An opera about a maddening hum, ‘The Listeners,’ premieres in Philly

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

“How do you murder a sound?” That’s the question one character sings in “The Listeners,” a new opera enjoying its American premiere this week by Opera Philadelphia at the Academy of Music.

The character, a teenager named Kyle, is part of a small suburban group in an unidentified American city who are plagued by a sound of undetermined origin. It’s a constant hum — to Kyle, it’s a truck “rumbling it’s way to hell,” while another character says it is “an electric drill grinding into my brain” from which there is no respite. The sound tortures them, eroding their mental stability.

Composer Missy Mazzoli, a native of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, who now lives in New York, based the hum on real mysterious sounds. Invasive, constant hums with no discernable source have been reported in places such as Taos, New Mexico, Auckland, New Zealand and Windsor, Ontario. An online data map tracks reports of the hum.

“My favorite Wikipedia page is a list of unexplained sounds, if you want to go down that rabbit hole with me,” Mazzoli said. “I started listening to some of these recordings online, then created my own operatic version of it.”

Mazzoli composed “The Listeners” for traditional orchestral instrumentation, except for the hum. To mimic the eerie experience of being a Listener, at key moments the orchestra stops and an electronic drone pours out of speakers installed through the academy.

“We’ve created a surround sound setup within the theater,” Mazzoli said. “No matter where you’re sitting — in the back of the balcony or in the front row — you will feel the sound swirling around you, like it’s actually coming out of your own head.”

Mazzoli wrote “The Listeners” with librettist Royce Vavrek, and it has been a long time coming. Co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, it was supposed to have its world premiere here in 2022 but was postponed due to the pandemic. Instead, it premiered in Oslo. The Philadelphia performance is the American premiere.

“This is mostly an American cast, whereas in Oslo we had a mostly European cast,” Mazzoli said. “To tell an American story with Americans who get all the jokes and understand the nuance — the Norwegian National Opera did an amazing job, it was an amazing production, but there’s something about doing an opera where it takes place that is really exciting.”

The hum is just the beginning. People who perceive the hum form a support group, which a charismatic but troubling leader guides into something akin to a cult. By the second half, “The Listeners” is investigating the blind appeal of political leaders, the quicksand of conspiracy theories and the tribalism of cult behavior.

“I’m not going to give away the end, but they seem to be on a collision course with destruction,” Mazzoli said.

Vavrek and Mazzoli began to conceive “The Listeners” in 2016, when Donald Trump began his term in the White House. Although not directly referencing the rise of Trumpism, they were trying to capture the zeitgeist of that moment, which Mazzoli said continues today.

“There was a lot of talk about the power and the potential danger of these charismatic leaders that were emerging in America and around the world, and their potential to manipulate and prey upon weakness and division,” she said. “Which, unfortunately, is just becoming more and more vivid in the last eight years.”

The production, which Opera Philadelphia director Anthony Ross Costanzo said is the most expensive the company has ever attempted, uses multiplatform technologies younger audiences will find familiar, including cameras onstage simultaneously projecting onto screens and TikTok-like social media posts the characters perform in real time.

The viewer comments that pop up in the social media projection become a counter-narrative to what is happening onstage. Many are vulgar, just like in real life. “The Listeners” is not afraid to be crass to get a laugh.

“The Listeners” will have three performances in Philadelphia: Sept. 25, 27 and 29 at the Academy of Music. It is the first production under Opera Philadelphia’s new ticketing model, in which every seat is $11 or as much as the patron wishes.