Following sold-out debuts at Covent Garden in 2022 and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2024, the revival of Oliver Leith’s chamber opera Last Days has been acclaimed at the Royal Ballet and Opera, with the Evening Standard calling it “one of the most original operas of this century”.
The 90-minute piece, with a text by Matt Copson, is based on Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film about a rockstar’s flight from rehab. In a self-destructive spiral he encounters his agent, a Superfan, housemates, a pair of Mormons, a private detective, the groundskeeper, and a magician. Last Days is in rep at the Linbury Theatre until 3 January – tickets here.
…one of the most original operas of this century…it makes a welcome return…A penumbra of shimmering percussion dominates, strings billow and surge, mostly gently, while voices are rarely full-on operatic… The blend of pathos, impending doom and low comedy gives the opera its own special atmosphere…that rare beast, a contemporary opera with a genuine future.
The Standard (Nick Kimberley) 8 December 2025 *****
…a bold telling of the final moments of the Nirvana frontman…Leith’s reputation has snowballed…operatic epic Garland…was a highlight of the year…Fragments of sound, squeezed or extended, slowed down, untuned, revolve in and out of view…Leith harnesses these noises not to alienation but to the familiar, the tender, the mundane…The dominant atmosphere…is hallucinogenic, strange, like a memory of deepening sorrow…
The Observer (Fiona Maddocks) 13 December 2025
… passages of spare, olde worlde polyphony seem to emanate as a distant musical memory. Leith even orchestrates the household of interlopers gradually falling asleep…The most chilling scenes are those that foreground Leith’s remarkable way with timbre…delicate, stratospheric slides in the strings merge seamlessly into the sound of fireworks as light plays across the Disney-ish forest backdrop (by Copson)…in this piece our own grip on reality is also repeatedly and powerfully challenged.
The Guardian (Flora Willson) 8 December 2025 ****
There’s a palpable buzz…if anyone has come to worship at the feet of the grunge icon, they will soon find themselves marvelling instead at the sheer inventiveness of [the] production…[Auchterlonie’s] leaps into the soprano stratosphere seemed to be the only element resisting the opera’s downward drift.
The Times (Daniel Lewis) December 7 2025 ****
…once again, the score impresses with a unique sound-world… a strange and unsettling musical backdrop… It all adds up to a unique piece in which visuals, score and performances come together to suggest a painfully vulnerable human being ever more indifferent to a world he now sees as an irrelevance.
The Stage (George Hall) 8 December 2025 ****
The production is directed by Matt Copson and Anna Morrissey, with sound design by Sound Intermedia, lighting by Prema Mehta and sets and costumes by Grace Smart and Nat Turner.
Leith’s score integrates recorded and found sounds, such as a recording of Montana cattle auctioneer voicing Blake’s agent and an electronically processed Sacred Harp hymn that mixes with voices onstage and in the pit. It also features recording of an Italian verismo-style aria written for the indie pop sensation Caroline Polachek.
The show features key Leith collaborators GBSR Duo, 12 Ensemble, and conductors Jack Sheen and Naomi Woo. Actor Jake Dunn, making his West End debut, played the non-singing role of Blake – a nearly-mute mumbling figure in a world where cereal bowls, glass bottles, and DHL delivery drivers have their own music.
Last Days debuted at the Linbury Theatre in 2022 and received its US premiere from Thomas Adès and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in January 2024. The world premiere recording was released by Platoon; a film adaptation of the stage work, directed by Matt Copson, is forthcoming in 2026, financed by Mubi, Spain’s AF Films, and LUMA, and starring Agathe Rousselle, who appeared in the world premiere production.
The revival sees several of the original cast return, including Patricia Auchterlonie as the Superfan (who also appeared in the premiere of Leith’s Garland at Bold Tendencies in September), Mimi Doulton as the Delivery Driver/Housemate, Sion Goronwy as the Groundskeeper, Edmund Danon as a Housemate, and Henry Jenkinson as the Magician.