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Composer Missy Mazzoli: ‘Opera is a place where classical music can talk to contemporary society’

The US premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s opera The Listeners arrives in Philadelphia in September. She speaks about the opera and modern cult intrigue.

Can you hear the hum? A phenomenon known as the ‘global hum’ – a never-ending low-pitched hum – is reported to plague four per cent of the world’s population. It forms the starting point for Missy Mazzoli’s thriller of an opera, The Listeners, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, which premiered in Oslo in 2022, staged by Lileana Blain-Cruz. It receives its US debut in September, opening Opera Philadelphia’s season.

Whereas Breaking the Waves, Mazzoli’s big operatic breakthrough, was based on Lars von Trier’s film, The Listeners is an original plot. How did it come about? ‘So much of opera is adaptation – which is fine,’ Mazzoli tells me, ‘but it can’t be opera’s greatest destiny to just tell stories that have already been told in another medium. There has to be room for stories that need to sing on their first outing into the world, so Royce and I connected with a friend of ours, Jordan Tannahill, a Canadian playwright and novelist, and we challenged him to come up with a story that had to be sonic in its first version.

‘Jordan wrote four short treatments and one of these became The Listeners. It was just three paragraphs long, but we were struck by the story. I had been interested in writing an opera about a cult for a long time so we asked him to expand it to a seven-page story and then Royce turned it into a libretto. The interesting thing is that Jordan took that seven-page story and turned it into a play, then a novel and now it’s a TV show! Because the pandemic happened, the novel came out about three months before the opera premiered.’

The 2022 world premiere of The Listeners in Oslo, with Norwegian National Opera (photo: Erik Berg)

Mazzoli explains the concept of the hum as ‘a noise that only certain people in this community can hear. It plagues them day and night – they think they’re going crazy because not everyone can hear it. But what does it mean? What can it represent? We decided the hum is something that comes for you when there’s an aspect in your life that you’re ignoring. All of these people in what becomes the cult – The Listeners – have something in their lives that they’re repressing.’

The central character is Claire, a middle-class mother who notices ‘the hum’ and is drawn into a group of fellow ‘listeners’, led by Professor Howard Bard, which takes on disturbingly cult-like dimensions. But is Claire losing her mind in the tradition of operatic mad scenes? For Mazzoli, it’s the reverse.

‘She becomes more sane as the opera goes on. Claire’s afflicted with this noise, so she’s kind of at her craziest at the beginning of the opera. There’s this very funny scene where she lashes out at her students and gets herself fired from her teaching post, but as the opera goes on, she steps into a leadership role within the cult, where she really finds herself. Her destiny is to be a leader. In a different situation, she’d have been a senator or a CEO or something.’

Mazzoli had noticed a clutch of cult-related media – documentaries such as Wild Wild Country (about the guru Rajneesh), Going Clear (Scientology) and the film Holy Hell (about the Buddhafield cult in California). ‘They seemed to follow the same pattern in that there was some sort of honeymoon period where people were thriving in the cult, because it gave them a sense of family that a lot of these people didn’t have. They’re all looking for something, for understanding, and all of a sudden there’s this cult leader who is saying, “I see you. I understand you”. That’s so seductive. Who doesn’t want that?’

‘I wanted to portray this cult as something that’s not wholly bad. At the beginning, it’s really important that we like Howard – we want to join his cult and be there with these people – but, as in many cult situations, there’s an abuse of power and the whole house of cards falls apart very quickly. But Claire rises to the occasion and these people flock to her. It’s such a consistent pattern and there’s something in this trajectory that is very human. This is how we fill the void when we don’t have family or societal support. This is why I think it happens a lot in America because there’s very little social safety net. Our successes are often defined by isolation – to be in a car that isolates you from people, to be in a house that isolates you from people – that’s how we define success. It’s the opposite of community.’

From Mozart and Da Ponte onwards, composer-librettist partnerships have been crucial to some of the greatest operatic successes. For The Listeners, Mazzoli again collaborated with Vavrek, who is also a close friend. ‘Royce and I have a unique and close relationship. We live about a mile away from each other, we’re always texting each other ridiculous things. Being close is not a requirement for a composer-librettist relationship but it’s been the great artistic gift of my life to have this partner-in-crime. It’s a very honest relationship with a constant back and forth. Flexibility is the key to our success. Neither of us is precious.’

Mazzoli is enthusiastic about Blain-Cruz’s staging. ‘It captures the spirit of present-day America. Lileana creates an amazing atmosphere and singers really trust her. You have to create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable enough to be themselves, otherwise the production dies.’

Berg’s Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera was Mazzoli’s first opera, which made a big impact on the 19-year-old. ‘It feels so dark and so contemporary for a work that was written nearly 100 years ago. I realised opera is a place where classical music can talk to contemporary society. I wanted to be part of that conversation, to be talking about the impact of charismatic leaders on a population searching for meaning.’

In 2026, Mazzoli gets her own chance at the Met, which co-commissioned (with LA Opera) her next opera, Lincoln in the Bardo, part of a sea change in programming at the Met. ‘It’s great news and it’s responding to what audiences are actually coming to. They’ve brought back Kevin Puts’ The Hours; they’ve brought back [Terence Blanchard’s]Fire Shut Up in My Bones. These are the works that audiences are flocking to see and selling tickets matters. I’m very excited. To have an opera presented at the Met is like a childhood dream.’ Mazzoli is about to have the operatic world at her feet.

The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli is at Opera Philadelphia 25-29 September: operaphila.org

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2024 issue of Opera Now. Never miss an issue – subscribe today