JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
A mysterious hum, moody teenagers, a menacing cult - these may sound like the ingredients for prestige TV, but in this case, they come from an acclaimed new opera. "The Listeners" by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek had its U.S. premiere this week in an Opera Philadelphia production. Nate Chinen from member station WRTI brings us this report from the Academy of Music.
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NATE CHINEN, BYLINE: In the very first scene of "The Listeners," a man's face appears in tight close up, projected onto a giant screen. It's a live feed of a character who grimaces as he sings the opera's opening lines. This is how we live now - unbelievable. That's the complaint of a disillusioned cult member, though we don't know it yet. And while the story that unfolds in "The Listeners" is extraordinary, the sentiment feels disarmingly relatable, which is partly the point.
MISSY MAZZOLI: We're very interested in making opera that could only be made today. So "The Listeners" - I hope that people hear and think, oh, this could only have been written in the 2020s.
CHINEN: Missy Mazzoli is one of the most heralded composers in modern classical music. Together with her best friend and longtime librettist Royce Vavrek, she created "The Listeners" based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill. It begins with the premise of the hum.
MAZZOLI: This whole story revolves around this crazy noise that only a certain percentage of the population can hear. And this was based on actual noises throughout the world. There's, like, one in Taos, N.M. There's one near Detroit. You know, there are these areas where people report hearing these mysterious noises, and some of them are recorded.
CHINEN: Not everyone can hear the hum. One person who does is Claire Devon, a suburban school teacher played and sung here by soprano Nicole Heaston.
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NICOLE HEASTON: (As Claire Devon, singing) You hear it, too. You hear it, too.
CHINEN: Claire, driven almost to the point of madness by this mysterious noise, finds a community of fellow sufferers led by a charismatic figure who is gradually revealed as a cult leader. Director Lileana Blain-Cruz says the story is a dramatic gold mine.
LILEANA BLAIN-CRUZ: People can make the assumption of opera, like, you kind of know what's going to happen. And you're kind of sitting there, waiting for them to get to the point because they're singing real slow. And in this one, it doesn't feel like that. You're kind of on the edge of your seat, not knowing why they're making these choices, what they're going to unearth, like, where we're headed next, who's going to show up on scene next. And that kind of suspense thriller quality to the opera as a director I was really interested in. I was like, how do we keep us feeling like we're on the edge of something and not knowing where we're going to go? How do we keep that suspension in the set?
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (As characters, vocalizing).
CHINEN: The suspense in "The Listeners" plays out through the staging and set design as well as the words and music. Another key factor is the hum itself, which presented Mazzoli with a compositional puzzle.
MAZZOLI: It really changes the entire piece. Like, if it's something that only the singers can hear, it's in everybody's head, that's one thing. If the audience is also hearing it, that's another. So, you know, the audience doesn't hear it for a long time. But - and I won't give too much away, but I will say that at some point, the audience will hear the hum. And you're left to decide if you're crazy as well. Or are these characters crazy, or is this something that everybody's hearing?
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CHINEN: At a recent rehearsal, Blain-Cruz carefully coached several young singers on their state of mind during an emotional scene from Act 1. She also handed out props you don't often see on an operatic stage, like an iPhone and a vape pen. Librettist Royce Vavrek singles out that moment.
ROYCE VAVREK: There is this moment in the opera where two high school teenage girls smoke a joint outside their classroom. And it was offered as a little morsel on TikTok through a broadcast that we had after the Oslo premiere. And 2.4 million views later, it's - I think that's probably my most widely seen - our most widely seen little musical morsel. But it was really fascinating to see what these young kids were saying about the work and how, oh, my God, I didn't know that this is what opera could be.
CHINEN: That jolt of familiarity in the listeners feels like a sleight of hand, coming as it does with true operatic grandeur.
MAZZOLI: Musically, I'm attracted to opera because it illuminates our inner lives. So we might speak in everyday language, but our feelings are huge or small, and they're far-ranging. And what goes on in our minds and our imaginations is much more colorful and wild and weirder than what we present on the outside. So I think opera illuminates that for people on the stage.
CHINEN: For Mazzoli and her team, it isn't just language and texture that create a gripping experience. "The Listeners" asks us to consider how we isolate ourselves from one another even as technology creates an illusion of connection. It's a timely story that, on an emotional level, also taps into something timeless.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (As characters, vocalizing).
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