美国国家公共电台 NPR Sing Different: Steve Jobs' Life Becomes An Opera

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Steve Jobs has been the subject of movies and books, but his complicated life and the ubiquitous objects he left behind also turned out to be the stuff of opera. Ten years after Apple released its first smartphone, the story of the genius behind the company comes to stage - the stage of the Santa Fe Opera tonight. Naomi Lewin reports on the premiere of "The (R)evolution Of Steve Jobs."

NAOMI LEWIN, BYLINE¹: Mark Campbell is one of the most prolific² librettists in contemporary American opera. But as he recently told an audience at the Guggenheim Museum, not everyone thought this project was a good idea.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARK CAMPBELL: I've had a number of socialist⁴ friends of mine saying, why would you write an opera about Steve Jobs? He was the worst capitalist. And I'll say, reach in your pocket. You probably have an iPhone there.

(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #1: (As character, singing) Tap, get the news. Tap, set a date. Tap, book a flight. Tap, stay in touch. Tap, stay in shape.

LEWIN: The idea came from composer Mason Bates. And though his librettist³ was initially⁵ skeptical⁶, too, the 40-year-old Bates was convinced he'd found the right subject for his first opera.

MASON BATES: Steve Jobs' life was complicated and messy. He had a daughter that he didn't acknowledge for many years. He had cancer. You can't control that. He was, while a very charismatic figure, quite a hard-driving boss. And his collisions with the fact that he wanted to make everything sleek⁷ and controllable, yet life is not controllable, is a fascinating topic for an opera.

LEWIN: Rather than creating a chronological⁸ life story, librettist Mark Campbell says the two collaborators opted⁹ for a fragmented narrative¹⁰ to reflect the man and his machines.

CAMPBELL: Steve Jobs did have a mind that just jumped from idea to idea to idea. It was very quick. And we wanted to tell an opera that is also very quick, that jumps around.

LEWIN: "The (R)evolution Of Steve Jobs" shifts back and forth¹¹ in time over the course of 18 scenes. And Bates created a different sound world for each character. Since Jobs played guitar and spent much of his time dealing¹² with electronics...

BATES: Steve Jobs has this kind of busy, frenetic, quicksilver world of acoustic¹³ guitar and electronica.

(SOUNDBITE OF MASON BATES OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

BATES: His wife - completely different space of these kind of oceanic, soulful strings¹⁴.

(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

SASHA COOKE: (As Laurene Powell Jobs, singing) You know what you need. You really need some rest.

LEWIN: Other characters include Jobs' partner, Steve Wozniak, and the Japanese-born Zen priest Kobun Chino Otogawa, who led Jobs to convert to Buddhism¹⁵ and served as a mentor¹⁶ for much of his life.

BATES: Kobun, the spiritual adviser¹⁷, has an almost purely¹⁸ electronic world with prayer bowls and processed Thai gongs.

(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

WEI WU: (As Kobun Chino Otogawa, singing) Karma can suck.

(LAUGHTER)

WU: (As Kobun Chino Otogawa, singing) What'd you expect? Simplify doesn't mean be selfish.

LEWIN: As often happens when his compositions premiere, Mason Bates will be seated among the orchestra musicians playing a pair of laptop computers.

BATES: Yes, they are Macintosh. No, I'm not sponsored. And I'm triggering sounds. I'm actually playing rhythms, everything from electronic beats to the sounds of early Apple computer gear to processed prayer bowls.

(SOUNDBITE OF MASON BATES OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

LEWIN: The opera's structure reinforces Jobs' notion of connecting the dots by looking backwards¹⁹. And the set echoes his creations, says the opera's director, Kevin Newbury. After a prologue²⁰ in the iconic garage where Jobs' ideas first took shape, the garage walls explode into six moving cubes with screens which look a lot like iPhones.

KEVIN NEWBURY: We're doing something called projection²¹ mapping where all of the scenic²² units have little sensors²³ so the video actually moves with them. We wanted to integrate it seamlessly into the design because that's what Steve Jobs and Apple did with the products themselves.

LEWIN: Jobs' sense of design was enormously influenced by Japanese calligraphy²⁴, including the enso, a circle that depicts²⁵ the mind being free to let the body create.

(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #2: (As character, singing) In Japanese calligraphy, the enso is basically a circle.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (As characters, singing) A circle.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #2: (As character, singing) Drawn²⁶ in one or two continual strokes.

LEWIN: The Mason Bates says that also figures in the opera's title, "The (R)evolution Of Steve Jobs," with the capital R in parentheses²⁷.

BATES: Of course, there's the revolution of Steve Jobs in his creations and his devices. There's also the evolution from a countercultural hippie to a mogul of the world's most valuable company. And there's the revolution in a circle of Steve Jobs as he looks at the enso, this piece of Japanese calligraphy, and finds that when he can kind of come full circle he reaches the kind of completion that he sought so long in his life.

LEWIN: A life marked by a struggle to find the balance between life's imperfections and the drive to create the perfect thing. For NPR News, I'm Naomi Lewin.

(SOUNDBITE OF OPERA, "THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (As characters, singing) Simplicity²⁸.

UNIDENTIFIED SINGER #3: (As character, singing) Simplicity. Simplicity.