Creator Conversations: Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek on "The Listeners"

The Listeners, a co-commission by Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Norwegian Opera & Ballet, and Philadelphia Opera, receives its Chicago premiere this spring. We spoke with its dynamic creators — composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek — about genre, wildness, and what makes this opera such a powerful work for the contemporary moment.

In the press, some have described The Listeners as a thriller. Does that resonate with you?

Missy Mazzoli
I think that it has the pacing of a thriller that you would see on Netflix. And that was by design. Particularly in the second act, we worked very hard to ramp up the drama so that everything comes together in this massive crescendo. The action just starts spilling over itself. It's... thrilling. I like that word because it's not typically used to describe opera, but it's very accurate here.

Royce Vavrek
The impulse to engage Jordan Tannahill to write an original story that we would then turn into an opera was so that the audience would come in and not know the narrative. They would be taking in the story for the first time. This piece has a lot of big twists and turns. With opera, when you have seen a work five or six or seven times and you really know it inside your body, there's nothing more magical than that. But there is also something magical to the exhilaration of seeing something for the first time, and having it pull you through with a force and a velocity. That is also something that I attribute to the thriller label.

Mazzoli
I think Tosca is a thriller. I think most operas are thrillers. I just saw Tosca the other night, so it's on my mind. It's thrilling and it's harrowing. Our work is set in America in the present day and it has taboos, and a police raid, and unexpected turns. Those are things people associate with movies and TV shows.

You've been able to see the work in performance in Oslo and Philadelphia. How were the audience reactions?

Vavrek
In Norway, the reception was very warm — but it was nothing in comparison to how the Philadelphia audience responded. There was an energy. Because the opera is 21st century and it's very vernacular, it really does feel like your friends are on stage singing about their lives. The audience in Philly just went for it. I don't think they believed that there were experiences like that. We're told that the opera has Wagnerian horns on heads, and beautiful, huge-voiced humans who come and stand at the edge of the stage and sing for eight minutes and do nothing but sing. I think that they were just surprised that opera could communicate like theater and be something that you could laugh out loud with, and that shocking things were going to happen. There were gasps.

Mazzoli
It's an American suburb. You can relate to that as a European or someone living in Oslo, but in America, we live it. This is our life. To see your life operatized is thrilling. I think it's a rare experience for people — even people who go to opera all the time.

The opera is derived from an original story by novelist Jordan Tannahill, and he published a book with the same title. Can you describe the relationship to the book?

Vavrek
I would say that the opera is not really related to the novel. We commissioned a treatment from Jordan, just a four-page, crude short story version. Then we developed the opera independently while he went and he initially developed it as a stage play and then as a book, and then as the mini-series for the BBC. Basically, we planted two identical seedlings, and then we went off and tended to them in our own gardens, and they became very independent things, linked by this fundamental connection.

The Listeners is your fourth collaboration, of six.
For opera, yes. Song from the Uproar (2012), Breaking the Waves (2016), Proving Up (2018), The Listeners (2012). Lincoln in the Bardo will premiere at the Met in the fall of 2026, and so it will actually be after The Galloping Cure.

Vavrek
The Galloping Cure has now become our fifth opera, because it will have its world premiere in the U.K. shortly before Lincoln.

Has your collaborative method evolved?

Mazzoli
The way we work is that we talk a lot as we're coming up with the story and the source material — we're constantly in dialogue about that. Then Royce goes away and writes a draft of the libretto. I'm very hands-off unless he asks for help at that point. Then once he has a draft, we go over it together. Then once we have a final draft, I go away and start writing. Then, as I'm writing, I'm checking in with Royce. It's a constant back and forth. In general, the words come first, but the words often will change to fit the music. It really is built to be one.

Vavrek
The long and the short of it is we like to meet in person as often as humanly possible.

Do you write with singers in mind?

Vavrek
I think that it's important for me to not be scared of words. There's this idea of, Oh, a librettist needs to know singable words. Every word is singable, and there's something delicious about it. But it's about the way that you set them. Obviously, there are beautiful, interesting ways to set the phrase "I love you," and very boring ways to set the phrase "I love you." The same can be said with any word, I believe. But if the composer is not inspired to meet the word, then you find another word. Of course, I listen to rhythms. I like strange, crunchy sounds, but I also appreciate big, beautiful open vowels and florid phrases. I do think very musically, but I don't think melodically, let's say.

In thinking about The Listeners, and Lincoln in the Bardo, it seems that invisible forces play a role in your work.

Mazzoli
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an essential part of opera, but I would have a hard time writing an opera that didn't have some element of magic or something otherworldly, or something extreme and not realistic in it. Because even the most mundane opera is very surreal; everyone is singing their thoughts. This gives me a lot of freedom and inspiration musically. Music can be a representation of these forces acting on people. It can be a representation of their psychology and something unknown.

Vavrek
There are links in the DNA of all of our pieces. In Breaking the Waves, it is a very rigid form of Christianity — and that oppressiveness comes through in a way that parallels The Listeners, where the community comes together to deal with this oppressive sound.

There's a coyote on stage in this opera, which has sort of an otherworldly quality.

Mazzoli
It's this strange creature, and everyone's reaction to this coyote is very strange. It's like this wild animal living among them. Certainly, coyotes are real. There was one in a grocery store in Chicago. They are creatures that straddle civilization and wilderness. It represents a bunch of different things in The Listeners — the wild side of Claire, our main character, for instance. It's a physical manifestation of the hum sound, and it's a call back to the wild self. I like having those elements in there. Why not?