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      Overlooked No More: Klaus Nomi, Singer With an Otherworldly Persona

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      His sound and look influenced everyone from Anohni to Lady Gaga. He also sang backup vocals for David Bowie.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.A wide range of musical genres fueled New York’s nightclubs in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including new wave, no wave, punk and post punk. Klaus Nomi, who performed during that era, defied being categorized under any of them.“I wouldn’t give it a label,” Nomi said of his sound in a Belgian television interview. “Maybe the only label is my own label: It’s Nomi style.”His music combined opera, infectious melodies, disco beats, German-accented countertenor vocals and undeniable grandeur. He influenced everyone from the singer-songwriter Anohni to Lady Gaga; in 2009, when Morrissey was asked to select eight essential records for the BBC radio program “Desert Island Discs,” Nomi’s version of Schumann’s “Der Nussbaum” made the list.Nomi’s stage look was equally eclectic, and inseparable from his sound. The gender-fluid mix included dark, dramatically-applied lipstick as well as nail polish, the occasional women’s garment and often a giant structured tuxedo top that suggested Dada as much as sci-fi. His style influenced the fashion world as well, in collections by designers like Jean Paul Gaultier and Riccardo Tisci.Nomi’s look was indisputably nonbinary, and a bit otherworldly. “He still comes across as an outrageously expressive and strange figure,” Tim Lawrence, author of the 2016 book “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983,” said in a phone interview.“There was something about his entire being, which seemed to be queer, around makeup and voice and music and dress,” Lawrence said.Nomi — or Klaus Sperber, the name he was born with — moved to New York City from his native Germany in the early 1970s. He fell in with a group of creative friends and in late 1978 joined many of them to perform at New Wave Vaudeville, a series of quirky variety shows. The bill included a stripper, a singing dog and a performance artist dressed as a sadistic nun.Nomi, in the background at center, at the Mudd Club in Manhattan in 1979, the year he met David Bowie there.Alan KleinbergAs the closing act, Nomi sang an aria from Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” while wearing a transparent raincoat over a shiny, fitted top and pants along with dramatic eye makeup and lipstick.“He really blew people’s minds,” Ann Magnuson, who directed the shows, said in an interview. “He had all these snarky punk rockers out there who were speechless.”With the performances came a new name, inspired by the name of a magazine focused on outer space, Omni.“Klaus said, ‘I can’t go out as Klaus Sperber,’” his friend Joey Arias, the singer and performance artist, recalled by phone. “‘That’s not a star’s name.’”Soon he was performing as Klaus Nomi at tastemaker Manhattan clubs like Max’s Kansas City and Hurrah, with a set list created with the help of Kristian Hoffman, a musician who served for a time as his musical director. The material included edgy originals and unconventional takes on well-known hits. Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” became an enraged dirge, for example; the chorus of “Lightnin’ Strikes” morphed into an aria. The thought was that pop songs would “catch the ear of an audience who isn’t ready for opera,” Hoffman said in an interview.As The New York Times put it in a review of one of his performances, Nomi’s music was “positively catchy, in a strange sort of way.”One night in late 1979, Nomi and Arias were at the Mudd Club, in TriBeCa, when they met David Bowie there. Nomi called him later — Bowie had asked him to, scribbling his phone number with a friend’s eyeliner — and Nomi and Arias were recruited to be Bowie’s backup singers for an appearance that December as the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.”For the show’s three songs, they wore clinging women’s Thierry Mugler dresses, purchased at Henri Bendel. The look was extremely provocative at the time, especially on national television. Throughout, the TV cameras’ focus seemed to be as much on them as on Bowie.“It legitimized everything, because it had been sort of a private scene, and all of a sudden there it is, right in front of you on ‘Saturday Night Live,’” said Katy Kattelman, a designer who is known professionally as Katy K and who was a friend of Nomi’s.Soon after, Nomi signed a record deal with RCA France. His debut album, titled simply “Klaus Nomi,” was released in Europe in 1981; a second album, “A Simple Man,” came out the next year. The records sold well — “Klaus Nomi” earned gold-record status in France — and he performed abroad to packed venues.Nomi returned to New York toward the end of 1982, excited by the prospect of possible American tours and releases. But he arrived gaunt and exhausted — he had contracted AIDS. He died of complications of the illness on Aug. 6, 1983. He was 39.A scene from the 2004 documentary “The Nomi Song” showing Nomi getting ready for a performance.Palm PicturesNomi at Hurrah, one of many nightclubs he performed at in New York City.Harvey WangKlaus Sperber was born on Jan. 24, 1944, in Immenstadt, a town in what was then West Germany. He was raised by his mother, Bettina, who worked odd jobs. A fling with a soldier, whom Klaus never met, resulted in his birth. When he was a child, he and his mother moved to the city of Essen, about 400 miles away. Opera music was often playing in their house, and it set Klaus on his path.“The first time I heard an opera singer on the radio I said, ‘My God, I want to sing just like that,’” he said in interview footage that is included in the 2004 documentary “The Nomi Song.” As a teenager, he became equally fond of Elvis Presley.He moved to West Berlin and worked as an usher at Deutsche Oper, where he sometimes sang for colleagues after the audience had left. But he aspired to sing professionally, and, Arias said, “he felt like he was at a dead end.”“He wanted to come to New York because he felt like it would change his life,” Arias added.Nomi settled in Manhattan’s East Village. He worked for a while in the kitchen of the Upper East Side cafe and celebrity hangout Serendipity 3 and started a baking business with Kattelman called Tarts, Inc., supplying restaurants with desserts made in Nomi’s St. Marks Place apartment.Nomi was known to frequent after-hours clubs, like the Anvil and Mineshaft, where casual sex was commonplace. There were sexual encounters at home as well — Arias said he once arrived at Nomi’s apartment to find a naked Jean-Michel Basquiat toweling off.To get a green card, he married a woman, Melissa Moon, a U.S. citizen, in 1980.“I don’t think he was in any way being anything that wasn’t himself, which was pretty gay as far as I knew,” said the artist Kenny Scharf. “When you’re creating your persona, the sexuality part is obviously part of the persona. It was all part of his sense of style and him being an artist in every way.” More

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      ‘Down With the King’ Review: A Rapper in the Wilderness

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      In Diego Ongaro’s patient and subtle new film, Freddie Gibbs plays a hip-hop artist struggling with a career malaise.“Down With the King” is the first movie I’ve seen that confronts the Great Resignation, if not as a social phenomenon then at least as a mood. Money Merc, a hip-hop artist sensitively played by the real-life rapper Freddie Gibbs, struggles with a career crisis specific to his personality and profession that is also likely to resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped, overwhelmed or just plain tired out by work.Merc has retreated to a lovely, secluded spot in rural New England, ostensibly to work on material for a contractually mandated new album. He clearly enjoys the solitude, the company of at least a few of the locals and some of the chores and routines of country life. He clears deadfall with a chain saw, helps a neighbor butcher a hog (and later, with less success, a steer) and gazes thoughtfully on the hillsides in their autumnal glory. But in the midst of the pastoral calm and natural beauty, you feel the pull of his melancholy, the weight of his malaise.Merc’s mother (Sharon Washington) named him Mercury, after the Roman god, and a kitschy plaster statue of the deity is part of the décor in Merc’s spacious Berkshires getaway. Mercury is a perpetually busy mythical figure, associated with commerce, speed and movement — everything his namesake wants to escape.The director, Diego Ongaro, a French filmmaker who lives and works in New England, doesn’t overdramatize Merc’s situation, or tether him to the machinery of a plot. Merc is a Black man in a very white place, a fact that the movie deals with bluntly, and also subtly. “Down With the King,” which shares its title with a Run-DMC comeback classic, isn’t a fish-out-of-water comedy or a culture-war melodrama. The story emerges slowly and organically, following the rhythm of days spent trying to get stuff done and to find ways to avoid doing it. Merc is visited by his mother, various friends and a manager (David Krumholtz) who pushes him to stay on track. There are money at stake and a reputation to uphold.More than that, Merc isn’t entirely alienated from a creative pursuit that has brought him fulfillment as well as success. His verbal and musical skills are still in evidence, as is the slow-burning charisma that keeps the fans engaged on social media. He’s expected — and expects himself — to use his rustication as a chance to recharge, and then to step right back onto the relentless escalator of his career.What’s the alternative? Merc falls into a romance with Michaele (Jamie Neumann), who works at a hardware store and hopes to resume her education after being knocked sideways by addiction. He develops a friendship with a local farmer — played by Bob Tarasuk, an actual Berkshires farmer who starred in Ongaro’s previous feature, “Bob and the Trees” — that bridges differences of age and background. These relationships are sweet and surprising, but the movie doesn’t overstate their transformative potential.The trait “Down With the King” exhibits most powerfully is patience, something in short supply in modern cinema or, for that matter, the modern world. Instead of pushing to resolve conflicts or simplify contradictions, it asks us to examine how we live by walking for a while in someone else’s shoes and feeling how they no longer fit.Down With the KingRated R. Rap lyrics, racial slurs and (legal) weed. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Season Goes Global

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      The institution will present 22 programs from late September through next June, and feature performers from five continents.Since its arrival in New York three-and-a-half decades ago, Jazz at Lincoln Center has worked to define jazz as a high art form that could only have been made in America. But in recent years, the center has increasingly embraced the music’s role on the international stage, and the ways jazz has been adopted, passed around and reshaped.That will be the focus of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 35th season, which will present 22 programs from late September through next June, and feature performers from five continents, the center announced Tuesday.Many of the season’s headlining shows will be anchored by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, who continues as Jazz at Lincoln Center’s artistic director.The band will be joined by featured performers and guest bandleaders, including Naseer Shamma, an Iraqi oud virtuoso, performing with the orchestra (Jan. 20-21); the Japanese-born pianist and big-band leader Toshiko Akiyoshi, who will play her compositions with the orchestra (March 10-11); and the Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca and the Colombian harpist Edmar Castañeda, who will each present newly commissioned works with the orchestra (April 14-15). The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will kick off the season with its own featured performance, Sep. 30 and Oct. 1: the U.S. debut of Marsalis’s “Shanghai Suite.”Some of the season’s other headliners will include the French guitarist Stephane Wrembel, paying tribute to Django Reinhardt (Nov. 4-5); the South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and the Brazilian mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda, performing together (Feb. 24-25); and the Brazilian vocalist and guitarist Rosa Passos, performing March 24-25 with the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Ron Carter on bass and Kenny Barron on piano, plus the Brazilian percussionist Rafael Barata.A number of guiding lights from jazz’s under-40 crowd will lead their own bands, something that doesn’t always happen on Jazz at Lincoln Center’s concert stages. They include the pianist Emmet Cohen (Oct. 21), the vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant (May 19-20) and the trumpeter Etienne Charles (June 9-10).A number of education-oriented events will serve audiences of all ages: programs celebrating the jazz legends Charles Mingus (Oct. 22) and Thad Jones (March 25), and a pair of engagements in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Journey Through Jazz series, with the orchestra giving lessons on jazz history in the form of live performances (Nov. 17-19 and Feb. 16-18).All of the season’s shows will take place at one of the center’s two major stages: the Rose Theater or the Appel Room. Nightly bookings continue year-round at Dizzy’s Club, a more intimate venue also housed in the center. Tickets are at jazz.org. More

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      How to Choose a Karaoke Song

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      Choose something in your range. Avoid cold drinks to save your throat. “Don’t sing ‘I Will Always Love You’ if you cannot hit those notes,” says Garvaundo Hamilton, 33, who won the Karaoke World Championships in 2020. Just because you like a song does not mean you should sing it. Many classic songs should probably be avoided unless you’re a trained vocalist with an expansive range — including all of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Journey and Queen, particularly “Bohemian Rhapsody.” If you want to sound good, he also suggests caution when attempting “rap that’s really too fast for you.” Hamilton, a general manager at a print shop in Seattle, goes out to karaoke nearly every night of the week. He spends at least four hours a day singing to himself in the car, in the shower, at his desk and anywhere else he can. Use a karaoke app on your phone to practice. Hamilton keeps a list of go-to songs on his phone divided into different categories, including up-tempo, ballads and duets. His favorite is Alexandra Burke’s version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” For karaoke, you don’t need to have all the lyrics memorized, but it helps to have practiced a song until you can sing it confidently. Given the choice, Hamilton avoids private karaoke rooms, opting instead for the bar-style public ones where your audience includes strangers. If you’re shy or planning to sing something new, alcohol can sometimes ease nerves. Don’t overdo it, and choose a room-temperature drink. “Cold beverages aren’t good for your throat,” Hamilton says. You don’t have to be a great vocalist, but your skill level should be a consideration when choosing what to sing. An upbeat party song that prompts a singalong can be a good option for so-so singers who might struggle to carry a song alone.Karaoke varies by geography. Hamilton first started as a teenager in Jamaica, where, in his experience, audiences tolerated only accomplished singers. “They’ll boo you, they’ll stop you, they’ll kick you off the stage,” he says. Hamilton has found that some cities have more skillful singers (New York, Atlanta) and some lean more toward tone-deaf drunks (Los Angeles, Chicago). For the most part though, your fellow karaoke-goers are looking for joy and release; expect to be supported so long as you’re making a heartfelt effort. “Most people are there to sing and not to be judgmental,” Hamilton says. More

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      William Herschel Is Famous for Science. What About His Music?

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      The accomplished astronomer was, one historian said, “the Einstein of his time.” But before he surveyed the sky, he was a prolific musician.Within the four-square opening of William Herschel’s Symphony No. 8 is a phrase that sounds like one of the delicately reorchestrated pop songs in “Bridgerton.” The first violins play a goading, syncopated refrain as the harmony lurches underneath, slithering to a resolution before launching into grand second subject. It’s a standout moment, and an earworm.That is, if you ever get the opportunity to hear it.If Herschel (1738-1822) is talked about today, it’s probably not for his music. He’s better remembered in the world of science, as a distinguished astronomer notable for discovering Uranus, infrared radiation, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Mimas; for the idea that stars are born and die like other living things; and for a rigorous approach to cataloging the night sky on his sweeps of the skies that set in motion a method of conducting scientific research.“He was the Einstein of his time,” said Sarah Waltz, an associate professor of music history at University of the Pacific in California. “But of course, Herschel was much better at music than Einstein was.”This year is the bicentennial of Herschel’s death, and an occasion to explore his musical life. The range of works that survive today — 24 symphonies, a dozen concertos, the same number of violin sonatas, six published harpsichord sonatas, music for church services — suggests he was no compositional slouch.But does he stand out in the crowded marketplace of 18th-century symphonies, among the reigning works of Mozart and Haydn? Assessing one of the few commercial recordings of Herschel’s compositions, the Gramophone critic Stanley Sadie wrote that this is “no music of the spheres,” and bemoaned its structural predictability and lurching modulations.Perhaps, though, composing was one of many tools in the arsenal of a talented and successful freelance musician who plied his trade until the age of 44. He had been born in Hanover, Germany, in 1738, the son of an oboist who led that city’s military band. Intellectual curiosity was encouraged in the family, with William and his brother Jacob engaging in detailed musical debates in the margins of their correspondences. William learned to play the oboe, violin and organ, and followed his father into the band. But, as war with France loomed in 1757, he fled to England.In the early 1760s, Herschel worked as a teacher, composer, performer and impresario across northern England. Although he would later be regularly employment as an organist, his contemporary and peer Edward Miller noted his particular talent on the violin: “Never before had we heard the concertos of Corelli, Geminiani and Avison, or the overtures of Haydn performed more chastely, or more according to the intention of the composers than by Mr Herschel.”Herschel was not entirely happy with a freelancer’s life. “From one place to another; from one social circle to another; from one lifestyle to another; —— what an intolerable condition!” he wrote in 1761. A paper trail of his many movements exists almost by accident, with most of his symphonies including the precise locations of their composition: Pontefract, Leeds, Sunderland, Richmond.However, Herschel was unwilling to entertain a move to the busy but musically competitive London. So, after a brief stint as organist of Halifax Parish Church in West Yorkshire — according to Miller, he informed the panel in his audition that he had already accepted a better offer elsewhere — he moved to Bath in 1776, entering a city of emergent upper-class sophistication, with a budding intellectual scene and the newly built Octagon Chapel, from which Herschel constructed a small musical empire built around oratorio performances and subscription concerts.Several years earlier, William’s sister Caroline had followed her brothers to England. Accounts of her story also obscure her early musical interest. The first woman to receive the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the first published woman to publish scientific research and the first female scientist to receive a salary, Caroline moved to England after an intervention from her brother — to rid her from a life of household drudgery following the death of their father — and began to take singing lessons, eventually becoming the resident soprano in William’s oratorio performances, at a time when performing families were in fashion.Herschel believed that music belonged as one of the four liberal arts of the quadrivium, alongside arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. With the aid of two 18th-century books by the Cambridge scholar Robert Smith — “Harmonics” and “A Compleat System of Opticks” — he began to tackle astronomy with the same autodidactic zeal employed when learning English through the dense texts of John Locke. And one of his first homemade Newtonian reflector telescopes brought about a change that would turn Herschel into an overnight celebrity: the discovery, in March 1781, of Uranus, which he initially believed to be another comet. Herschel obsequiously named that planet Georgium Sidus to the delight of King George III, who later offered him a salary with the title of “the King’s Astronomer.”The position involved taking a large pay cut from his profitable music business, but Herschel nevertheless abandoned music to focus his gaze on the heavens. As the Herschels moved to Slough to be closer to the king, the telescopes got bigger, the surveys more ambitious and the celebrity more intense.Although Herschel’s musical compositions had ground to a halt with the move, there is mystery surrounding his relationship with Haydn, who visited the observatory in June 1792. In “Essays in Musical Analysis,” classic volumes from the 1930s, Sir Donald Tovey concluded that looking through Herschel’s famed 40-foot telescope provided the cosmic inspiration for the famous opening of Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation.” The problem: Records show that Herschel was out of town at the time. But perhaps Caroline, at this point his trusted assistant, could have ushered Haydn toward his moment of clarity?Waltz, the music historian, and Woody Sullivan, an astronomy professor from the University of Washington, are currently undertaking a critical biography of Herschel that combines science with music.“We’re trying to remind people that a musician at this time period is not necessarily a composer first, the way that we think of them today,” Waltz said. “They were composing as part of the package.”Much like Herschel’s pathbreaking surveys of the heavens, studying his life requires starting with the big picture, then adding details, piece by piece. More

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      Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul,’ and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Taylor Swift, the Mars Volta, Gorillaz featuring Thundercat and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. 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.Beyoncé, ‘Break My Soul’The first song from Beyoncé’s album due July 29, “Renaissance,” has a clubby house beat and an attitude that equates defiant self-determination with salvation. She and her co-producers, Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, work two chords and a four-on-the-floor thump into a constantly changing track. They sampled shouted advice — “Release your anger! Release your mind! Release your job! Release the time!” — from “Explode” by the New Orleans bounce rapper Big Freedia. Beyoncé extrapolates from there: joining the Great Resignation, building “my own foundation,” insisting on love and self-love, facing every obstacle with the pledge that “You won’t break my soul.” When she invokes the soul, a gospel choir arrives to affirm her inner strength, as if anyone could doubt it. JON PARELESGorillaz featuring Thundercat, ‘Cracker Island’A kind of living cartoon character in his own right, the charismatic bassist Thundercat is a natural fit in the Gorillaz universe — so much so that it’s almost surprising he’s never collaborated with them before. Thundercat’s insistent bass line and backing vocals add a funky jolt to the group’s “Cracker Island,” a sleek and summery jam that happens to be about … a made-up cult? Thankfully the tune doesn’t get bogged down by anything too conceptual, though, and invites the listener to simply lock into its blissed-out groove. LINDSAY ZOLADZElizabeth King, ‘I Got a Love’The Memphis-based vocalist Elizabeth King once seemed headed toward gospel stardom. In the early 1970s, she and a group of all-male backing singers, the Gospel Souls, scored a radio hit and won the Gospel Gold Cup award, presented by the city’s gospel D.J.s. But then King stepped back, spending decades raising 15 children; her public performances were limited to singing on a weekly gospel radio program. It wasn’t until last year that King, now in her 70s, released her first full album, the impressive “Living in the Last Days.” She returns this week with “I Got a Love.” On the title track, King reprises the sultry style of praise-singing that she had perfected in the 1970s, telling us about her rock-sturdy romance with God over a slow and savory tempo. Behind her, a tube-amplified guitar slices out riffs, an organ alternates between full chords and long rests, and a heavy, pushing bass keeps the band’s muscles flexed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAmanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’The title track from Amanda Shires’s upcoming album is a poetic and provocative torch song enlivened by an electrifying vocal performance. Featuring her husband Jason Isbell on guitar, “Take It Like a Man” is a sweeping ballad that continuously builds in blistering intensity — sort of like something Shires’s Highwomen bandmate Brandi Carlile might release. But the song is a showcase for the unique power of Shires’s voice, which is both nervy and tremblingly vulnerable at the same time. “I know the cost of flight is landing,” she sings as the melody ascends ever higher, “and I know I can take it like a man.” ZOLADZThe Cultural Impact of Taylor Swift’s MusicWith two quarantine albums and new recordings of her older albums, the pandemic has been a time of renewal and reinvention for Taylor Swift. A Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift’s rerecordings: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun. Pandemic Records: In 2020, Ms. Swift released two new albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore.” In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music. Fearless: For the release of “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” the first of the rerecordings, Times critics and reporters dissected its sound and purpose. Reshifting the Power: The new 10-minute version of a bitter breakup song from 2012 can be seen as a woman’s attempt to fix an unbalanced relationship by weaponizing memories.Taylor Swift, ‘Carolina’“Carolina,” from the soundtrack to the forthcoming movie “Where the Crawdads Sing,” holds the distinction of being one of the spookiest songs in the Taylor Swift catalog; save for “No Body, No Crime,” it’s the closest she’s come to writing an outright murder ballad. Co-produced with Aaron Dessner, “Carolina” sounds of a piece with Swift’s folky pair of 2020 releases: The arrangement begins with just a sparsely strummed acoustic guitar that eventually swells into a misty atmosphere with the addition of strings and banjo. As on her 2015 single “Wildest Dreams,” there’s a hint of Lana Del Rey’s influence as Swift digs into her breathy lower register to intone ominously, “There are places I will never go, and things that only Carolina will ever know.” ZOLADZSessa, ‘Canção da Cura’“Canção da Cura” (“Song of Healing”) from the Brazilian songwriter Sessa’s new album, “Estrela Acesa” (“Burning Star”), hints at some clandestine ritual. In his gentle tenor, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” Acoustic guitars and percussion set up an intricate mesh of syncopation, and in his gentle tenor, with hushed backup vocals overhead, Sessa sings, “To the sound of the drums I’ll consume you.” It’s a brief glimpse of a mystery. PARELESThe Mars Volta, ‘Blacklight Shine’After a decade of other projects, the wildly virtuosic, conundrum-slinging guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and the singer and lyricist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have reunited as the Mars Volta, with a tour to start in September and a new song: “Blacklight Shine.” It’s a six-beat, bilingual rocker, full of complex percussion and scurrying guitar lines, with lyrics like, “the high control hex he obsessively pets with his thumbs/thinking no one’s watching but I got the copy that he can never erase.” But unlike many of Mars Volta’s past efforts, this one strives for catchiness, and its rolling rhythm and harmony vocals hint, unexpectedly, at Steely Dan, another band that tucked musical and verbal feats behind pop hooks. An extended “short film” connects the song’s underlying beat to the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of Puerto Rican bomba. PARELESCKay featuring Davido, Focalistic and Abidoza, ‘Watawi’Commitment is an iffy thing; in “Watawi,” the Nigerian singers CKay and Davido and the South African rapper Focalistic stay evasive when girlfriends ask “What are we?” CKay suavely croons a non-answer: “We are what we are.” Keeping things up in the air is the production by Abidoza from South Africa, which hovers around a syncopated one-note pulse as it fuses the cool keyboard chords of South African amapiano with crisp Afrobeats percussion. In its final minute, the track introduces a fiddle that could easily lead to a whole new phase of the relationship. PARELESAlex G, ‘Runner’There’s something wonderfully uncanny about the music of Philadelphia’s Alex G. His songs often gesture toward familiar sounds and textures — “Runner,” from his forthcoming album “God Save the Animals” bears a melodic resemblance to, of all things, Soul Asylum’s early ’90s anthem “Runaway Train”— but their gradual accumulation of small, idiosyncratic sonic details produce an overall sense of strangeness. “Runner” initially sounds like warm, pleasant alt-rock pastiche, but before it can lull the listener into nostalgia, the song suddenly erupts with unruly emotion: “I have done a couple bad things,” Alex sings a few times with increasing desperation, before letting out a thrillingly unexpected scream. ZOLADZLil Nas X featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Late to da Party’Exile comes in many forms — sometimes it’s spiritual, sometimes it’s literal. The pop-rap phenom Lil Nas X recently took umbrage — seriously or not, who can tell — at not being nominated for a BET Award at this year’s ceremony. YoungBoy Never Broke Again remains on house arrest, one of rap’s most popular figures but one who’s achieved that success without the participation of traditional tastemakers. Together, they share the kinship of outsiders, even if they never quite align on this song, which is notionally aimed at BET; the video features a clip of someone urinating on a BET Award trophy. They are radically different artists — two different rapping styles, two different subject matter obsessions, two different levels of seriousness. By the end it feels as if they’re seeking exile from each other. JON CARAMANICATove Lo, ‘True Romance’“What does a girl like me want with you?” the Swedish songwriter Tove Lo asks in “True Romance,” a four-minute catharsis. The track uses only two synthesized chords and a slow pulse, but the vocal is pained, aching and constantly escalating the drama: a desperate human voice trying to escape an electronic grid. PARELESRachika Nayar, ‘Heaven Come Crashing’The composer Rachika Nayar explores the textural and orchestral possibilities of electric guitar and digital processing: effects, loops, layering. Much of her work has been meditative, and so is the beginning of “Heaven Come Crashing,” with shimmering, sustained washes of guitar and abstract vocals from Maria BC. But there’s a surprise midway through: a hurtling drumbeat kicks in, and what had been a weightless drift is suddenly a warp-speed surge forward. PARELESAbraham Burton and Eric McPherson, ‘Will Never Be Forgotten’In an alternate universe, the release of new music from the tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton and the drummer Eric McPherson would be a major event. Both are Gen X jazz eminences, and across decades playing together, their styles have grown in complement to one another. Burton holds long notes in a strong but wavery yowl or shoots out notes in string-like bursts, conveying a wounded tenderness in spite of all that volume and power. McPherson has a relatively gentle touch on the drums, but still channels the earth-moving polyrhythmic force of Elvin Jones. Last summer, these longtime musical partners gave a concert, joined by the bassist Dezron Douglas, as part of Giant Step Arts’ outdoor series at the old Seneca Village site in Central Park. The performance closed with “Will Never Be Forgotten,” a lament with a descending bass line and a melody that winds downward like a teardrop. A full recording of the concert was released on Juneteenth, as “The Summit Rock Session at Seneca Village.” RUSSONELLO More

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      Drake’s ‘Honestly, Nevermind’ Is His 11th No. 1 Album

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      The dance-oriented surprise release debuts with the equivalent of 204,000 sales — the streaming star’s lowest opening-week tally for a studio album.A little over a week ago, Drake announced a surprise new album, “Honestly, Nevermind,” and released it online a few hours later. Just like clockwork, it has now gone to No. 1, becoming Drake’s 11th album to top the Billboard 200 chart.“Honestly, Nevermind,” Drake’s seventh studio LP — and his 17th full-length release overall, counting compilations and mixtapes — opened with the equivalent of 204,000 sales in the United States, including 250 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. Those figures were enough to send the dance-heavy “Honestly” to No. 1 by a comfortable margin. But they were low by the standards of Drake, who for more than a decade has routinely posted gigantic numbers for new work.The album’s 204,000 equivalent sales — a measurement that reconciles streams with downloads and any traditional album purchases — are a fraction of the 613,000 that Drake posted for the opening of his last studio album, “Certified Lover Boy” (2021). And they are Drake’s lowest since “Care Package,” a compilation of previously released tracks, which opened (at No. 1, naturally) with 109,000 in 2019. Apart from “Care Package,” no Drake album has begun with fewer than half a million equivalents since “What a Time to Be Alive,” a mixtape with the rapper Future from 2015, when streaming represented a minority of overall music consumption. (As of last year, streaming makes up 83 percent of recorded music sales revenue in the United States.)Still, a No. 1 is a No. 1. And with 11 of them, Drake has now matched Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen. Ahead of them on the list of artists landing the most chart-toppers on the Billboard 200 are Jay-Z (with 14) and the Beatles (19).Also this week, BTS’s “Proof,” last week’s top seller, falls to No. 4. Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” is No. 2, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 3 and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 5. More

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      Wagner’s Early Operas Shouldn’t Be Mere Curiosities

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      A survey at Oper Leipzig provides an opportunity to reassess the youthful efforts that have been excluded from the composer’s canon.LEIPZIG, Germany — How quickly Richard Wagner changed his mind about “Rienzi,” his first successful opera.In his self-aggrandizing memoir, “My Life,” assembled at the request of the Bavarian King Ludwig II and dictated to his wife, Cosima, Wagner described the 1842 opening night as something like the apotheosis of his artistic coming-of-age. “No subsequent experience,” he said, “has given me feelings even remotely similar to those I had on this day of the first performance of ‘Rienzi.’”Granted, that was written before bigger achievements: inaugurating his Bayreuth Festival Theater with the first “Ring” cycle in 1876, or premiering his final work, “Parsifal,” six years later. But Wagner nevertheless regarded “Rienzi” with affection.Affection, and then indifference. By the time he was working on “Lohengrin,” in the mid-1840s, “Rienzi” had become, he said, “a work that no longer interested me” — a welcome, much-needed source of income, but not a reflection of the poetry, mystery and singular musical language that would come to define his mature operas.And so, when the non-“Ring” and “Parsifal” works were slowly introduced to the Bayreuth stage by Cosima after her husband’s death in 1883, she stopped short of “Rienzi,” going back only as far as its successor, “Der Fliegende Holländer,” and codifying the 10 canonical operas that continue to be performed at the festival today.Doomed to exclusion and obscurity were his three earlier efforts, which in addition to “Rienzi” include “Die Feen,” a work never performed in Wagner’s lifetime, and “Das Liebesverbot,” from 1836. All have appeared onstage throughout the years, but they remain curiosities.Should they? At Oper Leipzig, in Wagner’s hometown, a survey of his entire stage output — a festival called Wagner 22, which continues through July 14 — offers a fresh opportunity to assess his early works in juxtaposition with their canonical siblings, and in chronological order.The trio of rarities reveals an impressionable composer who, before finding a voice of his own, knew how to expertly draw on those he admired; and who, before pioneering a declamatory style of operatic dramaturgy, rapidly developed a keen sense for theatrical storytelling and a grasp for the fashions of his time. In some ways, he is himself from the start, writing less in a mode of entertainment than of profound exploration — in the tradition of Mozart’s collaborations with Lorenzo Da Ponte, like “Don Giovanni,” and of Beethoven’s fiercely political “Fidelio.”Mozart especially looms over “Die Feen,” composed when Wagner was 20 years old. It came after he had abandoned an earlier work, “Die Hochzeit,” and after he had rejected a suggestion to compose an opera about the life of the Polish national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko. He wrote the libretto himself, inspired by Carlo Gozzi’s “La Donna Serpente,” setting a precedent for all of his works.“I had really become a ‘musician’ and a ‘composer’ and wanted simply to write a decent libretto,” he later recalled, “for now I realized nobody else could do this for me, inasmuch as an opera book is something unique unto itself and cannot be easily brought off by poets and literati.”Renaud Doucet’s production of “Die Feen” blends the opera’s dreamy fantasy with the realism of a contemporary apartment.Kirsten Nijhof“Die Feen” didn’t premiere until 1888, five years after Wagner’s death. So he was spared the pain of the public reception it might have had in his youth. It’s impossible to say what that would have been, but from the perspective of 2022, the opera is, frankly, not very good. And that’s not the fault of Oper Leipzig, which — in a reminder that the performing arts continue to tread carefully under the threat of Covid-19 — put on its production last week with last-minute replacements for not only the two leading roles, but also the conductor.If anything, the staging, by Renaud Doucet, helps orient viewers with a work they probably don’t know, aided at every turn by the clear and luxurious sound of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the pit. Doucet’s production is set in the present, at the home of a man who tunes in to a radio broadcast of the opera, which provides a contextualizing introduction. The dreamy action begins to intrude on reality; this evening is as much about discovering “Die Feen” as performing it.The libretto features the subplots of a Mozart comedy and the Romanticism of Carl Maria von Weber, whose “Der Freischütz” was formative for the young Wagner. Stylistically, the music is indebted to them as well. These arias are designed to open up the inner thoughts of the characters, without the grace that would come in, say, the incidental ruminations of Hans Sachs or the delirium of Tristan.“Die Feen” is a number opera — far from the “endless melody” Wagner would describe in his 1860s essay “Music of the Future.” And it’s a clumsy one, attempting in the third act to weave aria pauses into a breakneck pace and an abrupt, Orphic turn. Like Wagner’s instrumental works from around that time, it doesn’t need to be taken out of the curio cabinet except for the occasional dusting.A similar fate shouldn’t befall “Das Liebesverbot,” Wagner’s first staged opera. A loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” it was mostly met with shrugs at its premiere. But, while still a world from the mature works, it is a skillfully, entertainingly told story with depth and resonance.The Italianate overture, which begins with a ringing tambourine and festive percussion, isn’t recognizably Wagner. But the opera’s substance is. His librettos were like subtweets; that’s why, Wagner believed, the critic Eduard Hanslick cooled on him after a reading of the text for “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” a cri de coeur against artistic gatekeeping. Here, Wagner’s target is chastity-obsessed conservatism and the bad behavior it breeds.He would later wrestle with socially unacceptable sensuality in “Tannhäuser” and “Tristan und Isolde,” not without an element of autobiography. Neither of those works, though, is as barbed as “Das Liebesverbot,” which skewers hypocrisy — with crimes and punishment for the #MeToo age — while arguing that morality is a malleable thing on which we can only try to force rigidity.Tuomas Pursio as Friedrich, the moralistic governor who gets his comeuppance in “Das Liebesverbot.”Kirsten NijhofFor close listeners, there are flashes of the future Wagner. And coincidences as well; the line “Es ist ein Mann” recalls its opposite, “Das ist kein Mann!,” which Siegfried exclaims upon discovering the sleeping Brünnhilde in the “Ring.” Early on, when the heroine, the novice Isabella, is introduced with a prayer, the music seems to prefigure “Parsifal.”Much closer to mature Wagner is “Rienzi,” a sprawling, five-act adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel about Cola di Rienzo, a 14th-century tragic figure of Italian politics who took on a new importance in nationalistic movements of the 1800s. If “Tannhäuser,” another transitional work, is on unsure ground stylistically, “Rienzi” is even more so: transparently an answer to the grand operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer, yet also contending with a new musical language that would take shape with “Holländer.”In Leipzig, “Rienzi” was, understandably, presented with extensive cuts. Employing requisite elements of grand opera, like a plot-stopping ballet, the original version ran more than six hours. It was so long, it was later split into two evenings, “Rienzi’s Greatness” and “Rienzi’s Fall,” but reverted to one after audiences responded negatively to paying for multiple tickets.After cuts, the Oper Leipzig “Rienzi” still lasted a little more than four hours, and unfolded on an expansive scale, despite missing 21 chorus members out with Covid-19. The work is best known today for its overture, a staple in the concert hall and the easiest way to share the music, which otherwise demands a substantial investment for an enormous cast and production, along with a tenor with the stamina to endure a punishing role on the level of Siegfried and Tristan. (Here, Rienzi was fearlessly sung by Stefan Vinke, a veteran Siegfried.)“Rienzi” speaks as much to the present as its own time, and not just because it includes a scene in which a mob storms a capitol building. As in “Lohengrin,” Wagner interrogates the limits of charisma and the burden of leadership, and begins to deal in the ambiguity and complication that would course through his canonical works. And he does so in an increasingly declamatory rather than melodic mode, never more than in Rienzi’s Act V prayer, “Allmächt’ger Vater.”The work was a hit when it premiered in Dresden, admired by colleagues and audiences alike. Less well received was “Der Fliegende Holländer,” which debuted at the same theater about two and a half months later and signified an entirely new direction for Wagner — one in which he would call his librettos “poems,” and in which he would bear out his vision of “The Artwork of the Future.”“The management saw itself compelled to prevent my reputation from being tarnished by putting ‘Rienzi’ back on the boards in short order,” Wagner said in “My Life.” “And now I had to ponder the success of this opera, as well as the failure of the other.”“Holländer,” as we know, won out. Yet Wagner’s achievements are now accepted wholesale, so there isn’t a need to categorize any of his operas as successes or failures — except, perhaps, for “Die Feen.” The doors of Bayreuth have long been shut to the early, worthy works of its founder. It’s time to open them up. More