As the influx of highlighted Holy Bible pages on Kanye West's Twitter account signaled, Sunday night marked the debut of the latest facet of the Jesus Is King era, with the recent megachurch speaker bringing the Vanessa Beecroft-directed Nebuchadnezzar opera to the Hollywood Bowl.
Per the Los Angeles Times' review of the show from Mark Swed and Mikael Wood, the event lasted about 50 minutes and kicked off an estimated two hours behind the originally announced start time. Sheck Wes took the titular role, while West provided biblical narration.
Pitchfork points out that West incorporated some familiar songs into the musical portions of the evening, which largely pulled from new compositions. Bits from "Say You Will" and "Wolves," for example, were worked into the production.
Wood ultimately assessed the opera as "basically" consisting of "Kanye reading Bible verses—and reading them very dramatically—as his choir delivered long, moody vocal lines without a huge amount of melodic movement."
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Below, peruse some clips from and general commentary on West's first opera, which went down the same night as the American Music Awards. The full thing is available for replay via the Tidal app.
West and Beecroft are frequent collaborators, with an extended history of previous link-ups spanning more than a decade of live performances and videos, as well as experiences centered on West's Yeezy line.