THE (R)EVOLUTION OF STEVE JOBS at San Francisco Opera
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In my review of this opera that was posted on September 29, there were unfortunately many errors, misnamers, and typos. What follows below is the corrected version of this review.
What I’d heard till now of music by Bay Area composer Mason Bates seemed to me glib, light-weight, and of llittle interest. For example, his Piano Concerto, which premiered at San Francisco Symphony in 2022, struck me as meretricious, hardly worth the valiant effort of the brilliant pianist Daniil Trifonov for whom Bates wrote the work and who performed it at its SF premiere. So now, as I attended the Sunday matinee of The (R()evolution of Steve Jobs on October 24, I didn’t expect great things. Well, though I certainly did not experience great things, I must say that, for the most part, Mason Bates’ pop-infused mix of traditional orchestration and computerized soundscapes worked reasonably well in this operatic tale about a Silicon Valley ihigh-tech mogul and ruthless executive.
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