“A techno-infused opera about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has earned the financial backing of opera companies in San Francisco and Seattle, ensuring the musical meditation on the iconic entrepreneur will travel to America’s high-tech enclave,” The Associated Press reports.
“The partnerships were announced Tuesday as the Santa Fe Opera prepared for its July world premiere of ‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’ at its open-air summer stage in the foothills of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains,” AP reports. “The Seattle Opera and the San Francisco Opera are underwriting both the already completed artistic creation of the opera, led by composer and electronica DJ Mason Bates, and its physical stage production. As co-producers, the companies guarantee their right to performances beyond Santa Fe in California and Washington.”
AP reports, “Sponsors of the Jobs opera are counting on Bates and librettist Mark Campbell to deliver a ‘deeply layered, moving portrayal of a man grappling with the complex priorities of life, family and work,”’ in the words of San Francisco opera general manager Matthew Shilvock.”
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“The announcement of two major American opera companies joining the commissioning group behind a mainstage work that has yet to receive its world premiere is notable for both its inherent risk and its exceeding rarity in the opera world, and signals the belief that the opera’s story and its electronic-tinged score will resonate with audiences,” Opera News reports. “San Francisco Opera and Seattle Opera intend to announce casting for their performances at a later date.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs certainly lived a life worthy of an opera.
There had better be due reverence for Jobs’s preternatural ability to grok the dimensions of everyday life that underlay his decisions about what sort of tech would make it better. Again and again, he’d look at a competitor’s artifact, or one of his own engineers’ prototypes, and announce “That sucks. We can do better.” Nobody does that anymore! And no drama-worthy fictions, such as that the Mac OS was stolen.
If it comes to my town, count me in……
Syrup of ipecac for the opera world. I’ll be sure to go see it after drinking poison. Oh, I hope it’s all in 12 tone for maximum effect!
I <3 Steve Jobs. I loathe every single attempt at dramatizing his life. The biography's were bad enough, thank you.
Correction: “biographies’.
Part of the nausea induction of such garbage is watching how the facts of history are distilled down into essence of romantic distortion, which I find to be particularly noxious compared to either raw facts or real romance.