.cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } The Town With a Song in Its Heart Jamming on the porch of the Wildflower Bed & Breakfast in Mountain View, Ark. Houston Cofield The Town With a Song in Its Heart Follow the winding roads to Mountain View, Ark., home of the Ozark Folk […] More
.cls-1 { fill: url(#linear-gradient); } .cls-2 { mask: url(#mask); } The Town With a Song in Its Heart Jamming on the porch of the Wildflower Bed & Breakfast in Mountain View, Ark. Houston Cofield The Town With a Song in Its Heart Follow the winding roads to Mountain View, Ark., home of the Ozark Folk […] More
The group founded in 1967 has carried on after the death of its longtime leader, Edgar Froese, but his impact on its music is still resonating.Before this spring, the last time Tangerine Dream performed live in the United States was on Sept. 30, 2013. The occasion was “Live From Los Santos: The Music of Grand Theft Auto V,” a showcase presented during the 51st New York Film Festival.Surrounded by fellow composers and a phalanx of session musicians, the pioneering electronic-music band was hard to pick out of the crowd. But you couldn’t miss the group’s leader, Edgar Froese, front and center in his signature black hat.It was the final New York performance by Froese, who died of a pulmonary embolism in 2015. He had founded Tangerine Dream in Berlin in 1967, and kept the trailblazing group alive through myriad lineups and stylistic shifts: from eerie soundscapes and hypnotic sequencers in the 1970s, through anthemic synth-pop suites and successful film scores in the ’80s, and guitar-stoked E.D.M. during the ’90s, to the splashy, stage-friendly sextet of his final years.Now, a new Tangerine Dream is touring the U.S. and Canada, arriving at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Saturday — precisely a decade after its last New York appearance. Huddled together for a video call backstage in Tucson, Ariz., before a recent show, the current members — the keyboardists Thorsten Quaeschning and Paul Frick, and the violinist Hoshiko Yamane — delighted in the tour’s progress so far.“Absolutely brilliant,” said Quaeschning, 46, a member of the group since 2005 and its musical director since 2013. “It’s getting better from concert to concert.”“A lot of people talk to us after the show, who share their memories of old Tangerine Dream shows and albums from before I was born,” Frick, 44, said.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesApart from a one-off South by Southwest festival show in March, this is the first time Tangerine Dream has performed in the states without Froese. But the former leader is uncannily present: not only in back-catalog selections like “Phaedra,” “Stratosfear” and “Love on a Real Train” (the haunting theme from the film “Risky Business”), but also in new music fashioned with musical sketches and digital recordings from a 60-hour archive Froese bequeathed to his second wife, the German artist Bianca Froese-Acquaye, who now supervises the band and its legacy.“For him, Tangerine Dream was always a kind of project which could be developed,” Froese-Acquaye said in a recent interview in a Times Square hotel cafe. “The individual musicians never were that important; he always said the music was the star.”It wasn’t the first time Froese had proposed a Tangerine Dream without him. “I had previously had the slightly strange idea of placing the group’s musical future into other hands in 1990, and to perhaps work on as a provisional director from behind the scenes,” he wrote in “Force Majeure,” an autobiography completed and published in 2017 by Froese-Acquaye.The line of succession now pointed toward Quaeschning. “There was always this sort of teacher-pupil situation between us,” Quaeschning said. “He had very set and crystallized views about scales and sound design, and the ideas behind the music.”“I feel like Edgar watches us at every concert,” Yamane said. “Or maybe I want him to.”Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesYamane, 42, enlisted in 2011, adding violin and cello to a lineup already augmented with guitar, saxophone and percussion. When Froese stripped the band back down to its electronic core in late 2014, Yamane — who uses a five-string electric violin to control keyboards — opted to carry on with the group, which added another keyboardist, Ulrich Schnauss.“I add the sound of my violin not as a solo melodic instrument,” Yamane said in an email interview, “but as one of all the sounds that can be played from the synthesizer.”After Froese died, the trio worked briefly with Peter Baumann, who had played with Froese and Christopher Franke in the foundational early ’70s lineup, and signed a later version of the band to Private Music, his upstart record label, in 1988. Baumann’s renewed presence might have allayed concerns about a Tangerine Dream without Froese. But the combination failed to gel.“For them, it was hard with me coming in from the outside and obviously having a history with the band,” Baumann said by telephone from his home in Northern California. “I didn’t want to fight, saying, ‘I’m the senior person here and will do what I want.’ It just was not fun, let’s put it that way.”“There was always this sort of teacher-pupil situation between us,” Quaeschning said of the group’s former leader.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesForging ahead, the nascent trio was met with skepticism from concert promoters and industry executives. “It was really a tough time,” Froese-Acquaye said. “They called us a cover band and things like that.”Former band members have also challenged the group’s legitimacy. Among the first to protest was Froese’s son, Jerome Froese, who played in Tangerine Dream from 1996 to 2005. “Tangerine Dream was my Dad and my Dad is dead and so is Tangerine Dream,” he wrote on Facebook in 2015.By email, Jerome confirmed that his position hasn’t changed. “What has happened here,” he wrote, “is classic legacy hunting by people who would not have had a career without the name Tangerine Dream.” The idea that his father left behind surplus musical material, he asserts, is a “fairy tale.”Johannes Schmoelling, who played in Tangerine Dream 1979 to 1985, says the current group lacks the technological tools and musical capability to match the historical band’s innovations. “It is much easier and commercially more successful to adorn oneself with this once world-famous name instead of having to earn one’s own laurels,” he wrote in an email.The crowd taking in Tangerine Dream at Mohawk Austin.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesEven Baumann is skeptical. The original band’s success, in his view, was less about genius than serendipitous timing. “You can’t really recreate what happened in the ’70s,” he said. “You don’t have the same kind of instruments, you don’t have the audience, you don’t have the atmosphere, you don’t have the cultural environment.“There’s nothing wrong with a cover,” Baumann added. “But it’s not the original, you know?”Quaeschning has heard it all before, even in response to projects led by Froese, like a cantata trilogy based on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” In the 2000s, Froese himself recorded new versions of several Tangerine Dream albums, including “Phaedra,” “Tangram” and “Hyperborea.”“I’m used to people saying, ‘This is not Tangerine Dream,’” he said, laughing. “But what is Tangerine Dream?” Anyone hearing “Electronic Meditation,” the group’s clangorous 1970 debut, then “Phaedra,” its sequencer-driven 1974 landmark, and “Optical Race,” a slick digital release from 1988, would find it hard to reconcile the differences, he said.“It’s hard to spot the Tangerine Dream sound from a distance,” Quaeschning said, “but the feeling and the concept were always there. And it feels quite right at this moment.”“Quantum Gate,” released in 2017, and “Raum,” its 2022 follow-up, sound very much like Tangerine Dream, and not just because material by Froese was used. “The idea was going back to everything Edgar had done with Tangerine Dream in the ’70s and ’80s,” Quaeschning said, “with contemporary sound design and the idea that everyone has a role in the band, like an orchestra.”Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesOn tour, the upstart group won fans over with a mix of its new music and back-catalog staples. Harking back to the wholly improvised concerts of the earliest era, each show would end with a spontaneous collaboration lasting 20 minutes or more. Rather than improvisations, Quaeschning terms these performances “sessions.”“I don’t like the idea of improvisation, because sometimes it feels like people doing the muscle-memory thing,” he said. Here, just enough information is shared in advance — often just a key signature and tempo — to harmonize collaboration, sometimes accommodating guests.Schnauss departed in 2020, and Frick, 44, signed on. “A lot of people talk to us after the show, who share their memories of old Tangerine Dream shows and albums from before I was born,” he said. But new listeners are showing up, too, including some surely attracted by his work in the heady German techno trio Brandt Brauer Frick.Frick is the first Tangerine Dream member who never met the group’s founder. But for his bandmates, Froese remains vividly present.“I feel like Edgar watches us at every concert,” Yamane said. “Or maybe I want him to. I’m sure he will give me some advice, like, ‘You were good today,’ or ‘You should do this better.’” More
The Florida rapper’s latest hit LP bumps Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts” to No. 2 in its second week of release.For many music fans, the name Rod Wave may not immediately come to mind as one of today’s hip-hop superstars. But over the past few years, this 25-year-old from St. Petersburg, Fla., has quietly become one of the most successful artists in the genre with a distinctive style that combines rapping and singing and has helped him score his third No. 1 album in a row.“Nostalgia,” Rod Wave’s new album, opens with the equivalent of 137,000 sales in the United States, beating Olivia Rodrigo’s hit LP “Guts” by a few thousand, bumping it to second place after one week at the top. “Nostalgia” was a big streaming hit, particularly on Apple Music, garnering 188 million clicks, according to Luminate, which tracks music data.“Nostalgia” is Rod Wave’s third straight No. 1, after “Beautiful Mind” last year and “SoulFly” in 2021; before that, his album “Pray 4 Love” peaked at No. 2. According to Luminate, Rod Wave, who began releasing mixtapes in 2017, has logged more than 15 billion career streams in the United States alone.Rodrigo’s “Guts” is No. 2 with the equivalent of 134,000 sales. Zach Bryan’s self-titled album holds at No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is also stationary at No. 4, and SZA’s “SOS” — which recorded 10 weeks at No. 1 from late 2022 into February — rose one spot to No. 5 in its 41st week of release. More
Carlos Acosta’s first major commission as the leader of Birmingham Royal Ballet celebrates a local band and the hard-rocking genre it invented.On a recent afternoon, 18 members of Birmingham Royal Ballet spun, pirouetted and leaped across a rehearsal room, with all the grace and skill associated with classical dance. Yet the music blaring out of the sound system wasn’t by Tchaikovsky or Ravel. It was by Black Sabbath.When the dancers finished the sequence to the Ozzy Osbourne-fronted band’s pounding track “Iron Man,” Pontus Lidberg, the lead choreographer for the company’s new production, “Black Sabbath: The Ballet,” nodded approvingly. Then he decided he needed movement more suited to the aggressive music.“Shall we try a stage dive?” he said.In 2020, Birmingham Royal Ballet — based in England’s second most populous, but often overlooked, city — grabbed the British dance world’s attention when it appointed the Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta as its artistic director. Now, Acosta said, he hoped that the Black Sabbath Ballet, which has its premiere Wednesday, would gain the company global attention, too, as well as help the company find a wider audience at home.A mural celebrating Black Sabbath in their hometown of Birmingham.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesA preview performance on Saturday attracted a mix of Black Sabbath and ballet fans.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesThe second part appears to be working. An eight-show run at Birmingham’s vast Hippodrome theater is sold out, as are runs in London and Plymouth, England.Acosta said he had chosen Black Sabbath for his first major commission at the company because the heavy metal band was one of “Birmingham’s jewels.” Before forming, the group’s four members worked in the city’s factories and abattoirs, but soon after they came together in 1968, they began mixing lyrics influenced by horror movies with hard rock, in a style that was eventually christened heavy metal. Over the following decades, most major metal bands, including Iron Maiden and Metallica, cited Black Sabbath as a key influence, and the band sold over 70 million albums.Acosta noted that Birmingham has a canal bridge named for Black Sabbath, but otherwise, he said, the city hadn’t done enough to celebrate the brand or the genre it created.Birmingham Royal Ballet’s artistic director, Carlos Acosta, said he hoped that “Black Sabbath: The Ballet” would gain the company global attention and also help the company find a wider audience at home.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesThe idea of melding heavy metal music and dancing on pointe was initially met with some confusion, Acosta said, including from Black Sabbath’s members. Tony Iommi, 75, the band’s guitarist, said that when he heard about the project, his first thought was: “Dancing to Sabbath! How’s that going to work?”Still, Iommi agreed to meet Acosta and was won over by the dancer’s enthusiasm for the band and a shared background: Acosta came from a poor part of Havana, Iommi said, while Black Sabbath’s members hailed from rough districts of Birmingham, where street brawls were common and ballet lessons nonexistent.“Carlos had such a belief in what he was doing,” Iommi said.It took Acosta several years to work out how to stage a full-scale ballet to the band’s music. Ben Ratcliffe, writing in The New York Times in 1993, described the ideal Black Sabbath song as “slow and low, loud and long.” Lidberg, the ballet’s lead choreographer, said that the repetitive, angry riffs of the group’s most famous songs, like “War Pigs” and “Paranoid,” at first seemed more suited to contemporary dance.Acosta and Black Sabbath’s guitarist Tommy Iommi collaborated on the show. “Carlos had such a belief in what he was doing,” said Iommi. “The whole band signed it off.”Drew TommonsIt was only with a deep dive into the band’s catalog that the creative team realized there were other songs — including the psychedelic “Planet Caravan” — that had gentler moods. The final ballet will contain orchestral versions of eight Black Sabbath tracks, as well original music by a team of composers. A metal guitarist will play onstage, too.Although the piece is no story ballet, it does feature scenes based on real events, including an industrial accident Iommi suffered in 1965 that was key to the development of Black Sabbath’s sound. The guitarist, then aged 17, was working a shift in a Birmingham sheet metal factory when he caught his right hand in a machine. It tore off the tips of two fingers, leaving bloody bones sticking out.To continue playing, Iommi fashioned new finger tips out of dishwashing soap bottle caps, then slackened his guitar strings to ease the pressure as he pressed down on the fretboard. Those changes helped create Black Sabbath’s — and so metal’s — signature booming sound.Five years later, when Black Sabbath released its self-titled debut album, critics hated it, but fans flocked to the band’s concerts. Black Sabbath made headlines throughout the ’70s for its drug-fuelled antics as much as for its music. (The sleeve notes for the band’s fourth album, recorded in Los Angeles in 1972, thanked the city’s drug dealers.) But even for Black Sabbath, Osbourne went too far, and in 1979, the band’s other members fired him. In the solo career that came after, Osbourne once bit the head off a live bat onstage.The ballet features “head banging, air guitars, and moshing,” according to its lead chief choreographer, Pontus Lidberg. Ellie Smith for The New York TimesLidberg said that he had toyed with including many strange, real-life moments in the ballet, including the bat biting, but, ultimately, the show would be thematic, rather than specific. The first act centers on how Birmingham’s clattering factories influenced heavy metal’s sound, he explained, and the third act is about the band’s fans.Lisa Meyer, a Birmingham music promoter, is credited as the ballet’s “metal curator,” tasked with ensuring authenticity — but it remains to be seen what metal fans will make of it.Barney Greenway, the Birmingham-born lead singer of Napalm Death, a band that pioneered the metal subgenre of grindcore, said he hoped the dancers didn’t rely on “metal stereotypes, like throwing the ‘devil horns,’” a hand gesture often seen at rock concerts. Nonetheless, he said, his interest was piqued.Iommi predicted one subset of fans that would likely appreciate the ballet: Black Sabbath’s original followers from the 1970s. “They wouldn’t want to go to a rock concert anymore,” he said. “Some are in their 80s!” This show would be perfect for them, Iommi added: They can watch it sitting down. More
Mariusz Trelinski returns to the Metropolitan Opera next year with a new staging of “La Forza del Destino,” which leans into psychoanalysis and fate.In Verdi’s epic opera “La Forza del Destino” (“The Power of Destiny”), none of the characters can escape the inexorable drive toward a tragic ending. The director Mariusz Trelinski, originally a filmmaker by training, has identified one force in particular that determines the events.“It is a story about patricide and the consequences,” he said by phone from Lyon, France, referring to the death of the Marquis of Calatrava. “The killing of the father in the first act determines the fate of all the characters. They are pushed like billiard balls and can only continue rolling passively.”From Feb. 26 to March 29, Mr. Trelinski will mount the Metropolitan Opera’s first new staging of the opera in nearly three decades. It is a co-production with Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw, where Mr. Trelinski serves as artistic director and where the production was first seen in January.At the Met, the music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast including Lise Davidsen in her role debut as a Spanish noblewoman, Donna Leonora de Vargas, and Brian Jagde as her suitor, Don Alvaro, who is half Peruvian. Igor Golovatenko plays her brother Don Carlo de Vargas — whom Alvaro kills in a duel.The relationship between Mr. Trelinski, 61, and the Met began in 2015 with a double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera, “Iolanta.” The next year, the Met’s season opened with his staging of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Both operas emerged in co-production with the Polish National Opera (“Tristan” was additionally mounted at the Baden-Baden Festival in Germany).A scene from “Bluebeard’s Castle” at the Met, which was directed by Mr. Trelinski in 2015.Marty Sohl/Metropolitan OperaThe director’s career in opera first took off with a 1999 production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” that traveled from Warsaw to Washington and Los Angeles, followed by stops in Valencia, Spain; Tel Aviv; and St. Petersburg, Russia. Known for his contemporary but clear visual language, Mr. Trelinski was in 2018 named best director at the International Opera Awards in London.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You often approach your characters from a psychoanalytical perspective. Tell us more about your production of “La Forza del Destino.”For me, Calatrava is the symbol of patriarchy. His assassination is a rejection of everything that has formed us: norms, laws and logos. After that moment, the characters become slaves of the situation.It is an epic story that unfolds over about 20 years. We begin with Calatrava’s birthday party, where we see the elite of society and the prestige of military forces.After that, war breaks out. We see that the world is turned upside-down. And in the third part, after so many years, we see the ruin of civilization. Our heroes are older and tired.The set is in almost permanent motion, as a kind of metaphor for the mad rush of fate and events that you cannot stop. We cannot stop these wheels from turning until the end of our lives.Does faith or God offer any promise of redemption?Nowadays faith does not consist of the divine judgments we find in Verdi’s opera, but rather human complexes that are deeply inscribed in the fabric of life. The result is broken lives, children searching for a kind of surrogate father, and a series of false unconscious choices.This is the reason Leonora takes refuge in a monastery and Alvaro joins the army. They choose a surrogate father because these are patriarchal institutions. We cast the same singer [Soloman Howard] as Calatrava and the superior of the monastery, Padre Guardiano, to drive home this principle.“La Forza del Destino” at the Polish National Opera.Krzysztof Bieliński/Teatr Wielki – Polish National OperaAnd true love has no chance in these societal structures?I think Verdi’s answer is pessimistic. Love initially gives Leonora and Alvaro together hope for a different life. But patricide separates them for many years.When they finally meet again, they see in each other the ones who killed the father. They both feel guilty and cannot live together.Verdi is very clever here. The crime leaves behind such a wound that even love cannot really repair it.I have staged “La Traviata,” where you also have a domineering father who represents patriarchal society. It was important for me to return to this opera and understand this as key to the story.How has your relationship with the Met and [the general manager] Peter Gelb evolved over the years?I’m very happy with the trust we’ve built. And I think a big part of it is my filmic approach. People today see the world through the eyes of cinema — they speak through pictures.This is a key issue because what does it mean to be opera director? An opera director is somebody who can visualize the music.The music really shows you the energy of the production, the tempo of the changes. And it’s always the truth, because there are a few librettos that are really great, but in, let’s say, 70 percent of operas, we have genius music, and the libretto is secondary. And if we want to bring this genre to life, we have to keep this in mind, because the music is eternal. More
SeokJong Baek, a South Korean tenor about to make his Metropolitan Opera debut, has had a meteoric journey to the most hallowed halls of the opera world. But to hear him tell it, his whirlwind career has been simply about timing.On a recent sweltering day over coffee in this city’s Gangnam neighborhood — where coffee can cost up to $8 — Mr. Baek spoke about his career with an innocent modesty. He will make his debut at the Met as Ismaele in Verdi’s “Nabucco” (opening Thursday) just a couple of years after retraining his voice from baritone to tenor.Three of his first roles as a tenor were at the Royal Opera House in London, a level of prestige that many singers work years, if not decades, to achieve. It’s an enviable trajectory for any opera singer, and one that Mr. Baek, 37, seems to shrug off as just the story of a humble guy from South Korea who got a break. Or, one might say, a series of breaks.Born in Jeonju in southwestern South Korea, Mr. Baek studied music in high school and at Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul before moving to Toronto to study English and work for a few years. In 2010, he was accepted into the Manhattan School of Music in New York, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees (with a two-year stint back in South Korea for his required military service). He graduated in 2019.But a chance meeting that same year with the South Korean tenor Yonghoon Lee changed the course of his career.“Yonghoon said that I had a great voice as a baritone, but that he heard something different in my voice,” Mr. Baek recalled. “He said that I could be a greater tenor.”Along with a piano accompanist at Mr. Lee’s apartment in New York, Mr. Baek sang “Recondita armonia” from Act I of “Tosca.”“I was shocked how I could sing the upper register,” he said. “We were all a bit surprised.”Mr. Baek performing in “Cavalleria Rusticana” with Aleksandra Kurzak at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseSoon after, Mr. Baek was accepted at the young artists program at the San Francisco Opera as a baritone. But for the final student concert in late 2019, he was allowed to sing the same aria from “Tosca” and another tenor aria.“I decided to change my voice in September, and the concert was in December, so that was a very short period of time to prepare as a tenor,” Mr. Baek said. “Going from tenor to baritone is easier. But to go from baritone to tenor is much more difficult. But I made it.”Two months later, the pandemic hit, and Mr. Baek spent that time retraining himself to be a tenor, which involved vocal exercises and “opening up my chest to resonate with my whole body” and repeating the high register over and over.“For 90 minutes almost every day for 18 months, I sang by myself at the San Francisco Korean United Methodist Church in my neighborhood,” he recalled. “The training was quite brutal. It was lonely. And for a few months, it didn’t work. But after about a year, I could maintain the high register on several arias.”Soon after, he took first prize at the prestigious Loren L. Zachary voice competition in Los Angeles in 2021 — as a tenor — and then took first prize later that year at the Vincerò opera competition in Italy, where he met a casting director from the Royal Opera who arranged an audition. This led to his being cast as the cover, or standby, for the role of Samson in the Royal Opera’s “Samson and Delilah” in May 2022. It was his first role as a tenor.Mr. Baek performing the role of Samson in “Samson and Delilah” at the Royal Opera House.Tristram Kenton/Royal Opera HouseIn early 2022, before performances began, the tenor Nicky Spence had a serious leg injury and had to cancel all performances as Samson. Mr. Baek was suddenly tapped for eight performances.“It’s been an extraordinary trajectory,” Oliver Mears, the Royal Opera’s director of opera, said in a recent video interview. “It’s not unheard-of to go from baritone to tenor, since it really is a matter of retraining the voice, but I think the thing that struck me about SeokJong was that he hadn’t had any real stage performances when he was seen at a competition.”The week after “Samson” ended with great success at the Royal Opera, alongside the mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca as Delilah, the tenor Jonas Kaufmann dropped out of “Cavalleria Rusticana.” Mr. Baek was asked to step in.“It was crazy,” he said. “I didn’t know the opera and there was only two weeks before opening night. I had three shows left of ‘Samson’ while I was learning ‘Cavalleria Rusticana.’”He was then offered the role of Radames in “Aida” in May of this year after the tenor Francesco Meli dropped out of the final five performances.Mr. Baek in New York. He says his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“When I saw him in ‘Aida,’ I was struck at how much he had progressed,” Mr. Mears said. “Richard Jones, the director, and Tony [Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera] worked him incredibly hard on ‘Samson,’ and he absorbed everything they threw at him.”A casting director from the Metropolitan Opera had attended a “Samson” performance and offered Mr. Baek the upcoming role in “Nabucco.” Mr. Baek was also given the role of Calaf in “Turandot” at the Met, which will open Feb. 28 (he has sung that role now a few times in concert, including this year in Seoul, and at smaller opera houses). From there, Mr. Baek said, his performance schedule is almost fully booked into 2027.“I’m a little bit of an introverted guy from South Korea,” he said. “Everything has happened so fast. Sometimes it feels like I still don’t realize what’s happening.He paused, and smiled, taking a sip of that $8 coffee.“But what I really need to do is accomplish the things ahead of me right now,” he said. More
The Writers Guild of America got most of what it wanted. With actors still on picket lines, however, much of Hollywood will remain shut down.Hollywood’s bitter, monthslong labor dispute has taken a big first step toward a resolution.The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters, reached a tentative deal on a new contract with entertainment companies on Sunday night, all but ending a 146-day strike that has contributed to a shutdown of television and film production.In the coming days, guild members will vote on whether to accept the deal, which has much of what they had demanded, including increases in compensation for streaming content, concessions from studios on minimum staffing for television shows, and guarantees that artificial intelligence technology will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation.“We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the Writers Guild’s negotiating committee said in an email to members.Conspicuously not doing a victory lap was the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios. “The W.G.A. and A.M.P.T.P. have reached a tentative agreement” was its only comment.For an industry upended by the streaming revolution, which the pandemic sped up, the tentative accord represents a meaningful step toward stabilization.But much of Hollywood will remain at a standstill: Tens of thousands of actors remain on strike, and no talks between the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, and the studios were scheduled.The only productions that could restart in short order would be ones without actors, like the late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert and daytime talk shows hosted by Drew Barrymore and Jennifer Hudson.The upshot: In addition to actors, more than 100,000 behind-the-scenes workers (directors, camera operators, publicists, makeup artists, prop makers, set dressers, lighting technicians, hairstylists, cinematographers) in Los Angeles and New York will continue to stand idle, many with mounting financial hardship. California’s economy alone has lost more than $5 billion from the Hollywood shutdown, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom.SAG-AFTRA has been on strike since July 14. Its demands exceed those of the Writers Guild and the studio alliance decided to prioritize talks with the Writers Guild, in part because of the hard line taken by Fran Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA’s leader. Among other things, the actors want 2 percent of the total revenue generated by streaming shows, something that studios have said is a nonstarter.Even so, the deal with the Writers Guild could speed up negotiations with the actors’ union. Some of SAG-AFTRA’s concerns are similar to ones raised by the Writers Guild. Actors, for instance, worry that A.I. could be used to create digital replicas of their likenesses (or that performances could be digitally altered) without payment or approval.The last sticking point between the Writers Guild and studios involved artificial intelligence. On Saturday, lawyers for the entertainment companies came up with language — a couple paragraphs inside a contract that runs hundreds of pages — that addressed a guild concern about A.I. and old scripts that studios own. The sides spent several hours on Sunday making additional tweaks.Talks between the writers and the studios began again this past week after a hiatus of nearly a month.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe tentative deal came after several senior company leaders joined the talks directly — among them Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive; Donna Langley, chair of the NBCUniversal Studio Group; Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive; and David Zaslav, who runs Warner Bros. Discovery. Typically, talks took place between union negotiators and Carol Lombardini, who leads the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, an organization that bargains on behalf of the eight biggest Hollywood content companies.Talks resumed on Wednesday after a hiatus of nearly a month, a period when each side insisted that the other was the one refusing to negotiate. Writers Guild leaders had come under intense pressure from some of its A-list members, including Ryan Murphy (“American Horror Story”), Kenya Barris (“black-ish”) and Noah Hawley (“Fargo”).Showrunners like Mr. Murphy did not push Writers Guild leaders to take what was already on the table. Rather, they agitated for an immediate return to negotiations, and cited as a reason the increasing financial hardship on idled Hollywood workers.Hollywood workers have taken more than $45 million in hardship withdrawals from the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan since Sept. 1, according to a document compiled by plan administrators that was viewed by The New York Times. Mr. Murphy set up a financial assistance fund for idled workers on his shows and committed $500,000 as a starting amount. Within days, he had $10 million in requests.Studios have also been hurting. This month, Warner Bros. Discovery said that the dual strikes would reduce its adjusted earnings for the year by $300 million to $500 million. The stock prices for Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have taken a hit. Analysts have estimated that studios will forgo as much as $1.6 billion in global ticket sales for movies that were initially scheduled for release this fall but pushed to next year because of the actors’ strike.Negotiations between the studios and the writers began over six months ago. Union leaders repeatedly called the moment “existential,” arguing that the rise of streaming had worsened both compensation levels for writers as well as their working conditions.Over the last decade, the number of episodes for television series went down from the old broadcast network standard of more than 20 per season to as little as six or seven. Writers Guild officials said that fewer episodes often translated to lower income for writers, and left them scrambling to find multiple jobs in a year.The writers also took particular aim at so-called minirooms, a streaming-era innovation where fewer writers were hired to help conceive of a show, and they were frequently paid less.Putting guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence was an issue of some significance when negotiations began in late March, but it took on greater urgency to members as bargaining — and the strike — wore on.Prominent members of the Writers Guild had framed the strike as being about something loftier than Hollywood — they were taking a stand, they argued, against the evils of capitalism. Some of that sentiment peppered the reaction to the denouement. In a post late Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Billy Ray, whose credits include “Captain Phillips” and “Shattered Glass,” encouraged fellow writers to “stand with the actors” and workers everywhere. “That’s how we’ll save America.”The strike was one of the longest in the history of the Writers Guild. The last time writers and actors were both on strike at the same time was in 1960.With a tentative deal in hand, the Writers Guild suspended picketing. The union, however, encouraged members to join the striking actors’ picket lines, which will begin again on Tuesday. More
At the Park Avenue Armory, an imaginative and viscerally shocking staging of Schubert songs from the director Claus Guth and the tenor Jonas Kaufmann.In the classical tradition, a song often evokes intimacy and solitude: a poet baring vulnerability, a composer painting a miniature. That sense of seclusion extends to the performance as well: a singer and pianist alone onstage, a listener absorbing the work in an intimate recital hall or immersed, alone, with headphones.These conventions surround the final group of songs written by Schubert, known as “Schwanengesang” (Swan Song) and published after the composer’s death in 1828 at age 31. But those expectations were upended in “Doppelganger,” which had its world premiere Friday at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall. The director Claus Guth, the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the pianist Helmut Deutsch and a raft of collaborators transformed “Schwanengesang” at the Saturday night performance into an entire wartime narrative.Kaufmann is a soldier who lies dying in a military hospital. Far from being alone with Deutsch onstage, he is one of nearly two dozen injured and sick soldiers being tended by a fleet of six nurses, the rest of the cast is made up of dancers. Deutsch and the piano are dead center among more than 60 hospital beds that stretch across the hall’s immense floor. Kaufmann’s soldier spends the last hour of his life revisiting his memories in a cascade of Schubert’s songs, stitched together with ominous new music by the German composer Mathis Nitschke.Guth’s imaginative and powerful staging for his New York debut recalls history. This drill hall has served as a hospital and shelter; “Doppelganger,” which had originally been intended for a fall 2020 premiere, also invokes the field hospitals hastily erected at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.The inventive and minimalistic set design by Michael Levine is dominated by hospital whites, and the clever lighting is by Urs Schönebaum.Monika Rittershaus/Courtesy of Park Avenue ArmoryMichael Levine’s inventive and minimalistic set design is dominated by the blanched shades of hospital whites and khaki uniforms. Growls of Nitschke’s sound and clever lighting by Urs Schönebaum suggest thunderstorms and bombings.Does the theatrical conceit serve Schubert’s songs? In the hands of Kaufmann and Deutsch, who have long worked together, yes — and it reignites the master’s music in a fresh, intelligent setting without sacrificing the duo’s artistry as classical performers.At one point, the piano becomes a main character in the drama, as Kaufmann and the dancers gather to listen in respite to Deutsch perform the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960. It was a rare treat to hear Deutsch, who usually performs an accompanist, take literal center stage.In a concession to the Armory’s sheer expanse, Kaufmann’s voice was lightly amplified. This was occasionally distracting when he turned his head away from his microphone, and his normally crisp articulation was slightly muddied. But Kaufmann’s sweet tone transcended the limits of the technology, particularly in Schubert’s yearning song of desire “Ständchen.”In the evening’s climactic song, “Der Doppelgänger,” Kaufmann’s soldier encounters his ghostly twin at the moment of death. Although the audience knows this was coming, having already seen the soldier being mortally wounded, the theatrical ingenuity and visceral force of “Doppelganger” was so strong that the audience let out an audible gasp of shock. When was the last time you heard something like that in a classical concert hall?DoppelgängerThrough Thursday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org. More
