Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Occupied City’ Review: Mapping the Holocaust, Street by Street

    In his four-and-half-hour documentary, the British director Steve McQueen charts the fate of Amsterdam’s Jewish population during the Nazi occupation.Early in Steve McQueen’s extraordinary documentary “Occupied City,” the film cuts to the interior of the elegant main hall in Amsterdam’s grand Royal Concertgebouw. In World War II, the Nazi-German occupiers held events in the hall, but at some point in 1942 the names of the Jewish composers adorning it were covered. Concerts continued, but without Jewish composers, conductors, orchestra musicians, concertgoers and even names on walls.Not long after this section ends, “Occupied City” shifts to a new location, a nondescript, boarded-up storefront. This, the narrator explains, was the site of a cafe that, in 1940, was among the first in the city to ban Jews. Soon after, the movie cuts to another location and then to another and another. And so it goes in this intense, absorbing and epically scaled chronicle — it runs close to four and a half hours, including a 15-minute intermission — that charts the fate of Amsterdam’s Jews during the Nazi occupation, street by street, address by address.In total, the film surveys a staggering 130 addresses, a mapping that McQueen has realized, somewhat surprisingly, without the use of archival imagery. Instead, the director (whose earlier films include “12 Years a Slave”) explores the city’s past exclusively through images of quotidian Amsterdam life today — in and outside homes, in squares, on trams — that he shot over several years beginning in 2019. These 35-millimeter visuals are, in turn, accompanied by sounds that include voices, birdsong and so on recorded during the filming; fragments of music (some composed by Oliver Coates); and the narration (delivered in the English-language version with dry equanimity by Melanie Hyams, a British voice actor).McQueen’s decision to only use images of contemporary Amsterdam in the film is as effective as it is conceptually bold, though it takes time to fully grasp what he’s doing and why. Without ceremony, textual explanation or a flourish of introductory music, he drops you into the city’s gentle and clamorous bustle right from the get go, and there you remain even as the film hopscotches across Amsterdam, covering miles and years. The movie opens, for instance, with a daytime shot of a warmly lit hallway in what looks like an apartment, with a door opened onto a garden. It’s quiet save for the homey sounds of rustling, the metallic tinkling of what seems like silverware and some faintly babbling voices, perhaps from a radio or TV.An unidentified woman enters, and the narration — as it does throughout — begins with a recitation of an address, which grounds you. This was once the office of a printer-publisher who, with his wife and two sisters, died by suicide on May 15, 1940, the day the Netherlands capitulated to Germany. As the woman onscreen opens a trapdoor, the narrator continues, recounting that while many Jews hoped to escape to England, “most could not find a boat willing to take them.” The dead man’s brother did escape, and he transferred the business to an employee, who helped Jews hide in the office. One hid for days “on top of the elevator.”McQueen continues this approach for the remainder of the film, though with striking variations that create linkages, by turns obvious and oblique. In one sunny segment, a cozy spell of pleasure and play becomes a ghost story as you watch people skating on a frozen canal outside a building where a woman sheltered Jewish residents and resistance fighters. Elsewhere, though, McQueen folds in images without commentary, notably in scenes of people protesting against pandemic lockdowns, met by police with water cannons. These images raise the specter of state violence even as the film — with its relentless, harrowing narration — puts the protesters and their freedoms into historical context.As “Occupied City” continues to juxtapose the city’s history with its present — with chronicles of varying length that chart Jewish struggle, resistance, death and survival — the film builds tremendous force. A pilot who shot down German planes before the Netherlands capitulated lived at one address; a 10-month-old baby was taken from another address to a police station; the following year, the baby was murdered at Auschwitz. Amsterdam, McQueen repeatedly reminds you, is occupied by both the living and the dead, an obvious point that takes on specific, deeply profound resonance as the film unfolds. Most of Netherland’s Jewish population, as the narrator reminds you, died in the Holocaust.Among these, alas and of course, was Anne Frank, who’s mentioned a few times in “Occupied City.” It’s notable, I think, that McQueen doesn’t include Prinsengracht 263, the building where her father’s employees kept the business running while she, her family and four others hid in the annex until they were betrayed and eventually deported to Auschwitz. The building is now a tourist attraction, which might be one reason that McQueen avoids it. I imagine that he also wanted to distance the film from the popular, commercially palatable conception of Frank, the one that seizes on her diary’s most famous line — “in spite of everything I still believe people are really good at heart” — and can attenuate the barbarism of her murder.McQueen’s film is “informed,” as the credits put it, by Bianca Stigter’s huge 2019 book “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945),” which she described in an interview with the BBC as “a kind of travel guide to the past of Amsterdam.” (Stigter, who’s Dutch, and McQueen, who’s British, are married and live in the Netherlands.) She wrote and helped produce “Occupied City,” and she also directed “A Lengthening: Three Minutes” (2022), a feature-length documentary about a segment of a home movie that an American tourist, David Kurtz, shot in 1938 of a Jewish community in a Polish village. Using only images from this fragment, Stigter movingly reclaims a lost world, face by face, second by second.Time is stretched differently in “Occupied City” and passes far more quickly than you might imagine, despite the running time. Some of this has to do with the fluidity of McQueen’s filmmaking and how the disparate parts build power cumulatively. Much of this, though, has to do with how McQueen approaches the past. It’s instructive, for one, that he hasn’t shaped the narration chronologically. Instead, as the film shifts from address to address, and as the seasons and people pass by onscreen, the narration skips from 1940 to 1944 and back again, pausing in moments before and after the war. For McQueen, history isn’t a neat little package that can be experienced at a safe remove and then forgotten. Here, history is in every wintry park and sunlit room because it is insistently present and very much alive.Occupied CityRated PG-13. Running time: 4 hours 22 minutes. In theaters. 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    ‘The Crime is Mine’ Review: Courtroom Tango

    In this showbiz screwball, an aspiring actress and her lawyer best friend spin a murder accusation into a shot at fame.Filmmakers know that the courtroom is a hell of a place to put on a show — and this year, French movies like “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Saint Omer” have put women on trial to dramatize, not so much their crimes, but the gendered biases that make them look criminal.“The Crime is Mine,” a snappy showbiz screwball, takes this feminist conceit and adds stardust and firecrackers to the mix. Directed by François Ozon — a French director known for his winking subversions of genre — the film puts a twist on the trope of the spotlight-seeking murderess: the women in the film want us to know they did it.Freely adapted from a 1934 play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil and set in a vintage Paris, the film revolves around the roommates Madeleine (Nadia Terezkiewicz) and Pauline (Rebecca Marder), two dead-broke ingénues angling for a break. In the opening scene, Madeleine, a blonde bombshell who dreams of her name in lights, comes home distraught after a slimy theater producer Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) attempts to rape her. And Madeleine’s beau, a Buster Keaton look-alike, announces his plans to marry a wealthy heiress and keep Madeleine as his mistress. Hours later, the cops swing by — Montferrand is dead and the revolver on Madeleine’s dresser looks awfully fishy.The lofty investigating magistrate (Fabrice Luchini, marvelously ludicrous) thinks he’s got it figured out: Lowlife bohemian that she is, Madeleine must’ve killed Montferrand after he rejected her bid for a part. Pauline, a bi-curious attorney, steps in: no, no, it was actually self-defense.Several versions of what might have happened are shown in grainy black-and-white, like reels in a silent film. Ultimately, the truth is what plays best before a crowd. In court, aided by a script written by Pauline, Madeleine performs the part of the feminist hero to roaring applause, front-page glory and job offers for the juiciest parts.Odette Chaumette (Isabelle Huppert), a once-famous silent film star with a Norma-Desmond-size chip on her shoulder (and a showy persona to match), appears, demanding a cut of the spoils. The always-magnetic Huppert has played her share of tabloid murderesses, but, here, she trades out her trademark visceral steeliness for a coy and irreverent narcissism. The threat she poses to Madeleine and Pauline’s hard-won fortune carries the film’s even cheekier second act.“The Crime is Mine” is the epitome of a comfort film, decked out in old-Hollywood nostalgia and unfolding at an auctioneer’s clip. Its fun and games are deceptively smart — all the more because the women know their angles so triumphantly well.The Crime is MineNot Rated. In French and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Boys in the Boat’ Review: Taking Up Oars

    George Clooney’s film covers a high water point when the University of Washington’s junior varsity crew padded all the way to the 1936 Olympics.“The Boys in the Boat,” directed by George Clooney, is an old-fashioned movie about old-fashioned moxie. Based on a section of Daniel James Brown’s 2013 nonfiction book of the same name, and set to a plucky score by Alexandre Desplat, it’s a handsome, forthright flashback to a high water point of the Depression Era when the University of Washington’s junior varsity crew padded all the way to the 1936 Olympics. Approximately 300 million radio listeners tuned in to hear live sporting news from Berlin, and the film cuts to what feels like all of them rooting on these tall, ruddy and heroic amateurs. I’ve never seen a movie with this much applause — the extras must have been as winded as the athletes.The United States eight-man rowing team had won every gold medal since 1920, but the screenwriter Mark L. Smith glides past that fact to emphasize that these particular boys were at a disadvantage. Unlike the prestigious Ivy League squads, the Huskies were mostly middle and working class landlubbers who’d only taken up oars to pay for school. Our lead, Joe Rance (Callum Turner), trudges to campus from a Hooverville; later, the coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), pokes around his crew’s lockers to count the holes in their shoes. Before a pivotal regatta, a radio sportscaster (John Ammirati) bellows the obvious theme: “A clash of character! Old money versus no money at all! It’s a boat full of underdogs representing an underdog nation!”The script is as subtle as a bonk on the nose, and the editing repeats every beat twice-over in broad pantomime and meaningful looks. Despite some tender philosophizing from the racing shell designer George Pocock (Peter Guinness), we never quite get an insight into exactly how these eight undergrads melded into a winning team. The main oarsmen, Don Hume (Jack Mulhern) and Rance, rarely speak, and the others hardly register. Thank heavens for Luke Slattery as the coxswain Bobby Moch, who straps on a hands-free leather and metal megaphone — a contraption that, to modern eyes, looks like a torture device for mumblers — and instantly screams some life into the picture.With the female characters sidelined to one-note cheerleaders, Clooney puts his focus on the fantastic production design. The pennant budget alone must have cost a fair penny, but he even includes an assembly line scene of those pennants being made. Just as faithfully, Clooney acknowledges how little politics registered to these jocks. In Berlin, they become passingly acquainted with Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes), but when Adolf Hitler (Daniel Philpott) pops up in a Seattle newsreel, no one bothers to boo.So it’s for our sake that the film gives us the Führer pounding his fist in fury that the Yanks might one-up Germany in his moment of triumph — and for our kicks that the cinematographer Martin Ruhe bests a shot from Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary “Olympia,” a dynamic redo of Moch heaving in and out of the frame, his megaphone eclipsing everything but his hair and lips.The Boys in the BoatRated PG-13 for cursing and cigarettes. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ Review: A Whole Civilization in the Classroom

    An idealistic teacher in a German school meets reality, and it’s messier than she could have imagined.Teaching, like parenting or skiing or governing or making a souffle, is an activity you can learn about from books and classes and movies, but only really understand on the job. Carla Nowak (Leonie Benesch), a new teacher in a German school, seems to have arrived in her sixth-grade classroom armed with theories and techniques for gaining the trust and respect of her students. But she’s about to discover, as many a teacher has before, that actually managing a classroom is not as easy as they make it seem on TV.In some ways, Ilker Catak’s “The Teachers’ Lounge” (which is Germany’s international feature film entry to the Academy Awards) feels like a direct rebuttal to the glut of so-called magical teacher movies, which abound throughout cinema. In that genre (think of “Freedom Writers,” “Mona Lisa Smile” or “Dead Poets Society”), an idealistic teacher encounters reticence and struggle but manages to break through to her students and make a difference in their lives. Teachers do this, of course, but if you only watched Hollywood’s rendering of the classroom you might think stirring success is inevitable.But Ms. Nowak’s good intentions are thwarted at every turn. (Everyone uses honorifics in this school, including faculty.) Her students are a typical bunch, a mix of high achievers, do-gooders, slackers and cut-ups. Someone in the school, however, is stealing from others, and nobody can pin down who the perpetrator might be. Ms. Nowak is horrified when another teacher asks student council representatives to snitch, or at least say who they think might be doing it, especially when Ali (Can Rodenbostel) is the one they accuse. He’s the son of Turkish immigrants, and when his parents arrive to explain to the administrators why it wasn’t him, unsubtle racism pervades the room.This is where it becomes clear that “The Teachers’ Lounge,” despite its realism, is strongest on the allegorical level. The modern classroom has been described by philosophers and theorists as carceral, an institution in which children are indoctrinated into disciplinary systems that will govern their whole lives: in the workplace, in the justice system, in the public square. You must arrive on time, follow rules and schedules, respond to the buzzer, submit to evaluations and repeat it all tomorrow. This school — or at least Ms. Nowak’s part of it — prides itself on its democratic fairness, its freedom of speech and the press, its attitude of self-governance.But of course, it’s really the teachers who are in charge here, and elements of contemporary society seep in from all sides. Misinformation flies around, helped along by slanted journalism. Teachers demand students open their wallets in a random inspection, telling them that “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.” Phones and parents’ group chats create a surveillance society that Ms. Nowak detests, but cannot escape; eventually, suspecting the theft may be coming from somewhere other than the classroom, she sets up her own form of surveillance, with catastrophic results.Taking on the uneasy complexity of a progressive modern society, and the friction produced when pluralism and an insistence on order and obedience collide, is a bold move, and “The Teachers’ Lounge” pulls it off with a sense of tension that makes the whole thing play like a thriller. There’s a level on which it’s darkly funny, especially if you’ve spent time around preteens. Every time Ms. Nowak thinks she has a solution, it goes sideways, in part because you cannot count on sixth-graders to just go along with suggestions from adults. Trying to build classroom solidarity after an outburst, she selects six students to complete a familiar team-building exercise of the kind that might delight 8-year-olds and mildly irritate adults on a company retreat. Here, though, it ends in predictable bedlam.A society is not very easy to keep in harmony, and a fully democratic attempt to keep the peace in any group is bound to result in a tug of war between authoritarian and even fascist principles on the one hand and unfettered chaos on the other. Catak places that struggle in a classroom, but it’s clear that like other European directors (including Michael Haneke and the brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne), he’s slyly telling a story about a society much, much larger than the kind found on a campus.Meanwhile, the students — who are Zoomers, after all — are tuned into the issues around them and ready to fight back. They organize. They refuse to comply. They denounce censorship. They talk about practicing solidarity against “measures otherwise found in rogue regimes” and the “structural racisms that our school, like others, can’t escape.” Their power is limited, but they know how to talk about it. They have learned well from their teachers. But have their teachers learned the lesson, too?The Teachers’ LoungeRated PG-13; teachers and students behaving like citizens. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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    5 Operas You Can Stream at Home

    This selection of works, available to rent and purchase, features some of today’s boldest directors and greatest vocal talents.Enjoying opera — fully staged opera — at home has become easier. Recent productions from top European houses have begun to appear for rental and purchase on Amazon Prime Video.So, on an impulse, you can take in these works — and keep them, too. (There are other opera-focused streaming platforms, but those rarely allow for purchases.) The productions include rarely staged gems, and feature some of the boldest directors and greatest vocal talents today. Earlier this year, we put the spotlight on five offerings. Here are five more recent additions.‘Fidelio’Tobias Kratzer is a director who is willing to jerk a canonical text around to fit a contemporary concept. In his take on Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” for the Royal Opera in London in 2020, he upends both acts: The first takes place in a Jacobin milieu, amid the French Revolution; the second, however, departs from historical specificity, showing its chorus in modern dress. This approach fits an opera that has always proved a challenge for straightforward storytelling. Crucially, Kratzer’s direction of singing actors tends to be marvelous; here, the star soprano Lise Davidsen is truly gripping as Leonore.Kratzer makes many small alterations. One involves a partial disrobing by Fidelio (Leonore disguised as a man) in front of Marzelline during the first act. But the humanist impulse of this opera — clearly about more than saving just one man from prison — is consistently emphasized by a strong cast, the Royal Opera orchestra and the conductor, Antonio Pappano. And Davidsen, a powerhouse soprano known for blowing the roof off the Metropolitan Opera, also indulges her talents for delicate scene partnership, as in the early Canon Quartet.‘Der Schatzgräber’“Der Schatzgräber” at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.Monika RittershausWe 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?  More

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    Former Dixie Chicks Member Laura Lynch Dies

    Lynch, who was dismissed from the band in 1995, died in a car crash in Texas on Friday, the authorities said.Laura Lynch, a founding member of the country music group the Dixie Chicks, died in a car crash on Friday, according to the authorities. She was 65.The death and Lynch’s identity were confirmed by Nikol Endres, a justice of the peace in the area.Lynch, of Fort Worth, was driving east on Route 62 near Cornudas, Texas, about 70 miles east of El Paso, when a pickup truck that had been heading west crossed into her lane and struck her pickup truck head on, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.After being raised on her grandfather’s ranch in Texas, Lynch, a bassist, founded the Dixie Chicks, now known as the Chicks, in Dallas in 1988 with Robin Lynn Macy, and sisters Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire.The original lineup only had two albums together: the debut “Thank Heavens for Dale Evans” in 1990 and “Little Ol’ Cowgirl” in 1992.In an interview with National Public Radio that aired in 1992, Lynch referred to the band’s music as “cowgirl music.”“Our brand of cowgirl music is a mixture of old-time country music, bluegrass music, acoustic,” she said. “We all sing three-part and four-part harmony. We throw in some instrumentals, some country swing. That’s our brand of cowgirl music.”Macy left the band in 1992. The next year, the remaining trio released “Shouldn’t A Told You That,” and began to experience moderate success. In 1993, the band played at an inaugural ball for President Bill Clinton.But in 1995, Lynch was dismissed from the group and replaced by Natalie Maines.“We were facing going on our seventh year, we were starting to re-evaluate things,” Maguire told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1996. “We were making a future decision.”Added Maguire: “What do we want to do in the future, where do we want to be in five years? I don’t think Laura really saw herself on the road five years from now.”On social media, the Chicks called Lynch a “bright light” whose “infectious energy and humor gave a spark to the early days of our band.”“Laura had a gift for design, a love of all things Texas and was instrumental in the early success of the band,” the Chicks said. “Her undeniable talents helped propel us beyond busking on street corners to stages all across Texas and the mid-West.”Information about survivors was not immediately available.After leaving the Dixie Chicks, Lynch went on to become a public relations officer with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, according to The Star-Telegram.Lynch told The Associated Press in 2003 that she took up oil painting and spent much of her time raising her daughter.“It was worth it,” Lynch said of her time in the band. “I’d get anemic all over again to do it.” More

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    Carlos Lyra, Composer Who Brought Finesse to Bossa Nova, Dies at 90

    When Brazilian musicians fused samba with jazz and classical influences in the 1950s and ’60s, he was among the first, and the best.Carlos Lyra, a Brazilian composer, singer and guitarist whose cool, meticulous melodies helped give structure and power to bossa nova, the samba-inflected jazz style that became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 1960s, died on Dec. 16 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 90.His daughter, the singer Kay Lyra, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was sepsis.Alongside Antônio Carlos Jobim, Mr. Lyra was widely considered among the greatest composers of bossa nova. Mr. Jobim once called him “a great melodist, harmonist, king of rhythm, of syncopation, of swing” and “singular, without equal.”Mr. Lyra was part of a loose circle of musicians who in the 1950s began looking for ways to blend the traditional samba sounds of Brazil with American jazz and European classical influences. They often gathered at the Plaza Hotel in Rio, not far from the Copacabana beach, to discuss music and hash out ideas.One of those musicians, the singer and guitarist João Gilberto, included three of Mr. Lyra’s compositions — “Maria Ninguém” (“Maria Nobody”), “Lobo Bobo” (“Foolish Wolf”) and “Saudade Fêz um Samba” (“Saudade Made a Samba”) — on his “Chega de Saudade” (1959), which has often been called the first bossa nova album. Mr. Lyra released his own first album a year later, titled simply “Carlos Lyra: Bossa Nova.”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?  More

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    Musical Performances to See in Europe This Winter

    Concert halls and opera houses in Vienna, Berlin and beyond are offering fan favorites (“Die Fledermaus”) and surprises (an operatic “Animal Farm”).The winter opera and classical music season in Central and Eastern Europe balances holiday classics with rarities and even some fresh works. Opera houses and concert halls from Vienna to Berlin to Prague are presenting a varied program of old chestnuts and new discoveries. Here is a selection.Munich“Die Fledermaus,” Bayerische Staatsoper, through Jan. 10Barrie Kosky’s new production of Johann Strauss Jr.’s most popular operetta, “Die Fledermaus,” a New Year’s Eve favorite in much of Europe, is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the season here at the Bavarian State Opera. Mr. Kosky, an Australian director with a wide-ranging résumé — his recent successes include “Das Rheingold” in London and “Chicago” in Berlin — stages Strauss’s infectiously tuneful farce with energetic panache and a dash of camp. Vladimir Jurowski, the Munich company’s general music director, leads a spirited cast headed by the German star soprano Diana Damrau. The dynamic performances, carefully controlled chaos of Mr. Kosky’s staging, and a few unpredictable touches make this 150-year-old work seem fresher than ever. The Dec. 31 performance will also be streamed on the State Opera’s online platform. For the more traditionally inclined, the company is also bringing back August Everding’s sumptuous 1978 production of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” (through Saturday).Barrie Kosky’s staging of “The Golden Cockerel,” performed in Lyon, France. The Komische Oper in Berlin, where the production will play this winter, has a long history with Slavic repertoire.Jean Louis FernandezBerlin“The Golden Cockerel,” Komische Oper Berlin in the Schiller Theater, Jan. 28-March 20A new production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel” at the Komische Oper Berlin is the first premiere to be led by the company’s newly minted general music director, the American James Gaffigan. This riotous and surreal take on the fairy-tale opera by Mr. Kosky, who ran the Komische as artistic director from 2012 to 2022, has also graced stages in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon, France, and Adelaide, Australia. In Berlin, it becomes the company’s latest foray into Slavic repertoire after inventive and gripping productions of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel” and Shostakovich’s “The Nose.”“Rusalka,” Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Feb. 4-22Antonin Dvorak’s 1901 opera “Rusalka” hovers on the edge of the standard repertoire. The lyrical and soaring aria “Song to the Moon” is better known than the rest of this dark and symbolically rich adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo directs the first new production of “Rusalka” at the Berlin Staatsoper in over half a century. The British maestro Robin Ticciati, music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducts the lush and frequently melancholy score.Vienna“Animal Farm,” Wiener Staatsoper, Feb. 28-March 10The Russian composer Alexander Raskatov’s “Animal Farm” arrives at the Vienna State Opera in late February, in a production by the Italian director Damiano Michieletto. Reviewing the work’s world premiere in Amsterdam earlier this year, Shirley Apthorp, the Financial Times’s opera critic, praised Raskatov’s “violent, compelling sound-world, percussive and angular, full of unpleasant truths” in this operatic setting of Orwell’s famed allegory of the Russian Revolution. The British conductor Alexander Soddy leads the work’s Viennese premiere.Franz Welser-Möst and the Wiener Philharmoniker, Feb. 22-26In the first of five February concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, Franz Welser-Möst, the former general music director of the Wiener Staatsoper and longtime leader of the Cleveland Orchestra, tackles Mahler’s towering and elegiac Ninth Symphony at the Wiener Konzerthaus. On subsequent programs, performed in the Musikverein, the Austrian maestro leads the Viennese in works by Ravel, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Berg, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.West Side Story, Volksoper Wien, Jan. 27-March 24In late January, music by Leonard Bernstein will resound through Vienna’s opera houses. Shortly after the American director Lydia Steier unveils her “Candide” at the MusikTheater an der Wien, a new “West Side Story” arrives at the Volksoper, the city’s traditional operetta and musical stage on the other side of town. (The house’s other productions this season include “Die Fledermaus” and “Aristocats.”) For the director Lotte de Beer’s rendition of the quintessential American boy-meets-girl musical, performed in a mix of German and English, the Puerto Rico-born, New York-raised choreographer Bryan Arias updates Jerome Robbins’s classic dance moves.“Katya Kabanova” at the National Theater in Prague, featuring, from left, Jaroslav Brezina, Eva Urbanova and Alzbeta Polackova. Zdeněk SokolPrague“Katya Kabanova,” The National Theater, March 22-27Leos Janacek’s searing 1921 opera about the emotional unraveling of an adulterous wife in 19th-century Russia returns to the National Theater in Prague in a production by the provocative Catalan director Calixto Bieito, who is famous for his unorthodox interpretations of classic operas. Jaroslav Kyzlink, a Janacek specialist, leads the psychologically raw score and Alzbeta Polackova, a much-loved soprano with the company, tackles the vocally and emotionally punishing title role.Bratislava, Slovakia“Hubicka (The Kiss),” Slovak National Theater, March 1-June 8In honor of the 200th anniversary of the great Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s birth, the Slovak National Theater presents his 1876 opera “The Kiss.” Once among the composer’s most popular works, “The Kiss” has long been eclipsed by Smetana’s earlier comic opera “The Bartered Bride,” and is remembered mostly for its lilting lullaby. With Andrea Hlinkova’s new production, the Slovak National Theater, which, coincidentally, was opened in 1920 with a performance of “The Kiss,” hopes to change that.Budapest“Bartok DanceTriptych,” Hungarian State Opera, Feb. 1-24Three works by Hungary’s great modernist composer Bela Bartok comprise this new ballet, choreographed by a trio of creatives. Laszlo Velekei, the director of the Ballet Company of Gyor, in northwestern Hungary, tackles “The Wooden Prince,” a pantomime ballet (a work half-danced, half-mimed) that premiered at the Hungarian State Opera House in 1917. Bartok’s second (and last) ballet, “The Miraculous Mandarin,” caused a scandal when it was first performed in 1926 in Cologne, Germany, because it depicted a girl forced into prostitution in a seething modern metropolis. In her production, Marianna Venekei, a longtime member of the Hungarian State Opera, explores the psychology of the work’s motley crew of city dwellers. Rounding out the program is the “Dance Suite” (1923), originally a concert piece and here choreographed by Kristof Varnagy, whose varied résumé includes projects with classical ballet companies, contemporary dance troupes and even Cirque du Soleil. Writing about the short movements that make up the “Dance Suite,” Bartok said his aim was to “present some idealized peasant music.” More