Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners takes its Lyric Opera bow in Chicago

Missy Mazzoli’s opera The Listeners is currently making its local debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the third of three commissioning companies to see it performed, after Norwegian National Opera in 2022 and Opera Philadelphia in 2024. The story follows Claire, a schoolteacher who hears a low-frequency hum that others cannot. The opera proves a jagged experience, as the story jerks through its plot points without sufficient scaffolding, Royce Vavrek’s libretto squandering Mazzoli’s carefully sculpted sounds.

There’s a lot of plot to get through in the opera’s two-and-a-half-hour run time. We first meet Claire talking to a coyote, played by a dancer. She’s outside in the middle of the night, having cut the power in her house to try to silence the hum. Later, at school, one of her students, Kyle, reveals to her that he hears a hum too, and they bond. Kyle and Claire find a community of people who hear it, led by a psychiatrist named Howard and his fawning secretary, Angela. It turns out to be more of a cult than a support group and, post-intermission, things happen fast: Howard tamps down dissent; Kyle and Claire kiss; Howard throws out Angela in favor of Claire; one of the dissenters shoots at a cell tower; Angela denounces Howard; the authorities storm the cult, Waco-like; and quite a bit more.

Cramming all this story in requires some leaps. For example, it takes only a few minutes of stage time for Claire to go from meeting Howard for the first time to appearing in a Twitch-like stream for recruitment, which leads directly to vulgar graffiti on Claire’s garage door (with the unlikely complaint of her ruining property values). It all happens too fast, making Claire less the everywoman the audience can sympathize with than a cipher of a plot engine.

The herky-jerky plot is a shame, because Mazzoli’s music is very effective. She frequently builds sounds using advanced techniques on top of ordinary playing, keeping an eerie or unsettling quality thrumming throughout the through-sung opera. Her sense of tension in the scene where one of the cultists shoots at the cell tower drives the suspense impressively. And her innovative use of the chorus works particularly well, bringing in contemporary choral sounds like cluster chords and murmuring instead of the more declamatory style in which opera choruses have historically been used.

Alienating also to the audience, the vivid modern-day language – diction such as “morass” and “quagmire”, descriptions of domestic abuse and cutting – pulls no punches. The Listeners surely holds the record for greatest number of fucks on the Lyric stage. None of this would shock a Chicago storefront-opera audience, but the relatively conservative Lyric crowd seemed less enthusiastic. A couple left midway through the first half, just after a scene in which Claire is interrupted mid-coitus by a ringing phone. 

Vocally the production was nearly unimpeachable. The large number of small solo moments, filled both by members of the Ryan Opera Center (Lyric’s training program) and by the chorus, showed personality even in their individually limited durations. Nicole Heaston as Claire showed impressive control and a timbral shine. Kyle Ketelsen as Howard had the bass heft for the part but maybe not the acting chops to play the hypnotic cult leader.

The standout among the cast was mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, playing Angela. The range between her bubbly scene-stealing charisma on first meeting Claire and Kyle and her vulnerability and abjection in the second half when losing her position as Howard’s number two proved her a true singing actor, with a vibrant vocal color palette to match.

The orchestra played well under Lyric’s Music Director, Enrique Mazzola. The long-awaited Mazzoli-Mazzola collaboration – her Proving Up was Covid-canceled twice – showed good balance and ensemble even with the many unusual sounds emanating from the pit, with the exception of overpowering Jonas Hacker, playing Kyle, a few times, as his voice was somewhat less beefy than the other leads’.

A small note about a strange decision: the hum, the catalyst for the whole story and a sonic phenomenon, does not feature in the music. You might think Vavrek and Mazzoli want to leave it uncertain whether the hum is real or just in the Listeners’ heads, but no doubt remains to the audience by the end that the sufferers all hear it together. Sometimes a high pitch, almost like tinnitus, accompanies a mention of the hum, but the characters describe it as extremely low-frequency, like a drill or an engine. In any case, our not hearing it situates us in an out-group, not fully in sympathy with Claire.

Many people have argued over the years that lots of canonical operas are too long. Da capo arias or expositional recitative can pad run time without adding much musical content. The Listeners, lacking some scaffolding between plot points but awash in good music, is the rare opera that is... too short.