https://www.operaphila.org/whats-on/in-theaters-2024-2025/the-listeners/
Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek follow up on their acclaimed 2016 world premiere Breaking the Waves with a thriller about the seductive power of cults and charismatic leaders in a divided nation.
The Listeners examines the lengths to which we, as Americans, are willing to go to find a sense of place and purpose, and the way in which confident, charming leaders can exploit these needs to their own ends.
A middle-class mother (soprano Nicole Heaston in her company debut) living in a southwestern U.S. suburb notices a “hum,” a high-frequency environmental noise that only a select few people, the “Listeners,” can hear. A community organization quickly forms to solve the mystery of the hum, but when the de facto leader (Kevin Burdette) suggests a spiritual significance, the meetings become increasingly cult-like. Is this community of “Listeners” on a collision course with destruction?
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