Chicago Classical Review

When an opera begins with a dancer in a catsuit stalking across the stage and glaring at the audience while the orchestra is tuning and the house lights are still up, you know you’re in for it.

Missy Mazzoli’s The Listeners opened Sunday afternoon, the final production of Lyric Opera’s season. And despite Mazzoli’s past successes and the considerable amount of talent on stage, the most noteworthy thing about Listeners is that it is the worst new opera to be heard in Chicago since Freedom Ride.

It’s bewildering just how numbingly bad this opera is since Mazzoli is usually such an intelligent and compelling voice. A former composer in residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (2018-2020) she has enjoyed previous success in the operatic genre with Song from the Uproar, Breaking the Waves, and Proving Up. (Her fourth opera Lincoln in the Bardo will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in the fall of 2026.)

The Listeners tells the tale of Claire, a suburban mother and teacher living in the Southwest U.S., who is besieged by a mysterious humming that she can hear but her family cannot, disconcerting her husband Paul and daughter Ashley. She discovers that Kyle, one of her students, also hears the sound. Kyle discovers that a band of similarly afflicted people have gathered together who want to understand the hum’s meaning. They travel to join the group, which is being directed by Howard, its strange yet charismatic leader. Claire gradually comes under the spell of Howard, which threatens the leader’s existing relationship with Angela, his second-in-command. Hilarity doesn’t ensue. It gradually dawns on some members that the manipulative Howard is running a mind-control cult and preying on the psychological weaknesses of his misfit followers, a fracturing that ultimately leads to violence.

The Listeners is a Lyric co-commission, which debuted in Oslo in 2022 and had its U.S. premiere last fall at Opera Philadelphia. Though the opera originated in the aftermath of the 2016 election, The Listeners is not overtly political and doesn’t try to make polemical hay out of painting the cult as MAGA adherents. Rather, the opera’s storyline at times seems to hearken back further to Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” the celebrated Twilight Zone episode where a middle-class suburban neighborhood descends into paranoia over a suspected alien invasion.

The opera’s storyline is intriguing and the potential dangers of cults—be they religious, political or social—is always fair game.

Unfortunately, the opera’s potential is never realized, largely due to the fact that Royce Vavrek’s libretto is an unholy mess. The opera goes off the rails almost from the jump, with the omnipresent coyote, represented by an undulating dancer, who Claire commiserates with and sings to. In addition to the inscrutable symbolism, the not-so-wily coyote quickly becomes distracting and annoying. Can hunting season come too soon?

The intriguing, noirish sci-fi elements—what the humming represents and where it is coming from—is never fully explored or explained. Instead, the muddled libretto morphs into community group therapy with several undeveloped characters  flitting in and out. Claire is largely a cipher and the other characters are cardboard archetypes, some of whom get solo moments with (jarringly close-up) livestreams of their “confessionals” projected on a large screen.

In addition to the prevailing triteness of Vavrek’s words, the libretto abounds in crassness and crudities including two on-stage sex scenes (the second mercifully brief and stylized). Equally off-putting is the ceaseless profanity, which seems to be used for cheap laughs that aren’t even funny. Vavrek marks the opera’s dramatic peaks with repeated F bombs—the lazy writer’s equivalent of the bad directorial device of having opera characters slap each other.

Mazzoli’s score is often subsumed by the restless production with its zoom-in live-streaming of singers and high-tech visuals. Her music for the first act is unremarkable, fluently efficient and skillfully scored but pallid, often fading into the background of the action. With more aria-like solos in the second act, the music has greater expressive richness, as in the choral writing for the cult’s incipient derangement. But ultimately, this is not one of Mazzoli’s more successful or notable efforts.

Nicole Heaston has turned in some worthy recital appearances in Chicago, and, as Claire, she makes a generally solid Lyric Opera debut. The singer possesses a sizable soprano able to handle the sudden leaping lines that the role abounds in. Her acting proved more workmanlike, hitting the marks as required but never really etching a credibly rounded character (though the shallow libretto bears much of the blame).

Howard may be the villain of the piece, but as the hummers’ holy man, Kyle Ketelsen provided the best singing of the night, deploying his refined bass-baritone with grace and dramatic point as needed. Ketelsen conveyed the charlatan’s charismatic qualities though he too wasn’t helped by the libretto’s lack of character consistency.

As Kyle, Claire’s student co-hummer, Jonas Hacker made a worthy mainstage bow, following his sort-of company debut in Lyric Unlimited’s Fellow Travelers in 2018. Hacker credibly passed as a high school student and though the tenor’s light instrument sounded a bit undersized for the big house, he sang with fine expressiveness and greater projection in his spotlight aria.

Of Claire’s family members, Jasmine Habersham’s squally soprano added to the irritation provoked by Ashley, Claire’s complaining daughter. Zachary Nelson did what he could with the equally ungrateful part of her perplexed husband Paul.

As Angela, Daniela Mack is so manic and over the top as Howard’s secretary/number two, she seems too crazy even for this cult. The cartoonish character is given some belated balance and the mezzo-soprano brought affecting expression to her reflective aria.

Though he didn’t have a lot to sing, John Moore made a striking company debut as the unhinged cult member, Dillon. The young baritone was fully credible as a damaged military veteran, delivering a performance of riveting intensity as an obsessive-compulsive train wreck on the edge of a violent breakdown.

Jospeh Lim was serviceable if overemphatic as the skeptical Thom. Lyric chorus members filled the rest of the individual cult member roles capably. Michael Black elicited ensemble singing of power and versatility from the large extended chorus. Dancer Rachel Harris was the graceful if annoying coyote. 

Adam Rigg’s sets and Hannah Wasileski’s projections worked effectively. Michaela Mahony directed the production resourcefully, skillfully handling difficult the complex cult scenes with dozens of people on stage. 

Enrique Mazzola often does his best work in new music and such was the case again with the company’s music director leading a tautly focused performance of Mazzoli’s uneven score, drawing committed and polished playing from the Lyric Opera Orchestra.

The Listeners runs through April 11. lyricopera.org 

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