‘Steve Jobs’
New work premieres at Santa Fe Opera
The man who wired the world foundered in his own attempts to connect with the people around him.
A tyrant and visionary who sometimes wept at his desk, Steve Jobs was an enigma best excavated through opera, said Kevin Newbury, director of “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,” opening on Saturday, July 22, at the Santa Fe Opera. The 90-minute work is nonlinear, moving through flashbacks to the Jobs family garage through Apple’s corporate offices, ending with his Stanford University Chapel memorial service.
With music by Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Mason Bates and a libretto by Mark Campbell, the opera delves deeply into the heart and soul of its title character through a melding of electronica and symphonic music.
Baritone Edward Parks, who plays Jobs, read everything he could about his protagonist to prepare for the role.
“He’s a very complex person,” Parks said. “We’re all complex, but his genius made him more so.
“It’s not so much about computers. It’s about the connection we have with human beings. It’s about connecting with the people you love and the people you work with.”
The libretto places Jobs’ wife, Laurene, at the center of the piece as both anchor and soulmate.
“She was a very private person,” mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke said. “I think they balanced each other. I think there’s only a couple of people in Steve Jobs’ life –– his spiritual adviser (the Zen Buddhist priest Kobun) — whom he trusted with guidance. I think it was the same with Laurene.”
Bates composed a theme for each of his characters. Laurene’s slow-moving, oceanic harmonies collide with the frenetic energy of her husband. Tibetan prayer bowls
and Chinese gongs drift across the electronica to signal Kobun.
Laurene reminded her husband that people existed as more than a single button. It was also Laurene who persuaded Jobs to accept the pancreatic cancer that killed him. Jobs resisted surgery for nine months, instead relying on a pseudo-medicine diet to try natural healing. He died in 2011.
“I think it was a trust thing,” Parks said. “I think people trust the system or you don’t. When he was younger with Woz, (Jobs’ best friend and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) they wanted to be rebels and pull pranks. He would get really furious when his expectations weren’t being met. I think that made him such a tyrant in the workplace. If you see the documentary, there were people who said he ruined their entire lives.”
Director Newbury helmed the opera about another American paradox named Walt Disney. Philip Glass’ “The Perfect American” opened in both Long Beach, Calif., and Chicago this year.
“What is the nature of genius?” Newbury asked. “I think (Jobs) saw a way of bringing everything together. When we look into the iPhone, we see ourselves. Never before has one device contained so much about us. It’s totally narcissistic. Our phones trigger the same things in our brains as cocaine and heroin. He often said the Henry Ford quote that if you asked people 150 years ago what they wanted, they’d say a faster horse. He invented the 21st century. He made us see the world differently and ourselves differently. How did he see himself?”
The libretto maintains Jobs softened as he aged, thanks largely to Laurene, Cooke said.
“At the end, she says people need to get out of their phones and connect with one another.”
“The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” will open in Seattle in 2019 and in San Francisco in 2020.