Last Days: The opera exploring the myth of Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain’s cultural relevance has barely diminished in the 31 years since his death. The grunge aesthetic, which has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years, has enjoyed a resurgence in 2025, both as a TikTok trend and on fashion runways (take the cardigans and muted colour schemes of Magliano’s Fall/Winter collection or Pauline Dujancourt’s baggy knitwear). The scuzzy, distorted guitar sound which Nirvana popularised is now a permanent fixture of the musical landscape: while there are all sorts of alt-rock influences in the mix, the music of Olivia Rodrigo – one of the biggest pop stars on the planet – is in some ways downstream from Nirvana. 

Beyond the more tangible proofs of his legacy, Cobain endures as a mythic figure; the patron saint of teenage angst, canonised for choosing death over selling out. When Trump first entered politics, a fake quote circulated on social media which appeared to show Cobain endorsing him for president in the early 90s. As ridiculous as it may have been, it speaks to Cobain’s power as a symbol of unimpeachable authenticity that someone decided that what Trump really needed was a nod of approval from a long-dead rock star, and that so many people wanted to believe it was true.

Cobain is also (kind of) the subject of Last Days, a new opera currently playing at London’s Royal Opera House. For artist Matt Copson, who co-wrote it along with composer Oliver Leith, the mythology surrounding Cobain is more interesting than the events of his death. “Most things from that era really haven’t lasted, but I see teenagers wearing Nirvana T-shirts every day,” he says. “I think it’s because that was the last period before the internet, when there was a really strong monoculture, and [Cobain] represented an attempt at some kind of disruption and rebellion against that monoculture. That failed in lots of ways, because all rebellious gestures eventually get assimilated. But now we’re in a period where the idea of selling out no longer even exists, and I think we yearn for a time when there was a stronger alternative in culture.” 

Returning to Royal Opera after making its debut three years ago, Last Days is an adaptation of Gus Vant Sant’s 2005 film of the same name: both works are loosely inspired by Cobain’s suicide, and both centre on a reclusive rock star called “Blake”, who has long, dirty blonde hair and a grungy aesthetic (although his costuming in the opera, complete with bright green fur coat, is a little more flamboyant). It is a story about isolation, but it’s also about someone whose efforts to to be alone are disrupted by a barrage of interruptions: phone calls from his wheedling and manipulative manager (rendered in the opera as a stream of chopped-up gibberish); a DHL courier, a private detective, an obsessive fan, Mormon missionaries and a group of raucous hangers-on, who exploit and then abandon him. Of course, none of these interactions does anything to lessen Blake’s alienation. 

While its subject matter may be bound up in the 90s, Last Days feels very of the moment. In a heightened way, it captures the experience of being bombarded with emails, notifications and other demands on your attention. In 2025, you don’t need to be a reclusive rockstar to feel like there is always someone who wants something from you. Some elements of the opera are deliberately anachronistic, which lends it a wider resonance and moves it further away from a conventional biopic. “There are references to things that just didn’t exist in the 90s – at one point, his manager is talking about 3D scanning him,” Copson says. “I wanted it to speak to a sense of alienation and loneliness, but also the perpetual barrage of modernity, when you can’t get a break, you can’t breathe. It’s kind of a theatre of the absurd about being in your house and getting inundated with phone calls, and thrusting all of those banal moments in relation to someone who’s going to kill himself.”

The character of Blake is doomed from the moment he first appears. Even if the title didn’t give away the ending, we all know what happened to Kurt Cobain. There is no character arc, no examination of his inner life. “I wanted to make an anti-biopic where there was no attempt to psychologise the character,” says Copson. “I think that’s one of the great lies of art: that you spend 90 minutes with a character and then by the end, viola, you suddenly understand them and how the world works. When that’s a biopic about a real person, in particular, I find it morally stupid.” Blake is an opaque, in some ways passive character who does little more than wander around the stage and mumble, but he’s not boring: Jake Thunn (best known for his recent role as a drug dealer in the excellent BBC drama What It Feels Like for a Girl) brings a vivid physicality and pathos to the role.

We’re in a period where the idea of selling out no longer even exists, and I think we yearn for a time when there was a stronger alternative in culture

Copson and Leith’s collaboration first began with a mutual interest in how “very banal things can hold a kind of magic” – Leith’s original concept was an opera about taking the bins out. After deciding instead to adapt Last Days, they wanted every element of the story – from Blake’s death to him eating cereal – to be afforded the same weight. Copson had no previous experience with opera and started out by trying to deconstruct what the form actually is. The most satisfying answer he came up with was the Wagnerian idea of it as “the complete work of art,” which can hold all the different forms together. “I don’t really want individual forms to remain siphoned off and relegated into their own worlds of art and fashion and film; I want them all to be mixed,” he says. Having adapted Last Days into a feature film, due to be released next year, Copson and Oliver are now working on their second opera, which will be much larger in scale. “It’s about medieval Europe”, says Copson, “but really it’s about generational warfare in the present day.”

The visual and musical elements of Last Days work together as a cohesive whole, alternately hopeless and enchanting. The set comprises a wooden, tree house-like structure with a grubby kitchen interior (resembling more a prepper’s bunker or a crack den than a mansion), and behind it a lush, verdant, surrealist painting of a forest. The score conjures a sense of terrible inevitability, making use of unusual percussion instruments (I’d never have imagined a xylophone could sound so mournful) and discordant but still melodic strings; Copson wanted to create the feeling of “everything being a swamp, everything lilted and lopsided.” But amid the swamp, there are moments of sublime beauty: an Italian aria sung by Copson’s partner, Caroline Polachek (‘Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare’) is especially transcendent.

It might not sound like a barrel of laughs, but Last Days is also sometimes very funny. Opera is such an old, prestigious and melodramatic form that there is something inherently ridiculous in someone belting out a canta about a package from DHL or their band’s new demo. “We knew we had to acknowledge that, we had to make it funny,” says Copson. “Something can be about a bleak subject matter, but in order for that bleakness to have any meaning, it has to be put in relation to other emotions. It can be funny and absurd, too.”

Mostly, though, Last Days is haunting and bleak. At the moment of Blake’s suicide, the auditorium is plunged into darkness for what is only a matter of minutes but feels like a long time. This was the hardest aspect of the opera to pull off, partly because the orchestra had to learn to play without a conductor, and partly because the Borough of Westminster has strict rules about what you’re allowed to do on stage.

“We had to employ tonnes of people who get up during the performance, walk over to all the exit signs and LEDs and cover them up. I think we managed to get it to a point where it’s total pitch black. It’s a crazy sensation, and some people have really strong responses,” says Copson. I found it engulfing, a little overwhelming, one of the most powerful representations of death I’ve ever experienced.

Last Days is not really about Kurt Cobain. While Copson loved Nirvana’s music when he was growing up, he didn’t want to take a “fannish” approach to the project. But in its surrealism and abstraction (qualities Cobain was always drawn to as a lyricist), its beauty and sorrow, it’s a fitting tribute all the same.

‘Last Days’ is on at the Royal Opera House, 5 December to 3 January