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      The Pains and Privileges of Staging Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’

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      Three artists preparing a new production of this classic at the Metropolitan Opera discuss what makes it so difficult yet satisfying.There are operas that are challenging for their sheer technical demands — the density of Berg’s “Lulu” or the heroic immensity of Wagner epics. And then there are those that seem simple but are actually some of the most difficult.In that second category fall Mozart’s three collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte — “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Don Giovanni” and “Così Fan Tutte” — works of slippery psychology, frank humanity and, crucially, crystalline construction that punishes any mistake onstage or in the orchestra pit.Particularly tough to stage is “Don Giovanni,” which returns to the Metropolitan Opera in a new production on May 5, with Peter Mattei in the title role. Its score runs nearly three hours with major events at the beginning and end — Giovanni murders the father of a woman he nearly rapes, then later is dragged to hell — but little in between other than characters repeating mistakes, as if in loops of unhealthy habits.Without the hand of a confident director, the story rapidly sags. And, in true operatic fashion, its telling is equally dependent on a conductor’s momentum, and actorly, complex expression from the singers. When all the pieces fall into place, “Don Giovanni” unfurls with a sublime, graceful beauty that a casual listener might find straightforward, even light.But, the conductor Nathalie Stutzmann said, “the simpler this opera sounds, the more difficult it is to create.” As she prepares to open the Met’s new “Don Giovanni,” she and two other members of its team — Ivo van Hove, the director, and Ying Fang, a leading Mozart soprano who stars as Zerlina — discussed the work’s challenges and gifts. Here are edited excerpts from those conversations.Ivo van Hove“This man has been idolized as a libertine — his mission is “Viva la libertà” — but his own freedom, not the freedom of other people,” said van Hove.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesI’ve seen some famous productions. There was Peter Brook in 1984, with Peter Mattei; it was a minimalist staging but very powerful. I’ve seen Michael Haneke’s in Paris, and that was modern, with Don Giovanni as the C.E.O. of a big firm. And I’ve seen another one in Salzburg by my idol, Patrice Chéreau, whose work I used to see in Paris all the time when I was young, with my little car and no money, driving back after the show was over.A challenge is that it’s very long. The first act is sharp as a knife, and the second is almost repeating the things we have seen, but developing them deeper. And that’s where it gets even more challenging — there are these buffa parts, that even those huge directors that I’ve seen fail at. They get lost in there. If you start to do comedy, it doesn’t work; then it’s about nothing. You have to deepen the emotions, not play it light or funny, which is not really what it is anyway.My starting point was something that people often forget: The original title was “Il Dissoluto Punito, Ossia il Don Giovanni” [“The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni”]. When I saw this title, a lot of doors opened. Mozart had a clear point of view on the character. I had always found it a bit difficult to accept that Donna Anna is a little bit in love with him while she’s raped in the first scene, and then a few minutes later he kills, without any reason, her father. This man has been idolized as a libertine — his mission is “Viva la libertà” — but his own freedom, not the freedom of other people. “Don Giovanni” became for me suddenly a very contemporary opera.When I studied the score and the text, I discovered that it talks about power structures in our society: Don Giovanni, servants like Leporello, but also the farmers’ community in Masetto. Don Giovanni seduces Masetto’s fiancée, Zerlina, with the promise of a fabulous future of riches and a house, and all these things. Then there’s the sexual, emotional dominance of Donna Elvira; these power structures are about control at the detriment of others, and Don Giovanni is at the top while the others resist him.And the libretto is so well written, the characters are all complex and ambivalent individuals. They are a bit like Ingmar Bergman characters: neither good nor bad, just human. So, all of this becomes almost like a description of the times we live in.The ending can be very difficult, but I wanted Don Giovanni to go to hell, and burn in hell forever. What we show is something you don’t expect. But he, as a person, is a problem that has to be dealt with. And with this ending, now that he is dealt with, everybody can move on with their lives. They have closure. It is actually a conventional, happy ending. But I think that is necessary: You see them taking up daily life, as if they were starting again.Nathalie Stutzmann“My idea is to make it really alive, and very much about the story,” Stutzmann said.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMozart is a kind of doctor for any singer or musician’s playing: Every note that is not right, every dynamic, every articulation, every balance is hearable immediately. Everything that you can cover in later Romantic music — you can hide much more in Wagner — you can’t with Mozart.This orchestration in “Don Giovanni” is so precise. I’ve never seen in Mozart so many fortepiano dynamics; it’s abrupt and a permanent change of color. Which is interesting, but also tiring and very hard to play for three hours. You can never relax. It is a nonstop race — a race that goes to the abyss at the end.The arc of it is already in the first measure of the overture. Those notes are the abyss; you have them again at the end. So you have to build the overture so that people understand. Then there is everything in between.There is the party, which is a virtuoso moment for the orchestra and singers. A lot is connected to the words, the phrasing, but you cannot do that if you are singing every note égal. You don’t have time. So, you have to respect the appoggio [breath support] of the language, and you have to be super strict with the rhythm. When it’s not precise, it’s like a sugar crash. But when it is, it works like a Swiss clock.I’ll never forget a phrase that I read in a book: Mozart said, one of the most difficult, important and crucial things to realize in playing my music is simply the right tempo. In this opera, it’s one key for me. The phrasing seems simple, but the realization is incredibly difficult. The pulse needs to be organic, and one thing needs to be related to the next.There are many places where we need to make a connection; for me that is the recitativo. My idea is to make it really alive, and very much about the story. I also include the pianoforte instrument in the arias, sometimes, for joyful moments — like the kisses of Zerlina, a little bit in the spirit of Mozart, what he would do.What I try to achieve is less of a gap between the recitativo moments and the arias. Typically at this time, the story was told by the recitativo, and the aria described the feeling. But in this opera, the recitativo has so many stories, while the arias are also telling them. It’s a very modern opera in that respect.Ying Fang“To interpret this, you have to be faithful to what Mozart has already written,” Fang said.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWhen you sing the music right, Mozart is like medicine, a balm for the voice. It’s indescribably beautiful, and just so genius. But it can be deceptive. It sounds very simple and effortless, but it takes a lot of hard work to achieve that.You have to have perfect legato, and perfect breath control, to get through a lot of long phrases. Mozart also writes runs with crazy coloratura, as well as some dramatic moments. To do all that requires secure technique. It’s very different from verismo, or Verdi. Clarity and purity: When you’re singing Mozart’s music, you have to use particular muscles to be flexible yet keep the purity of the tone. This is all a testament of healthy, and good, technique.Mostly in the recitatives, Zerlina gets more dramatic. In the scene right before “Batti, batti,” when she goes back to Masetto after almost being seduced by Don Giovanni, she displays her capability in dealing with Masetto, saying: “What, you don’t believe me? Then kill me. Please, let’s just make peace.” It’s completely human, and so relatable. That’s another thing about these roles; you can see yourself, and you know you could be that person.But to interpret this, you have to be faithful to what Mozart has already written. He is a great vocal composer; a lot of things are already written into the score, stressed in how the language is expressed. If you follow that, the emotions speak for themselves. So, the interpretation has to be a little more strict, but it should seem effortless.The hard work to do that is in the preparation. You’ve got to know other people’s lines, and be aware and listen to whatever is happening around you. Once you know all that, everything is clear, and you can stop thinking too much and just enjoy being in your character. Then, the beauty of it is just so satisfying. It really is one of the greatest joys. More

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      Review: Jonathon Heyward Debuts With the Philharmonic

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      Jonathon Heyward, the incoming, barrier-breaking music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, leads the New York Philharmonic this week.On paper, this week’s New York Philharmonic program had plenty going for it: balance, an up-and-coming conductor, an established soloist. But at David Geffen Hall on Thursday, the concert was only sometimes on the verge of grand, and just as often one or two kindling sticks short of a true fire.Still, the show provided an opportunity to catch the rising star Jonathon Heyward, who was making his Philharmonic debut, filling in for Karina Canellakis. In a few months, he will become the first Black music director of the Baltimore Symphony. And, from the start of Thursday’s performance, his reputation for dramatic feeling and attention to dynamics seemed to be well earned.Heyward drew dynamism from the orchestra, without any recourse to stentorian volume, in the opening minutes of Zosha Di Castri’s “Lineage,” an 11-minute piece from 2013. Like some of her works on the recent portrait album “Tachitipo,” this one derives momentum from hairpin turns that link together drone-ish states and startling streams of motivic activity. But toward the end of the work, in some hushed moments of still-busy writing, the Philharmonic’s interpretation slackened — sounding tentative, or short of full commitment.

      Tachitipo by Zosha Di CastriSomething similar transpired during Brahms’s lengthy and majestic Violin Concerto, which followed. Initially, Heyward had the full attention of the Philharmonic players. During the opening movement, he subtly shaped a dramatic pause not long before the entrance of the soloist, Christian Tetzlaff; the orchestra responded with tactile precision to his dramatic, yet not too mannered, method of navigating the transition.Tetzlaff‌ was as impressive here as on a recent recording of this piece on the Ondine ‌label; though his approach was obviously well-drilled in advance, he also proved sensitive here to Heyward’s beat. And his expert handling of Joseph Joachim’s first-movement cadenza — with playing that varied in its timbral effects, from rough-hewn to silvery to robustly expressive — showed an invention that had been missing for a stretch of time in the broader ensemble playing.Sometimes, Tetzlaff seemed to toss off a line reading, appearing none too studied, but in service of setting up explosive precision. A bit of that moment-to-moment interpretive sensibility in the surrounding orchestral material might have proved equally thrilling.Thankfully, after intermission, a greater nimbleness prevailed during Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra. Although it is not as formally radical as other works in this Polish modernist’s catalog, Heyward and the orchestra found a great wealth of rambunctious material to savor. The first movement’s folk-like melody had a singing quality that contrasted nicely with some moments of raging, post-Stravinsky exclamation. The gentler middle movement had an air of transporting mystery. And the passacaglia of the third movement progressed with persuasive momentum.The final work also dispelled a sense I had that the Brahms might have been hobbled by the slightly chilly acoustic of the recently renovated Geffen Hall. In the Lutoslawski, there were some rounded, warm sounds that had been missing during the appropriate passages in the Brahms. But the orchestra is still getting used to its new home, and Heyward is still getting used to this orchestra; with time, a program like this might find a better tone.And he will be back. After Saturday’s performance — which is followed by a Nightcap program drawn up by Di Castri — Heyward will be absent from Geffen Hall only until he leads the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra there in August.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Mark Stewart, Fiery British Rocker, Is Dead at 62

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      His band, the Pop Group, was anything but pop, blending anti-authoritarian fury with a ferocious mix of punk, funk and experimental jazz.Mark Stewart, the incendiary frontman of the British post-punk band the Pop Group, whose explosive mix of funk, noise rock, free jazz experimentalism and anti-authoritarian rage made a mockery of the group’s sunny name, died on April 21. He was 62.His death was announced in a statement by his London-based recoding label, Mute. It provided no other details.The Pop Group emerged in Bristol, England, in 1977, as punk rock was shaking the foundations of the British music scene. Mr. Stewart found inspiration in punk’s iconoclastic fury. “There is the arrogance of power,” he once said, “and what we got from punk was the power of arrogance.”Onstage, the band created a cyclone force that put many punk bands to shame. Gyrating manically and barking rebellious lyrics through his pouty, Jagger-esque lips, Mr. Stewart whipped audiences into a frenzy with songs like “We Are All Prostitutes,” the band’s best known single, from 1979, which reached No. 8 on the British indie charts. The lyrics include these lines:We are all prostitutesEveryone has their priceEveryoneAnd you too will have to learn to live the lieLive performances by the Pop Group hit with “such indomitable force and such sudden visceral rage that I could barely breathe,” the musician and writer Nick Cave wrote in a tribute on his website, The Red Hand Files, after Mr. Stewart’s death.Righteous fury was as intrinsic to Mr. Stewart’s personality as it was to his music. “Mark taught me many things about life,” Mr. Cave added, including the idea that “sleeping was a bourgeois indulgence, and that the world was one giant corporate conspiracy, and that one way to win an argument was to just never, ever stop shouting.”The band scarcely made a dent commercially, but that made sense, given its contempt for all things capitalist. As Mr. Stewart put it in a 2015 interview with The Arts Desk, a culture site, “The Pop Group were really that Situationist idea of an explosion at the heart of the commodity.”Mr. Stewart performing onstage in 2012 in Leeds, England. After the Pop Group broke up, he remained prolific, collaborating with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and Massive Attack, and releasing a string of eclectic solo albums.Andrew Benge/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMark Stewart was born in Bristol, in South West England, on Aug. 10, 1960, one of two sons of an engineer father and a mother who worked with children with learning disabilities.Bristol in the 1970s was a rough town, Mr. Stewart once said, and his towering stature — he was already 6 feet 6 inches tall as a preteen — made him a tempting potential recruit for local boot-boy gangs. But the thug’s life was not for him; music was his passion — even though he and his friends considered themselves musical misfits, scouring junk shops for obscure jazz and funk records, wearing mohair sweaters inspired by the Sex Pistols and staging punk shows at a local youth center.“The local gangs really, really had it in for me,” he said in the Arts Desk interview. “They wanted me to join their gangs but didn’t realize I was only 12. They thought I was about 20. So they’d smash all the youth club windows. I had to climb out of toilet windows.”Music was a way out. “If there’s not too much going on in the town you’re in, you dream,” he said in 2014 interview with Vice.Mr. Stewart formed the Pop Group in 1976 along with the band’s original members: John Waddington (guitar), Simon Underwood (bass), Gareth Sager (guitar and saxophone) and Bruce Smith (drums).The band’s name came from Mr. Stewart’s mother. “I think she said, ‘Oh, Mark’s forming a pop group,’” he told Vice. And at the outset, he said, “we thought we were.”The band’s first album, “Y,” which was released in 1979 and produced by the British dub master Dennis Bovell, made little commercial impact.“These heavyweight journalists thought we were being deliberately obtuse,” Mr. Stewart told Vice, although NME, the taste-making British music publication, called the debut “a brave failure. Exciting but exasperating.”The Pop Group did anything but mellow on its second album, “For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?,” released the next year; it crackled with angry denunciations of Thatcher-era England. Though some dismissed it as “self-righteous soapbox agitprop,” the critic Simon Reynolds wrote in “U.K. Post-Punk,” a 2012 collection of his essays, the album, like “Y,” came to be a considered a classic by many.In a look back at the album upon its rerelease in 2016, the site Punknews.org observed: “This is the noise of a collapsing society caught on tape, running through the gamut of paranoia and death. Dig it.”The band broke up not long after the second album’s release, but Mr. Stewart remained prolific, collaborating with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tricky and Massive Attack, and releasing a string of eclectic solo albums over the years that, characteristically, were as subtle as a bazooka.The first, “Learning to Cope With Cowardice,” from 1983, was rereleased in 2006. It inspired the music site Pitchfork to note the single-minded intensity of this “possible madman and authority-critiquing refusenik that was marginalized in his own time, only to later be viewed as a seer.”Little is publicly known about Mr. Stewart’s personal life, and information about his survivors was not available.In 2010, he reunited with the Pop Group and released two more albums, “Citizen Zombie” (2015) and “Honeymoon on Mars” (2016). Both its albums and live performances showed that the band, and Mr. Stewart, had not lost a flicker of their fire.“It was good to be reminded of how singular and beautifully abrasive the Pop Group could be,” Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian wrote in a review of a 2010 London performance, “and how dreadfully conservative most rock music since sounds in comparison.” More

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      The Enduring Appeal of Magical Mystery Musicians

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      As the elusive British singer and producer Jai Paul makes his live debut, hear songs by Sault, Burial and others.Jai Paul onstage in New York this week.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesDear listeners,On Wednesday night, I witnessed something that I never expected to see: a live performance by the mysterious British vocalist and producer Jai Paul.Paul’s music — full of glitches, strangely compressed sounds and spliced-together samples — is unmistakably a product of the digital age, yet his artistic persona could not be further from the era of social-media oversharing and streaming-service savvy. He has given one known interview, in 2011. His only full-length release was leaked, unfinished, in 2013; although it was rapturously received, the intrusion led him to suffer what he later described in a statement as “a breakdown of sorts.” After that, he retreated even further from the public eye, and didn’t officially release his album, “Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)” — on which most tracks were still labeled “unfinished” — for six more years.What is it that enthralls us about a musical enigma? Paul’s story reminds me of other artists who have eschewed the spotlight to toil in anonymity (like the reclusive yet wildly prolific folk musician Jandek), as well as those who have chosen, much to the consternation of a rabid fan base, never to follow up a beloved record (like Neutral Milk Hotel, the band behind the adored 1998 indie-rock landmark “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” — and then not really anything else).The faster culture moves, the more we seem to revere these artists who have opted out of the musical rat race. We are bombarded each day with such a glut of information — so many songs imploring to be heard; so many links baiting us to click — that there is a relief in encountering a finite discography or an artist who forgoes the traditional promotional routines in favor of letting the art stand on its own.That was certainly apparent at the Jai Paul concert, which was only his fourth live show ever. His return was subdued in every sense — he didn’t tease the concerts with any new material, and there was an endearing awkwardness to his stage presence — but the audience respected that. In a way, we were all there to thank him for his reticence, his increasingly rare refusenik stance, and, of course, the enduring mystery of his music.Today’s playlist is a tribute to artists like Paul: an appropriately fleeting, gently melancholy collections of tracks from artists who have cultivated a certain mystique. In addition to Paul and Neutral Milk Hotel, it features the long-lost (and finally found, thanks to the Oscar-winning documentary “Searching for Sugarman”) singer-songwriter Rodriguez; the shadowy, shape-shifting R&B collective Sault; and the eventually unmasked but still cryptic British electronic musician Burial. It does not include Jandek, because it is possible to be so elusive that your albums are not on any streaming services.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Jai Paul: “Str8 Outta Mumbai”The first proper song on Paul’s only album is a kinetic explosion of textures centered around an exhilarating sample of Vani Jairam’s “Bala Main Bairagan Hoongi,” which she wrote with Ravi Shankar. He closed his live show on Wednesday with it, and it was the unquestionable highlight of the set. (Listen on YouTube)2. Neutral Milk Hotel: “Holland, 1945”A crashing, calamitous tear-jerker from the underground hero Jeff Mangum’s 1998 opus, “Holland, 1945” had a brief moment in the mainstream in 2014 when Stephen Colbert chose it, in tribute to his late family members, as the final song played on “The Colbert Report.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Rodriguez: “Crucify Your Mind”For decades, a macabre rumor swirled that the Detroit-born folk singer Sixto Rodriguez had died onstage. In Malik Bendjelloul’s remarkable 2012 documentary, “Searching for Sugarman,” he discovered that Rodriguez was not only still alive, but that he was huge in South Africa. Better late than never, the film inspired a much-deserved Rodriguez revival. (Listen on YouTube)4. Sault: “Wildfires”The prolific R&B collective Sault lets its music speak for itself: no interviews, no press photos, no music videos. It’s not entirely clear who is in Sault. What is clear is that it makes passionate, purposeful and hypnotic tunes that give voice to collective struggle, like “Wildfires,” a soulful meditation on police brutality that appears on its harrowing 2020 album “Untitled (Black Is).” (Listen on YouTube)5. Burial: “Street Halo”“I’m a low-key person and I just want to make some tunes, nothing else,” Will Bevan wrote on Myspace in 2008, when he “came out” as the anonymous but influential producer Burial. (He broke a certain corner of the internet six years later, when he posted a selfie.) From his closely guarded realm of privacy, though, the London artist has released a steady stream of moody, brooding electronic music, including this rain-streaked title track from the 2011 EP “Street Halo.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Jai Paul: “Jasmine (Demo)”The stuttering production and hiccuping vocals of “Jasmine (Demo),” Paul’s second single, convey an introversion suffused with incredible longing. Like a lot of Paul’s best music, there’s a sonic shyness about it, but also a deep undercurrent of tenderness. (Listen on YouTube)I was born for the purpose that crucifies your mind,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Magical Mystery Musicians” track listTrack 1: Jai Paul, “Str8 Outta Mumbai”Track 2: Neutral Milk Hotel, “Holland, 1945”Track 3: Rodriguez, “Crucify Your Mind”Track 4: Sault, “Wildfires”Track 5: Burial, “Street Halo”Track 6: Jai Paul, “Jasmine (Demo)”Bonus tracksNew newsletter alert! Madison Malone Kircher, whose story about Taylor Swift merch I linked to in last week’s Amplifier, has just introduced a weekly missive about all things internet called It Happened Online. The first installment is out today, and it is outrageously fun. Subscribe here.I went back and forth on which Rodriguez song to include, and at the last minute, I went with “Crucify Your Mind.” But you should also listen to the one I almost chose, the poetic and heartbreaking “Cause.”“Tuesday night at Knockdown Center in Queens, nearly 2,000 people were handed something fragile and entrusted — implicitly implored — not to break it.” On Tuesday night, my colleague Jon Caramanica went to the first of Jai Paul’s two New York shows and wrote an excellent review. I also enjoyed Jia Tolentino’s report for The New Yorker, in which she wrote, astutely, “Paul’s overall vibe was that of a time traveler. He had been ahead of the past decade of music, and now he was playing a 10-year-anniversary nostalgia show that was also his debut.”And if you’re looking for even more music recommendations, this week’s Playlist has new tracks from Jack Harlow, Jessie Ware, Four Tet and more. More

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      Jack Harlow Goes Deep on Race and Rap, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jessie Ware, Joy Oladokun, Miguel 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.Jack Harlow, ‘Common Ground’On his third major label album, “Jackman,” Jack Harlow leans away from the lithe boasts that shaped “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” his 2022 breakthrough LP. Instead, he pivots to issues — specifically, on the opening track “Common Ground,” the issue of whiteness. It’s a fleet, acute look at the ways white participants in hip-hop cloak themselves, to be present but not quite seen (or maybe vice versa): “Reciting rap lyrics about murder and cash profit/Get to feel like a thug but don’t have to act on it.” White rappers rapping about the condition of whiteness in hip-hop isn’t new, and Harlow has addressed these themes on earlier releases; he raps about these topics with self-awareness and skepticism (though not quite self-indictment). But as he is beginning to become a bigger mainstream rap star, he’s not shrugging off the conversation as if it doesn’t apply to him anymore. JON CARAMANICAJessie Ware, ‘Freak Me Now’The British pop singer Jessie Ware pivoted to disco on her excellent 2020 album “What’s Your Pleasure?,” but she shifts n into a higher gear on its ecstatic follow-up, “That! Feels Good!,” out on Friday. The kinetic, house-inflected dance-floor anthem “Freak Me Now” is a highlight, and its vampy attitude and attention to sonic detail finds Ware in complete control of her vision. “That sparkle in my eye, you are a jewel, baby,” she purrs on the verse, as if an entire glittering, sweaty congregation of partygoers is orbiting around her confident stillness. LINDSAY ZOLADZFour Tet, ‘Three Drums’Fresh off a raucous, last-minute gig headlining Coachella with his pals Skrillex and Fred again.., Kieran Hebden has released “Three Drums,” a slow-burning, eight-minute reverie that’s much more subdued than what he played for the festival crowd. But such is the duality of Four Tet. “Three Drums” contrasts the textures of live percussion and otherworldly synth gradients, resulting in a hypnotic composition that ebbs and flows like an ocean. ZOLADZMiguel, ‘Give It to Me’Miguel returns to one of his favorite modes — the flirt — in “Give It to Me,” which is blunt: “I like what you got,” he repeats. He has plenty of blandishments, among them “I’ll be your doctor, let me operate.” But he surrounds them with a production, credited to Scoop DeVille, that keeps melting down and reshaping itself around him: with synthesizers and handclaps, with hard-rock guitars, with echoey backup voices. It’s as if he wants to try every possible seduction strategy, all at once. JON PARELESJoy Oladokun, ‘Somebody Like Me’“I’ve watched even my best intentions turn into disaster/Everything goes backwards,” Joy Oladokun sings in “Somebody Like Me” from a new album, “Proof of Life.” It’s a plea for consolation and support from friends and from God; it’s a confession and a rallying cry. “I’ve never been as honest as I want to be/when I need help through,” she adds. The syncopated beat is steady, yet she knows the sentiment is widely shared. PARELESBebe Rexha & Dolly Parton, ‘Seasons’Aging, loneliness and despair aren’t the usual makings of Bebe Rexha’s songs, so the folky “Seasons” is unexpected — even more so with the appearance of Rexha’s duet partner, Dolly Parton. They sing in close harmony through the song, and Rexha adapts her voice to share Parton’s feathery vibrato, but Parton is upfront in the bridge. “How come nobody warns us about what’s coming for us?” she sings. “That you live and die alone.” PARELESThe 3 Clubmen, ‘Aviatrix’Andy Partridge, the often elusive co-founder of XTC, has re-emerged with two longtime collaborators, Jen Olive and Stu Rowe, as the 3 Clubmen. “Aviatrix” is a warped, meter-shifting, proudly eccentric pop extravaganza. The lyrics touch on historical and modern aviation, from “made like a bird out of canvas and sticks” to “your seat is a flotation device,” while the music just keeps piling things on — percussion, flute, saxophones, vocal harmonies, lead guitar — all wrapped around a bouncy acoustic guitar lick that loops all the way through. PARELESBill Orcutt, ‘The Life of Jesus’The guitarist Bill Orcutt has recorded in all sorts of configurations, from raucous punk to acoustic ruminations to tautly composed minimalistic electric ensembles. His new album, “Jump on It,” returns to solo acoustic guitar, a format in which he can be pristinely meditative or wildly eruptive at any moment. “The Life of Jesus” promises stability at first, steadily tolling a major chord. But midway through, breakneck dissonant lines burst out; when consonance returns, it seems far more fragile. PARELESRob Moose featuring Brittany Howard, ‘I Bend But Never Break’The violinist Rob Moose, a founder of the chamber group yMusic, has been a ubiquitous studio musician and string arranger for — among hundreds of credits — Miley Cyrus, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, John Legend, Phoebe Bridgers and Alabama Shakes. Brittany Howard, Alabama Shakes’ leader, returns the favor with her song “I Bend But Never Break,” which will appear on Moose’s EP due in August, “Inflorescence.” Howard sings about seeking, and claiming, the strength to rise above obstacles and tribulation: “I am not fearless but fear will stop me,” she vows. She’s backed by a lush, cello-rich, harmonically convoluted string ensemble, as her solo testimony gives way to a choral affirmation. PARELES More

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      U2’s Music Shaped My Life. Then It Helped Save It.

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      While I was undergoing treatment to eradicate a tumor, listening to songs from the band’s long career became its own vital form of medicine.The radiation oncology department in the basement of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York does not seem like a regular home for rock ’n’ roll. But every business day for almost seven weeks this year, U2 blared over the speakers at my request.I became a fan in the late 1980s and have attended nine of the band’s concerts, though I probably fall short of superfandom. I remember listening to songs from “The Joshua Tree” album as a preteen on my staticky clock radio, struck by U2’s carefully crafted music that builds into anthems, and lyrics exploring weighty but personal themes, like love and religion. In the 1990s, I watched its mesmerizing Zoo TV tour in the pouring rain from the nosebleed seats of the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey. My wife, Amy, and I danced to “In a Little While” at our wedding. In many ways, the group has provided the soundtrack to my life.That importance gained new dimension in the summer of 2022, when I was diagnosed with a benign tumor the size of a lime near my pituitary gland. I had surgery to remove it, only to develop a rare bleeding complication that left me in intensive care for about a week. I required emergency transport and five units of blood to survive.While my complication (thankfully) is on track to heal, a small bit of the tumor remains. In March, I finished a 30-session radiation cycle to keep the mass from growing again. All of my medical drama led to dozens of trips to Mount Sinai. And it brought many chances to request U2.Patients undergoing recurring care like radiation sometimes get their choice of music, which makes it easier to relax and keep still. Meditative or classical music are popular choices, according to the radiation technicians at Mount Sinai. My choice was slightly different.U2 served two purposes. One part, of course, was escape. At every treatment, for weeks upon weeks, I changed into a gown, laid on a table and had a suffocating mesh plastic mask installed on my head to ensure that I would not move or twitch. The M.R.I.s required absolute stillness for up to 35 minutes or more.Hearing U2 helped, especially in the latter parts of the radiation treatment, when the routine became harder to bear. Bono’s philosophical words, Adam Clayton’s steady bass, Larry Mullen Jr.’s crisp drums and the Edge’s ringing guitars — that was my focus. U2’s songs often surfaced memories that took me far from the treatment room: a high school trip (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”), a college breakup (“One”), time spent in another city (“Beautiful Day”).The music also served a utilitarian purpose. U2’s songs routinely clock in at about four minutes long. That knowledge allowed me to estimate how much of the treatment remained. Radiation typically took me about 20 minutes, or four to five U2 songs. M.R.I.s lasted about eight songs.At the initial M.R.I. that kicked off my medical journey, I had no idea that music was even an option. Holding still in silence, the M.R.I. seemed to take eons to complete as the machine heated up and emitted ominous loud beeps and crackles. At my second scan, I asked about the possibility of audiobooks or music. Yes, they had Spotify, a technician said. My U2 treatment plan was born.During my many trips to Mount Sinai, I have heard music from the band’s five-decade catalog in random order. Sometimes, I reframed the songs in light of my circumstances. “Stories for Boys” (1980) made me think of my 6-year-old son and how I hoped to raise him longer. “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” (1991) and “Kite” (2000) brought about thoughts of my 11-year-old daughter. “Every Breaking Wave” (2014) took me to a sunny beach. “With or Without You” (1987) popped up most often, sparking a feeling one might get if a best friend just walked into the room.Every once in a while, Spotify sent out a song that I had not heard before, often a B-side or an obscure dance version of a track (How many times did the band rearrange “Mysterious Ways”?). For my fifth M.R.I., the technicians mistakenly put on a karaoke version of a U2 album with no words. Luckily, the songs were a close-enough facsimile of — though definitely not even better than — the real thing.The song that induced the most catharsis during treatment? “Where the Streets Have No Name.” With its ethereal organ and guitar and racing beat, the song conjures images of speeding down an empty desert highway. Basically, the opposite of lying in a hospital bed.Life’s saving graces come in all sizes, with the small ones often accumulating and surprising us with their bigness when we least expect it. I think about the village of people that has helped me during this health crisis. Doctors, nurses, support staff, family, friends, colleagues. My wife, Amy, especially. Count U2 among them.Theodore Kim is Director of Career Programs for The New York Times. More

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      Putting the Brutality of a Prize Fight on the Met Opera Stage

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      Terence Blanchard’s “Champion,” about the fighter Emile Griffith, is the rare opera to engage with sports. A boxing consultant helped keep it gritty.Emile Griffith fought Benny Paret on March 24, 1962, in a highly anticipated welterweight championship bout at Madison Square Garden.In the 12th round, Griffith knocked Paret into the ropes and pounded him with more than a dozen unanswered blows. As The New York Times put it the next day, “The only reason Paret still was on his feet was that Griffith’s pile-driving fists were keeping him there, pinned against the post.”Paret never regained consciousness and died 10 days later. The fight and its terrible aftermath were high drama. One might even call the story operatic.There has been little overlap between the high drama of sports and the high drama of opera, beyond the bullfighting in “Carmen” or perhaps that odd singing competition in “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.” But in telling Griffith’s story, Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer’s 2013 opera “Champion,” which opened earlier this month at the Metropolitan Opera and streams live in movie theaters on Saturday, brings together the brutality of boxing with the soaring passions of opera.It helps that “Champion” is not just a tale of boxing, but also of Griffith’s life as a closeted gay man, an immigrant with a tough childhood and complicated relationship with his mother, and later an old age troubled by dementia and regret.But boxing is the catalyst for the story. The 1962 bout was the third between Griffith and Paret, who had split their first two fights. (Those earlier contests are omitted from the opera, keeping the focus on the fateful third.)Ryan Speedo Green, center, as Griffith after winning the fight against Paret (Eric Greene) in “Champion.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt was a time when big boxing matches were big news. Pre-fight hype was everywhere, with all aspects of the fighters’ preparations scrutinized. The Times marveled at Griffith’s “$130 a day suite with two television sets and a closet the size of a Y.M.C.A. room” in Monticello, N.Y., as well as the “turtleneck sweaters, seal coats and Ottoman club chairs” that surrounded the ring as he sparred.The terrible aftermath of the fight brought even more intense coverage. News of Paret’s serious condition made the front page of The Times, days after the fight, with the headline “Paret, Hurt in Ring, Given Little Chance.”At the time, the biggest controversy was the referee’s delay in stopping the contest. “Many in the crowd of 7,500 were begging” the referee to intervene, The Times reported. The referee, Ruby Goldstein, was later exonerated by the State Athletic Commission.But there was more to the story. Though Griffith said he was “sorry it happened,” he added, “You know, he called me bad names during the weigh-in” and during the fight, “He did it again, and I was burning mad.”“Bad names” was how Griffith, The Times and other newspapers described Paret’s taunts. The true nature of those words was not widely known at the time. But in the mid-2000s Griffith revealed the full story. Paret had called Griffith “maricón,” a Spanish slur for a gay man. Griffith was secretly bisexual.The opera’s second act deals with the fallout from the fatal punches, and Griffith’s later life, including a brutal beating he received outside a gay bar. Griffith died in 2013 at 75.The Met worked hard to get the details and the atmosphere of a prize fight right: the ring announcer (who acts here as a Greek chorus of sorts), the sound of the bell, the trophies and championship belts, a “ring girl” signaling the changing of the rounds and the macho posturing of the weigh-in. (The conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin emerges in the pit for the second act in a boxer’s hooded robe.)Helping to make it look accurate was Michael Bentt, a former professional world champion who served as the opera’s boxing consultant. “I’m not an expert on opera,” he said. “But I’m an expert on rhythm. And boxing is rhythm.”Bentt told the production team that there should be no stool in the ring before the first round, only between later rounds. And he thought that the boxing mitts, used by a trainer to block a fighter’s punches, looked too clean. “I said: ‘Make them look gritty. Rub them on the concrete to get them nasty looking.’ There’s nothing clean about the world of boxing.”The Met’s fight director, Chris Dumont, is used to working out sword fights. But for “Champion,” he had to choreograph fisticuffs and make them look convincing without anyone getting hurt.Champion. Griffith after winning the middleweight title in 1966.Larry Morris/The New York Times“For the body shots, they might make some contact with each other,” he said. “But you don’t want someone to get hit in the face. Even if it’s light, it won’t feel too good.”There are several ways to depict boxing: One is to simulate it as closely as possible, as some boxing movies do, by showing powerful punching and splattering blood. A more apt choice for the stage is stylization.“Since they have to sing, actually boxing through those scenes would wind them,” Dumont said of Ryan Speedo Green, who portrays the younger Griffith, and Eric Greene, who plays Paret. Most of the time, when a blow lands, the singers freeze, as if in a snapshot. Some parts are performed in slow motion.The show reaches its sporting peak with the re-creation of the 1962 fight, which ends the first act. The tension and anticipation operagoers may feel as the ring appears onstage is not all that different from the mood among fight fans or sportswriters in the moments before a big bout. All sports have some atmosphere of pregame expectation. But when the sport involves two combatants trying to hurt each other with repeated blows to the head, there is an added frisson of fear, or even dread.In “Champion,” Griffith goes down in the sixth round, and the shouts of a boisterous onstage crowd add to the tension. Then comes the fatal moment.Although the boxers’ blows onstage do not land, that does little to temper the grim moment when a flurry of unanswered shots floor Paret. “I watched the actual fight and tried to keep it as real as possible,” Dumont said. “The 17 blows are fairly close to what it was, in real time. We are not actually landing blows, but moving fast enough so the audience is tricked. It moves back to slow motion as he is falling to the mat.”And in the orchestra pit, the snare drummer looks up at the stage. Each time a blow falls, he raps a synced snare shot.A night at the opera can bring murder or war or bloodshed. But the historically and sportingly accurate depiction of a prize fight that ended with a man’s death has an unsettling quality all its own. As Goldstein, the referee, testified: “It’s the type of sport it is. Death is a tragedy that occasionally will happen.” Or, as Bentt said of “Champion,” “We can’t tiptoe around that it’s violence.” More

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      ‘Harmony,’ a Manilow Musical Set Under Nazis, Is Broadway-Bound

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      The show about the Comedian Harmonists, a real-life sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime, was first staged in 1997.“Harmony,” a musical about a German singing group upended by the rise of Nazism, will finally open on Broadway this fall with songs by Barry Manilow and his longtime collaborator, Bruce Sussman.The show, which Manilow and Sussman have been developing for more than 25 years, tells the true story of a sextet that ran afoul of the Nazi regime because the group featured both Jewish and non-Jewish members. The ensemble was called the Comedian Harmonists.“They represent everything I love — they’re a combination of The Manhattan Transfer and the Marx Brothers, with complicated harmonies — and funny as hell,” said Manilow, who wrote the show’s music. “When we dug into it, it just killed me: Why don’t we know about them?”Sussman, who wrote the book and lyrics, said the show was “about the quest for harmony in what turned out to be the most discordant chapter in human history.”Musicals often take a long time to reach Broadway, but “Harmony” has had a particularly protracted journey. The show was first staged in 1997, at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and since then has had productions, with varying creative teams and casts: in 2013 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, in 2014 at the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, and last year at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York. There have been previous efforts to bring the show to Broadway, including a planned 2004 production that fell apart over a lack of funds.“We’re not letting go of this,” Manilow said. “We knew we had something that was special, even though we kept hitting brick walls.”The show is arriving at a time when antisemitism has become, once again, a growing concern in the United States and beyond; the issue is currently explored on Broadway in the play “Leopoldstadt” and the musical “Parade.” “It is sadly more resonant,” Sussman said, “with the rise of not only antisemitism but of autocrats around the world.”The Comedian Harmonists have been explored by other storytellers in the past: There was a 1997 movie, “The Harmonists,” and an unsuccessful 1999 musical, “Band in Berlin.” This latest musical is based in part on a historical archive compiled by Peter Czada.The Broadway production will be directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, who won a Tony Award for choreographing “After Midnight,” and who also helmed last year’s “Harmony” production with the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The Broadway cast has not yet been announced.The production is scheduled to start previews on Oct. 18 and to open on Nov. 13 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The lead producers are Ken Davenport, Sandi Moran and Garry Kief. More