Production Note

Notes on the Production

WRITTEN BY Julia Brown Simmons

PHOTOS BY Erich Schlegel for Austin Opera

Steve Jobs (John Moore) from Austin Opera’s production from February this year. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”

Steve Jobs shared this idea with the 2005 Stanford University graduating class in a commencement speech that is often touted as one of the most watched in history. In his remarks, Jobs described to the students his life story—how he dropped out of college only to later drop in on college classes that looked interesting to him. He encouraged Stanford students to do as he did—not to drop out of college, per se, but to trust their guts and trust what they love—assuring students that the dots of their lives would ultimately connect. This concept—the ability to see connections and patterns with clarity only in retrospect—provides a lens through which to understand Mason Bates and Mark Campbell’s opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs—an opera that follows the Apple co-founder as he looks back on his life and career and confronts his own mortality.

Ko –bun Chino Otogawa (Wei Wu) and Steve Jobs (John Moore) from Austin Opera’s production. The 40-year-old composer and DJ Mason Bates conceived the opera. Bates, widely recognized for his works combining symphonic and electronic dance music, approached librettist Mark Campbell—who had crafted libretti for 37 operas, lyrics for seven musicals, and the text for five song cycles and two oratorios—to collaborate with him on the opera.

The work premiered in 2017 at the Santa Fe Opera. Although this one-act opera centers on the life of Steve Jobs, drawing primarily on real-life figures and events, it has a fictional spin. Rather than focusing on Jobs as the legend and celebrity who revolutionized how people communicate today, the opera explores Jobs as a man who recognizes the human condition, practices Zen Buddhism, and faces his own mortality. With this humanized Jobs at the core of the opera, Bates and Campbell delve into the duality of Steve Jobs—a man who is high-tech and futuristic as well as meditative and mortal.

The music composed by Bates maps perfectly onto the subject of his opera. Mirroring how the opera’s story revolves around Jobs’ duality, Bates’s music straddles two worlds. Bates combines classical music built upon years of tradition with modern, electronic music. Classical, melodic arias meld with pulsing amplification. Music of the past and present coalesce just as Jobs himself brings together the ancient tenets of Zen with revolutionary technology.

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs has seen spectacular success since its premiere in Santa Fe. It was the Santa Fe Opera’s most popular new opera in its history. The work was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, and the 2018 recording won a Grammy for Best Opera Recording. Opera companies across the country are now performing the work or scheduling the opera for upcoming seasons.

The narrative of the opera is non-linear, featuring different vignettes from Steve Jobs’s life. “Present-day” for the opera, however, is 2007. Jobs is in poor health. Laurene, his wife, tells him he needs to take better care of himself. Jobs decides to go on a meditative walk, during which he reflects on moments from his past. He Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Bille Bruley).

John Moore from Austin Opera’s recent production. remembers his dad giving him a workbench when he was a kid, attending a calligraphy class at Reed College, collaborating with his best friend Steve Wozinak, taking LSD with his girlfriend Chrisann and rejecting the child they had together, talking with his Zen mentor Ko –bun Chino Otogawa, and ultimately meeting his wife Laurene. His walk ends with his acceptance of his illness and mortality. The opera then closes with a memorial service for Jobs during which Laurene reflects on his life and influence on the world.

By taking isolated moments from Jobs’s life in all his various roles—as business magnate, husband, friend, father, Buddhist, and human—the opera reveals connections, patterns, and meaning. The opera, in Jobs’s own words, allows the audience to connect the dots of Jobs’s life. It allows us to better understand Steve Jobs— both the good and the bad—and perhaps gives us a bit of insight into our own mortality.