Lyric Opera 2024-2025 Issue 8 - The Listeners

25 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Claire (at center,played here by Nicole Heaston) is hopeful at the first gatherings of the Listeners. in the Bardo , and The Galloping Cur e, a co-commission with San Francisco Opera and the Edinburgh International Festival, among others, will premiere in 2026. The Listeners was in part born out of the political aftermath of the 2016 election in the United States. Mazzoli recognized that Americans were “divided as a society, increasingly drawn towards our own echo chambers.” An awareness of that silo effect served as an inspiration for The Listener s. Mazzoli recalls: I wanted to create an opera about power imbalances and a middle-aged woman who finds herself in an extreme situation. When this is transformed into a dramatic distillate, the result can be summed up as a cult. Increasingly desperate people embody the dramatic essence Mazzoli describes. They seek comfort and relief. The confluence of fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and the unknown create a nexus of incredible vulnerability. The relentless hum in the opera — heard only by some — serves as a metaphor for the way isolation and uncertainty drive individuals toward collective belief systems, conspiracy theories, and cult-like devotion. The results, in The Listeners , are chilling and extreme. The work occupies a liminal space in American society in the twenty-first century — residing between the nodes of fact-based reality and those of a small group who hear something most cannot. That small group huddles together. They find a psychiatrist who provides them with answers, taking advantage of their need for belonging and community. It begs a question of modern society: If someone listened to you — when seemingly no one else would — could you stomach the loss of your spouse? Your child? Your job? The opening chorus in the Prologue — as a sort of answer to the painful struggle we’ve learned is tormenting Thom, Danica, and Dillon, part of the group of “Listeners” — asks: “Do you hear it? Do you always hear it?” The sustained urgency, voice grinding against voice, builds to a unison second statement of “ hear it .” The group continues: “A dull hum. An aggressive drone. The disruptor of our lives.” The men’s voices close the word “hum” to a sustained hmmm … vibrating beneath the women’s voices. Half-step clashing between the voices creates a jarring, beautiful effect. We see their faces in home video footage. Theories are espoused for the cacophonous presence of the hum: Ghost radio frequencies. The foundation rumbling. Governmental mind control. Radiation leaked from cell phone towers. Mazzoli generates a soundworld to maximum consequence as the opera unfolds. The central character Claire ushers us into this humming world. Solitary. In the moonlight. In her backyard. She is a woman on the edge. And on that precipice, she is joined by a coyote with whom she communicates, who just may be talking with her. She sees that they’re not so very different, she and the coyote. She cries out: “Howling. Owwoo! Owwoo!” — and the coyote joins her. The animal may Erik Berg/Norwegian National Opera & Ballet