Aurelia Butler

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    Damiano Michieletto Is Bringing ‘West Side Story’ to Rome

    It was the morning of the dress rehearsal for Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” at the Baths of Caracalla, the ancient ruins that are the traditional summertime venue for the Rome Opera, and the show’s director, Damiano Michieletto, was concerned.“Some of the Jets have problems with precise pronunciation,” he said.After deciding to do the musical in English rather than in translation, he did not have the funds to hire a full American cast for the Jets, a gang rumbling to take the streets of New York. You could tell, he fretted. (The diction was less of a problem with the Sharks, the rival Puerto Rican gang, he said, “because Italian, you know, that works.”)That might have been his least concern. This year, Michieletto was given free rein to come up with the program for the Rome Opera’s summer Caracalla Festival, which runs until Aug. 7, keeping in mind that 2025 is a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church expected to draw millions of pilgrims with varying musical tastes to Rome. In a break from past programming, he decided that the first major new production would be “West Side Story.” A musical — gasp — was headlining one of Italy’s most highbrow cultural stages and was an unusual choice in a country where musicals are considered a minor genre and often dismissed.A musical headlining one of Italy’s most highbrow cultural stages is an unusual choice in a country where musicals are often dismissed.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesThat did not faze Michieletto, who over the past 20 years has built a reputation as a visionary, nonconformist, at times over-the-top, director whose work is in demand across Europe. In September, he will make his debut at a major American opera house with Rossini’s “Il Viaggio a Reims” at Opera Philadelphia. There he will be presenting a revival of a much-lauded version first staged in Amsterdam in 2015 and reprised several times since.For his new work at the Caracalla Festival — which this year is titled “Between the Sacred and the Human” because it casts a wide musical net, from a staged production of Handel’s oratorio “The Resurrection” to “West Side Story” — he opted to focus on the electric energy of a work that was directed and based on an idea by Jerome Robbins, one of the great choreographers of his generation.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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    Salzburg Festival Welcomes Peter Eotvos’ Opera “Three Sisters”

    Peter Eotvos’s “Three Sisters,” based on the 1900 play by Anton Chekhov, is at the festival this year for the first time.On a hot, drizzly afternoon in late June, a rehearsal of Peter Eotvos’s “Three Sisters,” one of the four new opera productions at this summer’s Salzburg Festival, erupted in dainty tinkling.The opera’s cast members sat in the middle of a rehearsal room and tapped spoons against empty teacups. The conductor Maxime Pascal, flanked by two pianos, nodded approvingly at the sounds of clinking, clattering and rattling. On the large copy of the score that lay in front of him, each tap was precisely notated, and there was a visual key illustrating different techniques: tapping with the tip or the stem of a teaspoon, continuous stirring, and setting a spoon down on a saucer.“Peter wrote this moment because it’s a bit boring,” Pascal explained with a slight chuckle during a break in the rehearsal. “The three sisters are very bored, and there is this kind of melancholy.”Based on Anton Chekhov’s 1900 play about siblings in a Russian provincial town who dream of a better, more fulfilling life in Moscow, the opera is unconventional in ways that are, by turns, playful and daring.The four main female characters — Olga, Masha and Irina as well as their sister-in-law, Natasha — are performed by countertenors, the highest male voice type. In addition to china and cutlery, the score calls for two musical groups: a pit band (referred to as the ensemble) of 18 instruments that are identified with specific characters, and a 50-piece orchestra that plays from elsewhere in the theater. (For the Salzburg performances, the orchestra will play from a large hidden balcony that is behind and above the rows of seating in the Felsenreitschule, a cavernous indoor theater that is carved into a cliff.)Alphonse Cemin conducting instrumentalists during a “Three Sisters” rehearsal. Eotvos wrote the score for two musical groups, a pit band featuring 18 instruments, and a 50-piece orchestra that plays elsewhere in the theater.Matteo de Mayda for The New York TimesWe 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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    Asmik Grigorian Brings “A Diva Is Born” to the Salzburg Festival

    Asmik Grigorian will return to the role of Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s “Macbeth” and present her pop-infused comic recital “A Diva Is Born.”When the soprano Asmik Grigorian took on the title role of Strauss’s “Salome” at the Salzburg Festival, in 2018, the summer event found a new reigning diva.With a voice of lush power and a raw authenticity that shines through in every character, the Lithuanian artist has become one of today’s most sought operatic performers, in Vienna, currently her home city; London; Milan; and beyond.But she has flouted conventions of stardom and challenged audiences’ expectations. Onstage, she pushes well-known characters to dramatic extremes; offstage, she often stares into the camera with a defiantly non-glamorous expression.In August, she will return to Salzburg as Lady Macbeth in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s staging of Verdi’s “Macbeth,” first seen there in 2023. And on Aug. 24, with the pianist Hyung-ki Joo, she will present the comic recital “A Diva Is Born.”The “Diva” show debuted in May of last year at the Vienna State Opera — where it will return this December — and was recently performed in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Grigorian was born and raised.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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    This Math Tutor Keeps Popping Up in Wes Anderson Films

    Michael Maggart spends most days running the online tutoring company he founded after a decade working as a math teacher. But every now and then, his high school friend Wes Anderson, the director, contacts him out of the blue, summons him to a film set and sends him to wardrobe.There’s Maggart playing a security guard in “The Phoenician Scheme,” Anderson’s latest film, which was released in May. Previously, he played a detective in Anderson’s 2023 film, “Asteroid City,” and a hotel concierge in Anderson’s second feature film, “Rushmore” (1998). His credits also include a series of AT&T commercials that Anderson directed, and Anderson’s 2023 short film, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”Maggart as a casino cashier, one of several roles he played in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” (2023).Mike MaggartMaggart said he sometimes felt guilty about landing roles that an aspiring actor would covet, but “then I just kind of enjoy it.”Vincent Alban/The New York TimesMaggart, 55, who splits his time between Austin, Texas, and New York City, has no formal training or interest in pursuing a career in acting. He has no other acting credits and would never have appeared in movies at all if not for an old friend who happens to be a celebrated film director — one who likes him enough to put him on camera. For Maggart, this has meant hobnobbing, dining and running lines with A-list actors like Tom Hanks, Bill Murray and Benicio Del Toro.“I do feel a little guilty sometimes because, for example, the scene in ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ that I have is three lines,” he said. “And I’m sure that it would be quite a moment for the career of a young actor or any actor to get those three lines instead of me. But I only think of that briefly and then I just kind of enjoy it.”Maggart is not certain why Anderson keeps thinking of him for bit parts in his films. Anderson, 56, who did not respond to an interview request, described his old friend as a “crucial collaborator” in a video message for an event in Houston celebrating the 25th anniversary of “Rushmore.”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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    More Woody Guthrie Songs? Yes, From a Trove of Homemade Recordings.

    A new, intimate album will include 13 previously unheard songs and a rewrite of “This Land Is Your Land.”In 1951, Woody Guthrie’s publisher gave him a newfangled piece of equipment: a Revere T-100 Crescent home tape recorder. It was primitive: mono and running at a noisy, lo-fi, 3 ¾ inches of tape per second, with a little mono microphone. Yet it allowed Guthrie to record his songs without visiting a studio, without recording engineers or time pressures, while he was at home in Beach Haven, Brooklyn, keeping an eye on three young children.On Aug. 14, Guthrie’s estate and Shamus Records will release “Woody at Home, Vol. 1 and 2.” It collects 20 songs and two spoken-word interludes, including a version of “This Land Is Your Land” that adds extra verses, as well as 13 newly unveiled songs. Guthrie’s own version of “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” — a song that became a folk-revival standard with a new melody by Martin Hoffman but that Guthrie had only recorded at home — is being released on Monday, his birthday.With the help of newer audio software and antique reel-to-reel tape machines, engineers have been able to make the tapes sound best for playback to make digital copies. Vincent Alban/The New York TimesGuthrie is revered nowadays as a model for singer-songwriters: plain-spoken, casually tuneful, pointedly topical or slyly humorous. As a storyteller, he was able to compress narratives into terse rhymes while he empathized with an extraordinary range of narrators. And he was hugely prolific: He wrote lyrics for more than 3,000 songs.“Woody represents the American spirit in such a noble and fierce way,” said the historian Douglas Brinkley, who is working with the Guthrie family on a collection of lyrics. “You learn to live and love and work, to fight to have a democratic society and to never feel you’re too highfalutin, or that your money makes you better than somebody else. We’re just discovering this tape and some of these lyrics, but they still have zest to them — and they matter.”Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie, a lifelong advocate and guardian of her father’s work, said, “In looking through 3,000 lyrics, only a handful are about his personal life.” She spoke via video from the offices of Woody Guthrie Publications in Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Anna Canoni, her daughter, is the company’s president. “He uses ‘I’ all the time, but he’s an actor. I’ve never run into a songwriter that was able to put himself into so many different characters.”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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    Test Your Knowledge of French Novels Made Into Musicals and Movies

    Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge is focused on globally popular French novels that went on to become big-screen adventures — and more. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and some of their filmed versions. More

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    Bob Geldof Reflects on Live Aid, 40 Years Later

    On Oct. 23, 1984, Bob Geldof, the lead singer of the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, sat down at home in London to watch the evening news. It changed his life — and saved the lives of millions more.The BBC ran a report on what it called a “biblical famine” in Ethiopia caused by drought and exacerbated by civil war. Searing images of emaciated and naked children were beamed for the first time into homes across Britain, and then around the world.Geldof was incensed and horrified. How could this be happening in the 20th century? And what could he — an angry pop star — do about it?On Sunday, it’s 40 years since Live Aid, two epic concerts held in London and Philadelphia that he helped organize in response to that question. They were arguably the most successful charity events in history, and have a claim to be among the best gigs ever, too.Geldof persuaded many of the world’s most top artists at the time to play for free, including Queen, David Bowie, Madonna, the Who, Elton John, Tina Turner and Paul McCartney. The shows were seen by about 1.5 billion people in more than 150 countries and would go on to raise more than $140 million.Stars including George Michael, left; Paul McCartney, fourth from left; and Freddie Mercury, second from right, during the Live Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium in London on July 13, 1985.Joe Schaber/Associated PressWe 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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    When Streaming Won’t Cut It and You Need the DVD

    Streaming is dominant for movies and TV shows. But some fans still insist on physical media.Last month, a young man walked into Night Owl, a store in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn that sells Blu-rays, DVDs and even a few video cassettes of movies and television shows, and browsed for several minutes. Eventually he plucked a case from a shelf: A handsome Criterion Collection release of “The Royal Tenenbaums,” the first Wes Anderson movie he had ever seen.“I had a ton of DVDs growing up,” Noah Snyder, 27, said. But reading about the way contemporary conglomerates treat films and television programs on their streaming services had prodded him to acquire physical media again. Snyder cited the actress Cristin Milioti’s recent comments about “Made for Love,” her show that was not only canceled, but removed altogether from the HBO Max streaming platform.“The stuff the CEOs do, they’re bad decisions,” Snyder said. “I don’t want something I love to be taken away like that.”In the last decade or two, the story of physical copies of movies and television has been overwhelmingly one of decline. Blockbuster is essentially gone, streaming is ascendant, Netflix no longer sends DVDs through the mail, and Best Buy no longer stocks them in its stores. Many manufacturers have ceased making disc players. Retail sales of new physical products in home entertainment fell below $1 billion last year, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry association.Jess Mills, left, and Aaron Hamel are the owners of Night Owl, a physical media store in Brooklyn.Ye Fan for The New York TimesYet amid the streaming deluge, there are signs — small, tenuous and anecdotal, but real — of a rebellion. Alex Holtz, a media and entertainment analyst at International Data Corporation, compared Blu-rays to vinyl albums. Holtz, an audiophile, gladly streams new music while on walks, but he buys records he loves. “We’re in a back-to-the-future moment,” he said.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