San Francisco Opera: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

 

Bille Bruley as Steve Wozniak and John Moore as Steve Jobs

The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Pushing this post, from September 26, to the top, now that I've seen it again.

I feel pretty much the same way as I did in 2017. I think there were some improvements: I am reasonably sure that an embarrassing line about how Steve and Laurene "adopted" Lisa Brennan-Jobs is now gone, and I think that Laurene has more music. But the opera still fails to show how Jobs evolved; he is awful throughout. Reviews of Brennan-Jobs's memoir, Small Fry, makes Jobs and Laurene both sound awful. And in 2023, it's hard for me to be anything but cynical about tech moguls considering everything that has gone on in the last few years (the destruction of Twitter; working for an extremely profitable company that overhired during the pandemic, then laid of 12,000 people while paying its CEO nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, etc.).

I still liked the music and the performers are fine, although Sasha Cooke's general artistic profile isn't glamorous rich lady, and that might affect how I see her performance. John Moore and Bille Burley are great as Jobs and Woz, and it was good to see Adler Fellow Olivia Smith in a larger role. 

I was given a nice seat upgrade to the orchestra section, Row J just off the center aisle, and I gotta say that the orchestra sounded amazing from there; I could hear more details than in Santa Fe, where who knows how much sound goes out the back and sides of the theater. 

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Simon Cohen, SFCV
• Michael Strickland, Civic Center
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills. I admit to being a little surprised at Patrick's boredom, given the fast-moving libretto and bubbling music.
• DB, Kalimac's corner 
• Thomas May, Musical America
• 2017 media round-up (My blog post, linked here, consists of a lot of ranting about problems in the libretto.)
• Lisa Hirsch, Steve Jobs, the Man, and Steve Jobs, the Opera (2017)
• Lots more at this Google search