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      Atlanta Opera Is Growing, and Bucking Trends

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      Under the leadership of Tomer Zvulun, Atlanta Opera powered through the pandemic, has tripled its budget and is producing ambitious work.Walking through a repurposed industrial space in Atlanta one recent afternoon, Tomer Zvulun gestured toward a cafe table in the middle of a wraparound stage covered in graffiti.Zvulun, the general and artistic director of Atlanta Opera, described how the action in his contemporary-dress production of Puccini’s “La Bohème,” which was a few hours from opening, would swirl around the audience, providing an immersive experience for some of the 500 ticket buyers.“If people need neck braces at the end,” he said, “we’re doing our job.”Not only was Atlanta Opera presenting an unusually intimate, head-swiveling “Bohème,” it was also doing the show on alternating nights with — and on the same set as — “Rent,” the 1996 musical based on the Puccini classic. When the combination occurred to Zvulun and his team, they assumed that another company had already had the idea.“But we Googled it,” he said, “and no one’s ever done it.”The company’s production of “Rent,” in repertory with “La Bohème.”RaftermenAtlanta Opera’s production of “La Bohème.”RaftermenJuxtaposing the pieces was a coup that embodied an organization trying to make opera vibrant and accessible — and succeeding in the bottom line. Over the past decade, Atlanta Opera has been on a very different trajectory from many American companies: It has been growing rather than shrinking.Under Zvulun — an Israeli-born stage director who started at Atlanta Opera in 2013 when he was in his mid-30s, having never held an administrative position anywhere — its budget has tripled to roughly $15 million. (Only about 10 companies in the country are larger.) It braved the pandemic with a burst of programming.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Garth Brooks Is Accused of Rape and Assault in Lawsuit

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      A woman who worked as a hair and makeup stylist for the country superstar says he subjected her to repeated advances. Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to the allegations.Garth Brooks, one of country music’s biggest stars, has been accused of sexual assault by a woman who said he raped her in a Los Angeles hotel room and subjected her to repeated unwanted sexual advances over a period of about two years, according to a lawsuit filed in a California court on Thursday.The woman was not named in court papers but was described as a hair and makeup stylist who worked with Mr. Brooks from 2017 to about 2020. In that time, her suit says, he repeatedly harassed her, describing graphic sexual fantasies and in one instance placing her hands on his genitals when he came out of a shower.A spokeswoman for Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Brooks, 62, is a star of the highest order in the world of country music and beyond, a household name who has sold tens of millions of albums and, decades into his career, still plays to stadiums full of adoring fans. He has also long been devoted to charitable organizations, particularly those focused on children and local relief after natural disasters.But the suit accuses him of preying on a woman working for him and then trying to silence her.Litigation over the woman’s accusation began three weeks ago with an anonymous suit filed in federal court in Mississippi. In that case — called John Doe v. Jane Roe — a man identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee” said that a woman residing in Mississippi had made “false and outrageous allegations of sexual misconduct she claims occurred years ago.” He asked a judge to protect his identity and to declare that the woman’s accusations against him were false.In a filing this week in response, the woman’s lawyers portrayed that lawsuit as a pre-emptive move to silence her, and said that she would be filing her case imminently, which would name the man.The 27-page lawsuit filed by the woman on Thursday, in Los Angeles Superior Court, says she is the same person listed as the defendant in the Mississippi action, and identifies Mr. Brooks as the John Doe plaintiff.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawyers for a Sean Combs Accuser Ask to Withdraw From Her Case

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      A dispute between Adria English, who has accused Mr. Combs of sexual misconduct, and her lawyers is the latest twist in the civil litigation the music mogul is facing.Lawyers for a woman who accused Sean Combs of plying her with drugs at his famous White Parties and commanding her to have sex with guests are seeking to withdraw from representing her, writing in court papers that she had displayed “undermining behavior and questionable antics.”The plaintiff, Adria English, sued Mr. Combs in July, alleging that as an employee who worked at the parties in the Hamptons and Miami in the mid-to-late 2000s, she had been “groomed” into being sex trafficked and had been given ecstasy-laced liquor.The lawsuit is one of a dozen sexual misconduct suits that have been filed against Mr. Combs over the past year. He is also facing a federal criminal case and was indicted last month on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.In their court filing, lawyers for Ms. English, Ariel Mitchell-Kidd and Steven A. Metcalf, told a judge in federal court in Manhattan that “irreconcilable differences” had developed with their client.“As a result of a fundamental disagreement between Attorneys and Plaintiff regarding almost every aspect of the litigation,” the filing says, “including settlement demands, causes of actions in the pleadings and Plaintiff’s undermining behavior and questionable antics an irreconcilable conflict and tension has developed between Plaintiff and Attorneys.”Ms. Mitchell-Kidd said in a text message response to questions on Thursday, “I never lost faith in her case, just in her.”“Her case is great,” she added. “My issue was with her undermining my work and going behind my back doing things incongruent to advancing her case.”In a phone interview on Thursday, Ms. English — who reported her claims to the police in Miami Beach, Fla., after filing her lawsuit — said she was seeking new counsel. She said she had clashed with Ms. Mitchell-Kidd repeatedly, including over a demand from the lawyer that Ms. English not speak to the media.“I’m the client; you work for me,” Ms. English said to describe her perspective.Mr. Combs, who is currently detained in a Brooklyn jail after a judge ordered him held until trial, has denied sexually assaulting or sex trafficking anyone. In a statement on Wednesday, his representatives called Ms. English’s claims “fabricated.”“As we’ve said from the start, anyone can file a lawsuit without proof — and this case is a clear example of that,” the statement said. “Adria English escalated things by filing false police reports and making baseless claims, using high-profile events as a backdrop to harm innocent people.”Mr. Combs’s legal team has been defending him against a mounting pile of lawsuits since the indictment was brought in September and lawyers in Texas have said they are preparing suits on behalf of multiple accusers who have reached out to them with accounts of misconduct. More

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      As Taylor Swift and Others Revive Cassettes, Fans Look for Tape Decks

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      Musicians and fans have developed a new taste for an old format, but manufacturers largely stopped making players. Listeners are finding creative (and vintage) solutions.When Taylor Swift released “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” in an array of physical formats last year, Cora Buel knew she had to get the cassette right away. Buel, a 48-year-old based in Daly City, Calif., is a fan of Swift’s music — an affinity she shares with her teenage daughter, who has since bought her mother more tapes as gifts. One main reason? Buel drives a 1998 BMW Z3, and has no other convenient options for on-the-road album playback.“Just get an old car that only plays cassettes,” Buel said, “and you’ll listen every day.”Although Buel might be an extreme proponent of retro design — she works as chief revenue officer at ThredUp, an online consignment store — the cassette’s return is by now almost as unmistakable as the format’s distinctive hiss and warble.Dominant in the United States from the early 1980s until it was overtaken commercially by the compact disc in the early 1990s, the cassette tape has survived as an underground phenomenon, a deliberately anachronistic medium of choice for artists on the noise, avant-garde and low-fi fringes. But tapes began turning up at the trend-chasing retailer Urban Outfitters as long ago as 2015, the same year that digital streaming first overtook download sales. Nearly a decade later, Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” stands as the top-selling cassette of the year so far, with about 23,000 copies sold through June 30, according to the tracking service Luminate.Sure, cassette sales of Swift’s new album pale beside its performance in even other physical formats, where it boasts sales of 1.1 million copies on CD and another 988,000 on vinyl. But “Tortured Poets” alone is on pace to beat the total annual sales of all albums on cassette for as recently as 2009, when the Luminate precursor Nielsen SoundScan reported a mere 34,000 units shipped. If Spotify killed the iTunes star, and vinyl is increasingly a high-priced luxury item — never mind CDs for the moment — then cassettes could be the cockroaches that outlive them all.As labels look to capitalize on “superfans” who will buy multiple formats, artists releasing new music on cassette this year cross genres and generations. A sampling of musicians embracing the format includes: the pop polymath Charli XCX, the alternative-rock titan Kim Deal, the adventurous South Florida rapper Denzel Curry, the outré Thom Yorke band the Smile, the black-metal group Darkthrone, the pop-rock duo Twenty One Pilots, the meditative electronic producer Tycho, the masked country singer Orville Peck, the folk-pop troubadour Shawn Mendes, the reigning pop wunderkind Billie Eilish, the garage-rocker Ty Segall, the alt-pop eclecticist Remi Wolf and the sultry singer-songwriter Omar Apollo.Though the last new car to be factory-equipped with a cassette deck was reportedly a 2010 Lexus, more than a quarter of light-duty vehicles on the road are at least 15 years old, according to a recent analysis by S&P Global Mobility. Susanna Thomson of the Oakland, Calif., band Sour Widows still listens to cassettes in her 1998 Volvo wagon, which has a tape deck and a CD player. “I-90,” a song on the alternative-rock group’s bittersweet new album, “Revival of a Friend,” includes lyrics about driving down the interstate while singing along repeatedly to a beloved cassette; the tape in question was by the Southern California punk-rock outfit Joyce Manor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Levi’s Turned a Beyoncé Song Into an Ad Campaign

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      The denim brand was looking for ways to sell more apparel to women, and the megastar gave them a natural spokeswoman thanks to a song on “Cowboy Carter.”Kenny Mitchell, the chief marketing officer at Levi Strauss & Co., knew his team needed to move fast after Beyoncé released the track list for her album “Cowboy Carter” in March. Out of the 27 songs listed, one provided the denim brand’s marketing department with a huge opportunity: “Levii’s Jeans.”While in Paris to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday, Mr. Mitchell was communicating across time zones with his team back at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to figure out how they could capitalize on the moment. When the songs dropped that week, Levi’s had landed on adding an extra I to the brand’s Instagram name, as Beyoncé had with her song.Still, Mr. Mitchell thought the brand could go further.“Once that album came out, it was obviously a moment where we said, Hey, maybe we can start to have some conversations about whether a deeper partnership makes sense,” Mr. Mitchell said.Soon after, Levi’s reached out to Beyoncé and her team. The two camps had already worked together on various campaigns and creative projects over the years. She had worn their jeans when she was a member of Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, making Levi’s one of the first brands to collaborate with the group, and she continued to incorporate the brand in her solo career..What soon became apparent for executives at Levi’s after the release of “Cowboy Carter” was that Beyoncé could be the key to achieving one of the company’s top strategies: convincing more women to shop the brand.A third of Levi’s shoppers are women. The plan, executives say, is to bump that to 50 percent.Levi’s has tried several strategies over the years to appeal to women, including a line called Lady Levi’s.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Orla Gartland Melds Honesty, Hooks and Noise

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      On her second album, the internet-native Irish songwriter makes a complicated relationship sound “squonky.”The Irish songwriter Orla Gartland refuses to oversimplify romance on her new album, “Everybody Needs a Hero.”“Pop music for me can be a little too black-and-white sometimes,” she said in a video interview from her home studio in London. “Lyrically, a love song or a breakup song can be really straightforward. But that’s not my experience. The line is never that straight. You know, it’s sticky and meandering. It’s a lot of, like, ‘I love you … but.’”Gartland, 29, has been her own pop cottage industry for most of her life. Raised in Dublin, she started playing Irish traditional music on fiddle when she was 5 and moved on to learn guitar, keyboard and drums. She has also mastered the crucial 21st-century skill of video self-branding, creating a constant stream of content.Gartland started posting songs to YouTube — covers and then originals — in 2009, and she released her first official single in 2012. “There’s something so naïve in my early videos,” she said. “I get very nostalgic about that era of the internet, because I do think that no one had really made a career on the internet yet.”She called that moment “really pure and good-natured, like people were putting up things because they were so alive to a community. I remember putting songs up and being absolutely fascinated by the fact that I could play a song and upload it from my bedroom in Dublin, and then someone from the Philippines could comment five minutes later.”With her debut album, “Woman on the Internet” in 2021, Gartland finally claimed credit as a producer or co-producer on her songs.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Betty Carter

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      Her intricate phrasing and live improvisational skills made her a cornerstone for artists of all sorts. Listen to songs chosen by 10 musicians and writers who consider her a north star.We’ve spent five minutes with the likes of Alice Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan and Wayne Shorter; now, we’re taking time to highlight Betty Carter, the transcendent vocalist whose intricate phrasing and live improvisational skills made her a prominent figure in jazz, and whose mentorship of younger musicians fostered a new generation of like-minded singers and instrumentalists to craft music in her image. An entrepreneur, she started her own label, Bet-Car Records, in 1969 because of frustrations with the music business amid diminished interest in jazz, and released some of her most revered work through the imprint. Case in point: Four contributors this month chose songs from “The Audience With Betty Carter,” her epic 1980 album that properly showcased her mastery of performance and is considered one of the best jazz LPs of all time.Almost four decades earlier, as a teenager, Carter cut her teeth as a member of Lionel Hampton’s band, a gig she held for three years. Even then, her power shone through: Carter had a singular tone that sounded like a trumpet or saxophone, which led to Hampton nicknaming her “Betty Bebop,” a nod to the subgenre of jazz being created in New York. She left the band in 1951 and re-emerged as a one-of-a-kind vocalist, working with Miles Davis and Ray Charles before releasing her debut album, “Out There,” in 1958.If you want to know how important Carter became to jazz before her death in 1998, at age 69, think of the people who played in her bands along the way: Billy Hart, Geri Allen, Jack DeJohnette, Cecil McBee, Mulgrew Miller and so many others. Now, as always, Carter is a cornerstone for artists of all sorts, an example of how staying true to nonconformity can lead to dynamic results.Below you’ll find a guide to Carter’s music, courtesy of 10 musicians and writers who consider her a north star. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Angélika Beener, writer, podcast host and D.J.“Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love”When it comes to romance, no one renders a cautionary tale quite like Betty Carter. While her self-penned “Tight” is currently the most famous and widely covered words-to-the-wise composition in her repertoire, Carter made this rarer Cole Porter gem a classic with her singular treatment. During her 1992 performance from Jazz at Lincoln Center (first released in 2019), her fantastic trio swings behind her as she gives a comical preamble to the audience. “I didn’t have a thing to do with these lyrics,” she says, playfully absolving herself from the stinging words she’s about to deliver while simultaneously dedicating it “to the men.” “It’s just my concept,” she casually adds.Indeed, Carter is a conceptual genius and unparalleled storyteller, using her vocal gifts and astonishing melodic choices to lay bare the intentions of “most gentlemen.” Her description of what men really want has the audience (and her) audibly giggling throughout, as she wittily sings the racy, chromatically structured phrases. At 63, she’s heard at the height of her powers here, seasoned to perfection and finally getting her just praises. Her wholehearted joy oozes from her heart to yours, and you can’t help but smile — and, at times, clutch your pearls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pras Sues Lauryn Hill Over Canceled Fugees Tour, Alleging Fraud

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      Ms. Hill was accused of deceiving the other group members about tour finances. She called the lawsuit “baseless” and “full of false claims.”After three years of stops and starts, a troubled reunion tour by the hip-hop trio the Fugees — Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras — was finally canceled in August, leaving fans wondering what had happened behind the scenes. One version of that story emerged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Pras against Ms. Hill and her company, MLH Touring.In the lawsuit, Pras — whose real name is Prakazrel Michel — laid out a withering portrait of a group in private conflict. He accused Ms. Hill of deceiving the other Fugees about the tour’s finances, trying to “usurp control” by taking over the group’s business and trademark, and unilaterally rejecting a $5 million offer for the Fugees to perform at this year’s Coachella festival.The suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, includes claims of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract and refusing to permit an audit. It seeks unspecified damages.In a statement, Ms. Hill responded: “This baseless lawsuit by Pras is full of false claims and unwarranted attacks. It notably omits that he was advanced overpayment for the last tour and has failed to repay substantial loans extended by myself as an act of good will.”The Fugees, from New Jersey, became progressive standard-bearers for hip-hop in the 1990s with reggae-tinged hits like “Fu-Gee-La” and “Killing Me Softly,” and Ms. Hill broke out with her 1998 solo album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” which won the Grammy Award for album of the year.But the group’s history has long been tumultuous, and fans have been waiting decades for a proper tour. According to Mr. Michel’s suit, the latest troubles began as soon as their first batch of reunion dates was announced in 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More