Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's final days are being turned into an opera by the Royal Opera House in London. ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut READ MORE: Krist Novoselic on Nevermind’s impact: “So much was going on. And then it all just spectacularly...
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s final days are being turned into an opera by the Royal Opera House in London.
- ORDER NOW: Paul McCartney is on the cover in the latest issue of Uncut
- READ MORE: Krist Novoselic on Nevermind’s impact: “So much was going on. And then it all just spectacularly blew up”
The production, called Last Days, will be a production adapted from Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film of the same name.
The film, which was centred on a young musician called Blake, was loosely based on Cobain’s last days. Cobain died by suicide in 1994 aged 27.
A description from the Royal Opera House says that the opera “plunges into the torment that created a modern myth” and that “Blake” is “haunted by objects, visitors and memories distracting him from his true purpose – self-destruction”.
The opera has been composed by Oliver Leith, the Royal Opera House’s composer-in-residence. Directed by Copson and Anna Morrissey, it is due to be staged this October at the venue’s Linbury Theatre (via The Guardian).
Leith said he was a “massive” Nirvana fan and that “the music soundtracked my teens. It’s some of the first music I learned to play on the guitar.
“I owe a lot of how I now make music to the sound of grunge from that time – I had never really thought about where my experimental mess and repetitions had come from.”