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With a ‘Ring,’ the Dallas Symphony Becomes a Wagner Destination
Fabio Luisi, a seasoned “Ring” conductor, will lead Wagner’s four-opera epic over a week in concert, breaking new ground for American orchestras.Richard Wagner conceived his four-opera “Ring” as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a marriage of poetry and music, for voices and orchestra, with coordinated sets, costumes and action. It’s a huge, expensive challenge even for top opera companies, calling for powerful singers, an accomplished conductor and orchestra, and a stage director and designer who can enliven a convoluted epic of family dysfunction, greed, destruction and rebirth.How much of Wagner’s impact remains if you subtract scenery and costumes, and most of the action — with neither water nor fire, sword nor spear, celestial palace nor subterranean smithy?Those questions will be put to the test by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which is alone in the American classical music and opera scene this season by presenting a complete “Ring,” over four evenings at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center beginning on Sunday.At the podium will be Fabio Luisi, the orchestra’s music director since 2020, who led the “Ring” at the Metropolitan Opera a dozen years ago. In Dallas, he began to roll out the cycle last spring, presenting “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre”; “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” followed earlier this month, semi-staged by Alberto Triola, who collaborated with Luisi and the Dallas symphony on “Salome” and “Eugene Onegin.”A concert staging of the “Ring,” Luisi said in a video interview from his home near Zurich, does not compromise the work.“In Wagner’s time the acting was extremely reduced,” he said. “We cannot compare the acting in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century with acting now. Even after the war, in Bayreuth, the stagings by Wieland Wagner were pretty much static.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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The Viral Choreographer Changing the Way Women Move
In February 2023, Rihanna took the field during the Super Bowl LVII halftime show for her first performance in five years. As the opening notes of “Rude Boy” played, a group of dancers in identical puffy white suits and sunglasses gathered in the middle of the stage, moving with forceful precision, gathering speed as the […] More
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking Cassie Assault Video
The hip-hop mogul’s legal team said in a filing on Wednesday that it may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Lawyers for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is battling federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, accused the government on Wednesday of leaking hotel surveillance footage of him brutally beating his former girlfriend to CNN, saying that they may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that the video — which shows Mr. Combs assaulting the singer Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 — is a key piece of evidence in their case. The surveillance footage was published by CNN in May, prompting Mr. Combs to apologize publicly for “inexcusable” behavior.It has never been clear how the footage made its way to the news organization, but in the court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty and has vehemently denied the criminal charges, accused the Department of Homeland Security, which executed raids of the defendant’s homes in March, of being responsible for the leak.“The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,” the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, wrote.The court filing cited a federal rule of criminal procedure that prohibits prosecutors or government agents from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.The lawyers did not cite direct evidence that Homeland Security officials had leaked the tape. But they accused the agency of a series of leaks, including in anonymous comments to The New York Post, that they said “all but ensured” that the grand jury and a potential trial jury would be tainted. The lawyers asked for a hearing to determine the government’s culpability in the leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Patrick Summers, Veteran Opera Conductor, to Step Down in Houston
Summers, who has helped introduce new operas into the American canon, will leave his role at Houston Grand Opera in 2026.Patrick Summers, a veteran conductor who over the past 26 years has helped turn Houston Grand Opera into one of most innovative companies in the United States, will leave his post in 2026, the company announced on Wednesday.Summers, 61, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, said he was eager for a change and felt he was leaving the organization in a strong position.“I love the company and the work that we’ve done here,” he said. “But I realized it’s time to make space for a new generation.”Summers has played an important role in introducing new operas into the American canon.He has premiered 11 works in Houston, including Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Carlisle Floyd’s “Cold Sassy Tree.” He has recorded new and recent operas, including Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas.” And, as a guest conductor, he has led major premieres at other companies: He was on the podium, for example, when Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” had its debut at San Francisco Opera in 2000.The star soprano Renée Fleming called Summers a “consummate musician” and a “natural educator.”“His effect has been to maintain a high standard of quality and hire great singers and have wonderful productions,” she said. “The whole ecosystem has benefited from his long tenure there.”Summers joined Houston Grand Opera as music director in 1998. He was recruited by David Gockley, the company’s general director from 1972 to 2005, who made it a hub for experimentation, commissioning dozens of new works. Summers became artistic and music director in 2011.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said Summers’s creative drive had transformed the company.“He lives in the future; he lives in commissions,” she said. “He lives in the support of talent at the beginning, when it’s most needed.”Dastoor said that the company had not yet begun searching for a successor but that she hoped there would not be a long gap between Summers and his replacement.“We’re united and ready to make an ambitious and bold choice when the time comes,” she said.For his next chapter, Summers said, he did not anticipate taking on another major director role, hoping to focus on performance. He will be given the title of music director emeritus at Houston Grand Opera and continue to appear there. This season, he is leading a new production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and performances of Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves.”Since the pandemic, Houston Grand Opera has been in a relatively strong position compared to its peers, with strong ticket sales and fund-raising.Summers said he was proud of the company. “We’re one of the real success stories in the arts in the United States,” he said. “How could I have any regrets?” More
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Garth Brooks Names Woman Who Accused Him of Rape
In a court filing, lawyers for the country superstar portrayed him as “the victim of a shakedown” and asked for compensatory and punitive damages.Garth Brooks, the country superstar, has named the woman who, as Jane Roe, accused him of rape and sexual assault in a bombshell lawsuit last week.In a court filing in Mississippi on Tuesday, lawyers for Mr. Brooks portrayed the star as “the victim of a shakedown” and said the woman’s lawyers had “flouted” the authority of a judge in a related case.Litigation over the woman’s accusations began last month with a lawsuit that was filed anonymously — as John Doe v. Jane Roe — in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiff, identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” said that lawyers for a woman had approached him in July with what he described as false allegations of sexual assault, and that they would sue Mr. Brooks unless he gave the woman “a multimillion-dollar payment.” The man asked the Mississippi judge to preserve the parties’ anonymity and declare that the woman’s accusations were false.In a response, lawyers for the woman said they intended to sue the man in California, saying that “Ms. Roe respectfully requests that she may commence her California action as she intended to do, and use Mr. Doe’s name, absent objection from this Honorable Court.”The court did not act, and two days later the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, naming Mr. Brooks but not herself. The suit accused Mr. Brooks of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019, and of subjecting her to repeated unwanted sexual advances for about two years. The woman described herself as a hair and makeup stylist who had worked with Mr. Brooks’s wife, the country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and had begun working regularly for Mr. Brooks in 2017.The suit drew wide coverage in the news media, and its portrayal of Mr. Brooks ran counter to the positive public image he had cultivated for decades.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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Jazz Has a New Home in Seattle. One Caveat: The Place Is ‘For Lease.’
The nonprofit Seattle Jazz Fellowship has carved out a performance space in the historic Globe Building — for now — and is putting its economic model to the test.The Pacific Northwest might be synonymous with grunge rock, but Seattle’s music scene has historically maintained a rich undercurrent of jazz. Even in the 1990s, with plaid-clad darlings riding high on barre chords, the trumpeter Thomas Marriott recalls an ideal downtown scene for budding improvisers to “pay dues,” a sort of low-cost, low-pressure musician’s utopia where rent could be made in a single weekend’s worth of gigs, and “you could just take your horn, walk up and down the street and see people you knew.”Marriott, 48, is a longtime fixture in the area’s jazz community and knows better than most what makes an operable scene. “Bandstands and elders and youngsters,” he said. “The whole cycle.” Soft-spoken but fiercely opinionated, often wearing his signature orange-tinted glasses, Marriott won the prestigious Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition in 1999 and used the prize money to move to New York. After several years, he returned to Washington State to build a livable career.But two decades later, art is barely sustainable in Seattle. Small and midsize jazz venues are floundering. Marriott calls the city’s musical pay scale “abysmal.” “The whole crux of the problem,” he said, “is that economically, local jazz is not really much of a commercial enterprise.” Rent is too high. Tables don’t turn over enough. Tastes have shifted.Tired of watching the scene ebb, Marriott plotted a solution: the Seattle Jazz Fellowship, a nonprofit he founded in 2021 with the goals of building community, increasing mentorship and reducing barriers to entry for performers and listeners. The Fellowship entered a new phase this year when it moved into historic Pioneer Square, a waterfront neighborhood that originated as a Gold Rush-era den of vice and still endures exacerbated booms and busts. The landscape architect Ilse Jones, a Pioneer Square advocate with an ownership stake in the rustic 1891 Globe Building, was searching for a new tenant last winter and thought the struggling block would benefit from jazz artists. Someone to “enliven the place,” as she put it.“We’re an ideal tenant for a less than ideal space,” went Marriott’s pitch. “We really only need four walls and a bathroom.”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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Seeking Release on Bail, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Downplays Risk of Witness Tampering
In an appeal, lawyers for Mr. Combs wrote that a judge’s decision to withhold bail was not based on evidence that he had sought to interfere with the sex trafficking investigation.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul fighting racketeering and sex trafficking charges, filed an appeal on Tuesday of a judge’s decision to deny him bail, arguing that concerns he would intimidate witnesses if released from jail were unfounded.Mr. Combs has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for three weeks, since the federal case against him was revealed to the public. Judge Andrew L. Carter of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered that Mr. Combs be detained ahead of his trial, ruling that he posed a danger of witness tampering and a safety risk to others.In their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, wrote that the government’s argument that their client posed a risk of obstructing justice was based on speculation, not evidence that he had sought to interfere with the criminal investigation into his conduct.The lawyers, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro and Jason A. Driscoll, argued in the court filing that Mr. Combs’s decision to travel to New York to face the charges, coupled with an intricate proposal for monitoring outside the government’s custody, helped support his release from jail ahead of his trial.“Mr. Combs is presumed innocent,” they wrote in the filing. “He traveled to New York to surrender because he knew he was going to be indicted. He took extraordinary steps to demonstrate that he intended to face and contest the charges, not flee. He presented a bail package that would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of running a “criminal enterprise” that helped him carry out a decades-long pattern of physical and sexual violence, alleging that he coerced women into “highly orchestrated” sexual encounters with prostitutes through the use of drugs, physical and emotional abuse, and financial pressure.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
