‘Last Days,’ Opera Inspired by Kurt Cobain Film, Heads to L.A.

It can feel easy to cast a swift judgment on the composer Oliver Leith. First, there are his titles, such as “Uh huh, Yeah,” “Bendy Broken Telemann No.3,” and “yhyhyhyhyh.” Then, there is the inspiration for his sounds, in which everyday objects like glass bottles and cereal bowls are considered intensely, becoming weird instruments themselves.

But if Leith seems flippant, he rejects that characterization entirely.

“People talk about irony in society all the time now, and I find that a little dull,” Leith said in an interview. “It’s a very British way of looking at things. Like, ‘Oh, are you being serious or are you not?’ No; I am deadly serious when I’m doing these things. I’m just chasing this strange feeling.”

Leith’s way of talking about music is a lot like his actual music: blurry and discursive, but also precisely evocative. That strange feeling he’s chasing, for example, is one he compared to being at a wake, where “outward joy and outward sadness” are possible at the same time.

Listen to his works, and you’ll see what he means. Take his opera “Last Days,” which receives its U.S. premiere on Feb. 6 in Los Angeles as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series. (The opera’s first recording will also be released on the Platoon label on April 5.) It is adapted from Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film of the same name, which fictionalizes the final days of Kurt Cobain.

During its premiere run in London, in 2022, the opera garnered a lot of attention based on the assumption that it was a biographical work. “It’s so not about Kurt Cobain,” Leith said. “It couldn’t have more distance from its subjects than it has, I think.”

Instead, Leith and the opera’s librettist, Matt Copson, wanted to write archetypes — like characters in a genre film, in which the magic lies in how far they stray from their stock expectations. Formally, “Last Days” also mirrors “the way that oral histories or myths are transmitted, where every iteration keeps the soul of a story, but changes skin,” said Caroline Polachek, who sings a prerecorded aria in the show.