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“ Like Jobs himself, technology and its good and bad effects are a contradiction. ”
I had my reservations about whether or not Steve Jobs would make a compelling character in an opera. Did I really need to relive watching a controlling egoist launch Apple products, events that many of us tech journalists experienced in real life, where his reality distortion field engulfed a crowd of cheering fans?
But I was curious, especially after seeing a play more than a decade ago about the cult of Apple that evolved into a hard look at its manufacturing practices in a one man show by actor Mike Daisey at the Berkeley Rep in 2011, not long before Jobs died.
Along with his major influence on Silicon Valley, co-founding Apple
AAPL,
with Steve Wozniak at age 21, and guiding the design of breakthrough innovations such as the Mac and eventually the iPhone to the iPad, Jobs the business genius was also well-known to often be cruel, maniacally focused and controlling. It is undeniable that there has always been much fascination with Jobs, his ouster from Apple and epic comeback, the myths and stories, versus his highly scripted public persona, potentially making him a worthy subject of one of the most complete art forms.
After seeing “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,” a moving and accessible opera, Jobs proved to be a perfect protagonist by theatrical standards. He was a complex and contradictory force and his untimely death at age 56 was indeed tragic, no matter how you felt about him. With Jobs as the linchpin, the opera is a story about life and death in one act, sung in English, that is only 100 minutes long, a deeply layered look at the multi-faceted tech visionary.
“As a tech mogul who presented as an artist, Steve Jobs gives us a unique opera subject — both protagonist and antagonist — who journeys from hippy idealist to master of the universe,” wrote Mason Bates, the opera’s composer. Another article in the program notes that the contradictions about Jobs are in unusually high relief, and as both hero and villain, success and failure, the resulting paradox is “operatic.”
The shorter length may make it appealing to non-opera buffs, such as myself, and the topic of Jobs, Silicon Valley and the tech business may also broaden its reach.
The opera, which premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2017, does not seek to be a biopic of Jobs. There is a disclaimer in the program notes that “‘The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs’ is inspired by the life and creative spirit of Steve Jobs and does not purport to depict actual events as they occurred…” It also notes that it has not been endorsed by Apple or the estate or family of Jobs or anyone else depicted.
The story begins with Jobs’s adopted father giving him a workbench he made for his 10th birthday, a scene that takes place in the family’s garage in Los Altos, so that he can “take things apart” and “find how they run, learn what makes them tick.” It then quickly shifts to the 2007 launch of the iPhone, where Jobs, played by baritone John Moore, wearing his signature uniform of jeans, black mock turtleneck and tennis shoes, tells the audience to turn off their phones that they will want to throw out, “when you hear what I say.” Moore remains on the stage for the entire show.
“We opted for a non-linear approach,” said Kevin Newbury, who directed the opera. “I think of the opera as taking place in the final moments before he died, looking back on his life.”
Newbury, who is based in New York, said in a phone interview that the opera is a balanced portrait, showing the inspirations for Jobs, from his relationship with his spiritual mentor, Kobun Chino Otogawa, to Japanese calligraphy, to dropping acid, and how two of his relationships, with Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Lisa, the daughter Jobs initially denied, and with his wife Laurene Powell Jobs, influenced his life. “It certainly shows some of the dark more complicated aspects to his personality,” Newbury added.
Bates, the opera’s creator and composer, combined a classical symphonic score with electronic music, and was in the orchestra pit with his laptop. Mark Campbell, the librettist, said he read a huge amount of information about Jobs before embarking on the project, including Walter Isaacson’s acclaimed biography.
Campbell said that when the opera opened in Santa Fe, he sometimes talked to patrons in the gift shop, some who had seen it a couple of times and were amazed that they liked it, even as he explained it was not typical of opera, which can run between three to four hours.
“There are so many myths about opera,” Campbell said in a phone interview. “I really like that this opera really levels them. Part of that is Mason’s music, it is really exciting music, it has beats. I like the electronic sound, I think that is perfect for Steve Jobs. I am thrilled that it attracts new audiences.” In 2019, the opera was nominated for several Grammies, and won for best opera recording.
“ The opera, with its 20 relatively short scenes, leaves out some major moments in Jobs’s life. ”
For Apple fans and historians, the opera, with its 20 relatively short scenes, leaves out some major moments in Jobs’s life. For example, the pirate team at Apple that developed the original Macintosh, the infamous visit to Xerox Parc, his founding of NeXT, his triumphant return to Apple, and his joint stewardship of Pixar Animation Studios are not included in the story, which also uses a lot of artistic license.
“I made up the language,” Campbell said. “You don’t know what Woz and Steve were saying when they were making that prototype. We don’t know that. These are two stoner boys, a little bit older than teenagers, maybe in their parents garage, and not realizing at all that they were going to revolutionize the universe with what they were doing there.”
Bille Bruley (L) and John Moore portray Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs”
Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera
The opera also has some comic moments, such as its telling of how in 1971, Wozniak impersonated Henry Kissinger in a phone call to the Vatican, as a test of their digital version of the famous Blue Box to make free long distance calls. The Blue Box was created by a hacker known as Captain Crunch who discovered that the sound from a toy whistle found in a cereal box could fool the phone company’s call routing switches into making long distance calls. Woz and Jobs’s partnership on their digital version paved the way for their eventual collaboration to form Apple.
“He has impacted every single day of my life for the last 15 years,” said Moore, in a phone interview, who plays Jobs, referring to when he got his own first iPhone.
But the message about technology in the opera itself is not completely sanguine. In the iPhone launch scene, the lyrics get some digs in at both Jobs and the technology he perfected with the iPhone. “Make up with your girlfriend. Tap! Break up with your girlfriend. Tap! Break up with your parents. Zap!” Jobs sings and later, “All you need to control those messy moments in your life,” a not so subtle reference to his cruel treatment of some people in his life.
“ Jobs evolves into the man who came back to Apple after some crushing defeats and saved the company. ”
Jobs’s evolution into the man who came back to Apple after some crushing defeats and saved the company from near-bankruptcy is in part credited to the positive influence of his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. She is portrayed in the opera as an important life partner who later had to badger him to see his doctor. He first rejected surgery after his initial cancer diagnosis and thought diet could cure it.
Powell Jobs did not attend the opera’s opening night in San Francisco, nor did Wozniak or Apple CEO Tim Cook. But there is chatter about the performance in the Bay Area, and others in the tech business have been attending. Chrisann Brennan attended some dress rehearsals.
“The deliberately asynchronous timeline didn’t bother me,” said Peter Delevett, communications director for venture capital firm National Grid Partners. “In fact, I thought it reflected rather accurately that human growth isn’t linear but occurs in fits and starts and restarts.”
Delevett, a former journalist who covered the outside of Jobs’s memorial service at Stanford University in 2011 for the San Jose Mercury News, said he left the opera feeling grateful for tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and that he now gets to work with many of them.
“On our way out of the opera house, I stopped to buy the live recording on CD,” Delevett said, “and I chuckled to think that Jobs himself helped render that technology obsolete by bringing iTunes to the world.”
Like Jobs himself, technology and its good and bad effects are a contradiction. The opera ends with a warning about the addictive nature of our smartphones. Sung in the show by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who plays Powell Jobs, she tells the audience that Version 2.0 of Jobs might not want everyone to rush to look at their phones immediately after his memorial.
“Look up, look out, look around,” Cooke sings. “Be here now. Be here now. And then he’d say, ‘please buy them, but don’t spend your life on them.’”
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