Aurelia Butler

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    An Oasis in England’s Troubled, Polarized Opera Landscape

    The sun shone brightly over the downs of East Sussex on a summer afternoon while people trickled onto the grounds of Glyndebourne to hear an opera by Handel. Most of the men wore black tie, and many women were in floral gowns, as they picnicked among gardens and sculptures, and under the shadow of the property’s grand, Jacobethan manor house.As they made their way into Glyndebourne’s opera house, old Oxbridge friends recognized one another and swapped life updates; introductions were made, photos were taken, and, when the time came for the show to start, the party was put on a respectful pause for the opening act of “Giulio Cesare.”It all had the appearance of opera in paradise, which isn’t so much of an exaggeration. Glyndebourne, a country house festival that over 90 years has grown into an enormous, year-round operation, has a reputation for elitism in its unofficial dress code and high prices. But there is also elitism, the good kind, in its level of music making.The Conrad Shawcross sculpture garden on the Glyndebourne grounds.Alice Zoo for The New York TimesIn the organ room at Glyndebourne.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kris Kristofferson Stood by Sinead O’Connor as the Boos Rained Down

    At a moment when the Irish singer had few people defending her, the country music veteran showed strong support. It created a bond that remained throughout their lives.On Oct. 16, 1992, Columbia Records threw its longtime artist Bob Dylan an event at Madison Square Garden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his first album with the label. The concert, available on pay-per-view, featured performances by Dylan along with some of the biggest stars of his era, among them Stevie Wonder, George Harrison, Johnny Cash and Eric Clapton.But it was the performance by the comparative newcomer Sinead O’Connor and the assist lent her by the country veteran Kris Kristofferson, who died Saturday at 88, that proved most memorable.O’Connor, then just 25, was at the center of a firestorm. Just two weeks earlier, the Irish singer was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” when, at the conclusion of her second and final performance of the evening, she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II and exhorted, “Fight the real enemy,” a defiant act of protest against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (and also, she later revealed, a deeply personal statement — the photograph had belonged to her mother, who had physically abused her). The incident drew widespread outrage and turned O’Connor into a cultural pariah.Now, in the wake of that polarizing moment, it was Kristofferson who was tasked with bringing O’Connor to the stage.“I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity,” Kristofferson said, in obvious reference to the “S.N.L.” incident. (As he would later sing of O’Connor, “She told them her truth just as hard as she could/Her message profoundly was misunderstood.”)O’Connor took the stage to a cascade of applause and boos, which did not let up as O’Connor stood silently at the microphone with her hands behind her back. A minute passed, and Kristofferson re-emerged from stage left, put his arm around O’Connor and whispered something in her ear.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Sean Combs Will Try Another Appeal of Judge’s Decision to Deny Bail

    Mr. Combs is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.The music mogul Sean Combs has given notice that he will file a second appeal of a judge’s order that denied him bail and sent him to a Brooklyn jail while he awaits trial on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.In a brief form filed with federal court in Manhattan, lawyers for Mr. Combs indicated that they would be appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Judge Andrew L. Carter Jr. had denied Mr. Combs’s first appeal of a federal judge’s order that he be held in the detention facility until trial.Attorneys for Mr. Combs did not immediately respond to a request for further information about his appeal.As recently as last week, Mr. Combs’s lawyers had informed Judge Carter that they did not, at that point, intend to ask for Mr. Combs to be moved from the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in Brooklyn.The M.D.C., as that facility is known, has been harshly criticized by lawyers and advocates for what they say are poor conditions and chronic understaffing. But in a statement last week, Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Mr. Combs, spoke positively about the facility, saying the “dedicated professionals at the M.D.C. are doing everything possible to help him and his lawyers prepare his defense, and I personally thank them.”“I can’t say enough good things about the M.D.C.,” Mr. Agnifilo added, “which has been responsive to our and his needs.”In arguing for Mr. Combs’s release on bail, his lawyers have suggested a variety of measures to ensure he would not flee before trial, including offering to post a $50 million bond as security if he were released. They have emphasized that their client has been cooperating with the prosecutors’ investigation for months, and that he had taken steps to fund the bond offer. Under an unusual proposal, which a federal judge rejected, Mr. Combs would have agreed to remain at his mansion in Florida, monitored around the clock by a private security force.But prosecutors have fought to keep Mr. Combs behind bars, citing concerns that he will tamper with witnesses if given the opportunity and that he is prone to violence. Judges have so far sided with the government, leaving him in the same unit of M.D.C. as Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto mogul convicted of fraud. More

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    Stream These 11 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in October

    A slew of TV shows and movies are leaving for U.S. subscribers this month. Here’s a roundup of the ones worth catching, including a few great horror picks for the season.October’s departing titles from Netflix in the United States include bubbly rom-coms, action thrillers, killer comedies and plenty of thrills and chills — it is the spooky season, after all. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ (Oct. 2)Stream it here.Like most of the output of Illumination Entertainment (the folks behind the Minions), this animated adaptation of the durable Nintendo video game is not exactly Pixar quality, in terms of family entertainment excellence. But kids will love it, especially the little gamers, and adults will find amusements here and there — primarily the rip-roaring gonzo vocal performance of Jack Black, clearly having a ball as the lovelorn supervillain Bowser.‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (Oct. 5)Stream it here.Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the best-selling novel by Kevin Kwan is a sleek, shimmering, fast-paced examination of the haves and have-nots (but mostly the haves). It follows the charming Queens-born N.Y.U. professor Rachel (Constance Wu) and her boyfriend Nick (Henry Golding) to a wedding in Singapore, where the conspicuous wealth of his family threatens to upend their seemingly bulletproof relationship. Chu juggles quotable dialogue, gorgeous cinematography and a sprawling cast — most notably Michelle Yeoh as Nick’s stern and judgmental mother, a woman who Rachel quickly finds is not to be trifled with.‘It Follows’ (Oct. 10)Stream it here.Maika Monroe, so haunted and compelling in the recent movie “Longlegs,” made her big-screen breakthrough in this 2015 horror hit from the writer and director David Robert Mitchell. She stars as Jay, a 19-year-old girl who is stalked by a mysterious force after she sleeps with her boyfriend — who informs her, after the fact, that the only way to rid oneself of this particular evil is to pass it on, via sex, to its next victim. Such a setup lends itself to the crassest of genre exploitation devices, but Mitchell is too much of a stylist for that; he lingers on dread and mood rather than skin or blood, and he creates one of the more unshakable indie thrillers in recent memory.‘Bride of Chucky’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.The “Child’s Play” franchise, in which the talking Chucky doll is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, had lain dormant for seven years (an eternity in the world of slasher movies) after the series low of “Child’s Play 3” when the screenwriter Don Mancini revitalized his series in 1998. He did so by infusing the mostly serious thrillers with a heavy dose of campy comedy, and with the invaluable addition of the Oscar nominee Jennifer Tilly as Chucky’s love interest, Tiffany Valentine. The Hong Kong genre master Ronny Yu directs with visual flair and good humor. (Netflix is also streaming several other films in the series, which will also depart after Halloween night.)‘Dark Waters’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.On first glance, this 2019 corporate thriller seemed to signal that the indie legend Todd Haynes was trying to go mainstream. But a closer examination reveals a film very much consistent with his preoccupations, pairing his formal ingenuity with a story of environmental illness and creeping paranoia that pairs nicely with his 1995 breakout film, “Safe.” Based on a 2016 article by Nathaniel Rich (published in The New York Times Magazine), it stars Mark Ruffalo as Rob Bilott, a corporate lawyer who typically defends corporate clients. Here, though, he takes on the giant DuPont corporation with a yearslong investigation that tested his sanity, resolve and personal safety. Haynes orchestrates the events with a masterly hand while Ruffalo reminds us of the exceptional actor lurking under the Hulk persona.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kris Kristofferson: A Life in Pictures

    Kris Kristofferson, who died on Saturday at 88, was most revered for his songwriting, favoring an aphoristic style that surveyed the many detours a life could take. By the time he broke through, at nearly 34 years old, Kristofferson had swerved off prescribed courses a number of times. The son of an Air Force major general and a socially conscious mother, he’d been a Rhodes Scholar, an Army helicopter pilot and a family man before going all in on music in 1965, a decision that splintered his family and left him scuffling for money.“I was working the Gulf of Mexico on oil rigs. I’d lost my family to my years of failing as a songwriter. All I had were bills, child support, and grief,” Kristofferson once said of writing “Me and Bobby McGee” in the late 1960s. “I was about to get fired for not letting 24 hours go between the throttle and the bottle. It looked like I’d trashed my act. But there was something liberating about it. By not having to live up to people’s expectations, I was somehow free.”By the time success came in 1970 — as Ray Price’s cover of his song “For the Good Times” reached the Top 40 on the pop chart, and Johnny Cash’s version of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit — Kristofferson had experienced love, loss and hard times, all of which gave his career a hard-earned sagacity as it expanded over the next 50 years.Here are some snapshots from his life and career.Kris Kristofferson, an Oxford-educated Army helicopter pilot, turned down a teaching job at West Point to pursue songwriting in Nashville.Al Clayton/Getty ImagesKristofferson, in 1970 or 1971, in a Nashville hotel room listening to a reel-to-reel tape recorder after his appearance on “The Johnny Cash Show.”Al Clayton/Getty ImagesKristofferson in 1970, the year two songs he wrote — “For the Good Times” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” — became hits for other artists.Al Clayton/Getty ImagesIn the liner notes of his 1971 album, “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” Kristofferson described his music as “echoes of the going ups and coming downs, walking pneumonia and run-of-the-mill madness, colored with guilt, pride, and a vague sense of despair.”Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesKristofferson with Janis Joplin in the summer of 1970, shortly before her death in October of that year. Her version of “Me and Bobby McGee,” penned by Kristofferson, went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1971.John Byrne Cooke Estate/Getty ImagesKristofferson starred opposite Barbra Streisand in Frank Pierson’s 1976 remake of “A Star Is Born.”Max B. Miller/Fotos International and Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesKristofferson and Streisand in a publicity photo from “A Star Is Born.” He won a Golden Globe Award for his performance.Screen Archives/Getty ImagesStreisand and Kristofferson at a preview of “A Star Is Born” in New York City in December 1976. She cast Kristofferson as the male lead in the film after seeing him onstage at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, Calif.Suzanne Vlamis/Associated PressKristofferson performing with Olivia Newton-John and Rod Stewart at a UNICEF benefit in New York City in 1979. His work in the 1980s and ’90s would venture into social justice and human rights.Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesKristofferson, center, with from left, Candice Bergen, Rita Coolidge, Willie Nelson and Burt Reynolds after a performance at the Bottom Line in New York City in 1979. Kristofferson and Coolidge, who were married for much of the 1970s, released three duet albums before divorcing in 1980.Associated Press/Associated PressKristofferson and Isabelle Huppert, with whom he appeared in the film “Heaven’s Gate” (1980), at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981.Associated PressKristofferson with Don King, commentating during a fight between Larry Holmes and Muhammad Ali in 1980. Kristofferson, a Golden Gloves boxer in college, was a lifelong fan of the sport.Randy Rasmussen/Associated PressKris Kristofferson and Jane Fonda at the premiere of the film “Rollover” in Los Angeles in 1981.Nick Ut/Associated PressWith Willie Nelson on the set of the film “Songwriter” in 1983.John Bryson/Getty ImagesFrom left, Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Kristofferson performing as the Highwaymen in 1985 at Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic in Austin, Texas.Beth Gwinn/Getty ImagesKristofferson, left, with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt in San Francisco in 1989, performing in protest of the war in El Salvador. Tim Mosenfelder/Getty ImagesKristofferson comforted Sinead O’Connor after she was booed at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1992. “It seemed to me very wrong, booing that little girl,” he later said. “But she was always courageous.”Ron Frehm/Associated PressFrom left, Kristofferson, Victoria Williams, Suzanne Vega, Vin Scelsa and Lou Reed backstage at the Bottom Line in New York City in 1994.Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesKristofferson joined Streisand onstage in London in 2019 for their duet “Lost Inside of You.” “He was as charming as ever, and the audience showered him with applause,” she wrote on social media after his death.Dave J Hogan/Getty ImagesKristofferson with Charlie McDermott in Vermont in 2005, during a break in the filming of “Disappearances.”Toby Talbot/Associated PressKristofferson performing with Nelson at a concert for Nelson’s 70th birthday in 2003. James Estrin/The New York TimesKristofferson performing at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif., in 2007. He retired from performing during the Covid-19 pandemic.Heidi Schumann for The New York Times More

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    Kris Kristofferson’s Stories Were Wonderfully Larger Than Life

    The singer, songwriter and actor, who died on Saturday at 88, found his way into situations and tales that underscored his role as a conscience for country music.Kris Kristofferson was a man to whom myth attached easily.Did he once take control of a National Guard helicopter so he could land it at Johnny Cash’s house to present him with some songs to consider recording? (He sure did, though Johnny apparently wasn’t home.) Did he not know that Janis Joplin, whom he’d been dating, had recorded his song “Me and Bobby McGee” just a few days before her death? (He didn’t; the track, released posthumously, became her lone No. 1 hit.) Did he once confront Toby Keith, country music’s jingoist in chief, about his performative bluster and ask him, “Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not.” (Depends whose account you believe.)Beginning in the mid-1960s, when he arrived in Nashville as an aspiring songwriter, Kristofferson, who died Saturday at 88, evolved into something of a communal conscience for the town, and the country music business, while also helping to usher it into conversation with the rest of popular music.He was best known as a songwriter, with compositions that bridged folky earthiness with a jolt of literary flair. When sung by some of the biggest country stars of the era — Cash, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, Bobby Bare — they inexorably moved the genre away from polished and poised singers in sports coats toward thornier territory closer to the folk revival of the 1960s.The protagonists of Kristofferson’s best songs were downtrodden victims of their own poor decisions — “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” the best-known version of which was sung by Cash, finds the singer struggling to find “my cleanest dirty shirt” the morning after a Saturday night bender. “Once More With Feeling,” written with Shel Silverstein and sung by Jerry Lee Lewis, tells the story of a relationship that’s run out of gas through the pleas of a man desperate to be deceived, even for a moment: “Darling, make believe you’re making me/Believe each word you say.”“Me and Bobby McGee” — initially recorded by Miller, but rendered indelible by Joplin — was the tale of two drifters who drift away from each other, anchored in the oft-repeated secular proverb, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Rust’ Armorer Is Denied New Trial After Dismissal of Alec Baldwin’s Case

    The armorer’s lawyers failed to convince the judge that the same evidence dispute that led her to toss the actor’s manslaughter charge had deprived their client of a fair trial.A judge in New Mexico declined on Monday to grant a new trial to the armorer in the fatal “Rust” shooting, who had accused the prosecution of suppressing evidence.The armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is serving an 18-month prison sentence and had asked to be retried on an involuntary manslaughter charge in New Mexico after the same judge dismissed the case against Alec Baldwin during his trial in July. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found then that the state had withheld evidence that could have shed light on how live rounds got onto the film set.On the afternoon of Oct. 21, 2021, Mr. Baldwin was positioning the old-fashioned revolver for a tight camera framing when the weapon discharged, killing the movie’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director. A jury convicted Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun that day, of manslaughter in March after prosecutors argued that she was reckless in overseeing guns and ammunitions on the set.Judge Marlowe Sommer ruled on Monday that the suppressed evidence that felled the Baldwin case — a set of ammunition that was delivered to law enforcement on the day of the armorer’s conviction — did not warrant dismissal of Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s trial because her lawyer was aware of and had access to the evidence.The judge wrote that the ammunition “does not qualify, as a matter of law, as material evidence because it was available to defendant in advance of and during trial.”The ruling was a moment of relief for the prosecution after its case against Mr. Baldwin, 66, collapsed under an accusation that state investigators had intentionally withheld the ammunition from them by putting it under a new case number. The accusation led to an extraordinary hearing in which the judge examined the ammunition in the courtroom; the lead special prosecutor, Kari T. Morrissey, called herself as a witness; and the other prosecutor on her team resigned.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Billie Eilish Brings a Master Class in Intimacy to the Arena Stage

    Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour opened in Canada on Sunday night, showcasing the 22-year-old pop star’s gift for dynamics, dramatics and audience engagement.A few songs into the first night of Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour at the Videotron Center in Quebec City, Billie Eilish challenged the sold-out crowd of 18,000 to play the quiet game. “It’s literally the only time in the entire show I’m going to say this,” assured the superstar, 22, who sat cross-legged on the floor at center stage, “because I don’t want silence, ever.”But there was a practical reason for the request: Eilish was about to record looped layers of her voice, so she could harmonize with herself while singing her hushed early hit “When the Party’s Over.” “I love doing my own vocal production,” she told the obliging audience, “and I thought I would bring that to the stage.”“I love you!” cried an ecstatic fan, who was promptly shushed by the entire arena.As Eilish built a lush bed of backing oohs and ahhs layer by layer, this hypnotic moment served a few purposes. It was a casual way to prove that she was singing live, and a clever means of bringing the intimacy of the bedroom recording studio — a fabled setting in the mythology of Eilish and her brother, the producer Finneas — to a massive, buzzing arena.After ascending from a luminescent cube in the center of the venue, Eilish spent most of the show bopping around a rectangular stage on the center of the floor. Julia Spicer for The New York TimesBut it was also a canny way to replicate a quintessential element of Eilish’s recordings — a whispery, ASMR-inducing hush — that can be difficult to evoke on an arena stage, where impassioned fans obscure the nuances of her voice by screaming every lyric back to her.Both ends of the dynamic spectrum are important to Eilish’s sound, a fact she underscores in the title of her adventurous third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” In this accompanying live show, she modulated them expertly, suddenly transforming acoustic numbers into arena-rocking power ballads and playing the adoring audience like a well-tuned instrument.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More