SANTA FE, New Mexico - It's 2007, and Steve Jobs has just finished launching the first iPhone before an enraptured audience when he nearly collapses, exhausted by the illness that will kill him four years later.

At this moment in Mason Bates' opera The (R) evolution of Steve Jobs, a harrowing sound emerges from the orchestra pit, a crushing downward progression that's described in the score as an "electronic shutdown".

"It's a combination of a stand-alone synthesizer with the actual sound on the old Macs of hard drives turning off and one in reverse booting up," Bates explained in an interview last week at the Santa Fe Opera, where his work will have its world premiere on Saturday.