Following its sold-out run in the Linbury Theatre in 2021, composer Oliver Leith and librettist/co-director Matt Copson’s visceral opera returns to The Royal Opera. Adapted from Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film loosely based on the final days of grunge icon Kurt Cobain, Last Days is an introspective meditation on the silent torment and alienation that created a modern myth. Starring Agathe Rousselle (Titane) as Blake and featuring an original aria recorded by singer-songwriter Caroline Polachek, the opera captures the slow unravelling of a man haunted by outside noise and inside turmoil. 

Cult Film Origins

Gus Van Sant's Last Days is a fictionalised account inspired by the final days of Kurt Cobain, who died by suicide at his Seattle home in 1994. The film follows the life of Blake (Michael Pitt), a reclusive and troubled rock musician who retreats to a remote mansion in the Pacific Northwest. The narrative, similar to the opera’s, is deliberately loose, privileging mood and atmosphere over traditional storytelling. Unfolding through fragmented, often non-linear scenes that capture Blake’s aimless wandering, introspection and alienation, the film offers quiet glimpses into the turmoil of a man struggling with identity, fame, substance use and at his core, solitude and despair.