Raw and riveting, discomfiting and relentlessly contemporary. “The Listeners” is all that and more.
The 2½-hour work, which opened Sunday afternoon at Lyric Opera of Chicago and runs through April 11, is Missy Mazzoli’s fourth work in the form, and it definitively establishes her as one of the major operatic composers of our time.
“The Listeners” is a tense psychological thriller, with virtually all the essential elements of that subgenre, including probing looks at the motivations and mindsets of its characters and a stunning plot twist at the end that few viewers will see coming.
Based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill, the taut, suspenseful libretto by Mazzoli’s regular creative partner, Royce Vavrek, centers on Claire (soprano Nicole Heaston). The middle-aged teacher suffers a kind of mental breakdown that keeps her up at nights and causes her to be fired from her job and drives her away from her family.
She is plagued by a maddening sound that is described variously in the opera as an “aggressive hum,” an “engine of a truck” and a “fungus mushrooming in your head.” For relief, she turns for refuge to a “community action group,” where there are dozens of others who hear the same noise —”the listeners.” But it turns out that is organization is really a cult, with all the pernicious mind control and sexual entrapment common to such groups.
Perhaps the sound is real and perhaps it is not, but, more important, the buzz is a metaphor for the emptiness, frustrations, failures and anxieties that drive lost souls into the waiting arms of a cult. It is a tale of loneliness, a desperate need to belong and the ugly lure of power.
Adding yet another layer to the storytelling is the intriguing, intervening presence of a coyote (dancer Rachel Harris), who is at once both real and mythological. Indeed, in this opera, the creature seems to follow a tradition in much Native-American storytelling in which the character is a trickster, an appellation even used at one point in the libretto to describe her.
The story takes place in a world evocatively conceived by set designer Adam Rigg that is both banally common and forbiddingly different. Claire lives in a blandly suburban house and teaches in a generic classroom, but the always visible backdrop to these locales is the stark, mountainous and subtly foreboding landscape of the desert Southwest accented by light designer Yi Zhao with hushed, often unworldly hues of greens, pinks, and violets.
Two elements most strongly mark the staging, which was originally conceived by Lileana Blain-Cruz for this co-production with the Norwegian National Opera and Opera Philadelphia, and re-created here by Mikhaela Mahony.
First is the sharp-edged realization of the opera’s damaged characters and their searing pain. Second is the inventive use of technology, including a Facebook Live segment in which the cult’s leader, Howard, tries to lure more adherents, and recorded “confessionals” in which eight or so cult members share their darkest secrets as the resulting black-and-white videos are simultaneously projected on a 26-foot-tall screen. With his enveloping bass-baritone voice and commanding stage presence, Lyric regular Kyle Ketelsen creepily inhabits the menace and charisma of Howard, not to mention the cult leader’s narcissism and obvious hunger for power.
Potently filling out the story, sharpening the emotions and shaping the atmosphere is Mazzoli’s rich, abundantly original and often eerie music that manages to be both alluring and assaultive, with its clangorous percussion, ominous brass and bass clarinet and sliding, streaking strings.
The score is vividly brought to life by the Lyric’s fine pit orchestra, with music director Enrique Mazzola showing himself to be just as effective in contemporary music as he is with Verdi, never letting the tension or action flag.
A particular highlight is the composer’s penetrating, multilayered choral writing that conveys the cult’s lockstep unity in both beautiful and disturbing fashion. These sections are impeccably performed by Lyric’s 60-voice chorus, which has an important presence in this opera and is superb throughout.
Heaston, a Chicago native, is making her long-overdue Lyric debut as Claire. Both a multi-dimensional singer and first-rate actor, she delivers a defining performance, forcefully conveying both the pain and sadness of this broken character as well as her ultimately scary and unexpected transformation.
In all, there are 19 principal singers, and they are strong from top to bottom.