Aurelia Butler

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    At the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial, Cassie’s Mother and Others to Testify About Abuse

    Prosecutors are aiming to fill in the picture of the mogul’s relationship with Casandra Ventura by questioning his former assistant and Ms. Ventura’s mother.As Sean Combs’s trial moves into its seventh day of testimony, investigators pursuing him on racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges are trying to sketch a wider picture of his time with the singer Casandra Ventura, who was his off-and-on girlfriend for more than a decade.Ms. Ventura, who performs music as Cassie, testified for four days last week; now witnesses including another artist signed to Mr. Combs’s label, Ms. Ventura’s estranged best friend and a former personal assistant to Mr. Combs have been asked by prosecutors to corroborate, and in some cases amplify, aspects of Ms. Ventura’s account. Her mother is also expected to testify this week.The first witness on Tuesday is scheduled to be David James, the assistant who took the stand late in the day on Monday. Mr. James described his duties as an aide to Mr. Combs in terms that resembled those of many high-profile, high-pressure corporate jack-of-all-trades. He rose early, arranged Mr. Combs’s calendar and kept detailed spreadsheets of his boss’s travel preferences. At his job interview, he told Mr. Combs, “I can’t stop, I won’t stop” — an expression of his work ethic wrapped in a nod to a hit song by the Lox, one of the signature rap acts for Bad Boy, Mr. Combs’s company. But even in the few minutes Mr. James was on the stand, he testified of hearing Ms. Ventura express frustration at her situation. On a cigarette break with her on a dock near Mr. Combs’s Miami mansion, soon after he started the job in 2007, he said she remarked to him, “Man, this lifestyle is crazy.” Mr. James said he agreed, and that Ms. Ventura added, “I can’t get out,” and that Mr. Combs “oversees so much of my life.”Prosecutors have worked to establish that Mr. Combs had coercive power over Ms. Ventura, in part because she loved him, but also because he held the reins on her career and physically beat her.Mr. Combs has acknowledged the violence, but he has denied the sex trafficking and other accusations of criminal conduct that have been lodged against him. His lawyers say Mr. Combs engaged in perhaps unconventional marathon sex sessions with Ms. Ventura, but they say it was fully consensual and he has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.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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    How the Cowbell Gave Latin Music Its Swing

    When life gets loud, let the rhythm get louder.Ran-kan-kan: Long before I could name the source of my excitement, my body responded to the strident signature of Latin dance music. The cowbell strikes like a drum but rings like a horn, the high pitch piercing through salsa’s dense thicket of overlapping patterns. Just when I feel myself drifting from the dance-floor herd, the cowbell summons me back to the rhythm’s raw nerve. Musicians call this function el amarre, from the Spanish amarrar — to fasten, to moor, to seal the deal. A paradox, maybe, that the instrument that brings all the others in line should incite the most euphoric feelings of freedom. I’m already sweating through my silk, so why resist the cowbell’s erotic revelation? When the fever reaches a certain pitch, complexity must give way to relentless repetition — one just-right note, catechized precisely like a prayer. Eso es. Just like that.Prayer, I learned recently, might be the right metaphor: The cowbell we know today is a direct descendant of instruments that spread through West Africa with the early iron-making technology of the Bantu migrations, and that continue to structure the diaspora’s ritual music, from the double-mouthed agogô of Yoruba bembé ceremonies to the triangular ekón of the secret brotherhood known as Abakuá. Like a god, the bell lays down our shared timeline. The sharp attack puts you in your place — enter here, act now — amid the din of drums and dancers. The job of the bell, I’ve been told, is to stay steady.Maybe that’s how these timelines survived the apocalyptic chaos of the Middle Passage. When diverse captives converged on the Caribbean, they sought out substitutes for the instruments they no longer had the freedom to craft. In Puerto Rico, they fashioned bomba drums from rum barrels; in Cuba, they turned the humble wooden crate, used to pack salt cod, into the cajón, whose special resonance later found a place in Spanish flamenco. Soon enough, free people of color gained access to forges for smithing bells from scratch, so I sometimes wonder if it was not only necessity but sheer virtuosity that compelled musicians to play most anything: hoe blades, machetes, paint cans and, yes, ranchland cowbells, struck with the handles of decapitated hammers.In New York City, the improvisations continued: Fania’s Johnny Pacheco stalked the carts in Central Park to steal the copper cowbells hanging from the horses’ necks. Eddie Palmieri, salsa’s founding father, told me how the drummer Manny Oquendo would take his cracked cowbell to a body shop for repair: “What is it with the cowbell?” the welder, used to mending fenders, finally asked. “Well,” Oquendo grunted, “that’s what gives the swing to the band.” By the 1950s, Latin music had become big business, so it’s no surprise the cowbell was perfected and mass-produced right here in the Bronx, by a Puerto Rican auto mechanic named Calixto Rivera: first in his apartment, then, after noise complaints, in a workshop behind Yankee Stadium. If you don’t make the cowbell by hand, Rivera once told The Times, “it doesn’t go coo-coo — it goes blegh-blegh.”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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    Santa Fe Opera Continues to Draw Performers From Across the Globe

    Nearly 70 years old, the Santa Fe Opera and its summer season draw singers, directors, designers, conductors and apprentices from across the globe.In 1956, in the high desert just north of Santa Fe, N.M., a young New York conductor had a vision to build an outdoor opera house. Many scoffed at such an idea in the Southwest, but John Crosby persisted. He had fallen in love with opera as a young man attending the Metropolitan Opera.Nearly 70 years later, the Santa Fe Opera, which opens its annual two-month season on June 27, attracts singers, directors, stage designers and conductors from across the globe. In many ways it has a sort of operatic pipeline to New York and the Metropolitan Opera.“There’s this wonderful legacy of artists who have had their debut here and gone onto the Met and other houses,” Robert K. Meya, general director of the Santa Fe Opera, said during a recent phone interview. “And John Crosby’s vision was very tied to the Metropolitan Opera. He first heard Richard Strauss at the Met, and he moved very quickly to bring many of Strauss’s first operas to Santa Fe years later.”That early vision of championing Strauss’s lesser-known works defined the company — six of his operas had their professional U.S. debuts in Santa Fe, including “Capriccio” in 1958 and “Intermezzo” in 1984 — in the decades after his death in 1949.Crosby’s vision to stage a world premiere or a U.S. premiere almost every season among its five annual productions has also distinguished the company.The conductor John Crosby wanted to bring opera to Santa Fe, so built an outdoor opera house and started the company in 1956.Santa Fe Opera ArchivesWe 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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    Opera Companies Find Savings and Gains Through Collaborations

    Co-productions can help companies across the globe save money, collaborate artistically and ensure that lesser-known works are seen by more audiences.Simon McBurney’s acclaimed production of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which debuted last month at the Salzburg Easter Festival ahead of its Metropolitan Opera premiere, almost didn’t happen.McBurney’s staging, once envisioned as a co-production between the Met and the Bolshoi in Moscow, was in limbo after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response to the war, the New York company severed ties with all Russian state-run institutions.At that time, Nikolaus Bachler had recently taken over as artistic director of the Easter Festival and was looking for other companies to share productions with. One of his ambitions was to present McBurney’s “Khovanshchina” in Salzburg. The Met signed on as co-producer. “For me, it was crucial to find partners from the very beginning,” he said in an interview last month at his office in Salzburg’s picturesque Altstadt, or Old City, shortly before the second and final performance of “Khovanshchina” at the festival, on April 21.“Especially for a festival like ours, it is such a pity — they did this in the past — that you do a production for two times and then it’s over,” he said. “This is an artistic waste and economic waste.”A scene from John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met, a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.Karen Almond/Met OperaIn recent years, the Met has increasingly turned to co-producing not only to share costs, but also as a way to collaborate artistically with other companies. The final premiere of the current season, John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” a Met commission composed by Mason Bates that adapts Michael Chabon’s novel, will open the 2025-26 season and is a collaboration with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where it premiered in November. Two further premieres in the new season, “La Sonnambula” and Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” are shared among various opera companies in Europe and the United States.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 Soprano Sonya Yoncheva Has Many Roles, On and Off the Stage

    Sonya Yoncheva discusses her turn as Lisa in “The Queen of Spades” at the Metropolitan Opera, her summer concerts, her production company and more.The soprano Sonya Yoncheva has established herself as one of today’s most versatile opera stars.Just over a decade ago, in 2014, she caused a splash after jumping in on short notice as Mimi in her first staged performance of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera. When the Bulgarian native appears as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s tragic love story “The Queen of Spades,” from Friday through June 7, it will be her sixth role debut at the house.Yoncheva, 43, maintains a busy schedule that includes a recent gala at the Opéra Garnier in Paris and her third production as the title character in “Iolanta,” also by Tchaikovsky, at the Vienna State Opera. In Europe this summer, she will perform Handel, Bellini and more.Yoncheva performing in “Iolanta” at the Vienna State Opera.Vienna State Opera / Michael PöhnUnder the auspices of her production company, SY11 Events, she will also appear in August in Sofia, Bulgaria, for outdoor concerts alongside the tenors Vittorio Grigolo, José Carreras and Plácido Domingo. Started in 2020, the enterprise joined forces with the label Naïve for her most recent album, “George,” inspired by the life and work of the French writer George Sand (born Aurore Dupin, she is known in the music world for her tumultuous relationship with Frédéric Chopin).An even less conventional project is the 2023 book “Fifteen Mirrors,” combining personal confessions about select characters and portraits in which Yoncheva poses in different guises.“I understand my work as a process,” she said by phone from outside Geneva, where she lives with her husband, the conductor Domingo Hindoyan, and their two children. “The interpretation takes up maybe an even bigger part than the singing.”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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    Ari Aster Hasn’t Seen the Reviews for ‘Eddington’

    The Covid-era satire has been divisive at Cannes, but the director has not seen the reviews. He’s focused on his fears about where the world is headed.The director Ari Aster has always wanted to bring a movie to the Cannes Film Festival, and he finally achieved that goal with the divisive comedy “Eddington,” which premiered here Friday. How did it feel to have his dream come true?“It’s a lot,” Aster confessed when I met him on an oceanside terrace on Sunday afternoon. “People keep asking me, ‘How are you feeling?’ And it’s like, I have no objectivity here. I feel excited, distressed, happy, detached.”Perhaps it’s fitting that Aster has gone through such an intense gamut of feelings, since his movies tend to put audiences through the wringer, too. Though “Eddington” isn’t a horror film in the vein of other Aster movies like “Hereditary” and “Misdommar,” it’s still meant to unsettle: Set in May 2020, the film explores how the early days of the pandemic inflame tensions in a small New Mexico town.As a conservative sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) mounts a campaign against the liberal mayor (Pedro Pascal) trying to enforce a mask mandate, their fellow citizens radicalize in different ways. The sheriff’s wife (Emma Stone) and mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell) lean hard into internet conspiracy theories, while the teenage residents of Eddington become phone-wielding activists whose strident attitudes incur much of Aster’s satire. Early reviews have been wildly mixed, and the film has been heavily debated here in the days since its premiere.It was a beautiful day in Cannes, though the conversation with Aster was often gloomy: The director spoke earnestly about his fear of where the world is headed, and the feelings of despair that inspired him to make this movie.Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did you feel at the premiere?You’re sitting there wondering how it’s working for people. It’s such a big theater that it’s harder to actually gauge what’s going on. But I have no objectivity and I’m a natural paranoid, so I just lean toward that.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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    Review: Unsuk Chin’s New Opera Gives Music to the Unsaid

    Unsuk Chin’s “The Dark Side of the Moon,” a reinterpretation of the Faust myth, reflects a restless mind with constant musical invention.Unsuk Chin’s new opera conveys, with uncanny precision, the restless energies inside a person’s head.Called “Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes” (“The Dark Side of the Moon”), the work premiered on Sunday at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany. It’s a reinterpretation of the Faust myth, drawing loose inspiration from a famous series of letters between the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.This is Chin’s second opera, following “Alice in Wonderland,” which was first performed at the Bavarian State Opera in 2007. It was as kinetic as her new one, though sillier, more eclectic and ultimately more haunting.“Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes” centers on a character called Dr. Kieron, sung by the baritone Thomas Lehman. He is an irascible yet brilliant scientist whose harsh perfectionism masks a fragmenting mental state. Searching for human connection and trying to slow the pace of his thoughts, he falls prey to a cynical, Nietzsche-quoting faith healer, Master Astaroth, performed by the baritone Bo Skovhus.At the start of the opera, Dr. Kieron’s sung text shows a confident man with bristly charisma. He mocks his assistant, his students and his colleagues with laser wit; In response, they grudgingly praise his intellect. Later, in a seedy bar, he entertains the other patrons with ludicrous tall tales that they believe despite themselves. Dr. Kieron’s behavior recalls Pauli, who dismissed bad science by saying it was “not even wrong,” but also Chin’s teacher, the composer Gyorgy Ligeti. “Ligeti was the harshest critic you could ever imagine,” she has said, “not only toward his students, but to his colleagues and himself.”Chin’s music takes us into Dr. Kieron’s psyche, and it’s an exhausting place. Melodic fragments flare up and burst; orchestral registers and timbres shift constantly. The score shows a mind that can’t stay still. No wonder Dr. Kieron searches for solace with Master Astaroth, whose therapy-speak pronouncements seem profound when accompanied by blessedly static, ethereal music.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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    Lincoln Center Plans a $335 Million Makeover of Its Western Edge

    The center in Manhattan aims to attract new audiences, as it takes down a wall on Amsterdam Avenue and revamps Damrosch Park.Lincoln Center in Manhattan detailed plans on Monday for a $335 million makeover of its west edge, a landmark project that it hopes will bring in new audiences and help define the center’s modern legacy.The plan includes tearing down a wall that has divided the campus from its neighbors along Amsterdam Avenue; building a 2,000-seat outdoor stage that faces the avenue; and adding more greenery, gardens and an interactive fountain to Damrosch Park.Mariko Silver, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, said the aim of the renovation, which has been in the works since 2023, was to “extend the glorious sense of wonder that inhabits all of Lincoln Center to the west face.” She said the area had “never lived up to its promise,” noting its imposing exterior; its outdated band shell; and its anemic public spaces.“It doesn’t welcome the neighborhood,” she said. “The spirit of the new park is to be welcoming, green and open — really a gift for New York City and for art lovers everywhere.”Lincoln Center said construction would begin next spring and finish by spring 2028. The center said it had already raised about $218 million for the project, including a $75 million gift from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a charity known for its work in arts, education and public health. The design team includes the firms Hood Design Studio, Weiss/Manfredi and Moody Nolan.Steven R. Swartz, the president and chief executive of Hearst, who serves as chair of Lincoln Center’s board, said he was hopeful the center could get the financial commitments needed for the project by the end of the year, despite recent economic uncertainty.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