Aurelia Butler

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    With a ‘Ring,’ the Dallas Symphony Becomes a Wagner Destination

    Fabio Luisi, a seasoned “Ring” conductor, will lead Wagner’s four-opera epic over a week in concert, breaking new ground for American orchestras.Richard Wagner conceived his four-opera “Ring” as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a marriage of poetry and music, for voices and orchestra, with coordinated sets, costumes and action. It’s a huge, expensive challenge even for top opera companies, calling for powerful singers, an accomplished conductor and orchestra, and a stage director and designer who can enliven a convoluted epic of family dysfunction, greed, destruction and rebirth.How much of Wagner’s impact remains if you subtract scenery and costumes, and most of the action — with neither water nor fire, sword nor spear, celestial palace nor subterranean smithy?Those questions will be put to the test by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which is alone in the American classical music and opera scene this season by presenting a complete “Ring,” over four evenings at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center beginning on Sunday.At the podium will be Fabio Luisi, the orchestra’s music director since 2020, who led the “Ring” at the Metropolitan Opera a dozen years ago. In Dallas, he began to roll out the cycle last spring, presenting “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre”; “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” followed earlier this month, semi-staged by Alberto Triola, who collaborated with Luisi and the Dallas symphony on “Salome” and “Eugene Onegin.”A concert staging of the “Ring,” Luisi said in a video interview from his home near Zurich, does not compromise the work.“In Wagner’s time the acting was extremely reduced,” he said. “We cannot compare the acting in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century with acting now. Even after the war, in Bayreuth, the stagings by Wieland Wagner were pretty much static.”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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    ‘We Live in Time’ Review: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s Weepie

    Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield star in this weepie romance that tries to be modern by unfolding over three intersecting timelines.Time doesn’t stand still in “We Live in Time,” a shamelessly old-fashioned weepie about love and heartache; it jitters and jumps, restlessly shifting back and forth. Set in contemporary Britain, the story follows Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) over a half-decade or so as their relationship develops around familiar milestones. They fall into bed and then into love, move in together and have a child, all while celebrating triumphs and weathering tragedies. As the years pass, they grow older, naturally, but their story is somewhat more complicated than most only because it unfolds out of chronological order.It’s a clever conceit that suggests how we experience the passage of time and, in the more successful interludes, conveys how the past, present and future inform one another. Early on, Almut whips up some eggs before waking Tobias in a sun-drenched bedroom in their picture-perfect country home. In a following sequence — which turns out to be set years before — he jolts awake in their darkened London flat and checks on the heavily pregnant Almut. Each awakening is connected by the couple’s love and ministering tenderness; intentionally or not, the scenes also signal that this movie has a real thing for eggs, fertilized and not.Written by Nick Payne and directed by John Crowley, “We Live in Time” is set during three time periods — one lasts several years, another six months and the third about a day — that have been minced and mixed together. The transitions between the different times are blunt and, at first, they’re a touch disorienting because they don’t come with the usual prompts; there are no rapidly turning calendar pages or characters mistily announcing, “I remember ….” Instead, the filmmakers keep you grounded in the separate eras partly through Tobias and Almut’s changing hairstyles, as well as through the birth of their daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), who grows from a topic of discussion into a charming little kid.Even as the filmmakers shuffle the couple’s different epochs around in a nonlinear fashion, time demands its due, as it must. As Almut and Tobias settle in for the long haul, more than just their hair changes. Almut, who quickly proves the richer character, undergoes significant transformations, including professionally as she goes from cooking in a small restaurant to presiding over a large staff in her own Michelin-starred place. Fairly early on, she and Tobias also receive the grim news from a doctor that her ovarian cancer has returned. It’s a jolt; it is the first indication that she’s been ill, and it’s also clear that the bad news will keep on coming.For the most part, Pugh and Garfield are pleasantly watchable, and they fit together persuasively enough to convey their characters’ mutual attraction. That’s the case even if Almut is more convincingly fleshed out than Tobias, who, as the story continues, can seem like both an obstacle and an appendage to this complicated woman. Almut doesn’t just give birth and fall gravely ill — which is already a lot for any one character — she’s far more professionally engaged than Tobias, who’s as bland as his job (for a cereal company) sounds. It’s an underwritten, reactive role that, particularly as Almut’s health crisis worsens, finds Garfield too often leaning on his talent for flooding his big, beseeching eyes with tears.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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    ‘Piece by Piece’ Review: Pharrell Williams’s Life, in Legos

    The producer and musician gets the biographical documentary treatment — with an unexpected twist.Credit where it’s due: In a sea of formulaic biographical documentaries about musicians, “Piece by Piece,” about the life of the hitmaker and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams, stands out boldly. Not because it doesn’t follow the usual narrative formula. It absolutely does: humble beginnings, rocket toward stardom, crash and then, inevitably, resurrection. That’s all so standard to the genre that it’s practically calcified.No, “Piece by Piece” pops because everyone — including Williams and the film’s director, Morgan Neville — is played by animated Legos.This choice, which was Williams’s idea, comes off less gimmicky than it sounds. Legos have proven to be remarkably versatile utility players in the past decade. They’ve performed as Ninjas and Batman and themselves ever since “The Lego Movie” (2014) opened and became both a staggering commercial hit and an instant classic. The movie was clever and inventive, but the choice of toy worked, too: Legos are recognizable, beloved and, most important, endlessly open to reinterpretation. There’s no reason not to mingle your Lego Hogwarts set with your Lego Star Wars set in the shadow of your Lego Eiffel Tower alongside your little cousin’s Duplo trucks, and that’s the fun of them — the potential for chaos and imagination.For “Piece by Piece,” the Legos are taking on a new challenge: playing real people. Animated feature-length documentaries have become more common in recent years — “Waltz With Bashir” (2008) and “Flee” (2021) are two significant examples — but here the animation is aggressively nonrealistic, on purpose. The subjects, which include Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and Daft Punk, show up rendered as cylinder-headed, block-bodied minifigures, Lego parlance for the people-shaped pieces. Minifigure Williams and Minifigure Neville sit across from each other, chatting about the movie and Williams’s life. The voices are real — Neville interviewed the plethora of collaborators and artists that Williams has worked for and with — but we only ever see their Lego versions, with some distinguishing facial hair or outfit.The playfulness fits Williams’s aesthetic, which ranges from producing beats and albums for that dizzying array of artists to recording his own megahit “Happy” to collaborating on lines of streetwear, fragrances, eyeglasses, sneakers and skin care. He’s clearly bursting with ideas all the time, and that’s the narrative of the film: This is a man who never stops dreaming of ways to remix the world. It’s his playground, his sandbox. Legos fit right in.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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    ‘Bad Genius’ Review: Cheating the System

    This remake of a hit Thai film about college admissions, starring Callina Liang, adds an element of racial politics to its heist story.At dinner at the home of one of her wealthy white classmates, Lynn (Callina Liang), a high-achieving Asian American high school student, finds out why she’s really there. Her classmate’s parents want her to help their son get into Columbia University, in whatever way is necessary. It’s quite the loaded setup in “Bad Genius,” a film that arrives a year after affirmative action in college admissions ended via a lawsuit in which, some argued, Asian Americans were used to advance a white conservative agenda.That thorny element of racial politics is the bold new ingredient in a remake of a hit Thai movie from 2017. This version, directed by J.C. Lee, is otherwise faithful to the original, following Lynn, a scholarship student at a prestigious high school who resorts to running a cheating ring to pay for college. For her big score, she enlists the help of Bank (Jabari Banks), a scholarship student whose parents are Nigerian immigrants.In practice, “Bad Genius” doesn’t actually have the political bite to back its bark. For all of its declarations meant to be scathing indictments of a rigged system, it is glaringly resistant to ever saying the word “white.” Nor does its young cast have the dramatic poise to elevate the script. Benedict Wong, as Lynn’s father, is an underused bright spot.Despite the film’s aims at spiky commentary, the class rebellion mostly serves as the thin wrapping to, at best, a middling heist movie that loses some of the punchy tension of the original’s getaway sequences. At its worst, it’s no more than a teenage soap opera.Bad GeniusNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong Say ‘The Apprentice’ Is a ‘Human Tragedy’

    It’s natural to feel nervous before presenting your movie at a major film festival. But in late August, when the director Ali Abbasi boarded a flight to the Telluride Film Festival, he wasn’t even sure if his new movie “The Apprentice” — a fictionalized look at the Machiavellian bond between the young Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) and the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) — would be permitted to play there at all.“It was really crazy what happened, and I spared Jeremy and Sebastian some of it, but it is a demoralizing feeling,” Abbasi admitted during a recent video call with his two stars. The former president had been threatening legal action against “The Apprentice” since its May debut at the Cannes Film Festival, which chilled distributor interest in the movie for months and made it a controversial prospect for any subsequent festival willing to show it.“If a movie comes out and people think it’s bad or it’s flawed, you can deal with that,” Abbasi said. “But when it goes into a safe box indefinitely, that was heavy.”In the end, Trump failed to follow through on his threats, Telluride played the movie without incident and “The Apprentice” ultimately found a distributor in Briarcliff Entertainment, which will release the film on Friday. Still, Strong was perturbed by how many major studios were unwilling to take on the film and potentially incur the presidential candidate’s wrath.“You think that things could be banned in North Korea or Russia or certain places, but you don’t think that will ever happen here,” Strong said. “It’s a real dark harbinger that it even nearly happened.”Written by Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” begins with Trump in his 20s as he toils under his real-estate magnate father and aspires to become a momentous figure in his own right. Still, Trump’s ambition exceeds his ability until he meets the savvy Cohn, who takes the young man under his wing and imparts ruthless rules for success that will eventually launch Trump onto the highest stage imaginable.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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    The Viral Choreographer Changing the Way Women Move

    In February 2023, Rihanna took the field during the Super Bowl LVII halftime show for her first performance in five years. As the opening notes of “Rude Boy” played, a group of dancers in identical puffy white suits and sunglasses gathered in the middle of the stage, moving with forceful precision, gathering speed as the […] More

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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking Cassie Assault Video

    The hip-hop mogul’s legal team said in a filing on Wednesday that it may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Lawyers for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is battling federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, accused the government on Wednesday of leaking hotel surveillance footage of him brutally beating his former girlfriend to CNN, saying that they may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that the video — which shows Mr. Combs assaulting the singer Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 — is a key piece of evidence in their case. The surveillance footage was published by CNN in May, prompting Mr. Combs to apologize publicly for “inexcusable” behavior.It has never been clear how the footage made its way to the news organization, but in the court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty and has vehemently denied the criminal charges, accused the Department of Homeland Security, which executed raids of the defendant’s homes in March, of being responsible for the leak.“The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,” the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, wrote.The court filing cited a federal rule of criminal procedure that prohibits prosecutors or government agents from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.The lawyers did not cite direct evidence that Homeland Security officials had leaked the tape. But they accused the agency of a series of leaks, including in anonymous comments to The New York Post, that they said “all but ensured” that the grand jury and a potential trial jury would be tainted. The lawyers asked for a hearing to determine the government’s culpability in the leaks.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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    Patrick Summers, Veteran Opera Conductor, to Step Down in Houston

    Summers, who has helped introduce new operas into the American canon, will leave his role at Houston Grand Opera in 2026.Patrick Summers, a veteran conductor who over the past 26 years has helped turn Houston Grand Opera into one of most innovative companies in the United States, will leave his post in 2026, the company announced on Wednesday.Summers, 61, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, said he was eager for a change and felt he was leaving the organization in a strong position.“I love the company and the work that we’ve done here,” he said. “But I realized it’s time to make space for a new generation.”Summers has played an important role in introducing new operas into the American canon.He has premiered 11 works in Houston, including Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Carlisle Floyd’s “Cold Sassy Tree.” He has recorded new and recent operas, including Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas.” And, as a guest conductor, he has led major premieres at other companies: He was on the podium, for example, when Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” had its debut at San Francisco Opera in 2000.The star soprano Renée Fleming called Summers a “consummate musician” and a “natural educator.”“His effect has been to maintain a high standard of quality and hire great singers and have wonderful productions,” she said. “The whole ecosystem has benefited from his long tenure there.”Summers joined Houston Grand Opera as music director in 1998. He was recruited by David Gockley, the company’s general director from 1972 to 2005, who made it a hub for experimentation, commissioning dozens of new works. Summers became artistic and music director in 2011.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said Summers’s creative drive had transformed the company.“He lives in the future; he lives in commissions,” she said. “He lives in the support of talent at the beginning, when it’s most needed.”Dastoor said that the company had not yet begun searching for a successor but that she hoped there would not be a long gap between Summers and his replacement.“We’re united and ready to make an ambitious and bold choice when the time comes,” she said.For his next chapter, Summers said, he did not anticipate taking on another major director role, hoping to focus on performance. He will be given the title of music director emeritus at Houston Grand Opera and continue to appear there. This season, he is leading a new production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and performances of Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves.”Since the pandemic, Houston Grand Opera has been in a relatively strong position compared to its peers, with strong ticket sales and fund-raising.Summers said he was proud of the company. “We’re one of the real success stories in the arts in the United States,” he said. “How could I have any regrets?” More