An unexpected by-product of pandemic lockdowns was the time and headspace they allowed for composers to work on big projects. Oliver Leith and Matt Copson used the opportunity well; his Last Days is one of the most original operas of this century. First seen in 2022, it now makes a welcome return.
Last Days is loosely based on Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film of the same name, an imagined account of a scuzzed-out rock musician contemplating suicide. Although Leith and Van Sant both refer to grunge-meister Kurt Cobain, who killed himself in 1994, the film carried a disclaimer: this is "a work of fiction and the characters and events portrayed in the film are also fictional". So it is with Leith’s opera.
As in the film, the central character is called Blake, less a representation of Cobain than an embodiment of his anomie and despair. Apart from brief moments of pre-recorded guitar, Leith doesn’t recreate Cobain’s sound-world. His orchestra (conducted by Jack Sheen) is the 12 string players of Ensemble 12, augmented by the piano and percussion of GBSR Duo. Running throughout, a delicate sound design (created by Sound Intermedia) is all hints and rustles, of bird song, ambient noise, everyday minutiae: milk being poured on breakfast cereal, for example.
Leith’s writing for voices and instruments is never strident. A penumbra of shimmering percussion dominates, strings billow and surge, mostly gently, while voices are rarely full-on operatic. Blake doesn’t even sing, he mumbles. Meanwhile, Blake’s manager (voiced by Cole Morrison, a cattle auctioneer from Montana) is heard only on the phone, his pre-recorded gabble as incomprehensible as Blake’s (surtitles provide a translation of both).
The opera’s text is by Matt Copson, who co-directs with Anna Morrissey. In Grace Smart’s split-level set, the production captures the slow-moving chaos amid which Blake festers and decays. There have been changes since the original staging: back then, costumes were by Balenciaga, an odd choice; now, Nat Turner’s replacements have the required tatterdemalion glamour. In 2022, Blake was played by a woman, Agathe Rousselle, introducing a note of gender fluidity. Her replacement is Jake Dunn, whose shambling gait and all-encompassing shaggy green coat (held over from 2022) retain that ambiguity.
The entropy engulfing Blake inflects moments of humour with a hint of menace: the DHL delivery person, desperate to get a signature so she can offload her parcels; the Mormon evangelists who strip off to join Blake’s shabby entourage; Blake himself vainly taking a broom to the accumulated detritus.
The blend of pathos, impending doom and low comedy gives the opera its own special atmosphere. Forget Cobain, put aside Van Sant. Leith and Copson’s Last Days can stand on its own. It’s that rare beast, a contemporary opera with a genuine future.
Ends January 3 rbo.otg.uk
