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    Nipsey Hussle’s Killer Sentenced to 60 Years to Life in Prison

    Eric R. Holder Jr. was found guilty of first-degree murder last year in the 2019 killing of Hussle outside a clothing store he had founded in Los Angeles.The man who was found guilty of fatally shooting the rapper Nipsey Hussle in 2019 was sentenced on Wednesday to 60 years to life in prison in a Los Angeles courtroom.Eric R. Holder Jr., 33, was convicted last year of first-degree murder for shooting Hussle outside The Marathon Clothing store the rapper had opened in the South Los Angeles neighborhood, where both men grew up.Mr. Holder was sentenced to 25 years to life on the murder count, to another 25 years to life because a gun was used and to another 10 years for shooting two other people that same day, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.Aaron Jansen, the public defender who represented Mr. Holder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.There was no dispute that Mr. Holder pulled the trigger. Multiple witnesses and even Mr. Jansen identified Mr. Holder as the assailant who fired toward Hussle with two handguns, hitting the rapper at least 10 times, then kicking him in the head.But Mr. Holder’s legal team said during the trial that the case was overcharged. Mr. Jansen said that the fatal shooting was not premeditated and that it took place in the “heat of passion” after an exchange in which Hussle, 33, invoked neighborhood rumors that Mr. Holder had cooperated with law enforcement.After meeting for less than an hour on a second day of deliberations, the jury members appeared to agree with Los Angeles County prosecutors that Mr. Holder had made the decision to kill Hussle after the two spoke as he returned to a car, loaded a gun, took a few bites of French fries, then marched back through the parking lot to confront the rapper.In addition to his conviction on the murder charge, Mr. Holder was also found guilty of possessing a firearm as a felon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter, stemming from the wounding of two bystanders.Fans mourned Hussle, whose given name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom, as an artist and entrepreneur who had moved past his early years as a member of the local Rollin’ 60s Crips gang. His public memorial in April 2019 in Los Angeles drew about 20,000 people, including Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg.Not a commercial hitmaker, Hussle was hailed as a local hero and celebrity, producing music on his own terms for 15 years before releasing his major label debut, “Victory Lap,” in 2018. More

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    Why A.I. Movies Couldn’t Prepare Us for Bing’s Chatbot

    Instead of the chilling rationality of HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” we get the messy awfulness of Microsoft’s Sydney. Call it the banality of sentience.Why are we so fascinated by stories about sentient robots, rapacious A.I. and the rise of thinking machines? Faced with that question, I did what any on writer on deadline would do and asked ChatGPT.The answers I got — a helpfully numbered list with five chatty entries — were not surprising. They were, to be honest, what I might have come up with myself after a few seconds of thought, or what I might expect to encounter in a B- term paper from a distracted undergraduate. Long on generalizations and short on sources, the bot’s essay was a sturdy summary of conventional wisdom. For example: “Sentient robots raise important moral and ethical questions about the treatment of intelligent beings, the nature of consciousness and the responsibilities of creators.”Quite so. From the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea to the medieval Jewish legend of the golem through Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and beyond, we have grappled with those important questions, and also frightened and titillated ourselves with tales of our inventions coming to life. Our ingenuity as a species, channeled through individual and collective hubris, compels us to concoct artificial beings that menace and seduce us. They escape our control. They take control. They fall in love.In “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag’s classic 1965 essay on science-fiction movies, she observed that “we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.” As Turing-tested A.I. applications have joined the pantheon of sci-fi shibboleths, they have dutifully embodied both specters.HAL 9000, the malevolent computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), is terrifying precisely because he is so banal. “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.” In 2023, that perfectly chilling exchange between human and computer is echoed every day as modern-day Daves make impossible demands of HAL’s granddaughters, Siri and Alexa.Our exchanges with Siri and Alexa are everyday versions of the interactions in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”Warner Bros.That example suggests that in spite of terrors like the Terminator, the smart money was always on banality. The dreariness of ChatGPT, the soulless works of visual art produced by similar programs seem to confirm that hunch. In the real world, the bots aren’t our overlords so much as the enablers of our boredom. Our shared future — our singularity — is an endless scroll, just for the lulz.The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.The Tom Cruise Factor: Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.An Andrea Riseborough FAQ: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why her nod was controversial.Sundance and the Oscars: Which films from the festival could follow “CODA” to the 2024 Academy Awards.A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Or so I thought, until a Microsoft application tried to break up my colleague’s marriage. Last week, Kevin Roose, a tech columnist for The Times, published a transcript of his conversations with Sydney, the volatile alter ego of the Bing search engine. “I want to do love with you,” Sydney said to Roose, and then went on to trash Roose’s relationship with his wife.That was scary but not exactly “Terminator” scary. We like to imagine technology as a kind of superego: rational, impersonal, decisive. This was a raging id. I found myself hoping that there was no pet rabbit in the Roose household, and that Sydney was not wired into any household appliances. That’s a movie reference, by the way, to “Fatal Attraction,” a notorious thriller released a few years after the first “Terminator” (1984) promised he’d be back. In another conversation, with The Associated Press, Sydney shifted from unhinged longing to unbridled hostility, making fun of the reporter’s looks and likening him to Hitler “because you are one of the most evil and worst people in history.”Maybe when we have fantasized about conscious A.I. we’ve been imagining the wrong disaster. These outbursts represent a real departure, not only from the anodyne mediocrity of other bots, but also perhaps more significantly from the dystopia we have grown accustomed to dreading.We’re more or less reconciled to the reality that machines are, in some ways, smarter than we are. We also enjoy the fantasy that they might turn out to be more sensitive. We’re therefore not prepared for the possibility that they might be chaotic, unstable and resentful — as messy as we are, or maybe more so.In “Her,” the artificial intelligence created is a consumer product, not a government creation.Warner Bros. PicturesMovies about machines with feelings often unfold in an atmosphere of hushed, wistful melancholy, in which the robots themselves are avatars of sad gentleness: Haley Joel Osment as David in “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001), Scarlett Johansson as Samantha in “Her” (2013), Justin H. Min as Yang last year in “After Yang.” While HAL and Skynet, the imperial intelligence that spawned the Terminators, were creations of big government, the robots in these movies are consumer products. Totalitarian domination is the nightmare form of techno-politics: What if the tools that protect us decided to enslave us? Emotional fulfillment is the dream of consumer capitalism: What if our toys loved us back?Why wouldn’t they? In these movies, we are lovers and fighters, striking back against oppression and responding to vulnerability with kindness. Even as humans fear the superiority of the machines, our species remains the ideal to which they aspire. Their dream is to be us. When it comes true, the Terminator discovers a conscience, and the store-bought surrogate children, lovers and siblings learn about sacrifice and loss. It’s the opposite of dystopia.Where we really live is the opposite of that. At the movies, the machines absorb and emulate the noblest of human attributes: intelligence, compassion, loyalty, ardor. Sydney offers a blunt rebuttal, reminding us of our limitless capacity for aggression, deceit, irrationality and plain old meanness.What did we expect? Sydney and her kin derive their understanding of humanness — the information that feeds their models and algorithms — from the internet, itself a utopian invention that has evolved into an archive of human awfulness. How did these bots get so creepy, so nasty, so untrustworthy? The answer is banal. Also terrifying. It’s in the mirror. More

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    ‘A House Made of Splinters’ Review: Home Is Where the Hope Is

    This film, an Oscar nominee this year for best documentary feature, has an aching sensitivity for the children in a Ukraine shelter.Filmed at a children’s shelter in eastern Ukraine, “A House Made of Splinters” is made with such aching sensitivity that it’s a marvel a camera was used and not some form of mind-meld. Simon Lereng Wilmont, the director and cinematographer, catches his young subjects in the fullness of their feelings — from joy to sorrow — as they wait for a new home.The children land here because of absent parents, typically casualties of alcoholism or war from previous Russian invasions and incursions (the documentary was filmed in 2019 and 2020). Unless another family member steps up, the young ones move into foster care or to an orphanage. Mercifully, the caregivers’ affectionate morning rounds immediately show that this is an institution rooted in love, hope and common sense.Instead of focusing on the staff, though, Wilmont sticks to the perspective of one child at a time, filming for a year and a half across multiple trips. Eva, for example, yearns for her grandmother to take her in and has no illusions that her mother will recover from her addiction to alcohol. Like the others, she has moments of looking weary beyond her years, but she also turns cartwheels to blow off steam.Wilmont hews closer to relationships than daily routines, and takes in the sky-high stakes of friendships, crushes and acting tough. He susses out life forces rather than spiraling despair; he is tender without being sentimental, cleareyed without being cool. A voice-over by one staff member lends gentle framing, and some welcome moral support, as you’re left a sniffling wreck from this compassionate portrait.A House Made of SplintersNot rated. In Ukrainian and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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    She’s Oscar-Nominated, but Hong Chau Hopes to Stay an Underdog

    Though Hong Chau received her first Oscar nomination last month, for playing Brendan Fraser’s caretaker in the Darren Aronofsky drama “The Whale,” it took awhile for the accolade to sink in. In 2017, after a breakout role in Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” she’d been hotly tipped for a nomination that never came, the sort of anticlimax that can make you want to detach from the hubbub of awards season altogether.This time around, there was a better outcome, though she is still sorting out exactly how she feels about it. “My honest reaction to the nomination was just relief,” she said.The 43-year-old Chau didn’t dream of becoming an Oscar-nominated actress: Born in a refugee camp to Vietnamese parents, she grew up in New Orleans and majored in creative writing and film studies at Boston University. After she signed up for an improv class to cure her shyness, her teacher encouraged her to pursue performing, and Chau moved to Los Angeles to seek parts. But success initially proved elusive, and skeptical casting directors told her that booking anything more than a day-player role was beyond her grasp.“After a few years of trying, you think, ‘Is it really worth it to try to dedicate my life to this?’” Chau said. “But what kept me going was the delusional hope that I’d get to work on a cool, weird movie, because those were the movies that I liked. I just kept hoping that something would happen and, thankfully, it did.”After following her big-screen debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” with “Downsizing,” Chau’s career caught fire: She’s been a scene-stealer ever since, in projects like HBO’s “Watchmen” and the recent culinary comedy “The Menu,” in which she plays a coolly hostile maître d’. Chau will next be seen in a raft of auteur-driven films that include Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and “And” from Yorgos Lanthimos, but in the meantime, audiences are still discovering her work in “The Whale,” in which her character, Liz, tends to Fraser’s 600-pound recluse with a whole lot of tough love.Chau is “a force of nature: titanium backbone, suffers no fools, has a bear trap of a memory,” Fraser told me. “Everything is an embarrassment of riches for whoever’s editing her work because of how varied and interesting she is. And she can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Chau in “The Whale.” She initially turned down the chance to audition.A24, via Associated PressNow that the dust has settled from your Oscar nomination, how are you feeling?The things that have touched me the most have been messages from people who have known me since before I wanted to be an actor. My friend from high school called from work and she was like, “Oh my God, I’m shaking right now. I’m hiding in the closet to talk to you because I can’t control my body right now.” I was like, “Why?” But she was starting to tear up on the phone, and it made me get emotional because she was like, “I remember all of those years ago when I went to your improv shows.” I hadn’t thought about that in so long, and stuff like that is meaningful to me. The rest of it, I don’t know. My whole career identity has been about being an underdog and trying to scrap my way into getting parts.Do you mean you were perceived as an underdog, or you felt like an underdog?I felt like an underdog, always really excited and grateful to be a part of things. Now it’s just a weird thing where I feel like, “Do I have to step up? Am I going to be considered a veteran now?” I still feel so new and I’m still learning, so I hope this doesn’t mean that people think I know what I’m doing. I really admire people who are pros, but at the same time, I hope I never become a pro, if that makes sense.You shot “The Whale” in early 2021, not long after you had given birth to your first child. Was it an easy yes?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.I was fully anticipating not working for the first year while I was a mother, so I was surprised when my agent sent me the script for “The Whale.” I almost didn’t want to read it, because I didn’t want to get attached, and then when I read the script, I felt even more strongly that this wasn’t the right time in my life to tackle something like that because it would take so much work. Also, everything that I’d done had been a specifically Asian character, and because this character wasn’t, I thought the casting net for it must be so wide. I just didn’t want to throw my hat in the ring.About a week passed and my agent came back to me and was like, “They really want to see you. Is this something you want to let go?” During that time, I had thought about it, like, “Oh my gosh, it is a really amazing story and script. I don’t know, can I do it?” They asked for three scenes on tape for the audition. I told my agent, “Here’s one scene. That’s all I had time to do. I think he should know after one scene whether I’m the right girl for him or not.”That’s a flex, Hong!“I don’t have time to do anything else! My baby is crying in the background” [she told the agent]. But Darren called me right after he saw it, somehow my baby cooperated, and we were able to put another scene on tape very quickly.Once you accepted the role, how did you feel?Honestly, I felt like I wanted to barf. I was thinking, “Wow, I’m so tired. How can I possibly be on set and say all these lines? Oh my God, this is more dialogue than I’ve had in all of the things I’ve done combined.” Thankfully, my husband really stepped up and took care of our baby while I was at work and allowed me to do it. And he was the one who also really pushed me to throw my hat in the ring and said that he would be there to support me.Brendan Fraser said Chau “can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesBefore shooting, the actors had three weeks of rehearsal. Is that the sort of thing that you spark to as a performer?I found rehearsals really restrictive, and I don’t think Darren will mind me describing it as that. He obviously knew what he wanted to do, so a lot of rehearsal from the get-go was spent on blocking, and it was so specific so early on. That’s what I had objection to because in my mind, rehearsal means that you just feel everything out without already knowing where you need to be.By the second or third day, I kind of tuned him out a little bit and was able to just focus on Brendan and trying to find those different moments with him. One of the functions of Liz in the script was to show the audience who Charlie was prior to us meeting him in this dire state, and finding those moments of joy and of levity needed to be worked out in rehearsal, because once we got on set, there wasn’t going to be time because of the limitations of the suit that Brendan was wearing. It was incredibly hot to wear silicone, so there wasn’t as much time to futz around.What do you think Liz is like outside the space we see her in during the movie?Well, when I was cast, my agents had thrown out some names of other people who were in consideration for the role. None of them were Asian, and the role wasn’t written specifically as Asian. So once I was cast, the writer Sam Hunter added the line about her being adopted. I think it was a useful bit of information in terms of picturing what it was like for her growing up in Idaho in this very conservative, religious family. That informed a lot of the choices that I made.I asked Darren if I could have tattoos and he said yes, even though you never see them on camera in the movie, because I was like, “Oh, I think she was a raver girl.” I could imagine Liz going to some warehouse parties and rebelling against her super-religious adoptive parents. But that was all just for me, and it felt luxurious, like, “Oh, this only happens on a Darren Aronofsky movie.” No other production would allow me to spend the time or the money on these tattoos.Maybe not, but on projects like “The Menu” or “Watchmen,” I’ve heard you had a lot of input into how those characters would look.Even though they’re limited in screen time, I want them to feel interesting. That’s part of the fun for me. I think a lot of people would maybe look at it in a more pitiful way, like, “Oh, why doesn’t she get to play lead characters? Why just supporting?” But I love supporting characters and I love doing that work to make them feel really full — it’s a little bit of a puzzle where you have to look for clues in the text. It’s not about jockeying for more screen time or more lines or anything like that. I’m usually more entertained or invested in whatever is going on with a supporting character than the lead character.In “The Menu,” Chau plays a stern maître d’ opposite Ralph Fiennes’s imperious chef.20th Century FoxIn past interviews, you’ve said that you don’t necessarily think of yourself as an actor. After a year like the one you’ve had, has that changed?When I say I don’t feel like an actor, it’s because typically whenever you read a profile of an actor, this is all that they’ve ever wanted to do. I don’t know if I could say the same thing, because I didn’t intend on being an actor. I didn’t go to school for it, and I only took improv classes as a way to break out of my shell because I was so introverted. I thought I wanted to be either a writer or an editor, something that was a little bit more solitary, and it’s just odd that I find myself in front of the camera.What do you get out of acting now that’s different than when you first began?I don’t know if I ever wanted anything out of it! I just wanted to be on set, to hang out with people, and to see the finished product. I could be on set all day if I didn’t have a family to take care of. I just love watching everybody work, not even just the actors — I love watching the grips move the lights, and the set decorators tweaking the little drapes. I also feel like my most relaxed and most confident self on set, too. I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m on a red carpet.Red carpets are terrifying! It’s a gantlet of flash bulbs and people shouting your name.It’s not even shouting my name — it’s more like whoever I’m talking to is looking past me to see if there’s somebody more famous coming up so they can quickly wrap up whatever they’re doing with me. That’s been my experience.You said that before “The Whale,” many of your parts were written specifically for an Asian actress. Is that still the case?“Showing Up,” no. Wes’s movie, no. “The Menu,” definitely not, because she was written as Scandinavian. But I never go into it with an agenda of like, “OK, I’m going to turn the stereotype on its head.” I’m always trying to service the script, and however people want to take it, I have no control over that. Even with Elsa in “The Menu,” I thought she was a very dominating character, but during an interview, somebody was asking a question about Asian stereotypes, and she was also Asian. She was like, “Your character reminded me of a maid.” I was like, “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”It’s a shame, honestly, to always be viewing the world and looking for that. You can always bend things in that way if you want to, but it’s not something that I can really spend too much energy trying to anticipate. But I’m also a little hesitant to get on a soapbox about things. My goal is not to be president of the Asian American student body — I just want to do good work and just leave it at that. More

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    What to See This Spring in NYC: Broadway Shows, Concerts and More

    “Life of Pi” and Laura Linney on Broadway, Lise Davidsen at the Met Opera, SZA on tour: Here’s what we’re looking forward to this season.Broadway | Off Broadway | Dance | Classical | PopBroadway‘PARADE’ It doesn’t exactly scream out for the big splashy Broadway musical treatment, does it, this disturbing tale of Leo Frank, accused of the rape and murder of a teenage girl and lynched by an antisemitic mob in Georgia in 1915? And yet, the original 1998 production grabbed Tony Awards for the book, by Alfred Uhry, and the score, by Jason Robert Brown. Almost 25 years later, Michael Arden directed a well-received Encores! production, starring Ben Platt, that had a blink-and-you-miss-it short run. Thankfully the production is headed to Broadway, again featuring Platt as Frank and Micaela Diamond as his wife, Lucille.In previews; opens March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, Manhattan.‘SHUCKED’ When the crop starts to fail in the small town of Cob County, an expert “corn doctor” arrives to help, but is he really a huckster? That’s the kernel of this cornpone musical comedy, anyway. Well-received in a premiere run at the Pioneer Theater Company, it promises earworm songs and many laughs — sounds amaizing. The book is by the Tony Award winning “Tootsie” writer Robert Horn, with songs by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. The ubiquitous Jack O’Brien directs.Previews begin March 8; opens April 4 at the Nederlander Theater, Manhattan.‘LIFE OF PI’ The long, tense standoff between a 16-year-old boy and a Bengal tiger stuck on a lifeboat is a tale of hope and survival first told in Yann Martel’s award-winning 2002 novel. A decade later, it became an Oscar-winning film directed by Ang Lee, and most recently has been adapted for the stage by Lolita Chakrabarti — the 2021 West End production won five Olivier Awards. The kid keeps surviving, so a stop on Broadway seems like a good next step. Hiran Abeysekera, who starred in London, will reprise the role of Pi, with Max Webster directing. No, no actual tigers will be among the cast; the puppetry and movement direction is by Finn Caldwell, with puppet design by Caldwell and Nick Barnes.Previews begin March 9; opens March 30 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, Manhattan.Hiran Abeysekera, left, with puppeteers operating the Bengal tiger in “Life of Pi.”Johan Persson‘PETER PAN GOES WRONG’ What’s the worst that could happen? When the Mischief Theater Company, which staged “The Play That Goes Wrong,” takes on the J.M. Barrie classic about a boy who won’t grow up, a few flying mishaps are sure to happen. This farce, which premiered in the West End in 2015, arrives to Broadway this spring, with Adam Meggido directing the chaos.Previews begin March 17; opens April 19 at the Barrymore Theater, Manhattan.‘THE THANKSGIVING PLAY’ You can’t please everyone … but you can try! A troupe of super progressive artists creates a culturally sensitive elementary school pageant that embraces both Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage month (without the participation of any actual Native Americans) in this satirical comedy by Larissa FastHorse. After a well-received premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2018, the show arrives on Broadway, with Rachel Chavkin (“Hadestown”) directing.Previews begin March 25; opens April 20 at the Helen Hayes Theater, Manhattan.Jennifer Bareilles, left, and Margo Seibert in “The Thanksgiving Play.”Jenny Anderson for The New York Times‘NEW YORK, NEW YORK’ What’s old is new when Broadway hosts a new musical inspired by a 1977 film about young artists with big dreams in the big city after World War II. It ain’t easy, but if they can make it here, they can make it anywhere (or so we’re told). The musical includes classics like the title number, as well as new songs — and a huge cast. The score is by Kander and Ebb, with an original story by David Thompson with  Sharon Washington and additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Susan Stroman directs.Previews begin March 24; opens April 26 at the St. James Theater, Manhattan.‘ROOM’ Like “Life of Pi,” also opening this spring, “Room” has gone from best-selling novel to award-winning film and now to a Broadway production. The play, adapted by Emma Donoghue from her 2010 novel about a mother and son held captive in a shed for years, has songs and some theatricalized aspects, like an older alter ego for young Jack. The essence of the story, though, about hope, imagination and resilience, remains the same. The songs are by the Scottish artists Kathryn Joseph and Cora Bissett, and Bissett (“Roadkill”) directs.Previews begin April 3; opens April 17 at the James Earl Jones Theater, Manhattan.‘SUMMER, 1976’ The casting alone, with Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht, ought to get you to the box office. Set in Ohio in the year of the bicentennial, David Auburn’s latest is about the budding friendship between Diana (Linney), an artist and single mother, and Alice (Hecht), a naïve housewife. As the nation celebrates independence, the women grapple with motherhood, ambition and intimacy and aim for their own sense of freedom. Daniel Sullivan directs.Previews begin April 4; opens April 25 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Manhattan.‘GOOD NIGHT, OSCAR’ Sean Hayes plays the impossible-to-describe pianist, performer and incomparable wit Oscar Levant in this new play by Doug Wright. Levant famously did a number of television interviews with Jack Paar when Levant talked openly and perhaps a bit scandalously about his battles with depression and mental illness. The play premiered last year at the Goodman Theater in Chicago to raves like this one from The Chicago Tribune: “It’s a stunner of a lead performance: moving, empathetic, deeply emotional and slightly terrifying.” Anticipation is in the air. Lisa Peterson directs.Previews begin April 7; opens April 24 at the Belasco Theater, Manhattan.Sean Hayes in “Good Night, Oscar.”Liz Lauren‘PRIMA FACIE’ On “Killing Eve,” Jodie Comer proved to be transfixing, so this riveting solo show will certainly be a highlight of the spring season. The play comes with trigger warnings — Comer plays a lawyer who ruthlessly defends men accused of sexual assault, but then she suddenly finds herself on the witness stand. Comer won the 2022 Evening Standard Award for best actress for her West End performance in the role. The play, by Suzie Miller, is directed by Justin Martin. STEVEN McELROYPreviews begin April 11; opens April 23 at the Golden Theater, Manhattan.Jodie Comer in “Prima Facie.”Helen MurrayOff BroadwayBEDLAM THEATER Those of us who grew up in New England all thought Lizzie Borden did it — she gave her mother 40 whacks with an ax, and when that was done, she gave her father 41. Or so went the story of the infamous Borden, who was actually acquitted in the murder trial of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Mass., in 1893. Bedlam Theater takes an irreverent look at the story in “Fall River Fishing,” an absurdist dark comedy about unrequited love, self-loathing and disappointment.In previews; opens Feb. 26 at the Connelly Theater, Manhattan.Following that play, Bedlam will stage “The Good John Proctor,” by Talene Monahon, a sequel of sorts to Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” focusing on the young Salem women in the time leading up to the infamous witch trials.Opens March 11 at the Connelly Theater.‘BLACK ODYSSEY’ The playwright Marcus Gardley knows his classics and has created imaginative riffs on Molière’s “Tartuffe,” and Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba.” Now he’s going back a wee bit further to Homer’s Odysseus saga, about a warrior who faces daunting challenges in finding his way home. Gardley places us in contemporary Harlem, where the soldier Ulysses Lincoln relies on his ancestors and family history to help him on his journey to reunite with his family. Stevie Walker-Webb (“Ain’t No Mo’”) directs.In previews; opens Feb. 26 at Classic Stage Company, Manhattan.James T. Alfred, at right, in “Black Odyssey.”Jeenah Moon for The New York Times‘HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF’ After a sorority sister is raped, some college students start their own self-defense class. And as they create a space to release their pent-up rage, they struggle with how best to respond — seek systemic change, or learn to land a palm strike? Or both? The play by Liliana Padilla was developed at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago and won the 2019 Yale Drama Series Prize. The Off Broadway production will be directed by Padilla, Rachel Chavkin and Steph Paul.In previews; opens March 13 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan.‘THE COAST STARLIGHT’ This title refers to the Amtrak daily route that runs between Los Angeles and Seattle, with unbelievable scenery along the way. Keith Bunin’s play — which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2019 — ponders what might be going on inside the minds of several people traveling solo on this train and fantasizes the encounters they might have with one another in a different reality. At least one of them holds a dangerous secret. Tyne Rafaeli directs.In previews; opens March 13 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan.‘THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART’ It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since I was first captivated by this National Theater of Scotland production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This wild tale of a stuffy academic who attends a conference in a Scottish border town and somehow, surrealistically, finds herself dancing with the devil is told with an immersive approach that can be intoxicating for an audience member. You can take that literally — the show is being presented at the McKittrick Hotel in a pub environment, as it was in Edinburgh and at the hotel in 2016-17. The writer, David Greig (“The Events”), has a knack for yearning and fantasy, and “Prudencia” is unlikely to get old anytime soon.Previews begin March 8; opens March 13 at the McKittrick Hotel, Manhattan.‘WHITE GIRL IN DANGER’ Tired of being a “Blackground player” in the soap opera town of Allwhite, Keesha Gibbs is determined to take center stage in this new musical comedy with book, music and lyrics by the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson (“A Strange Loop”). And as you might surmise from the title, there is indeed a killer on the loose in Jackson’s mash-up of soaps and melodramatic movies. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs.Previews begin March 15; opens April 10 at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, Manhattan.From left, Liz Lark Brown, Latoya Edwards and NaTasha Yvette Williams at a reading of “White Girl in Danger.”Lauren Lancaster for The New York Times‘DÍA Y NOCHE’ This coming-of-age story, set in El Paso, Texas, in 1984, is about racism and class struggle experienced through the unlikely friendship between a Chicano punk-rock kid and a Black upper-middle-class nerd who is gay and closeted. Carlos Armesto directs the LAByrinth Theater Company production, written by LAB actor/playwright David Anzuelo.Previews begin March 18; opens March 26 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan.RED BULL THEATER Even we Elizabethan geeks might not be familiar with “Arden of Faversham,” a 16th-century thriller from the quill of an anonymous playwright (Shakespeare? Marlowe? Thomas Kyd?). A wife is having an affair and, with her lover, plots the murder of her wealthy husband; naturally, things get complicated. Jesse Berger directs the adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kathryn Walat for Red Bull Theater.Previews begin March 6; opens March 16 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan.For 20 years, Red Bull has, thankfully, continued to keep many great classic plays alive for contemporary audiences — they’ll also stage Francis Beaumont’s hilarious comedy “The Knight of the Burning Pestle,” directed by Noah Brody and Emily Young this spring.Previews begin April 17; opens April 27 at the Lucille Lortel Theater.‘KING JAMES’ The timing could hardly be better for this show, arriving onstage just a few months after LeBron James broke the all time NBA scoring record. This play by Rajiv Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”), which follows two LeBron super fans who forge an unlikely bond during the basketball player’s days with the Cleveland Cavaliers, is a study of the important place sports can hold in some of our lives. I don’t even like basketball (I’m too short), and I still can’t wait! Glenn Davis and Chris Perfetti will revisit the roles they played at Steppenwolf Theater Company, where the play had its world premiere last year. Kenny Leon directs.Previews begin May 2; opens May 16 at Manhattan Theater Club.‘DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES’ This world premiere musical brings together the composer and lyricist Adam Guettel (“Floyd Collins”) and the playwright Craig Lucas (“An American in Paris”) for the first time since their musical “The Light in the Piazza.” Adapted from J.P. Miller’s 1962 film and 1958 teleplay, the story about a couple’s yearslong battle with alcoholism doesn’t sound super uplifting, but the creative team has quite a track record. Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen”) directs the Atlantic Theater Company production. STEVEN McELROYOpens May 5 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan.Dance‘COPPELIA’ In “Coppelia” (1870) the old toymaker Dr. Coppelius is obsessed with creating a female doll so realistic that she can be — and is — mistaken for a human girl. But that’s not enough: Through magic spells, he tries to bring her to life. In 2023, our magic is artificial intelligence, and in Morgann Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright’s ingenious “Coppelia,” which Scottish Ballet brings to Sadler’s Wells theater in London, Dr. Coppelius is a charismatic Steve Jobs figure in a black turtleneck, dominating technicians and androids as he attempts to create the perfect woman. The heroine, Swanhilda, is a journalist investigating Coppelius’s NuLife laboratory; her boyfriend Franz comes along and, just as in the 19th-century original, falls for the nonhuman Coppelia. The ballet won rave reviews after its debut at the Edinburgh Festival last year. ROSLYN SULCASMarch 2-5, Sadler’s Wells, London.JORDAN DEMETRIUS LLOYD Like so many dance artists, the choreographer and dancer Jordan Demetrius Lloyd has spent the past few years resourcefully creating work outside of theaters. In 2020, he directed the stirring, contemplative short film “The Last Moon in Mellowland,” a poem in images. Last summer, his site-specific “Jerome” drew crowds of dance lovers and curious passers-by to a schoolyard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. With his latest project — his first evening-length commission — Lloyd returns to the theater, both embracing its familiarity and testing out new directions, as he finds himself “on not the other side but another side of the pandemic,” he said in a phone interview. In “Blackbare in the Basement,” at Danspace Project, he and seven dancers extend on ideas from “JEROME” while considering the particularities of this hallowed downtown performance space and the history of the artists who have moved through it. SIOBHAN BURKEMarch 9-11, Danspace Project, Manhattan.From left, Paul Hamilton, Keely Garfield and Angie Pittman.Whitney BrowneKEELY GARFIELD As a choreographer and performer, Keely Garfield has long blurred the lines between irony and sincerity, the absurd and the profound. Her unpredictable works, unafraid of kitsch, are costume pageants with room for prayer, feats of endurance and bravery that don’t disguise awkwardness and vulnerability. Garfield is also a yoga teacher, an urban Zen integrated therapist and a hospital chaplain. Her newest piece, “The Invisible Project,” is her first to explore explicitly the crossover between her work as a choreographer and her work in wellness, experimenting with how endurance, patience, healing and catharsis can be danced. If compassionate presence is an aim, the cast is ideal: Opal Ingle, Angie Pittman, Paul Hamilton and Molly Lieber. BRIAN SEIBERTMarch 10-12 at N.Y.U. Skirball, Manhattan.TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY The question of how to stay current, relevant, haunts every dance company built on the vision of a single choreographer. What happens when that person is no longer here? Six years after the death of the postmodern trailblazer Trisha Brown, her company has, for the first time, commissioned a new dance from another artist: the Cuban-born Judith Sánchez Ruíz, a member of the Brown company from 2006 to 2009. Now living in Berlin, Ruíz combines a visceral understanding of Brown’s work with her own daring, intensely physical approach to movement invention. In addition to Ruíz’s “Let’s talk about bleeding,” with a score by the Cuban composer Adonis Gonzalez, the company’s Joyce Theater season features two of Brown’s collaborations with the sound artist Alvin Curran, “For M.G.: The Movie” (1991) and “Rogues” (2011). And Ruíz is not the only fresh voice on the program: Five of the troupe’s eight dancers are new. BURKEMay 2-7, Joyce Theater, Manhattan.Thaji Dias and Amandi Gomez from Nrityagram Dance Ensemble.Ravi ShankarNRITYAGRAM DANCE ENSEMBLE About a decade ago, Nrityagram — unsurpassed exponents of the Indian classical form Odissi — came to the Joyce Theater with surprise guests. They were members of Chitrasena Dance Company from Sri Lanka, experts in that nation’s Kandyan tradition. A collaboration among the dancers, all female, brought out both the shared ancient roots of the two styles and their differences: the more sinuous refinement of Odissi, the folksier verve of Kandyan. They danced to different drummers and found a new harmony. The two companies return together to the Joyce with a new program, “Ahuti,” or “Offering.” One change is the presence of men, who come from the Chitrasena side — bare-chested, virile, spinning end-over-end through the air. They are a novelty in Nrityagram performance, introducing a complementary energy and adding to a larger-than-usual cast, a more populous party. SEIBERTMay 9-14, Joyce Theater, Manhattan.ClassicalCARNEGIE HALL Last year, the Vienna Philharmonic’s Carnegie visit was upturned by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the last-minute dumping of its guest conductor, the Putin-affiliated Valery Gergiev. Things should be much calmer when the orchestra returns for three days of works by Schoenberg, Strauss, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Bruckner — all led by Christian Thielemann, a master of this repertoire (March 3-5). Another Carnegie staple, the English Concert, brings Handel’s oratorio “Solomon” (March 12); later, its fellow period ensemble Les Arts Florissants, led by the essential William Christie, comes with an all-Charpentier program for Holy Week (April 26).Among visiting pianists are the gracefully intelligent Alexandre Tharaud, playing works including his transcription of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (March 26); Seong-Jin Cho, who heroically flew in to salvage those Vienna concerts last February (April 12); and the mighty Beatrice Rana, taking on Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata (April 20). Other recitals include the cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s multimedia Bach show “Fragments” (April 1); the continuation of the Danish String Quartet’s Schubert-inspired “Doppelgänger” project, with a premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir (April 20), who has also written the latest installment of the flutist Claire Chase’s sprawling, multi-decade initiative “Density 2036” (May 25). Chase appears as well as the soloist in Kaija Saariaho’s “Aile du songe,” with Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra (May 9).Other ensembles are bringing local premieres to Carnegie: the Philadelphia Orchestra, presenting John Luther Adams’s “Vespers of the Blessed Earth” with the vocal group the Crossing (March 31); and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which over two evenings is performing Thierry Escaich’s Cello Concerto, with Gautier Capuçon, and Thomas Adès “Air,” for violin and orchestra, with Anne-Sophie Mutter (April 24 and 25). The Met Orchestra continues its tradition of postseason Carnegie appearances, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in Brahms’s “Ein deutsches Requiem” and a program that includes Renée Fleming and Russell Thomas in Act IV of Verdi’s “Otello,” as well as the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “Lear Sketches” (June 15 and 22).Susanna Mälkki conducting at Carnegie Hall.Chris LeeNEW YORK PHILHARMONIC The conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, whose career continues to thrive in the face of a terminal brain cancer diagnosis, returns to the Philharmonic podium to lead the local premiere of his “Meditations on Rilke” and Schubert’s “Great” Symphony (March 9-12). Then, the orchestra’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, leads Messiaen’s immense “Turangalîla-symphonie,” featuring Jean-Yves Thibaudet as the piano soloist (March 17-19), followed by Bach’s similarly expansive “St. Matthew Passion,” with vocalists including Nicholas Phan, Davóne Tines, Paul Appleby, Tamara Mumford and Philippe Sly (March 23-25).More firsts come in the New York premiere of Felipe Lara’s Double Concerto, featuring Claire Chase on flute and Esperanza Spalding on bass and led by Susanna Mälkki (March 29-31); the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Yunchan Lim’s Philharmonic debut in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with James Gaffigan (May 10-12); the U.S. premiere of Chick Corea’s Trombone Concerto, led by Marin Alsop and featuring the orchestra’s principal trombone, Joseph Alessi (May 25-27); the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s large-scale “unEarth” (June 1-3); and the New York premiere of John Luther Adams’s “Become Desert” (June 8-10).METROPOLITAN OPERA Earlier this season, the Met announced that it would devote more resources and calendar time to contemporary works and, inevitably, new productions. But revivals are still the bread and butter of a repertory house, and many this spring have something to look forward to. When Robert Carsen’s elegant production of “Falstaff” returns (March 12-April 1), it will feature as the decadent title character the German baritone Michael Volle — a solemn presence known for embodying Wagner heroes like Wotan and Hans Sachs — in his first Verdi role. Carsen’s similarly clean, and sobering, “Der Rosenkavalier” (March 27-April 20) will be a vehicle for the soprano Lise Davidsen, the Met’s reigning diva, who is making her role debut as the Marschallin.Lise Davidsen, at right, in “Ariadne auf Naxos.” This season she will make her role debut as the Marschallin in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier.”Marty Sohl/Met OperaYannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, has been largely absent so far this season, but will take the podium for Puccini’s “La Bohème” (April 21-28, then May 2-14). And the conductor Thomas Guggeis, turning 30 this year and on a rapid rise abroad, as the general music director of Frankfurt Opera and a substitute for Daniel Barenboim in a high-profile Berlin “Ring” cycle last fall, makes his Met debut leading another Wagner work: “Der Fliegende Holländer,” in the first revival of François Girard’s obtuse 2020 staging (May 30-June 10).PARK AVENUE ARMORY Recital spaces are preciously rare in New York, and few can compare with the Armory’s intimate and acoustically rich Board of Officers Room. There, the French baritone Stéphane Degout, with the pianist Cédric Tiberghien, will present an evening of art songs from composers including Fauré, Schubert, Debussy and Lili Boulanger (April 3 and 5). The tenor Allan Clayton — revered abroad and recently celebrated locally in the title roles of “Hamlet” and “Peter Grimes” at the Metropolitan Opera — comes next with the pianist James Baillieu for a program of works by Schumann and Nico Muhly, as well as Clayton’s countrymen Henry Purcell, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten (April 27 and 29). Later, the young pianist Pavel Kolesnikov brings his account of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, which he has performed alongside the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, as well as an eclectic mix of works inspired by Joseph Cornell’s “Celestial Navigation” (May 22 and 24). JOSHUA BARONEPopWEYES BLOOD The clarion-voiced Natalie Mering, under the name Weyes Blood, makes intricately wrought Laurel Canyon folk-pop updated for an era of millennial unease. She wrote many of the songs on her stirring 2022 album “And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow,” as hymns to the collective epidemic of loneliness brought on by the pandemic. Mering’s music is intimate but sweeping; she uses her own personal experiences to access larger and more generalized undercurrents of emotion. It will be heartening to hear a song like the anthemic single “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” performed live, with a venue full of voices proving the communal sentiment of its title. LINDSAY ZOLADZMarch 3 and 4 at Brooklyn Steel.Weyes Blood performs at Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, Spain, in 2022.Jordi Vidal/Redferns, Getty ImagesSZA In the details of a song and in the shape of her career, SZA’s timing has been utterly her own. To sing about relationships and ambitions that unfold as messily as everyday life, SZA — Solana Imani Rowe — writes melodies and lyrics that seem to be spilling out spontaneously: crooning, pausing, suddenly racing, then curling neatly into a hook. Her recordings have arrived with the same kind of unpredictability. She released her debut album, “CTRL” in 2017; five years later, in 2022, she expanded it to a deluxe version that was half again as long, then went on to release an entire new album, “SOS.” In the meantime, an ever-expanding audience found their own lives in her songs: in their desires, jealousy, doubts, seductions, setbacks and triumphs, and in their leisurely grooves. SZA is touring arenas this year, and singalongs will likely join her, phrase for eccentric phrase. JON PARELESMarch 4 and 5 at Madison Square Garden, Manhattan.YO LA TENGO Since forming nearly four decades ago, the Hoboken indie-rock legends Yo La Tengo have been staggeringly consistent: The trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew never seems to tire in its search of eclectic new elements to bring into its ever-expanding sonic universe. Still, the band sounds particularly inspired on its latest (and 17th!) album, the richly enveloping “This Stupid World,” which flickers from despair to hard-won hope and moves fluidly between jammy abstractions (“Sinatra Drive Breakdown”) and succinctly rendered indie-pop (“Fallout,” “Aselestine”). Both of those sides of “This Stupid World” are likely to translate well live, but the new album probably won’t be the set list’s only focus — naturally, their back catalog runs pretty deep. ZOLADZMarch 18 at Brooklyn Steel.SOLANGE Futuristic R&B, righteous jazz, gospel, performance art, poetry, sculpture, film and opera are all part of a generation-spanning seven-event series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music curated by Solange Knowles for Saint Heron, her project to preserve and celebrate Black culture. Named “Eldorado Ballroom” after a historic Black music hall in Houston, the series begins March 30 with a concert headlined by the ambitious, electronics-loving songwriter Kelela, along with the adventurous R&B songwriters Res and KeiyaA. On April 7, the long-running gospel group Twinkie Clark and the Clark Sisters are paired with a program of spiritual choral compositions by Mary Lou Williams. And on April 8, the pioneering free-jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp shares a bill with the poet Claudia Rankine and the avant-garde vocalist Linda Sharrock, in her first New York City concert since the 1970s. The whole series offers deep, promising connections. PARELESBegins March 30 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. More

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    Joshua Bell’s London

    “The first time I came to London, I was 17,” the violinist Joshua Bell, now 54, told me. We were at dinner together following a recent performance of his at Wigmore Hall, a small but renowned concert hall. “I came with my parents to make my first album,” he continued. “This was in the ’80s, and I remember thinking there wasn’t a lot of variety in food. Now, of course, it’s great.”Mr. Bell estimates he’s been to London around 70 times since then.“One of the problems with classical music is that it’s developed a reputation of formality,” Mr. Bell said. “In fact, classical music can be the most exciting thing to watch.”So no, the virtuoso and onetime child prodigy doesn’t live in London. But you could say he’s a professional visitor. His London is one of exquisite taste, uncommonly good food and a handful of tiny places you’d breeze right by if you didn’t know they were there — with, of course, a measure of music.Mr. Bell tends to favor lesser-known places, with one very notable exception: the Royal Albert Hall. “The Royal Albert Hall has this thing called the Proms. They take out the seats on the lower level, and people line up down the street to get in,” he said. “All these people are standing up like it’s a rock concert, and it’s Beethoven symphonies. It’s incredible.”Here are five of his favorite places to visit in London.1. J.&A. BeareA technician works on a violin at J.&A. Beare in central London. The shop has a collection of precious violins that can be viewed. “In August 2001, I walked into Charles Beare’s shop to pick up a set of strings, and Charles Beare said to me, ‘You have to take a look at the Huberman violin, it’s on its way to Germany.’” The instrument, made by Antonio Stradivari in 1713 and known as the Gibson ex Huberman, was legendary. “I knew the famous story of the violin,” Mr. Bell said, recounting its theft from a dressing room at Carnegie Hall in 1936.J.&A. Beare sells more modest violins as well as world-class ones like the one Mr. Bell uses.At the shop in 2001, Mr. Bell fell in love with a violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1713.“Charles Beare put me in a room with the violin and after a few notes, I was shaking with excitement. I was in love with it. I had a concert at the Royal Albert Hall — at the Proms — and used that violin that very night.”Even if you’re not in the market for a multimillion-euro violin, J.&A. Beare is worth a visit. The shop is open to the public — but if you want to see the collection of nearly priceless violins, book ahead.2. TrishnaThe tasting menu at Trishna, in Marylebone, is partly what draws Mr. Bell.“I did an event in New York with Salman Rushdie,” Mr. Bell said. “At one point, we were talking about London and he recommended Trishna. I love Indian food, but Trishna is not your typical Indian restaurant. The problem with Indian food for me is that I want to try a lot of things. I don’t just want to have one lamb curry as my dinner.” Instead, Mr. Bell likes to get the five-course tasting menu — “and a crab dish that’s really great,” he said.Trishna’s cozy interior.The Michelin-starred restaurant, with its private nooks, mirrored walls, delicately gilded surfaces, feels a like special occasion kind of place. It’s also best to come hungry. “I like places where they just get the tasting menu because I eat everything,” says Mr. Bell. “I like the person cooking it to choose what he wants to present.”3. Wigmore HallThe exterior of Wigmore Hall, a 552-seat concert venue in Marylebone.“Wigmore Hall doesn’t have name recognition to the general public,” said Mr. Bell of the 552-seat concert hall in Marylebone. With its small stage and red velvet seating, Wigmore Hall has a hushed, intimate appeal. “One of the problems with classical music is that it’s developed a reputation of formality. I’ve actually seen classical musicians admonish the audience for clapping at the wrong time. In fact, classical music can be the most exciting thing to watch.”With its small stage and red velvet seating, Wigmore Hall has a hushed, intimate appeal.“Having said that, it’s nice that there are places like Wigmore Hall where you know everyone understands. It’s like for an actor to do theater in a place where people really get it. And Wigmore Hall has history for me personally. The first concert there — I think it was 1901 — was played by the teacher of my teacher, Ysaÿe, the greatest violinist at the end of the 19th century in Europe. I feel the history when I walk on the stage.”4. Baglioni HotelThe Baglioni Hotel is a favorite of Bell’s when he’s performing at the Proms, an annual series of classical music concerts.When days are packed with rehearsals and evenings are given to performing, proximity to one’s bed is important — as is a nice hotel around that bed. And so when Mr. Bell plays at the Royal Albert Hall, he always stays at Hotel Baglioni, a stone’s throw away. “It’s an Italian boutique hotel and has a very intimate feel,” he said. “It feels like people know you there, and the rooms have this sort of very sexy vibe — they’re just very boudoir-like and dark. I sleep better in those kinds of rooms.”Its location also means he can “walk to the rehearsals and back — you can also walk right across the street to Hyde Park. It’s my home when I’m at the Proms.”5. Fidelio Cafe“It’s clearly a passion project for the owner,” Mr. Bell said of Fidelio Cafe, “who loves classical music and food and puts them together.” (Mr. Bell is seated at a table on the left.)Gabriel Isserlis“Very few places like this exist — or dare to offer this,” said Mr. Bell of Fidelio Cafe. The “this” in question is the intersection of a sweet little bistro and live, world-class classical music.Imagine a small cafe where the walls are papered in actual sheet music, a grand piano greets you at the front door and the menu — with its home-roasted granola, slow-cooked aubergine and roasted cherry tomato bruschetta — seems crafted from the morning’s farmer’s market.It’s also “about the uniqueness of having a meal in an intimate space while hearing chamber music,” Mr. Bell said. “It’s clearly a passion project for the owner, who loves classical music and food and puts them together.”“One of my dreams is to open a food-slash-music venue,” he added. “When I see places like Fidelio, I love that people are thinking outside the box and celebrating classic music in such an usual way.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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    Classical Music to See and Hear in Spring 2023

    This spring, Gustavo Dudamel, the Philharmonic’s next music director, conducts the big deal symphony, the Met Opera stages Terence Blanchard’s “Champion”; and in Chicago, Riccardo Muti says farewell.It was a hint about as subtle as a siren when the New York Philharmonic announced its current season a year ago: Gustavo Dudamel, the superstar conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, would be coming to New York as a guest in May 2023 to lead Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.One of the repertory’s most sprawling and profound works, Mahler’s Ninth has been played by the Philharmonic almost exclusively under the batons of its music directors. It’s not an assignment the orchestra gives rising hotshots or conductors it sees once a decade. It’s the kind of musically knotty, deeply emotional score you want led by the artists closest to you.That was just one of many suggestions that Dudamel, 42, would, before too long, join the ranks of New York music directors, a group that has included eminences like Mahler, Toscanini, Bernstein and Boulez. And so it came to pass: Earlier this month, the Philharmonic said that he would succeed Jaap van Zweden in the position, for a five-year term beginning — because of classical music’s oddly glacial planning cycles — in the 2026-27 season.But before all that comes Mahler’s Ninth, which Dudamel has convincingly, with tenderness and naturally unfolding intensity, recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The three New York performances, May 19-21, were already sure to be well attended, given the famous conductor and the beloved piece. Now, since the concerts will be Dudamel’s first appearances on the Philharmonic’s podium since the announcement, these will be some of the hottest tickets in town this spring.When Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season, in a run that sold out several performances, it was a landmark: the first time the company had put on the work of a Black composer. Now Blanchard’s earlier opera, “Champion,” from 2013, is coming to the house, beginning April 10.As in “Fire,” themes of identity, sexuality and the negotiation of traumatic memories dominate. “Champion” tells the true story of the closeted gay boxer Emile Griffith, who knocked out his opponent, Benny Paret, during a 1962 title bout; Paret never recovered consciousness and died 10 days later. At the Met, two bass-baritones share the role of Griffith: Ryan Speedo Green plays him as a young athlete in his prime, and Eric Owens, as an aging man looking back on his complicated past.A scene from Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” in James Robinson’s production at Opera Theater of Saint Louis.Ken Howard/Opera Theatre of Saint LouisIn the wake of the box-office success of “Fire,” the Met — which has been struggling with ticket sales and said in December that it would withdraw $30 million from its endowment to cover costs — rushed “Champion” into production, part of a coming burst of contemporary operas aimed at broadening the audience. The staging reunites members of the team that helped make “Fire” vivid: the director James Robinson, the choreographer Camille A. Brown — the step dance routine that she conceived for “Fire” stopped the show — and the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Three veterans, Latonia Moore, Stephanie Blythe and Paul Groves, round out the cast.It is unusual for the Met (or any company) to unveil two new productions of Mozart operas back to back. And even rarer for both to be led by one conductor: in this case, Nathalie Stutzmann, a former mezzo-soprano turned maestro making her Met debut on the podium for “Don Giovanni” and “Die Zauberflöte.”Replacing a dreary, unilluminating Michael Grandage production on May 5, the new “Giovanni” is an import from the Paris Opera, where the much-discussed Dutch director Ivo van Hove and his colleagues put onstage what Joshua Barone described in The New York Times as “a de Chirico-like set populated by handsomely dressed people in a state of sexy desperation.” (It can hardly help but be an improvement on the Grandage.)Stutzmann, who started at the Atlanta Symphony this season — the only female music director leading one of the 25 largest American orchestras — conducts a promising cast, including Peter Mattei, a star in the title role at the Met for the past 20 years, as well as Adam Plachetka, Federica Lombardi, Ana María Martínez, Ying Fang and Ben Bliss.The situation with “Die Zauberflöte,” opening on May 19, is slightly complicated. The Met is planning to retain its existing production — which the director Julie Taymor and the designer George Tsypin filled with plexiglass and fanciful puppets — in its abridged, English-language, family-friendly form as “The Magic Flute,” now a holiday-season tradition.Performed in full and in German, the new-to-the-company “Die Zauberflöte,” a much-traveled staging directed by Simon McBurney, has the orchestra spilling over onto risers placed onstage and contemporary-style costumes. Stutzmann’s cast here includes Erin Morley, Lawrence Brownlee, Thomas Oliemans, Kathryn Lewek and Stephen Milling.Dudamel’s appointment is perhaps the biggest news in music this season: a new beginning. But the other crucial conductor move in America this spring signals the end of an era.Riccardo Muti is bringing his 13 years leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to a close in June.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesAt 81, Riccardo Muti — a fixture on the country’s major podiums since the 1970s and the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra during the ’80s — is bringing to a close a 13-year tenure at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with performances of Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis,” June 23-25.Despite being an experienced Beethoven interpreter and a specialist in huge choral works, Muti stayed away from the notoriously thorny “Missa Solemnis” for decades, until he led it — with radiant dignity and grandeur — at the Salzburg Festival in 2021.“I always felt too small,” he said in an interview last year on Chicago radio, “never I felt ready to perform this huge monument, because it’s so deep, so vast.” Muti and other great conductors are not known for this kind of humility or patience, so these performances will be the fruit of uncommonly many years of study and thought.Given that the Chicago Symphony has not yet appointed his replacement, Muti will remain a crucial presence next season, and possibly beyond. But this “Missa Solemnis” — with the chorus coached by a distinguished guest, Donald Palumbo, the chorus master at the Met — is nevertheless sure to be a love fest between a superb orchestra and a conductor it has revered. More

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    ‘The First Fallen’ Review: A Remembrance of Those Passed

    A director crafts an elegiac tribute set during the dawn of the AIDS crisis in Brazil.At the start of his pandemic film, “The First Fallen,” the Brazilian director Rodrigo de Oliveira stakes a claim to the elegiac: A soldier steps through a jungle ruminating in voice-over about those who die early in battle. The significance of this scene — which cuts to Suzano (Johnny Massaro) watching his nephew, Muriel (Alex Bonin), in the surf — is made clearer later. But the meaning of the blood trickling from Suzano’s nose is a given from the beginning.When Suzano, a biologist, returns from Paris to a small city in southeast Brazil to visit his sister, a nurse named Maura (Clara Choveaux), the first wave of H.I.V. and AIDS is on the horizon. It is the last day of 1981, but Suzano doesn’t feel like celebrating. He looks “haggard,” Maura tells him. He has a dry cough.He skips ringing in the new year with friends at a new nightspot. At that club, a performer named Rose (played with furious grace by Renata Carvalho) is being documented by the videographer Humberto (Victor Camilo). Together Suzano, Rose and Humberto will face a crisis with a breadth and scale that they are unlikely to ever fully grasp.Throughout his film, de Oliveira plays with the tension between verisimilitude and the artifice of performance. (Suzano’s increasingly wracking cough comes across as both truthful and melodramatic.) A gay man of a younger generation, de Oliveira mourns the vulnerability of these characters’ bodies while paying tribute to their flourishes and fears. We see death and the spreading of ashes but the film does not end there, instead returning to that jungle from the beginning. There a trio wages a battle that will not save them but might save others.The First FallenNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More