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      Germany Celebrates Wolf Biermann, a Singer Who United East and West

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      A show at the German Historical Museum honors Wolf Biermann, whose music and moral stance endeared him to audiences across the once divided country.If passers-by on a busy bridge in central Berlin on a recent summer afternoon recognized East Germany’s most famous songwriter, poet and dissident, they did not show it.Posing for this article’s photographs in front of a huge wrought iron eagle that featured on one of his best known record sleeves, Wolf Biermann, 86, smiled and tried joking with the afternoon crowd. But the office workers and tourists ignored him and continued their journeys across the river.Nearly five decades after Biermann was thrown out of East Germany for criticizing its totalitarian Communist government, the German Historical Museum is honoring him with a major exhibition. Biermann may not be recognized on the street, but the show, which opens Friday and runs through Jan. 14, 2024, proves he is far from forgotten: He is the first living person in recent memory to be the subject of such an exhibition at Germany’s national history museum.In a life that crisscrossed the East-West border that once divided Germany, Biermann’s music and principled moral stance made him a rare figure who transcended that barrier. Now, his tale is a perfect one for the united Germany to celebrate.“His story is both East German and West German history,” said Monika Boll, the exhibition’s curator. “You can’t get more German than that.”Biermann was born under Nazism, in 1936, and raised in West Germany. As a teenager, he defected to the East and made a career as a singer of witty, folk-inspired songs — until an anti-authoritarian streak in his music began to trouble the Communist authorities. For a decade from the mid-60s, Biermann’s songs, many of which he recorded in his East Berlin apartment, were smuggled to the West and released by record labels there, then smuggled back behind the iron curtain.After a 1976 concert in Cologne, West Germany, in which he criticized the government of East Germany, Biermann was barred from re-entering that country, where he had made his home.Barbara Klemm/Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungYet Biermann wanted to stay in the German Democratic Republic, or G.D.R. Although he was the subject of a yearslong state surveillance operation, he was never imprisoned, unlike many other critics of the government. The authorities worried about a backlash from West Germany, where the press was taking special note of Biermann’s career.In a speech at the exhibition opening on Wednesday, Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture minister, compared Biermann to a “raised middle finger” aimed at the “pride of the G.D.R. leadership.” The opening’s guests included many former East German dissidents, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s former chancellor.In an interview, Biermann said that his life story was instructive for anyone who wants to understand Germany’s complicated postwar past. “I’m the ideal counterpoint,” Bierman said, to what was typical in those decades. “To recognize what was normal, you need to look at the exception,” he added.Right from his childhood, he did the opposite of everyone around him, he added. His family was staunchly communist, he recalled, and his father was Jewish. Naturally, he said, they detested the Nazis — unlike most German families at the time.Even the British fire bombing of his hometown, Hamburg, which he only survived by diving into a canal with his mother, did not stop Biermann rooting for the Allies. In a song, he later wrote:And because I was born under the yellow starIn GermanyThat is why we took the English bombsLike gifts from heaven.His father, Dagobert Biermann, a labor organizer, was murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazis when Biermann was 6.In 1953, swimming against the historical tide, the 16-year-old Biermann moved, alone, from West Germany to the East, just as thousands were fleeing in the other direction in search of a better life. But as a convinced Communist, Biermann thought it was the G.D.R., not the capitalist West, that offered a more just and moral vision.Right from his childhood, Biermann said, he did the opposite of everyone around him.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesA talent for music was recognized during his tenure as a production assistant at Berthold Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble theater, where he had been hired by Brecht’s widow. Supported by politically connected sponsors, Biermann had gained minor notice as a singer-songwriter by 1960. If his lyrics offended some, he got away with it because of his communist bone fides, including the fact that his father was killed by fascists.But soon his lyrics and texts became too critical of the government and, in 1965, the authorities — which had tight control over cultural life — de facto banned Biermann from performing, recording or publishing in East Germany.During the 11 years in which he was also not allowed to leave the country, Biermann’s apartment became his stage and recording studio, and he was under constant watch. Over the decades, the East German state security services, known as the Stasi, watched and bugged his home, followed his car, listened to his phone calls and tried to recruit his friends and lovers.“You could say he was in the champion league — such a level of surveillance was atypical,” said Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, a historian who has studied Biermann’s Stasi file.Biermann responded ironically with “The Ballad of the Stasi,” in which he commiserates with the poor “Stasi dogs” monitoring him, who would probably end up singing his songs in bed.East German fans who were caught with Biermann’s music on bootleg cassette tapes or handbills of his verse could be arrested and locked away for years. But his apartment, which was close to the main border crossing point into West Berlin, still became a gathering place for dissident artists and thinkers. American stars, like Joan Baez and Allen Ginsburg, also visited him there.A turning point in Biermann’s career came in 1976, with a three-and-half-hour concert he gave to a sold-out hall in Cologne, on a rare visit to West Germany. He came out swinging against the “old comrades” who ran East Germany, and painted a bleak picture of life behind the wall. Three days later, while watching the news on television, he learned that he had been permanently barred from re-entry to East Germany.Demonstrators in Leipzig, East Germany, in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall Fell. The placard, in German, reads, “We want our old singer Biermann back!”Archiv Wolf Biermann; Staatsbibliothek–PK/Abteilung Handschriften und historische Drucke Biermann said he was crestfallen to be shut out of the country he held so dear, despite all its shortcomings. While hundreds of people were risking their lives crossing illegally to the West, Biermann’s heart pined for the East. “With me, everything was always the other way around — that’s almost the fundamental law,” he said.Biermann’s expulsion led to protests by East Germany’s most famous artists, writers and actors, and the government reacted with further repressions on artistic expression that remained in place until the fall of the Berlin Wall, 13 years later.After Germany’s 1990 reunification — in which he played an important role — Biermann remained active, though less in the spotlight. He continued to be a respected figure on the German left, even as he voiced unpopular opinions among his comrades: He supported the American-led war in Iraq, and criticized the peace movement that grew against it.Standing in front of the bridge’s wrought iron eagle in Berlin, Biermann recalled writing one of his most popular songs, “The Ballad of the Prussian Icarus,” after he and Ginsburg crossed the bridge in 1976 and took pictures in front of the bird. They made a bet over which of them would bring the iron creature into verse, Biermann recalled.That song, which became one of his best known, is typical Biermann, a lyrical critique of the East German state that notes:The barbed wire slowly grows deepInto the skin, the chest and boneInto the brain’s gray cellsAs tourist boats passed under its perch on the bridge, the same eagle looked out on a very different world. If Biermann now has an official place in German history, it’s because of the part he played in shaping it.Wolf Biermann: A Poet and Songwriter From GermanyThrough Jan. 14, 2024, at the German Historical Museum, in Berlin; dhm.de. More

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      Taylor Swift Revises a Lyric on ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Rauw Alejandro, First Aid Kit and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Taylor Swift, ‘Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)’“Speak Now,” from 2010, was Taylor Swift’s third album, and it is now the third to be rereleased as a rerecorded “Taylor’s Version.” But all along, the album was a declaration of independence: It was the first she wrote entirely on her own, as a rebuttal to critics — perhaps like the one she cuts down on the sugary, spicy “Mean” — who suggested that Swift’s co-writers had a bigger hand in her previous successes than she’d let on. “Speak Now” remains one of Swift’s best and most sharply penned albums: The line “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” from the chorus of the great opening track “Mine,” is often held up as an example of Swift’s lyricism at its most expertly concise.But “Speak Now” is an album of excesses, too; some of them are glorious — like the epic kiss-off “Dear John” or the romantic grandiosity of “Enchanted” — and some of them are the authentic artifacts of a 19-year-old’s somewhat myopic sensibility. “Mean,” which punches down, is guilty of that, and so is the acidic rocker “Better Than Revenge,” which has the most significantly revised lyrics in a “Taylor’s Version.” “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches,” Swift sings on this 2023 update, a clumsier and less direct lyric than the original: “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” The change is unfortunate, and perhaps the beginning of a slippery slope of self-editing. The previous lyric was sanctimonious and nasty, yes, but it was also a historical document of Swift’s point of view at 19, and that of many young women who, being raised in a misogynistic society, are taught to blame the other girl before they learn how to curse “the patriarchy.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFirst Aid Kit, ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn’First Aid Kit is a duo of Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies are so perfect they can seem unreal. They have thoroughly studied 1970s Laurel Canyon folk-pop, with its gleaming, precisely blended electric and acoustic guitars. “Everybody’s Got to Learn,” from the expanded version of the 2022 album “Palomino,” sounds like parental advice from Fleetwood Mac. Over earnest folk-rock guitars and what grows into a hefty girl-group beat, the song reflects on the missteps that lead to maturity — “The blues and the bliss/you’ll hit and you’ll miss” — and promises, “You’re gonna see this through.” JON PARELESPrince, ‘All a Share Together Now’The latest find from Prince’s vault is “All a Share Together Now,” a song he recorded in 2006 but never released in any form. Prince sings about generational responsibilities — “the debt of the ones before us must be paid” — in a taut, bare-bones funk workout built around a jumpy bass riff. Live drums kick the beat around and a note-bending guitar teases out terse licks that are simultaneously lead and rhythm. It’s a homily disguised as a jam. PARELESRauw Alejandro, ‘Cuando Baje el Sol’Rauw Alejandro’s new album, “Playa Saturno,” eases back on the electronic experiments of his 2022 album, “Saturno,” in favor of earthy, party-ready reggaeton. But in “Cuando Baje el Sol” (“When the Sun Goes Down”), Alejandro and his fellow producers complicate the reggaeton thump with plenty of spatial and sonic mischief. Sampled and warped vocals, echoey synthesizers, turntable scratching and eruptive percussion all ricochet around his promises of hot times after sunset. PARELESKaisa’s Machine, ‘Gravity’Is “Taking Shape” — the latest album by the bassist Kaisa Mäensivu and her quintet, Kaisa’s Machine — a journal, or a workbook? Original tunes like “Shadow Mind” (a listless ballad) and “Eat Dessert First” (the LP’s eager, clattery final track) bespeak a confessional urge, but they can’t help spotlighting Mäensivu’s conservatory chops and wily compositional tactics. When wizardry takes the wheel — especially in jazz, and especially today — the voice underneath it can end up muffled in the trunk. Mäensivu deserves credit for seeking a healthy balance. “Gravity” is the album’s only track without a piano, slimming down this band of young aces to just bass, drums, guitar and vibraphone. Moving at a fast, nine-beat clip, Mäensivu’s bass line squares up firmly in a minor key, easing you into a space of feeling before the tune’s harmonic center starts shifting around. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAnohni and the Johnsons, ‘Why Am I Alive Now?’The title is a plain-spoken survivor’s lament, ostensibly about living through a time of environmental collapse: “I don’t want to be witness,” Anohni wails, “seeing all of this duress, aching of our world.” But within the context of Anohni and the Johnsons’ piercing new album “My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross” — which features a photo of the band’s namesake, the gay activist Marsha P. Johnson, on its cover — that question is also haunted by the ghosts of the queer community. By the end of this loose, mournful soul song, Anohni finds a hopeful answer to that titular inquiry: She’s here to tell these stories, to draw attention to these causes, to sing this song. ZOLADZLittle Dragon featuring Damon Albarn, ‘Glow’Surrounded by swirling, twinkling, glimmering arpeggios, Little Dragon’s Yuki Nagano sings about sheer rapture: “Glowing in the dark to find streams of stars to taste.” Midway through, and inexplicably, Damon Albarn arrives from a different, bummed-out dimension, with apologies for being “Under the spell of the eyes that paralyze.” Having provided a little ballast, he vanishes in a download spiral and Nagano returns, still glowing and utterly unperturbed. PARELESFito Páez featuring Mon Laferte, ‘Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba’Fito Páez, Argentina’s most celebrated — and perpetually eccentric — rocker, decided to remake all the songs on his definitive 1992 album, “El Amor Después el Amor” (“Love After Love”), three decades later for the album “EADDA9223,” joined by duet partners including Elvis Costello, Nathy Peluso and Marisa Monte. “Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba” — a tale of passion and crime — used busy disco-funk guitar back in 1992. But the new version — trading vocals with the dynamic, torchy Chilean belter Mon Laferte — uncovers the retro bolero underlying the song. With reverb-laden guitar and a trumpet obbligato, Páez and Laferte revel in the drama together. PARELESTkay Maidza & Flume, ‘Silent Assassin’The Australian electronic music producer Flume usually juxtaposes bouncy, consonant chords with a little noise. But the track he brought to the Australian rapper Tkay Maidza is pure irritation: buzzes, distortion, wavery tones, a drone that bristles with dissonance. Maidza tops it with a speedy, shifty, percussive boast, racing through lines like “I’m a jigsaw, not a quick fix” and “I’m tactical, no attachments/I’m doing it for the passion.” From any angle, it’s combative. PARELESPJ Harvey, ‘Lwonesome Tonight’Polly Jean Harvey meticulously constructed a narrative, a sound and a language — based on the local dialect in Dorset, where she grew up — for “I Inside the Old World Dying,” her first album since 2016. The music is folky but fringed with electronics; her vocals are high and eerie, nearly disembodied. In “Lwonesome Tonight,” she sings about encountering a mystically charismatic figure: “Are you Elvis? Are you God?/Jesus sent you, win my trust,” she sings, and at the end she’s left wondering: “My love, will you come back again?” PARELESBrian Blade & the Fellowship Band, ‘God Be With You’Over the past quarter-century, Brian Blade’s Fellowship has come to feel more like a brotherhood than an ensemble, accruing a repertoire of original music that will stand the test of time along with an unmistakable sound: a mix of country, jazz and gospel that exudes a feeling of choral warmth, despite not using any vocals. But beyond that, they’ve stood up against (and basically outlived) a few insidious trends in jazz: When so many fine improvisers seemed be reconciling themselves to a future where the audience might become an afterthought, Blade and Fellowship had no time for that. The group’s fifth album, “Kings Highway,” begins with “Until We Meet Again,” a slowly seductive Blade original that makes reference to a William G. Tomer hymn; it ends with “God Be With You,” a short and elegant rendition of the Tomer piece itself. We can only hope that those valedictory titles aren’t telling us something about Fellowship’s future. RUSSONELLO More

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      Millions Danced Joyfully to Her Song. She Drew on Her Pain to Write It.

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      Nomcebo Zikode, the South African singer of the pandemic hit “Jerusalema” that inspired a global dance challenge, wrote the chorus while battling her own depression.It starts with a clap, and then the feet tap along to the beat: four times on each side, followed by a quick jump. As the melody rises, dancers dip low and twirl.It’s a dance easy enough for anyone to learn, and people all around the world have done so, with everyone from an urban dance crew in Angola to Franciscan nuns in Europe showing off their moves on social media.The “Jerusalema” dance, named for the South African hit song that inspired it, provided a moment of global joy during the lockdowns of the pandemic, a welcome distraction from the isolation and collective grief.But it was the chorus, a lamentation over a heavy bass beat, that was balm to millions. Sung in a low alto in isiZulu, one of the official languages of South Africa, audiences didn’t need to understand the song to be moved by it.The singer Nomcebo Nkwanyana, who goes by Nomcebo Zikode professionally, drew on her own intense pain when she wrote it.“Jerusalem is my home,” she sang. “Guard me. Walk with me. Do not leave me here.”After more than decade as an overlooked backing vocalist, and with her faith in music faltering, Ms. Zikode, 37, was in a dark place in 2019 when she wrote those words.Her manager, who is also her husband, insisted she write the lyrics to help her crowd out the voices in her head that were telling her to give up on music, and herself.Ms. Zikode, 37, was in a dark place when she wrote lyrics that would uplift millions.Alexia Webster for The New York Times“As if there’s a voice that says you must kill yourself,” she said, describing her depression at the time. “I remember talking to myself saying, ‘no, I can’t kill myself. I’ve got my kids to raise. I can’t, I can’t do that.’”She didn’t listen to the recording of the song until a day after it was made. As the bass began to reverberate through her car, everything went dark, she said, and she almost lost control of the vehicle. She pulled over, tears streaming down her face.“Even if you don’t believe it, this is my story,” she said. “I heard the voice saying to me, ‘Nomcebo, this is going to be a big song all over the world.’”And that prognostication soon proved true.In February 2020, a group of dancers in Angola uploaded a video showing off their choreography to the song, and challenging others to outdo them. As lockdowns were enforced just weeks later, the song was shared around the world.The global success of “Jerusalema” has taken Ms. Zikode on tour to Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. It also led to her being featured on the song “Bayethe,” which would win the Grammy award for Best Global Music Performance earlier this year.But while “Jerusalema” has brought her global renown, she has had to fight to earn any financial reward from it and to be recognized as part of its creative force.She sued her record label, and a settlement in December called for her to receive a percentage of the song’s royalties and to be allowed to audit the books of the label, Open Mic Productions, that owns the song.At least as important, the agreement also states that Ms. Zikode must be cited as the song’s “primary artist” alongside Kgaogelo Moagi, more commonly known as Master KG, the producer behind the instrumental track on “Jerusalema.”But even this victory in South Africa’s male-dominated music industry comes with significant caveats: For one, Master KG is receiving a higher percentage of royalties. And Ms. Zikode said she has yet to see payment. “I’m still waiting for my money,” she said.Open Mic did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but in a statement put out after her Grammy win, the label said: “She is a very talented artist and we welcome this agreement as a progressive resolution.”The global success of “Jerusalema” has taken Ms. Zikode on tour to Europe, the Caribbean and the United States.Alexia Webster for The New York TimesStruggles with money are nothing new to her.The youngest of four children born in a polygamous marriage, Ms. Zikode’s father died when she was young and her mother, the third wife, was left destitute. Desperate, her mother let a church outside Hammarsdale, a small town in South Africa’s eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, take her daughter in for four years.There, she slept on bunk beds among rows of other children. She sewed her own clothes and helped to clean the dormitories. The church choir was a solace, but she sorely missed home until she was able to return in the 10th grade.Her mother sold maize or bartered what vegetables she could grow for secondhand clothes. The neighbors who would ask the young Ms. Zikode to sing for them would feed her and take her in for a few nights as her mother struggled.When she was old enough, Ms. Zikode learned to braid other people’s hair to earn some money, but remembers self-consciously pressing her elbows to her side, for fear that her customers would smell that she could not afford deodorant.But what she really wanted was to sing, and she got her break at an open-call audition. She spent years singing backup for gospel stars, sharing crowded apartments with other backing vocalists. When gigs dried up, she took computer classes as a career backup plan.Ms Zikode’s first major South African hit came in 2017 when she sang vocals on the song “Emazulwini” for a well-known house music producer and D.J., Frederick Ganyani Tshabalala. But what had seemed like a long-awaited break turned into a letdown when DJ Ganyani, as he is known, did all he could, she said, to prevent her from performing the song live on her own.“They try by all means to suppress the singers,” Ms. Zikode said of the D.J.s and producers who hold most of the power in South Africa’s music industry.DJ Ganyani did not respond to requests for comment.Hoping a record label would better protect her rights, Ms. Zikode signed with Open Mic, but once the deal was inked, the label went quiet, she said, and she was left hustling to record her debut album.Feeling abandoned by the record company, her husband and manager, Selwyn Fraser, sent messages to other artists, masquerading as his wife on Instagram and Twitter, trying to get bigger names to work with her.This outreach campaign connected Ms. Zikode with Master KG and resulted in “Jerusalema.”It’s not only the song that has made her a household name in South Africa, but also her very public fight for her royalties and recognition, in the courts and on social media, said Kgopolo Mphela, a South African entertainment commentator.“She’s coming across as the hero, or the underdog, taking on Goliath,” Mr. Mphela said.For all her struggles with reaping the monetary benefits of “Jerusalema,” Ms. Zikode’s musical career has made her financially comfortable and she now has a music publishing deal with a division of Sony Music.Her 17-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son want for nothing, she said. She and her husband renovated their home, adding an in-house studio.Ms. Zikode can also bask in the accolades that have come with her Grammy win for “Bayethe.”Ms. Zikode won a Grammy for “Bayethe,” which she performed with two other South Africans, the flutist Wouter Kellerman and the performer-producer Zakes Bantwini.Alexia Webster for The New York TimesOn a chilly April night in Johannesburg, in the Grammy’s afterglow, Ms. Zikode stepped out of a borrowed Bentley at an event to celebrate South Africans who have achieved international success.As she walked the red carpet, determined to own the moment, she granted every interview request, whether from the national broadcaster or a TikTok influencer. Later that night, she accepted two checks, one for herself and one for a charity she founded that helps impoverished young women.When she took the stage to perform the song that made her famous, she hiked up her gown to dance the “Jerusalema.” More

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      At Glamorous French Festivals, Poverty Is Only Onstage

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      The opening productions of the Avignon and Aix-en-Provence Festivals brought tales of the down-and-out to well-heeled spectators. It got awkward.Two events tower over France’s summer festival season each July, held in cities less than 50 miles apart. One, the Avignon Festival, is a bustling, overcrowded celebration of theater; the other, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, offers a more genteel operatic lineup.This week, well-heeled audiences sat down to opening productions at both festivals. Aix, in lieu of opera singers, unusually welcomed actors from the Comédie-Française, France’s most storied theater troupe, for “The Threepenny Opera,” directed by Thomas Ostermeier; in Avignon, the theater collective In Vitro was supplemented with some new faces for Julie Deliquet’s “Welfare.”Both productions touched on a subject that was an awkward fit for those affluent crowds: poverty.Since France has seen the cost of living rise quickly over the past year, it might have felt like an appropriate nod to the times. Yet few things are trickier onstage than asking actors — a profession in which the working class is hardly well-represented — to act “poor.”In the event, the Comédie-Française fares better than Deliquet’s actors, if only because Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 “The Threepenny Opera” is a riotous satire. Its amoral criminals and beggars are over-the-top inventions, and Ostermeier’s visually subdued production derives most of its pleasures from letting the cast’s superb talents loose.“Welfare” is another matter. It is a close adaptation of a searing 1975 documentary by Frederick Wiseman, who brought his cameras to a New York welfare center and bore witness as claimants dealt desperately with a rigid system. Wiseman himself long wanted to see the material translated onto the stage, and brought the idea to Deliquet, the director of the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe in Saint-Denis, France.Yet “Welfare,” which shared the opening honors in Avignon with a dance production, Bintou Dembélé’s “G.R.O.O.V.E.,” looks as absurd onstage as it is affecting on-screen. No one involved seems to have realized the insurmountable issue: Re-enacting the hardships of real people with performers turns those people into characters, so their stories lose the ring of truth. Fostering the same empathy takes more work, but here, Deliquet seems hesitant to step in.It doesn’t help that the unaffected black-and-white cinematography of Wiseman’s film has been replaced here with a technicolor recreation of a school gymnasium, including a bright teal floor that stretches across the vast outdoor stage of the Cour d’Honneur, Avignon’s most imposing performance venue. It’s as if the sitcom “That 70s Show” had opted to tackle welfare benefits, complete with well-cut, visibly new costumes. (Nothing says “my children are about to starve” like a neatly placed red beret.)The stories told in Wiseman’s film are loosely reorganized here into a day in the life of a welfare center, as case workers deal with one exasperated claimant after the next. One man lost his home in a fire. A couple of recovering addicts are trying to get their lives back on track. A heavily pregnant woman is asked for medical proof of her condition, while the husband of an older lady is withholding her checks.There are comedic moments in the film, but in Deliquet’s stage version, they start to feel involuntarily farcical. The energetic delivery of the cast may be because they need to project in the cavernous space, which holds around 2,000 spectators. The actors playing the claimants use their moments in the spotlight to play up the injustice of the system, instead of simply exemplifying it, as Wiseman’s subjects did so effectively.“Welfare” means well, and it’s easy to see why the new director of the Avignon Festival, Tiago Rodrigues, opted to put the project in a prestigious spot. It acts as a statement of change after the lumbering tenure of his predecessor, Olivier Py, and Deliquet is only the second woman director to receive a Cour d’Honneur slot in the 76-year history of the Avignon Festival.Deliquet deserves it: She is one of France’s top theater-makers, with a string of successes to her name. In “Welfare,” however, she is too respectful of Wiseman’s source material. Some directors, like Alexander Zeldin with his “Inequalities” trilogy, have found the right tone in recent years to tackle underprivileged lives, but “Welfare” looks as if it is playing at poverty.Christian Hecq and Véronique Vella in Thomas Ostermeier’s “The Threepenny Opera,” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.Jean-Louis FernandezIn Aix, “The Threepenny Opera” may not be an unqualified triumph for Ostermeier, its German director, but at least the show’s roll-call of lowlife misfits is luxuriously cast, and with help from Alexandre Pateau’s sharp new French translation, comes across as it was presumably intended: wry, charismatic, brilliantly individual.Christian Hecq and Véronique Vella are exuberantly, wackily brilliant as the shallow Mr. and Mrs. Peachum, who set out to take down the notorious criminal Macheath for eloping with their daughter Polly. Not all the actors are equally fine singers, so Vella’s powerful voice is an asset here. So are the vocal talents of Marie Oppert, a recent recruit to the Comédie-Française troupe and a trained singer who, in the role of Polly, turned “Pirate Jenny” into a showstopping number.Well-crafted scenes come thick and fast in the first half, but the energy tails off later. It’s as if Ostermeier, directing for the first time in an operatic context, stopped short of going truly big. The set designs are minimalistic: four mics downstage, a black platform behind the actors and a few screens above it that show repetitive Russian constructivism-inspired collages. On the main stage of the Comédie-Française in Paris, where the production will transfer in the fall, the company could simply repurpose the very similar set of Ivo van Hove’s 2022 “Tartuffe.”Maxime Pascal conducts his own ensemble, Le Balcon, who play off the actors well: At one point, a musician even caught a mic Benjamin Lavernhe — a whimsical highlight as the corrupt policeman Tiger Brown — had inadvertently dropped into the pit. Pascal’s reorchestration, adding electronic instruments, lent an intriguing edge to the biting momentum of Weill’s score.As in Avignon, the production was staged on an open-air stage of historical significance, in the courtyard of the Palais de l’Archevêché, where the festival was born in 1948. While it is reasonably sized compared to the Cour d’Honneur, it’s a prestigious venue, where audience members pay up to $180 for the privilege of seeing “The Threepenny Opera.”As with “Welfare,” there is whiplash in watching impoverished characters in such rarefied company. But that’s the reality of prestige theater today. More

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      For Filipino Audiences, ‘Here Lies Love’ Offers Emotional Rip Currents

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      The disco balls were spinning, the club music was pulsing, and on the dance floor, several Filipino audience members were near tears.It was a Saturday night, and at the Broadway Theater, “Here Lies Love,” the David Byrne-Fatboy Slim musical about the rise and fall of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, the former first couple of the Philippines, was preparing for its Broadway opening on July 20. In previews, it has drawn a growing stream of Filipino American theatergoers, reeled in by the chance to see their national — and in some cases, their family — history told onstage, close enough for them to literally touch.“I’ve never been in a play where I have a personal connection” to the story, said Earl Delfin, a 35-year-old Manhattanite. “I felt represented on a New York stage for the first time.”He got emotional in the opening scenes, he added. “And of course I danced.”Arielle Jacobs as Imelda Marcos, whose journey from beauty pageant contestant to wife of a despot is the focus of the show.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“Here Lies Love,” which opened to critical raves and sold-out crowds at the Public Theater downtown in 2013, arrives on Broadway after sojourns in London and Seattle, each time expanding its house and fine tuning its immersive staging. But only now has it added a fully Filipino cast — the first-ever on Broadway, organizers say. Also new are a cadre of Filipino producers, including the Tony winner Lea Salonga, the Pulitzer-winning writer Jose Antonio Vargas, the comedian Jo Koy and the Grammy-winning musician H.E.R., along with investors from Manila.“It only felt responsible, to fully engage with the motherland,” said the costume designer and creative consultant Clint Ramos, a native of Cebu, Philippines, who has worked on the show since its inception. He is now also a producer.“Having cultural capital from the motherland, but also financial capital from the motherland, it feels like the authorship and ownership of the show are holding hands very tightly. And that’s a great feeling,” he said.The narrative framework of the show has not changed: It still harnesses the gloss of a discothèque — as first lady, Imelda was a denizen of Studio 54 — to reflect the Marcoses’ dizzying rise to power, and the glittery allure of privilege and wealth that led the couple to spend their nation into massive debt, to live lavishly as their constituents suffered.The production has a cultural and community liaison who plans Filipino community events; even on regular nights, the show attracts attendees who had direct dealings with the Marcos and Aquino clans, organizers said.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesArielle Jacobs, a new addition to the cast, plays Imelda, whose journey from naïve beauty pageant contestant to sentimental megalomaniac — “Why Don’t You Love Me?” goes a signature song — is the focus of the story. Jose Llana reprises Ferdinand from the Public; his path from charismatic leader to presidential despot is shorter. “If they want to boo Marcos,” Llana said of audiences, “then I think I did my job right.”There is no book; the action is driven by Byrne’s soaring tunes (with beats by Fatboy Slim) and by the exuberant choreography of Annie-B Parson, Byrne’s frequent collaborator. A D.J. (Moses Villarama) acts as an emcee.Every day, Ramos said, as the creative team worked out the massive lighting rigs and costume transitions, they also asked the question: “Are we looking at history correctly here?”The challenge — engineered by Byrne, who hoped that the nightlife setting would give audiences a taste of the limitlessness of power — is formidable. “How do you combine joy with tragedy?” said Alex Timbers, the director, in a joint interview with Ramos.In place of a stage, the Broadway Theater was redesigned to create a dance club. Moving platforms carry the performers, with standing theatergoers surrounding them on the floor; catwalks bring the actors within arms reach for those seated above. The choreography encourages audience members to interact with the cast, hip-swiveling beside them in line dances, and playing the part of the faithful at political rallies — moments of civilian joy and swept-along fellowship that are broadcast on giant screens around the space, alongside darker, real news footage and transcripts.Audience members making the Laban sign, a Filipino hand gesture popularized by Ninoy Aquino, Ferdinand Marcos’s chief political rival.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesElizer Caballero, a fan who came from San Francisco, was practically vibrating with delight as he sang and bopped along to the score. The experience of being surrounded by the actors as they told this native story was almost surreal — he felt like part of the show — “but it’s also very poignant,” he said. “Especially for a Filipino American, it’s best to be on the floor. It adds more depth.”An untranslated moment when Imelda curses at Ferdinand in Tagalog has gotten a more consistent laugh on Broadway than it ever did downtown, cast members said. (The production has a cultural and community liaison, Giselle Töngi, who plans Filipino community events; even on regular nights, it attracted attendees who had direct dealings with the Marcos and Aquino clans, organizers said.)Salonga, the first Asian woman to win a Tony (in 1991, for “Miss Saigon”) is stepping in as Aurora Aquino, the mother of Benigno Aquino Jr., Ferdinand’s chief political rival, in a guest spot this summer. It is the first time in her long career she has played a role written as Filipina.Seeing a production of “Here Lies Love” a few years ago surfaced visceral memories of her childhood in Manila, during the Marcoses’ reign. Performing in it felt overwhelming. “I’m slamming into history,” Salonga said.Researching the part, she spoke to friends in the Aquino family. (Corazon C. Aquino, Benigno’s widow, succeeded Marcos as president.) In rehearsals for her number, she thought, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to keep my emotions from overtaking me as I try to sing the song?” she said in a phone interview. “I had friends texting me, saying, How on earth are you going to keep from crying when you do this?”Attendees of Filipino descent have described experiencing an intense personal connection at seeing their history depicted onstage.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesJustin J Wee for The New York TimesFor second-generation Filipino Americans, whose families prioritized assimilation, learning the story of their homeland has been a different kind of revelation. “Growing up, the only thing I really knew about Imelda was her shoe collection,” Jacobs said. “Getting in touch with this part of the Filipino culture, and the resilience of the Filipino people — all of that has been an awakening for me.”“Here Lies Love” is arriving on Broadway in a political and social landscape that’s vastly shifted since its premiere in the Obama era. The rapid unraveling of democracy it depicts is close at hand, the world over, Timbers and Ramos noted. Ferdinand’s habit of exaggerating or outright fabricating his successes is part of the autocrat playbook. Even his recorded dalliances with a starlet have a familiar ring. Ferdinand and Imelda’s son, known as Bongbong, is currently president of the Philippines. (After her husband’s death in 1989, Imelda, now 94, returned to politics and served three terms as a congresswoman.)Developing the project with Byrne, the protean former Talking Head, the creative team took pains not to glamorize Ferdinand, who imposed martial law from 1972 to 1981, and whose regime carried out mass arrests and silenced critics. The assassination of Aquino, at the airport when he returned from exile in the U.S. in 1983, served as a turning point to galvanize opposition against the Marcoses, and is an emotional rip current in “Here Lies Love.”In previews, it has drawn a growing stream of Filipino American theatergoers.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesConrad Ricamora, who has played the boyish Aquino (known as Ninoy) in three of the four productions, understood his legacy quickly. On Broadway, audiences make the Laban sign — a hand gesture like an inverted L; the word means “fight” — that Ninoy popularized. “If you look at people who do heroic things throughout history, they are only able to do them because they are deeply in touch with their humanity and the humanity of others,” Ricamora said.The show has still been criticized for putting a couple known for their ruthless corruption in the spotlight, and for minimizing Imelda’s political prowess. (A website aims to contextualize the country’s history.) In a statement, the producers said their new, binational group came together “in a time of necessary and welcome assessment of who tells what stories,” and that having people with lived experiences of this era further imbued the show “with authenticity.”For the nearly two dozen cast members — eight of whom are making their Broadway debuts — it is a rare chance to commune, and revisit, together, a past that is hardly in the rearview mirror for some of them.Ramos calls himself “a martial law baby,” raised under Marcos’s most brutal period. He was also there in February 1986, a school kid “on top of a tank,” he said, when the four-day protests known as the People Power Revolution swept the couple out of office, peacefully. “I experienced the whole arc of the regime,” he said. He came to the U.S. in the late ’90s, for grad school.Llana’s family landed in New York in 1979, when he was 3; his parents were student activists who had fled martial law. “Me being a part of this show for the past 10 years has really been cathartic,” he said, “because it wasn’t something necessarily that my parents talked about.”The choreography encourages audience members to interact with the cast, hip-swiveling beside them in line dances, and playing the part of the faithful at political rallies.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesWhen he first heard about the show, he hoped to play Aquino: “I thought nothing would make my parents prouder.” Instead he was asked to read for Ferdinand. It was, he said, an awkward conversation with his family when he got the part, and he made it known to the creative team that he would walk away if the production flattered a dictator.Still, he said, as an actor he needs to find the humanity in his characters. “And I think maybe that’s where sometimes people start criticizing us, is that we’re humanizing them. But you have to humanize people if you want to hold them accountable.”Llana’s castmates call him “kuya,” which means older brother or older male cousin in Tagalog — a term of endearment. For him, even after so many years with the show, the addition of Filipino producers was deeply meaningful. “It made me feel safe,” he said, “knowing that the Filipinos were in charge, that we could just do our jobs” as artists.Like Salonga, he has played a variety of ethnicities, just about none of them Filipino.“I feel like I owe all of those ethnicities an apology — like, I’m sorry I got cast,” Salonga said. “But things were very different at the time.”Even putting a complex, layered story like this on Broadway — staged like a dance party, no less — could serve as inspiration and empowerment, she hoped. “I want to see other communities of color be able to look at ‘Here Lies Love’ and go, ‘We can do that. We have these stories that we are able to tell. We are going to be able to do this.’” More

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      A Lot of Opera Is Now Streaming. Here’s Where to Start.

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      Naxos, which collects videos of productions throughout Europe, has begun to make its catalog available on Amazon Prime Video.Opera isn’t so different from film and television in its glut of streaming platforms — which can be just as challenging, and expensive, to navigate.Established entities like Medici.tv and Met Opera’s On Demand run on subscription models. Deutsche Grammophon’s Stage+ works similarly, and is the only platform for streaming the most recent staging of Wagner’s “Ring” from his home court at the Bayreuth Festival. Building your own digital library of opera on video is more frustrating. The Met, for example, only allows nonsubscribers to rent, but not purchase, individual productions for $4.99.Enter the Naxos label, which has been smartly acquiring the rights to a wide variety of opera productions in recent years and releasing video recordings on DVD and Blu-ray. And now that catalog, which includes shows from Europe’s major houses, is beginning to emerge for digital purchase ($19.99) and rental ($5.99) on Amazon Prime Video. Here are five of Naxos’s best offerings.‘Tosca’ (Dutch National Opera, 2022)Barrie Kosky is one of the most sought-after directors on the international circuit. He’s made his name with comedic and serious rarities alike, but this recent take on Puccini’s bloody shocker shows that his punchy style can work well with the classics, too.There is a notable lack of scenic decoration during the first act’s machinations and romances; we don’t even see what the painter Cavaradossi is working on. But Kosky caps the act with an imagistic coup — and it’s as potent a portrait of Scarpia’s villainy as you’ll find anywhere. Urgently conducted by Lorenzo Viotti and well sung by a youthful cast, Puccini’s thriller here moves with a swiftness that anticipates the slasher flick. And it comes in under two hours.‘Atys’ (Opéra Comique, 2011)Now for something luxurious from the French Baroque. The mythological story told here, with a score by Jean-Baptiste Lully, so entranced Louis XIV that his affection became synonymous with the music. Then the work largely dropped into obscurity, until a 1980s production at the Comique put it back on the map. And in 2011, when a wealthy philanthropist paid for an international touring revival of this sturdy staging, high-definition cameras were ready.The conductor William Christie and his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, perform the score with a courtly edge that enhances the power (and vengefulness) of Stéphanie d’Oustrac’s take on the goddess Cybèle. And Christie’s players likewise lend a glow to the lovestruck (or mad) exultations present in Bernard Richter’s portrayal of the title character.Sara Jakubiak and Josef Wagner in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane.”Monika Rittershaus‘Das Wunder der Heliane’ (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2018)Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s operas have generally struggled to catch on in the repertory, even after getting a quick start during the composer’s starry, youthful ascent in the 1920s. But in recent years, we’ve been gifted with sumptuous recordings of the composer’s lush music dramas — including Simon Stone’s production of “Die Tote Stadt” (documented on a Blu-ray from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, but not yet streaming).“Das Wunder der Heliane” is even better than Korngold’s rightly famous film scores that followed his move the United States and went on to influence the likes of John Williams. This recording is nearly three hours of orchestral delirium, thanks to the work of the Deutche Oper’s orchestra, under Marc Albrecht. Also no slouch: the American soprano Sara Jakubiak, who proves blazing in the title role. The staging is spare, but the music and acting crackle.‘Mathis der Maler’ (Theater an der Wien, 2012)First came Paul Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony — a nearly half-hour work that drew the ire of Third Reich, and the defense of Wilhelm Furtwängler. Then came the full opera, which premiered in Switzerland in 1938. The stage show winningly incorporates the music of the symphony throughout, but has never dislodged the concert piece in the repertoire, in part because of the prohibitive cost of staging a three-hour opera about the role of art in wartime.In Hindemith’s libretto, the title painter has to choose whether to engage in the 16th-century’s “Peasant’s War.” The seriousness of the subject matter may seem forbidding, but the imagination of Hindemith’s sonic language — dissonant at times, but always rapturous and conceived with care — is so riveting, it actually sells the philosophical material. A straightforward but memorable staging by Keith Warner is likely the only chance many will have to see this work, so its inclusion in Naxos’s catalog is a cause for celebration.Tansel Akzeybek and Vera-Lotte Boecker in Jaromir Weinberger’s “Frühlingsstürme.”Oliver Becker‘Frühlingsstürme’ (Komische Oper, 2020)Now how about an immersion in Weimar operetta? Here, you can take in the last operetta to open during the Weimar Republic, which premiered in January 1933, soon before Nazis did their best to erase a theatrical tradition that was Jewish, gender-fluid and influenced by Black American music of the period.Once again, Barrie Kosky is the director. This was hardly the best operetta production during his long and celebrated decade of leadership at the Komische Oper. It’s not even the best show by Jaromir Weinberger that the theater has put on. (That would be “Schwanda the Bagpiper,” as directed by Andreas Homoki in 2022.)But “Frühlingsstürme” remains a valuable document of Kosky’s efforts to revive Weimar-era works. His playful staging brings a snazzy panache to the comic reversals of fortune and mistaken-identity gambits. You can listen to excerpts that a star singer like Jonas Kaufmann is keen to include in a show-tunes sampler, but the entire show has a fizzy intoxication that excerpts can’t match. More

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      Coco Lee, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and ‘Mulan’ Singer, Dies at 48

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      A pop star across Asia by her early 20s, Ms. Lee reached international recognition with an Oscar-nominated song in 2001.Coco Lee, a Chinese American singer and songwriter best known for performing an Oscar-nominated song in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” died on Wednesday. She was 48.The cause was suicide, according to a statement from her sisters, Carol and Nancy Lee, who did not say where she died. Ms. Lee was taken to a hospital on Sunday after she attempted suicide at her home, they said.“Coco had been suffering from depression for a few years but her condition deteriorated drastically over the last few months,” her sisters wrote. “Although Coco sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her.”Ms. Lee had built a successful career as a pop singer in Asia, but she was best known to American audiences for singing the song “A Love Before Time” in the 2000 film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The song was nominated for an Oscar in the best new original song category, and she performed it in front of a television audience of millions at the Academy Awards ceremony in March 2001.“Combining the flavor and texture of Eastern music with the orchestral color and sensitive lyrics of Western culture, the magic of this stunningly beautiful film is truly realized in this evocative love ballad,” the actress Julia Stiles said as she introduced Ms. Lee’s performance.Her career as a recording artist began after she finished as the runner-up in a singing competition hosted by the television broadcaster TVB in Hong Kong in 1993, shortly after she graduated from high school. Ms. Lee entered the competition on a whim, she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, and stumbled upon success.“I was timid as a kid,” she said. “I would hide in the bathroom and sing in the shower. I always predicted my older sister Nancy would be the singer. She’s beautiful, talented and she’s got nice legs. I had no idea it would be me.”But being selected as runner-up in the TVB contest led to the release of her debut album with a Taiwanese record label in 1994. “My goal in the singing business is not to stay in one place,” she told a reporter for The South China Morning Post in 1997, saying that she wanted to work in Asia and the U.S.In 1999, Ms. Lee released her first full English language album, “Just No Other Way,” which featured pop and R&B songs. One track, “Before I Fall In Love,” was included on the soundtrack for the Julia Roberts film “Runaway Bride.”Ms. Lee’s career also expanded beyond music. She voiced the lead character in the Mandarin version of Disney’s 1998 animated film “Mulan,” in addition to singing the movie’s theme song, “Reflection.”Ms. Lee, who was born on Jan. 17, 1975, in Hong Kong, moved to the United States and attended middle and high school in San Francisco, where she was crowned Miss Teen Chinatown in 1991. She briefly attended the University of California at Irvine, intending to study biology and become a doctor, but dropped out after her freshman year, she told The Chronicle.In their statement, Ms. Lee’s sisters noted that this year marked the 30th anniversary of the launch of her accomplished singing career. Ms. Lee was “known to have worked tirelessly to open up a new world for Chinese singers in the international music scene,” they wrote, highlighting her “excellent live performances.”In addition to her sisters, Ms. Lee’s survivors include her husband, Bruce Rockowitz, and two stepdaughters. A complete list was not immediately available.Her last single, called “Tragic,” was released in February. In a post to her social media at the end of 2022, Ms. Lee acknowledged having had an “incredibly difficult year” but encouraged her followers to spread positivity and “be an influential figure to inspire people.”If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources. More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Olivia Rodrigo Returns, Fall Out Boy Denies History

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The new single by Olivia Rodrigo, “Vampire,” and a discussion of the directions her career may be takingThe Grimace Shake memes dominating TikTok and Instagram, and the “Barbie”/”Oppenheimer” corporate meme face-offA question about the legacy of “The Hills”Fall Out Boy’s updating of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”New songs from Sampha and VeezeAnd trying the Grimace Shake for snack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More