Last Days review

Twenty-eight years after his death, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain remains an icon. But who could have guessed that his life would make an opera? Or rather, not his life, but its final few days, previously fictionalised in a 2005 film by Gus Van Sant, whose title Oliver Leith’s work borrows and whose scenario it broadly tracks: as in the film, the Cobain character is named Blake.

Now in his early 30s, an established figure on the new music scene and winner of several awards, Leith is currently composer-in-residence at the Royal Opera House in a scheme run jointly with the Guildhall School. His librettist, and co-director with Anna Morrissey, is Matt Copson. Best known as a visual artist, Copson is also responsible here for the powerful backdrop, with its semi-apocalyptic view of the natural surround to Blake’s house; Prema Mehta’s lighting is finely judged.

Leith’s score utilises strings (the 12 Ensemble), percussion and keyboards (the GBSR Duo), conducted with scrupulous care and attention by Jack Sheen. The result is highly individual, especially successful in capturing Blake’s debilitating aimlessness as the comic-grotesque irrelevance of the interruptions by visitors or phone contacts that penetrate his increasingly interiorised world. Leith’s music doesn’t seek to impose itself upon the subject: rather, it is as if he has discovered the ideal subject for it to expand upon.

Grace Smart’s set is a dilapidated segment of the house – part kitchen, part improvised bedroom – where Blake, with his diminishing connection to reality, is hiding out. His disengagement is compassionately realised by French actor Agathe Rousselle, who mumbles, stumbles and crumbles before our eyes. Others come and go, their occasionally extraordinary costumes (designed by Balenciaga, no less) almost giving them the air of visiting aliens: as the Groundskeeper, Sion Goronwy’s discourse circles around the idea of impending death.

Other singers – Mimi Doulton’s DHL driver; Patricia Auchterlonie’s intrusive Superfan; Seumas Begg and Kate Howden in a wryly comic double act as the two Mormons who, through the predatory Housemate of Edmund Danon, get more involved than they bargained for; and Henry Jenkinson’s memento mori Magician: all leave an appreciable mark.

Pre-recorded voices provide memorable moments, too. Hauntingly sung by Caroline Polachek, there’s a mock-Italian aria to which Blake listens intently, and which he later tries to reproduce on his guitar; while the unwelcome phone calls from his manager Trip are unforgettably relayed by real-life Montana auctioneer Cole Morrison in his professional gabble. The score impresses most in the full-scale ensembles, which have real dynamism. Yet elsewhere, its laid-back atmospherics and respectful distance from its subject also prove surprisingly effective strategies.

How easy it would have been to deliver a crass ending. Instead, Leith, Copson and their associates come up with an extended threnody – like a benison.