Bouncing with Bud
Happy Friday, and Happy Bud Powell Centennial! With apologies, I must admit that I don’t have a “Bud at 100” post for you today, for reasons that should soon be clear.
As usual,
is on time and on point with this post, the centerpiece of which is a scrolling score of three iconic Powell solos. shares a story about Bud and Wayne Shorter in Paris. And Kevin Whitehead snuck out of retirement to with this fine Fresh Air tribute, a worthwhile seven minutes of your time.I’ll merely add that Bud Powell was one of a handful of jazz musicians who radically redrew the entire language of his instrument — his style wasn’t an adaptation of Charlie Parker’s line to the piano, as you will sometimes hear, but an intensely original signature that hardened over time into an orthodoxy. “His contributions have been as germane to the modern jazz pianist’s training as Czerny five-finger exercises and Bach Inventions are to that of classically trained pianists,” writes Guthrie Ramsey in The Amazing Bud Powell, a 2013 biography with a scholarly but approachable bent. (Its subtitle: “Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop.”)
Dance of the Infidels
Strange as it may seem, I’m not here to go long on Bud Powell’s legacy today. (Maybe another day.) Instead I want to talk about contemporary opera — one in particular. On Wednesday night, I attended the Opera Philadelphia premiere of The Listeners, a mind-blowing new opus by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, based on a story they commissioned from Jordan Tannahill.
First presented by the Norwegian National Opera in 2022, and broadcast as a livestream at the time, it’s a riveting work of dramatic tension and an absolutely brilliant example of operatic content in a contemporary form.
I wrote about The Listeners for NPR Music, and also reported a story for All Things Considered, which is airing on your NPR affiliate shortly before 6 p.m. ET today. (If you click the link after that time, you should be able to hit a “play” button to hear the radio piece.) So for a thumbnail sketch of the opera’s plot, and more details about its music, that’s where I would refer you.
The complex hero of The Listeners is Claire Devon, superbly sung and acted by soprano Nicole Heaston (both here and in the Oslo premiere). Claire’s arc in the opera describes a cycle of suffering, crisis, and resilience — though not without some residual queasiness in the final resolution. For Mazzoli — whose breakthrough at Opera Philadelphia, also created with Vavrek, was a 2016 adaptation of Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves — this tale of an ordinary women under extraordinary duress was not just useful or symbolic. As Mazzoli put it in conversation during an afternoon rehearsal at the Academy of Music, Claire’s untapped potential was as compelling a narrative element as society’s glib dismissal of her pain. And it has a direct parallel in the story of her own family.
The Listeners emphatically centers the stories of women — not just Claire, but also her flustered and rebellious teenage daughter, Ashley, and several fellow members of a self-help cult — without sermonizing, or even much sentimentalizing. It’s also often extremely funny, in the darkest way. One scene that I observed in rehearsals involves three teenage girls (including Ashley) trading secrets outside the school building, while smoking weed and idly scrolling through their iPhones.
Their dialogue — remember, this is an operatic libretto — begins with the following exchange, which sent the audience at the Academy of Music into hysterics.
JESSIE
Hey, get this, my mom is fucking my uncle.
ASHLEY
No way.
JESSIE
Even sent her a pic of his dick.
I saw it.
ASHLEY
That’s gross, Jess.
You can’t unsee that.
LEANN
Of all the men in the world,
She fucks her brother?
JESSIE
God no LeeAnn,
Don’t be sick.
My dad’s brother.
LEANN
Still.
That’s probably gonna end bad.
During our conversation at the Academy rehearsal hall, Vavrek seized on this moment as something that had gone viral on TikTok during the Oslo production. He also offered what I take as a mission statement, when it comes to colloquial language and relatable stories in the operatic sphere.
The Listeners was commissioned during the administration of Opera Philadelphia’s well-loved leader of more than a decade, David Devan. But its startlingly contemporary texture, and its ripped-from-the-Netflix-queue plot and premise, feel extraordinarily well suited to the aims of the organization’s brand-new general director and president, world-renowned countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo.
Taking the stage at the premiere on Wednesday, Costanzo welcomed the audience with the welcoming brio of a cocktail party host. His festive air was not without merit: in the weeks since he implemented Opera Philadelphia’s new “Pick Your Price” initiative, which offers all seats to all shows at a minimum fee of only $11, the organization has sold more than 10,000 tickets. More than half of those tickets went to first-time opera-goers, he announced from the stage. (I heard him say 68%. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin reports 58%.)
One week after Opera Philadelphia announced Pick Your Price — a move so radical in this space that it merited standalone coverage in the New York Times — I sat down with Costanzo at WRTI to talk about accessibility, accountability, and his vision for opera as an art form. Considering that you’ve read this far, I think you’ll appreciate this conversation whether you are an avid opera fan or not.
At one point in the interview, I mention A New Philosophy of Opera, a new book by the acclaimed young operatic director Yuval Sharon. The idea of Sharon’s that I invoke is the cultivation of an “anti-elite” model for modern opera productions — something that I think is beautifully embodied by Opera Philadelphia in general, and this production of The Listeners in particular.
Chances are, you read The Gig because you care about jazz and improvised music. So I’d like to invite you to read the following passage, from early in Sharon’s book, and think about how it relates to that tradition. I think there’s a lot to consider there.
Let’s start thinking of opera as evolutionary rather than decaying. Let’s consider the experience of going to the opera sas a way of thinking and feeling that will benefit us outside the theater. Let’s start viewing opera as an engine for empathy and awe, and decide to attend a performance with an explorer’s mindset. that means opening ourselves up to the unfamiliar. What would happen if we approached opera on those terms, actively developing our curiosity about things we can’t fathom but long to know?
The Scene Changes
Lileana Blain-Cruz, director of The Listeners, also directed the Wayne Shorter / esperanza spalding opera Iphigenia. I covered its premiere for NPR Music, after conferring with both spalding and Shorter.
Also for NPR Music, I reviewed Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the Terence Blanchard opera that made history at The Metropolitan Opera in 2021.
More Blanchard, more arias: here at The Gig, I wrote about Champion, Blanchard’s first opera, presented at The Met last year.
As I noted in the NPR Music story, Mazzoli and Vavrek are presenting Lincoln at the Bardo during the 2026–27 season of The Met Opera. They had just finished a revision when we spoke, and the excitement was real. I can’t wait.
This isn’t opera, but it’s words and music. Tonight I’m seeing Gabriel Kahane’s Book of Travelers, which Playwrights Horizons has staged in tandem with his Magnificent Bird. I’ll have more to say about that soon.
That’s all for now; I have a curtain call. Have an excellent weekend!