Aurelia Butler

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    Hannah Kendall Writes Music With a Vocabulary of Her Own

    This composer’s latest work, for Lincoln Center, is in conversation with Robert Schumann’s music and mental health struggles.“Violent congestion, inexpressible terror, failure of breath, momentary unconsciousness — these overtake me in quick succession, though I am better than I was,” the composer Robert Schumann wrote in a letter to his mother in 1833. He was 23, and the recent deaths of his older brother and sister-in-law surely cast a pall on his state of mind. “If you had any notion of the lethargy into which melancholia has brought me,” he continued, “you would forgive my not writing.”Hannah Kendall, a prominent young British composer based in New York, was struck by that passage a little more than a year ago, while reading Schumann’s letters, which provide glimpses of a decades-long struggle with mental illness, diagnosed during his life as exhaustion, and posthumously as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.“It felt as though there was a very direct, personal connection to his state at the time, which I found particularly fascinating as a composer,” Kendall, 40, said in a recent interview at Lincoln Center — where her new work, “He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing,” will premiere on Aug. 9. The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center will play Kendall’s piece on a program that also includes Schumann’s Second Symphony.What it takes to be an artist today, Kendall explained, is a regular topic of discussion among her circle of friends and peers. “Our well-being, mental and physical, is something that crops up on a daily basis,” she said. Some composers, like Julia Adolphe, Nico Muhly and Aaron Helgeson, have begun to air mental-health concerns and struggles in public, in blog posts and on podcasts.Kendall was urged to read Schumann’s letters by a longtime friend, the conductor Jonathon Heyward, the music director of the Festival Orchestra, who admittedly had an ulterior motive. For his first summer with the ensemble, he had her commissioned to write a piece for a concert that would also feature Schumann. He envisioned Kendall responding to not only Schumann’s music, but also issues of mental health and this moment when performing arts organizations are still struggling to lure back audiences lost during the pandemic.The coming program, which also includes two works by Bach, is surrounded by contextual offerings. “Ghost Variations,” an augmented-reality installation piece in the lobby at David Geffen Hall, explores how Schumann found solace in Bach’s music. And a preconcert discussion will address the question “Can music express mental health?”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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    Looking for the Best in Black Cinema? Try Brown Sugar.

    The streaming service highlights some of the finest movies starring, and often directed by, Black artists.As the name-brand streaming services struggle to show profits and broker cable-esque bundling packages to cut costs, the most successful streamers are proving to be niche services, which curate specialized libraries for a specific target audience. We’ve spotlighted several such streamers in this space, most of them focusing on clearly defined genres or sensibilities; this month, we look at a service with an eye on one particular culture.Brown Sugar, which started in 2016, promises on its site “hit movies and TV shows along with the largest collection of classic Black cinema, uncut and commercial-free.” Its library features programming about the Black experience, predominately by Black creators, and aimed primarily at Black audiences (while recognizing that those audiences are seeking all sorts of entertainment). There is a robust selection of Black cinema from the 1970s, the vaunted blaxploitation era, including titles from Ossie Davis, Rudy Ray Moore and Richard Roundtree, as well as cult titles like “The Harder They Come” and “Putney Swope,” and ’80s favorites like “Hollywood Shuffle” and “Beat Street.”That era initially dominated the service’s library, but it has since broadened its offerings to include more contemporary romantic comedies, action thrillers, heartwarming dramas, and historical and true crime documentaries. It’s also cultivated a partnership with Bounce TV that gives viewers access to such long-running and popular shows as the soap opera “Saints & Sinners,” the rags-to-riches sitcom “Family Time” and the barbershop-set comedy “In the Cut.”Subscription is a bargain, running only $3.99 per month (after a one-week free trial) or $42 for a year. Brown Sugar is available on desktop and a variety of streaming devices, including Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire. Image quality varies wildly — some films and shows are Blu-ray quality, but occasional older and less-cared-for titles may well have been mastered from VHS. But it’s worth the risk for the hidden gems the service offers.Here are a few highlights from the current library:Pryor plays an outlaw and Williams a federal agent in Sidney J. Furie’s film.Paramount Pictures‘Hit!’: “Lady Sings the Blues” was one of the first and most successful (critically and commercially) films of ’70s Black cinema; this 1973 effort reunited that film’s director, Sidney J. Furie, with two of its co-stars, Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor, this time for an action extravaganza that more resembled “The French Connection” than “Lady.” Williams plays a federal agent who goes after an international drug cartel after his daughter dies of a heroin overdose; Pryor is one of the team of outlaws and outcasts he puts together to get the job done when his superiors veto the mission. The result is fast-paced and funny (thanks primarily to the always-reliable Pryor), and filled with thrilling action beats.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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    Wolfgang Rihm, Prolific Contemporary Classical Music Composer, Dies at 72

    Likened to a “court composer” for Germany, he wrote more than 500 pieces and was considered one of the most original and independent musical voices in Europe.Wolfgang Rihm, a composer whose forceful, shape-shifting output reinvigorated contemporary classical music, died on Saturday in Ettlingen, Germany. He was 72.His death, in a hospice outside the city of Karlsruhe, where he lived, was announced in a statement by his publisher, Universal Edition. It did not specify a cause, but Mr. Rihm had been treated for cancer since 2017. His illness and his efforts to compose despite it were the subject of a 2020 German documentary.Mr. Rihm was considered one of the most original and prolific musical voices in Europe and the most performed German composer of contemporary classical music. Among his prominent commissions was “Reminiszenz,” an “arresting, broody orchestral song cycle,” as Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim described it in The New York Times. The work, for a tenor and large orchestra, premiered at the 2017 opening of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg.Mr. Rihm composed more than 500 works, though the exact number remains unclear because some pieces have not yet been published.He received the 2003 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the 2010 Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale and the 2014 Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music, among many other awards. He was named composer in residence for the 2024-25 season at the Berlin Philharmonic.“At times he was even like a court composer” for Germany, the music critic Manuel Brug wrote in Die Welt.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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    Sinead O’Connor Died of Pulmonary Disease and Asthma, Death Report Says

    A death certificate filed last week revealed the natural causes behind the death last July of Ms. O’Connor, the Irish singer and activist.Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who shot to fame in the 1980s and ’90s and was known for her activism, died at age 56 last July of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma, according to her death certificate.In January, a coroner in London said that Ms. O’Connor had died of “natural causes” but did not provide details. The police said at the time of Ms. O’Connor’s death that it was “not being treated as suspicious.”Ms. O’Connor’s death certificate, which was registered last week, filled in some gaps. The singer died of “exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchial asthma together with low-grade lower respiratory-tract infection,” the report said. It was submitted by John Reynolds, Ms. O’Connor’s first husband.Ms. O’Connor become a global star in the 1990s with a cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The album the song was on won a Grammy Award in 1991 for best alternative music performance.She also wielded her fame as an activist, speaking out against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, misogyny, the British subjugation of Ireland and other issues. In her later life, she spoke about her mental struggles and her recovery from child abuse.Ms. O’Connor’s death shook Ireland, which mourned her as a national treasure even though she had been a controversial figure for her political provocations onstage and off. In 1992, Ms. O’Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a “Saturday Night Live” performance to protest sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church.In the year since she died, debates have continued over Ms. O’Connor’s legacy and representation.In March, a risqué performance honoring her life and her first studio album opened in London and drew crowds in New York. And last week, a wax museum in Dublin removed a figure of her after her brother said it was “hideous” and “looked nothing like her.”“She was something grander than a simple pop star,” Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times, wrote in an appraisal of Ms. O’Connor’s career.“She became a stand-in for a sociopolitical discomfort that was beginning to take hold in the early 1990s,” he continued, “a rejection of the enthusiastic sheen and power-at-all-costs culture of the 1980s.” More

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    Review: Grand Opera Makes a Comeback With ‘Le Prophète’

    Meyerbeer, one of the 19th century’s most popular composers, is out of fashion today. But his work is receiving a rare revival at Bard College.Giacomo Meyerbeer was the toast of Paris in the 19th century. Nowadays, when he’s mentioned at all, he’s the object of backhanded compliments.“The man may not have been a genius, but he was a craftsman,” the critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The New York Times when one of Meyerbeer’s grand operas, “Le Prophète,” came to the Metropolitan Opera in 1977.Long on spectacle and long on length, “Le Prophète” has five acts with ballets and choruses galore; a coronation scene; and a grand finale in which an entire palace goes up in flames and kills, well, everyone. Based on a historical event, it tells the story of an Anabaptist uprising in 16th-century Germany led by Jean of Leiden, who is declared a prophet and king. The world premiere is remembered for its coups de théâtre, which included ice-skating (indicated with roller skates) and a sunrise (the first use of electricity on the Paris Opera stage).The notion of Meyerbeer’s exploitation of the public’s taste for dazzle persists. To give you an idea of how severely he has fallen out of fashion, the Met performed three — yes, three — of his operas in its first six months of operation in 1883-84, and hasn’t staged any of them since 1979.Fortunately, there are opera die-hards like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, who has a penchant for reappraisal. He mounted a persuasive argument for “Le Prophète” at the Fisher Center at Bard College on Friday. Because of modest resources, the spotlight was less on the staging and more on an often-overlooked element of Meyerbeer’s art: his fantastic instincts for vocal writing.For nearly all of Act IV, the mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein held the stage as Fidès, the pious mother of the false prophet Jean (John) and the opera’s richest role. Mad with anguish and thinking her son dead, Feinstein’s Fidès stitches together an unforced, just-hefty-enough sound from a mellow bottom to a ringing top in writing that was vocally gracious and terrifically exciting.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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    Robert Downey Jr. to Return to Marvel as Dr. Doom

    The actor announced his return to Marvel’s superhero movie franchise five years after ending his long run as Iron Man.Robert Downey Jr. is going from superhero to supervillain.The actor, who entertained audiences as Iron Man for more than a decade in several Hollywood blockbusters, is returning to the Marvel cinematic universe as the villain Victor von Doom in two upcoming movies.“New mask, same task,” Downey announced at a Comic-Con event in San Diego on Saturday, after he unveiled the character’s signature silver mask and green cloak to the roar of a cheering crowd.“What can I tell you?” he said. “I like playing complicated characters.”Downey is set to appear as the character, simply known as Dr. Doom, in “Avengers: Doomsday,” which is expected to be released in May 2026, and “Avengers: Secret Wars” a year later.Downey, 59, has been a prolific actor since the 1980s, portraying characters both serious and comedic.He received Academy Award nominations for his portrayal of the actor Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 film “Chaplin,” and for his role in the 2008 war comedy “Tropic Thunder.”After multiple probation violations stemming from an arrest on drug and weapons charges, he was sentenced to prison in 1999 and overcame a long battle with substance abuse.This year, he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s film about the making of the atomic bomb during World War II. Downey played the titular character’s political rival, Lewis Strauss.But audiences best know him for helping to start an era of blockbuster superhero movies that began in 2008 with the first “Iron Man” movie.He played the charismatic genius-inventor-billionaire-arms dealer Tony Stark, who becomes Iron Man and eventually leads a team of heroes, the Avengers, who protect the world against dark forces.He played the character in sequels and spinoffs including “Iron Man 2,” “Captain America: Civil War” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” He last appeared as Iron Man in the 2019 film, “Avengers: Endgame,” in which the character was killed off.And now Downey is going back to the popular superhero realm with Dr. Doom, a megalomaniacal villainous tycoon from the Marvel comic book series “Fantastic Four,” which was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961.In the series, Dr. Doom wore a threatening silver mask to hide his scarred face.The character was previously played by Julian McMahon in the 2005 film “Fantastic Four” and in the 2007 sequel “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” A reboot in 2015 featured the actor Toby Kebbell as Dr. Doom.The casting news comes as Marvel Studios, which has been trying to reverse recent box office misses, brought back two of its most popular characters, Deadpool and Wolverine, with the movie “Deadpool & Wolverine.”The movie was expected to sell roughly $205 million in tickets in the United States and Canada over the weekend, box office analysts said on Saturday. More

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    Review: ‘The Righteous’ Brings Stirring Prayer to Santa Fe Opera

    Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s new work about an ambitious minister’s rise in the 1980s is that rarity in contemporary music: an original story.We’ve had “The Shining” and “Cold Mountain,” “The Hours” and “Dead Man Walking,” and works based on the lives of Steve Jobs, Malcolm X and Frida Kahlo. “Lincoln in the Bardo” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” are coming soon.Opera audiences, traditionalists even before the pandemic, have ventured back warier than ever about buying tickets for anything other than the standards. So as companies try to present contemporary pieces alongside “Aida” and “La Bohème,” they bank on familiar titles and subjects.Many classic operas were adaptations; “Bohème,” for example, was inspired by a collection of stories. But lately the results have tended to feel less like great art than like bending over backward to coax a cautious public. Something special comes from being truly original: It’s no coincidence that perhaps the best opera of our time, Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence” (2021), was that rarity, a brand-new story.So is “The Righteous,” commissioned by Santa Fe Opera from the composer Gregory Spears and the poet Tracy K. Smith. Spears and Smith also created from scratch their first full-length collaboration, “Castor and Patience” (2022). They deserve great credit for this. These days it’s remarkable to sit at a premiere and be able to think, with admiration, “Here are imaginations at work” instead of “I’d rather be watching the movie.”Taking place over a few weeks, “Castor and Patience” was an intimate family drama — though one with larger societal implications. While a family is also at the center of “The Righteous,” which opened on July 13, the new opera is in every way a more sprawling piece, stretching from 1979 through the early 1990s, with a large cast and chorus and booming climaxes to match its impassioned lyricism.At its core is a man’s progress from youthful idealism to profound moral compromise. The main character, David, is a talented, devoted preacher who’s grown up close to a wealthy, well-connected oil family in the American Southwest. He marries the family’s daughter and, as his scrappy ministry grows in size and influence, he’s tempted more and more by the prospect of political power. As he climbs, he leaves betrayals both personal and ideological in his wake.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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    Book Review: ‘Seeing Through,’ by Ricky Ian Gordon

    In “Seeing Through,” the prolific composer Ricky Ian Gordon shares the heroes, monsters, obsessions and fetishes that drive his art and fuel a dizzying life.SEEING THROUGH: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera, by Ricky Ian GordonEven devotees of symphony orchestras sometimes struggle with the opera — its muchness and pomp. “The uproar,” my father called it, and he was a serious amateur chamber musician who collected and played the works of obscure composers on a Montagnana violin that he most certainly would have saved from a fire before my guinea pig, Percolator.But enough about my daddy issues — let’s discuss Ricky Ian Gordon’s. Gordon is one of our foremost composers of modern opera (for what that’s worth, as he notes mournfully, to Generation iTunes), including works based on “The Grapes of Wrath” and “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.” Now he’s also the author of a messy and mesmerizing new memoir called “Seeing Through.”“If I had my way, the whole world would look like a carnival,” writes Gordon, who has a synesthesiac “thing about color,” and this book is certainly pinwheels, sideshows and waxy litter scattered on the ground. Very entertaining; a little dizzying.Ricky was the youngest of four children and the only boy born to Eve and Sam Gordon, né Goldenberg, a dishonorably discharged World War II veteran — he’d punched an officer who’d made an antisemitic remark — who became an electrician and Masonic master, prone to lightning bolts of rage at home.This overstimulated family’s struggles were previously documented in the excellent 1992 book “Home Fires,” by Donald Katz — you can listen to it on Audible, which Katz, in one of those intriguing pieces of life-arc trivia, founded — and a year later in “Take the Long Way Home,” by Susan Lydon, the eldest daughter, a successful journalist who descended into serious addiction.Here, Sam’s neglect and maltreatment of his children, especially Ricky — who failed to be the expected “mirror” to his brute-force masculinity — comes in for more uncomfortable scrutiny. Sam never bothered to learn birthdays or look at schoolwork, cruelly beat his son and demanded sex from Eve multiple times a day, even when she didn’t want it.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