Opera Philly premieres ‘The Listeners’

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“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 operational 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.”