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      When Classical Music Was an Alibi

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      The idea that musicians and their work are apolitical flourished after World War II, in part thanks to the process of denazification.On April 16, 1955, the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, bowing as Cio-Cio-san in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” Critics hailed it as a landmark and said it illustrated how much Vienna had changed since the end of World War II, a decade earlier.What went undiscussed by the newspapers at Williams’s debut, however, were the colleagues she performed with: among others, Wilhelm Loibner, Erich von Wymetal and Richard Sallaba, all of whom were active musicians in Austria under National Socialism.Sallaba, a tenor, sang in several special performances of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Nazi leisure organization “Kraft durch Freude” (“Strength Through Joy”) between 1941 and 1943. On July 15, 1942, Loibner conducted a performance of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” for the Wehrmacht, and barely a month after Hitler committed suicide, he was back on the podium at the Vienna State Opera leading Puccini’s “La Bohème.” Von Wymetal, who coached Williams for her debut, assumed his position as the State Opera’s stage director after Lothar Wallerstein, a Jew, fled in 1938.Was Williams’s milestone tainted because she worked with those whose artistic careers directly benefited from the Nazi regime? Faced with such a question, we might be tempted to say that politics has nothing to do with classical music. It is an argument that has been heard again and again when artists come under scrutiny for their involvement in current events — most recently, musicians whose ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have been questioned.When the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, it was alongside musicians who had been active when Austria was occupied by Nazi Germany.Archive/AlamyPerforming classical music, or listening to it, has never been an apolitical act. But the idea that it might be flourished in the wake of World War II, thanks in part to the process of denazification, the Allied initiative to purge German-speaking Europe of Nazi political, social and cultural influence.The American and British military demanded that German and Austrian musicians who wanted to resume work fill out “Fragebogen,” comprehensive questionnaires that sought to determine the extent of their political complicity. This resulted in lists of “white,” “black,” “gray acceptable” and “gray unacceptable” artists — categories that were immediately the subject of disagreement. The process also varied widely by region. American officials were initially committed to systematic denazification and decried the “superficial, disorganized and haphazard” efforts in the zones occupied by France, Britain and Soviet Russia.But even in the American zone, strict blacklists were short-lived. By 1947, responsibility for assessing guilt was transferred to German-run trial courts, which were invested in resuming the rhythms of institutionalized music-making, for cultural and economic reasons. The moral aims of denazification quickly conflicted with the realities of music as an industry and a set of labor practices. Austria’s often-claimed position after the war as “Hitler’s first victim” likewise meant that musical affairs there resumed quickly — with even less public conversation about accountability.Musicians slipped through the denazification process with relative ease. Many rank-and-file artists had been required to join Nazi organizations in order to remained employed, and the correlation of such membership to ideological commitment was often ambiguous. Individuals tended to lie on their forms to obtain a more advantageous status. And artists such as the eminent conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler referred to music’s apolitical status as a kind of alibi, even when they had performed on occasions, and as part of institutions, with deep ties to the regime.Allied forces were keen to “clean up” the reputations of musicians whose talents they valued, and even aided some in gliding through the denazification process. On July 4, 1945, the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was asked to fill out a Fragebogen because she was on the Salzburg register of National Socialists in Austria. Had the form been deemed acceptable, the American military would have approved her return to the stage.But when the American intelligence officer overseeing her case, Otto von Pasetti, realized that she had lied on the form, he destroyed it. The following day, she was asked to fill out another one. Although it was not any more accurate, Pasetti accepted it because Schwarzkopf’s status as a celebrity diva had convinced him that “no other suitable singer” was available for major operatic performances. Shortly thereafter, she climbed into a jeep driven by an American officer, Lieutenant Albert van Arden, and was driven 250 kilometers to Graz, Austria, to sing Konstanze in Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail.”After 1945, then, career continuity was more the norm than the exception. Denazification status defined immediate employability but was only one factor in musicians’ prospects. Artists looking to resume their careers readily identified themselves as POWs, refugees, bombing victims, disabled soldiers and widows, many facing housing and food insecurity. Reference letters used postwar hardship as a justification for priority consideration or tried to explain how a person had been pulled into, as one put it, the “vortex” of Nazi politics. One baritone assured administrators that although he had been detained in a prison camp for several years, he still “had the opportunity to practice.”These claims of hardship easily slid into narratives of victimhood. Bombed concert halls and opera houses in formerly Nazi territories were potent symbols of destruction and the necessity of rebuilding, but also enabled the focus to shift from Nazi atrocities to German suffering. At the opening of the rebuilt Vienna State Opera on Nov. 5, 1955, just months after Williams’s debut in “Butterfly,” the conductor Karl Böhm — who had led concerts celebrating Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938 — was on the podium for the celebration. No Jewish survivors were invited to participate.Performances amid the rubble reignited a sense of community and attempted to rehabilitate classical music as inherently humanistic, universal and uplifting after its supposed “corruption” by propagandistic use during the Nazi era. In “The German Catastrophe” (1946), the historian Friedrich Meinecke evoked the power of German music as a restorative force: “What is more individual and German than the great German music from Bach to Brahms?” For Meinecke, the country’s music was redemptive, expressing the national spirit while still possessing a “universal Occidental effect.”Some composers, encouraged by the Allies, promoted the idea that modernist musical techniques were particularly antifascist because they had been banned by the Nazis — an exaggeration both of Nazi officials’ stylistic understanding and of the level of control they exerted over the arts. Winfried Zillig, a German who composed in the 12-tone style, had many career successes from 1933 to 1945, including major opera premieres and a position in occupied Poland, granted as a reward for his operas’ political values.The composer Winfried Zillig’s career flourished under the Nazis, but he later claimed that the regime had repressed his music.Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesBut Zillig later claimed that the Nazis had repressed his music. Around the time of his denazification trial, he expressed outrage at being “one of the few surviving ‘degenerates’” — that is, composers who, as modernists, were targeted by the regime — who was facing the indignity of being labeled a propagandist. Zillig’s self-flattering version of events was enshrined in Adorno’s writing about him and was not debunked until 2002, long after his death. His career as a conductor and radio director flourished in West Germany, and he played an important role in the dissemination of modern music.Despite the black-and-white thinking that too often accompanies these topics, and how easy it is to retrospectively condemn, Zillig’s career is a reminder that all working Austrian and German musicians were implicated in the Third Reich. The fact that classical music was the industry they worked in does not mean they transcended politics.The more uncomfortable truth may be that the ambiguity of classical musicians’ status under Nazism makes them prime examples of “implicated subjects,” to use the theorist Michael Rothberg’s phrase. Rothberg writes that “implicated subjects occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit or benefit from regimes of domination, but do not originate or control such regimes.”Many German and Austrian musicians occupied this liminal place, neither victim nor perpetrator but a participant in the history that produced both those positions. The well-meaning but blunt categories of denazification after 1945 actually blurred our understanding of the complex systems that led to war and genocide and how musicians operated within them.In 1948, seven years before Camilla Williams sang “Butterfly” in Vienna, the Black American soprano Ellabelle Davis gave a recital there, marking the first time a Black concert singer had performed in the Austrian capital since the outbreak of the war. Calling Davis’s performance “the first fully validated representative of the vocal arts from overseas since the war,” one critic heralded her debut as a turning point in Vienna’s musical journey, an opening of borders and an acceptance of voices that only a few years earlier would have been unthinkable.Commentators also pointed out that Davis was the first Black singer to perform in a Viennese classical venue since Marian Anderson in November 1937, a few short months before the Nazi annexation. At last, these critics said, the city was being restored to its previous era of musical openness. Such comments created a timeline that bridged the Nazi era, cordoning it off as an aberration.Yet other competing continuities also defined Vienna. Only a few months before Davis’s recital, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was Jewish, shared a scathing critique of the city’s postwar racial politics. Schoenberg, who had fled Europe in the 1930s, wrote in 1948, “I have the impression that in Vienna racial issues are still more important than artistic merit for judging artwork.”Later, in 1951, he affirmed that judgment: “I would like it best if performances of my music in Vienna were banned completely and forever. I have never been treated as badly as I was there.” Appeals to continuity after World War II could condemn or vindicate. Both classical music’s history of racism and its universalist aspirations persisted.In moments of war and violence, it can be tempting to either downplay classical music’s involvement in global events or emphasize music’s power only when it is used as a force for what a given observer perceives as good. Insisting on a utopian, apolitical status for this art form renders us unable to see how even high culture is implicated in the messy realities of political and social life. We must work to understand the complex politics of music, even when that means embracing discomfort and ambiguity.Emily Richmond Pollock teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of “Opera After the Zero Hour: The Problem of Tradition and the Possibility of Renewal in Postwar West Germany.” More

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      She Wrote for the Piano’s Extremes: Bronfman on Ustvolskaya

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      Yefim Bronfman discusses Galina Ustvolskaya’s Fourth Sonata, which he will play at Carnegie Hall on Monday.Galina Ustvolskaya, a reclusive composer who lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, from her birth in 1919 to her death in 2006, has acquired a reputation for works of unearthly spiritual strength and formidable technical demands. “Your fingers literally bleed,” the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja has said of playing them.But if Ustvolskaya’s few, grim compositions are works of violent extremes, the brutally loud cluster chords that often smash their way dissonantly through them are tempered with moments of quiet, rapt tranquillity.It’s that prayerful side of a composer who wrote for God as much as for mortals that appeals to the pianist Yefim Bronfman, who performs her Sonata No. 4 (1957) alongside sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin at Carnegie Hall on Monday.Ustvolskaya insisted that her music was not susceptible to ordinary analysis, and she vowed that no influences could be traced in it; even without her efforts, it would still sound unique. After all, as the historian Simon Morrison has written, Ustvolskaya “challenged the conventions not just of art, but of our understanding of art” — writing not “for workers in obeisance to official aesthetics,” but turning “music into work.”Still, no music exists entirely outside history. Asked in an interview to choose a favorite page from the Fourth Sonata, an 11-minute piece in four brief, continuous movements, Bronfman discussed how Ustvolskaya’s work extends traditional forms, as well as its political context. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.An excerpt from the final movement of Ustvolskaya’s Fourth Sonata.SikorskiUstvolskaya’s music has only really become prominent outside Russia since around the end of the Cold War. How did you come across it?I never really knew her until seven or eight years ago, when a conductor asked me to perform her “Composition No. 2” for piano, percussion and eight double basses. Somehow the performance never happened, but having studied the score, there was something very special about it. I started looking into her other music, of which there is not very much. I spoke to Markus Hinterhäuser, who recorded all the sonatas. It’s been a fantastic experience, I have to say, very different from anything else I have ever played in my life.I didn’t find any connection to anybody, except Beethoven maybe. Everybody leads toward Beethoven in a direct way or an abstract way. Hers is an extremely abstract way. As Beethoven grew older, his sonata form got shorter and shorter. Hers relate to that. No matter how short a movement, there is always a sonata form in it. Sometimes the development section is only a few notes, but then there’s a clear indication of the recapitulation in each movement.Music usually has a life span. The music starts and ends, and then life begins anew. But a piece by Ustvolskaya — you play it, and it lingers for a long time. It’s almost like a meditation. It gives you a very peaceful feeling playing it.Do you see it as religious or at least spiritual music in that sense?Not religious, but very spiritual. She grew up in Soviet times, and religion was prohibited. A lot of people who leaned toward religion experienced it in a spiritual way, not in a biblical way. That’s how I feel about Ustvolskaya.So you hear her personal introversion in her music as well?Definitely, I hear total loneliness. She’s talking to the universe and she doesn’t want to be involved with anything else. I don’t feel there is any gravity to the music; most music has an epicenter, but hers is in slow motion, out there. That is not to say there are no explosions; there are very violent explosions. But they are usually followed by very serene and soft sounds.I have to say that she’s also a very Russian composer in the sense that one always hears bells. Bells and choruses, human voices, like in the second movement of this sonata, it begins with bells, and there is a chorale. The third movement is all bells.The third movementMarkus Hinterhäuser, piano (Col Legno)Some of it sounds quite close to chant.Right. She’s maybe more connected to medieval music, but with a very modern voice. You know, it’s very hard to talk about this music because one needs to hear it and experience it.She herself said that she didn’t want us to analyze her music, that it should just be felt.Correct, and she didn’t want to appear influenced by anybody. Even Shostakovich, her teacher, she rejected. She felt a regret for how much he tried to influence her, and she tried to throw it all out. I don’t think there is even one inch of his music in hers. She is completely unrelated to anything before her or after her, which is quite fascinating.So much of Shostakovich’s work was shaped by his political context. Do you hear similar struggles in her later work?Shostakovich suffered a lot from being persecuted by the authorities. He wrote a lot of Soviet music to please the authorities, and so did she. But music like the sonatas has nothing to do with politics; it’s totally apolitical music.It’s interesting that she was able to create that space, given the traditional Western clichés about composers working in Soviet society.I’m sure she experienced the same as other composers who wanted their voice to be heard, and were not allowed. A lot of composers at this time were much more creative writing between the notes than in the notes. The message was always hidden. A little bit like Schumann, in a different time and for different reasons.Ustvolskaya wrote six piano sonatas over four decades. Why perform this one?I picked it because it’s not so violent. Especially the last movement, it has those cluster chords but most of it is very peaceful and has a very beautiful, meditative quality that I think is needed for this program, after the intensity of Beethoven’s “Appassionata.”Is there a page of the score that you particularly enjoy or that is revealing of her?I like the middle section of the second movement, where it’s “pppp”: It’s almost like human voices coming from another world or from space, in the middle of this violent piece. I also love the murmurs of the trills in the last movement; you have those long notes against them — for me that’s very special.The opening of the fourth movementMarkus Hinterhäuser, piano (Col Legno)Those trills, to my ears, suggest the first movement of Schubert’s last sonata.It definitely has an echo of that. They go through the whole movement, those trills, then the cluster chords with sforzandos, then you have a pianissimo progression. It has a fascinating sonority and imagination.Ustvolskaya was fastidious about how people performed her music. She reacted strongly against people being particularly expressive with it. And she’s asking an enormous amount of you. How possible is it to distinguish between a “ppp” and a “pppp,” a “fff” and a “ffff”?Dynamics are relative, in all music. “Piano” means “piano” only in context with what comes before and follows after. The same thing with her. If it’s “ppp” it’s one sound, but if it’s “pppp” it has to be softer; there’s no magic to it. You find an instrument on which you can really differentiate between dynamics, that’s all we can do.Every composer I have worked with is different. Stravinsky said just play the notes, play what’s written and don’t exaggerate. I imagine she belonged to the same school; she wanted you to execute exactly what is on the page. The music speaks for itself. You don’t need to work hard to make it sound the way it should.Will you play her other sonatas in concert?I really want to. Why not? She’s a good composer, I think a great composer. She has a strong message, however abstract it is, and rare, but there’s something there that has a magnetism to it. More

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      Franz Mohr, Piano Tuner to the Stars, Is Dead at 94

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      “I play more in Carnegie Hall than anybody else,” he said of his career adjusting instruments for Horowitz, Gould and others, “but I have no audience.”Franz Mohr, who in his 24 years as the chief concert technician for Steinway & Sons brought a musician’s mind-set to the mechanics of important pianos and the care of those who played them, died on March 28 at his home in Lynbrook, N.Y., on Long Island, where he lived. He was 94.His son Michael, the director of restoration and customer services at Steinway, confirmed the death.“I play more in Carnegie Hall than anybody else,” Mr. Mohr said in 1990, “but I have no audience.”Sometimes a string would snap or a pedal would need adjusting during a concert, and he would step into the spotlight for a moment. But he did much of his work alone, on that famous stage and others around the world. He might have been mistaken for a pianist trying out a nine-foot grand for a recital — until he reached for his tools and began making minute adjustments, giving a tuning pin a tiny twist or a hammer a slight shave.For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)Franz Mohr was born in Nörvenich, Germany, on Sept. 17, 1927, the son of Jakob Mohr, a postal worker, and Christina (Stork) Mohr. The family moved to nearby Düren when he was a child; in 1944, when he was a teenager, he survived an air raid.His interest in music began not with pianos but with the viola and the violin. He studied at academies in Cologne and Detmold and, in his 20s, played guitar and mandolin in German dance bands.He was playing Dixieland music one night when he spotted a woman on the dance floor. “I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her and said to my friends, ‘That is the girl I’m going to marry,’” he recalled in his memoir. Her name was Elisabeth Zillikens, and they married in 1954. Besides his son Michael, she survives him, as does a daughter, Ellen; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Another son, Peter, died in 2019.Tendinitis forced Mr. Mohr to give up performing when he was in his 20s, his son said, and he turned to pianos, answering a want ad from the piano manufacturer Ibach that led to an apprenticeship. Another advertisement, in 1962, sent him to the United States.It said that Steinway was looking for piano technicians — in New York. A devout churchgoer, he had made a connection with a German-speaking Baptist church in Elmhurst, Queens, that showed him the ad. He contacted Steinway and was soon hired as an assistant to William Hupfer, the company’s chief concert technician.Before long, he was tuning for stars like the famously eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who came to New York to make recordings. (In Toronto Gould relied on another tuner, Verne Edquist, who died in 2020.)Mr. Mohr not only worked on the piano at the recording studio, he also rode around New York with Gould. “He loved Lincoln Town cars,” Mr. Mohr wrote in his memoir. “That is all he would drive. He once said to me: ‘Franz, I found out that next year’s model will be two inches shorter. So, you know what I did? I bought two Town Cars this year.”He succeeded Mr. Hupfer as Steinway’s chief concert technician in 1968. The job made him the keeper of the fleet of pianos that performers could try out before a concert in Steinway’s West 57th Street basement. They could choose the one they were most comfortable with, but there were pianos that were off limits — Horowitz’s favorite, for example.Sometimes, maybe with a wink, Mr. Mohr would let pianists try it out.  “He’d regulate Horowitz’s piano to make it feather-light and capable of an enormous range of sound,” the pianist Misha Dichter recalled. “When I’d see Franz in the Steinway basement, I’d ask to try that piano when it was parked in a corner. He’d conspiratorially look over his shoulder and then give me the OK. It was like starting up a Lamborghini.”Mr. Mohr, who retired in 1992, said in 1990 that the first time he tuned Arthur Rubinstein’s piano, before a recital at Yale, he cleaned the keys. Then he proudly told Rubinstein what he had done.“Young man,” Rubinstein told him as they stood in the wings with the audience already in their seats, “you didn’t know, but nobody ever cleans the keys for me. It makes them too slippery.”Mr. Mohr had to find something to gum up the keys and find it fast, before the lights went down. The stickiest thing he could get his hands on backstage was hair spray. “I went pssst up, pssst down,” he said. “The audience laughed. But he loved it.” More

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      Anna Netrebko, Shunned in Much of the West, to Sing in Monte Carlo

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      After Russia invaded Ukraine, the soprano lost work in the West because of her past support of President Vladimir V. Putin. She was invited to sing this month in Monaco.Anna Netrebko, the superstar soprano whose international career crumbled after the invasion of Ukraine because of her past support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has been invited to sing in Monaco this month at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.Ms. Netrebko was initially scheduled to sing the title role of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York at the end of April, but the company, like many in the West, parted ways with her over concerns that she had failed to sufficiently distance herself from Mr. Putin after he began the war in Ukraine.Instead, Ms. Netrebko will now appear in Monaco, singing the title role in another Puccini opera, “Manon Lescaut,” in four performances at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the company announced on Thursday. They will be her first engagements since the invasion began in late February, but she has other appearances planned later this spring.“I am overjoyed to be unexpectedly making my stage debut at the Monte Carlo Opera,” Ms. Netrebko said in a statement. “It is going to be made even more special by performing with my husband, tenor Yusif Eyvazov, in the same Puccini masterpiece that marked our first encounter at the Rome Opera in 2014.”Ms. Netrebko has faced a wave of cancellations at leading opera houses. She once endorsed Mr. Putin’s re-election and, in 2014, she was photographed holding a flag used by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine.After initially denouncing the war but remaining silent on Mr. Putin, Ms. Netrebko saw her engagements in the West evaporate. So Ms. Netrebko issued a new statement last month seeking to distance herself from Mr. Putin, saying she had only met him a few times and stating that she was not “allied with any leader of Russia.” Her words prompted a backlash in Russia, with a theater in Novosibirsk, Siberia, canceling an appearance and a senior lawmaker denouncing her as a traitor.Opéra de Monte-Carlo on Thursday defended its decision to hire Ms. Netrebko, saying she had done enough to distance herself from the war.“Anna Netrebko made a statement two weeks ago regarding the war and her relationship with Putin,” Christiane Ribeiro, a spokeswoman for the opera house, said in an email. “She has taken a clear position against the war in Ukraine. As a consequence, she has been declared an ‘enemy of the homeland’ by the speaker of the Duma and a theater in Novosibirsk canceled her appearance.”Opéra de Monte-Carlo described its decision as artistic, noting that Ms. Netrebko is to replace the Italian soprano Maria Agresta, who canceled because of illness.In her statement, Ms. Netrebko said, “I wish my friend and colleague Maria Agresta a full and speedy recovery.”How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 7Valentin Silvestrov. More

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      Tokischa, Latin Music’s Newest Rebel, Isn’t Holding Back

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      SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — On a mid-March evening here in the capital, a crowd of hundreds of festivalgoers wearing fairy wings, rhinestones and rainbow face paint began to chant. “Po-po-la!” they shouted, deploying the local slang for vagina. The scene resembled the summoning of a cult leader, and the Dominican firebrand Tokischa, a rapper known for her prurient lyrics and high-profile collaborations, emerged onstage.For the next hour, the 26-year-old performer rapped about her bisexuality, carnal pleasures and doing drugs, all over speaker-frying dembow and trap beats. It was raining at the Isle of Light festival that night, the kind of Caribbean deluge that arrives in a flash. “I want to get wet with you guys!” she shrieked, walking out from under the stage awning and into the crowd. She unbuttoned her periwinkle blouse, revealing a hot-pink conical satin bra underneath, and the audience squealed.The ground, once covered in grass, was now an obstacle course of mud puddles. No one seemed to care. Fans belted every word, their voices audibly hoarse. One woman climbed a metal fence, twerking above the crowd. When her set ended, Tokischa, beaming, pulled her panties off from under her miniskirt and tossed them to a woman in the audience.Consider this a minor example of the provocation that defines Tokischa Altagracia Peralta. Her audacious lyrics, which revel in the linguistic rebellion of Dominican slang and embrace the euphoria of sex, are mostly unprintable. In “Tukuntazo,” she brags about sleeping with other women alongside her man. In her anthem “Yo No Me Voy Acostar,” she proclaims, “I’ve got a bunch of molly in my head/I have a girlfriend who kisses me.”“Not being afraid to express my sexuality, my way of thinking — it’s a beautiful thing,” Tokischa said.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesTokischa collects scandals like vacation souvenirs. Last year, she was forced to pay a municipal fine and issue a public apology after she posted risqué photos in front of a mural of the Virgin of Altagracia, the patron saint of the Dominican Republic. In the fall, she showed up to an awards show in a full-size vagina costume, dressed as a character she called “Santa Popola.” In a now deleted op-ed, a columnist for the Dominican newspaper La Información claimed her explicit lyrics “disrespect people who fight to conserve family values.”But there is also an entire generation of young Dominicans who see themselves in Tokischa’s gleeful refusal of respectability. To them, she is a sex-positive queer rebel, the kind of cultural figure whose performances gesture toward liberation from oppressive, retrograde politics.On a tucked-away street off the Malecón, the seafront esplanade that lines the coast of Santo Domingo, Tokischa reflected on her irreverent reputation. It was a few days before the festival, and the rapper had just arrived at the offices of Paulus Music, the label and creative team behind her videos. She wore olive green joggers and a matching T-shirt with a familiar, eternally memed image: the GIF of Homer Simpson retreating into a bush.“They say a lot of things about me,” she said. “‘Oh, she’s not an artist, she’s crazy, she’s a drug addict,’” she continued. “It doesn’t offend me, because I’m sure of who I am. I know who Tokischa is. I know what Tokischa’s doing.”Tokischa and Rosalía onstage in 2021. Tokischa appears on “La Combi Versace” from the Spanish pop phenom’s latest album.John Parra/Telemundo and NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesTokischa Altagracia Peralta was born in Los Frailes, a working-class neighborhood in Santo Domingo Este, but had an itinerant youth. Her parents separated, and she lived with her mother until she was 3 years old. When her mother relocated to the United States, Tokischa moved around often, living with aunts, godparents or other relatives. Her father was incarcerated when she was young.Tokischa is the first to admit that she was rowdy in school. “I would fight. They’d find me making out — someone always found me making out!” she said with a laugh. She talked back to her teachers and was expelled from schools — and was often punished physically, she added.“Aside from that, I was always creative,” she recalled. “I’d draw, I’d write. I’d lock myself in my room and act in front of the mirror.” She grew up surrounded by Dominican genres like merengue, dembow and bachata, but when she was around 14, she discovered a whole new musical universe online: Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna.“I lived dreaming up my life, imagining what I’d become,” she said. “I didn’t know in what field, but I did know I was going to be a big artist.”Tokischa’s first official single was “Pícala,” a trap song featuring Tivi Gunz that arrived in 2018. Josefina Santos for The New York TimesWhen she turned 18, a friend introduced her to Craigslist, and she said she became a sugar baby, receiving gifts from older, wealthy American sex tourists. One bought her Fenty Pumas, her first pair of sneakers. “This one guy had photos of himself on a camel,” she said impishly. “I was like, ‘He’s got money!’”Even though she’s playful as she talks about it, Tokischa didn’t like the work, especially when clients crossed the lines of consent. She transitioned to OnlyFans, the subscription-based platform where people can charge for access to photos and videos, and eventually started modeling and incorporating herself into the creative community in Santo Domingo. She learned how to write and record music after meeting producers in the scene through her manager, Raymi Paulus. She swiftly cultivated her vocal style, now her central weapon: an unmistakable, high-pitched, coy moan that oozes sex and allows her devilish, sensual raps to land with precision.Her first official single was “Pícala,” a trap song featuring Tivi Gunz that dropped in 2018. Then came a torrent of equally racy dembow singles: “Desacato Escolar,” with Yomel El Meloso; “El Rey de la Popola,” with Rochy RD; and last year’s “Yo No Me Voy Acostar,” among many others.The major labels soon came running: Last summer, she released “Perra” with the Colombian reggaeton star J Balvin. Then came “Linda,” and more recently “La Combi Versace,” both with the Spanish experimentalist Rosalía. In March, she completed her first U.S. tour, selling out Terminal 5 in New York in 30 minutes. She has a single with the EDM producer Marshmello arriving at the end of the month, and plans to record a full album over the next two years.“She’s different than people imagine. She’s very professional, very disciplined,” said LeoRD, the superstar dembow producer who’s collaborated with Tokischa on several tracks. In a phone call, he said that her climb has been unprecedented in the world of dembow. “In so little time, with just a few songs, I’ve seen her evolution go from zero to 100.”“They say a lot of things about me,” she said. “It doesn’t offend me, because I’m sure of who I am. I know who Tokischa is. I know what Tokischa’s doing.”Josefina Santos for The New York TimesTokischa’s rapid rise has been divisive. For some, she is a sexual deviant endangering children, or a victim of neglect and difficult circumstances. To others, she’s a self-objectifying woman who’s just satisfying male fantasies. And to still others, she is a fearless feminist whose insurgent spirit is breaking ground. Last summer, she performed in Santo Domingo at the Dominican Pride parade, and featured trans women as extras and dancers in the video for “Linda,” which drew praise from across the L.G.B.T.Q. community. The beauty blog Byrdie wrote that she’s “actively moving the needle away from the male gaze and towards female liberation,” and doing so in a Latin music industry that often favors white artists.It hasn’t all been rosy, though. Last fall, feminist activists and Colombia’s vice president condemned the portrayal of Black women in Tokischa and J Balvin’s video for “Perra,” in which Black women wear prosthetics that depict them as dogs, and Balvin, a white Colombian, walks one actress, who is on all fours with a chain around her neck.After the video was removed from YouTube, Balvin issued an apology. Tokischa later told Rolling Stone that she was “truly sorry people felt offended,” but that the visual was conceptual, intended to illustrate the song’s metaphors. “We were in the Dominican Republic; over there, we’re all Black,” she said of the backlash in a December podcast interview. “It wasn’t like we went to Africa or the United States to find those women.” Unsurprisingly, the comment drew criticism from some fans on Twitter for dismissing valid concerns about the animalistic depiction of Black women.The reaction illustrated how fans increasingly demand progressivism from pop stars, especially disrupters like Tokischa. “Since the first day I started making music, I said, ‘I’m going to speak my truth,’” she said. In a radio interview last year, she made the point a different way: “I only talk about me, my life,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’m responsible for fixing society.”Tokischa is still an agitator, and a necessary one. “Not being afraid to express my sexuality, my way of thinking — it’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “There’s a lot of people who are scared to say who they are, because they’re kicked out of their houses, they’re fired from their jobs, they lose friends. But you’re not bad — you’re doing what your heart is telling you.”“I have a lot of other messages to offer,” she continued. “But now is the moment for this message, and I’m loving it.” More

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      Review: In ‘Harmony,’ a Band’s Success Collides With History

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      Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman’s musical chronicles the story of the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet of Jews and gentiles in Weimar-era Germany.For many people, especially those of a certain generation, the name Barry Manilow immediately summons innocuous marshmallow-soft rock. Regardless of whether you interpret that description as comforting or saccharine, it is not necessarily a style you would associate with a show about a Weimar-era vocal group split apart by the rise of Nazism.And yet here is “Harmony: A New Musical,” a project Manilow and his longtime collaborator Bruce Sussman have been nursing for over 25 years. It opened on Wednesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, a location bearing the weight of history that adds an extra layer of poignancy to an imperfect but very affecting show.Those skeptical of the fact that the men behind “Copacabana” could tackle serious matters should perhaps listen closely to “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again” or “Even Now,” just two examples of Manilow’s flair. Those 1970s songs are very much of their time yet also ageless, and they embrace dramatic storytelling seasoned with a touch of unabashed sentiment that some may dismiss as sentimental. They are the aural equivalent of 1950s melodramas by Douglas Sirk like “All That Heaven Allows,” and, as such, not so different from the best numbers in “Harmony,” which are crafted in a defiantly classic mold. Every time the production becomes a little wobbly, those songs steer it back to solid emotional ground.The Broadway veteran Chip Zien acts as narrator but also pops up as a rabbi and in other minor roles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPresented by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, the show is essentially a biomusical — though not a jukebox — in which Manilow (music) and Sussman (book and lyrics) retrace the saga of the Comedian Harmonists, a sextet made up of Jews and gentiles and whose popularity in the late 1920s and early 1930s spread well beyond their Berlin base.It is at Carnegie Hall in December 1933 that we first meet the band members, performing the lengthy title number, in which the singers emulate jazz instruments before whisking us back to the group’s formation in 1927.This is when Harry Frommermann (Zal Owen), a supremely gifted arranger and orchestrator, not unlike Manilow himself, places a newspaper ad looking for singers. A crew as motley as it is talented answers the call, as if this were in an episode of “Making the (Boy) Band.” It includes Erwin Bootz (Blake Roman), nicknamed Chopin because of his virtuoso piano playing; the “chain-smoking Bulgarian tenor” Ari Leschnikoff (Steven Telsey), who goes by the nickname Lesh; the wealthy, monocle-wearing medical student Erich Collin (Eric Peters); and the rapscallion bass Bobby Biberti (a very funny Sean Bell, with Danny Kaye vibes).Rounding out the ensemble is Roman Cycowski (Danny Kornfeld), nicknamed Rabbi because he had been studying in Poland to become one. Rabbi plays a key role, or rather two: His older self, portrayed by the Broadway veteran Chip Zien (the original Baker of “Into the Woods,” “Falsettos”), acts as narrator, both reflecting back on his band’s history and commenting on the various goings-on.This extra Rabbi is new to the NYTF’s iteration of the musical — “Harmony” premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 1997, then re-emerged in 2014 for runs in Atlanta and Los Angeles — and, at first, he does not feel entirely necessary, especially since Zien also pops up, in a somewhat distracting manner, in a few minor roles.From left: Telsey, Bell, Roman, Kornfeld, Owen and Peters in the show, directed with a steady pace by Warren Carlyle.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs we go on, though, Zien’s Rabbi comes into his melancholy own: He is, after all, the one character who knows where this is going, and Zien eventually leaves it all out on the stage in his heartbreaking last song. In case you were wondering what it feels like to cry under a mask, there is a good chance you will find out then.But before getting to that point, “Harmony” barrels through a lot as it tries to capture the band members’ individual lives and their joint accomplishments: the Comedian Harmonists’ original lineup may have been together only for a relatively brief time, but they were a terrific act and their run was action-packed. (No wonder they have continued to fascinate over the decades, as the subject of a documentary, a book, a feature film, and numerous tributes, including the short-lived 1999 Broadway show “Band in Berlin.”)The show is in good hands with the director and choreographer Warren Carlyle (“The Music Man,” “Hello, Dolly”). Not only does he maintain a steady pace but he somehow manages to fit ambitious numbers — including the pocket Ziegfeld extravaganza “We’re Goin’ Loco!” and the Kander and Ebbesque “Come to the Fatherland,” in which the Comedian Harmonists become human marionettes — on the Museum of Jewish Heritage’s small stage.From left: Sierra Boggess, Kornfeld, Zien, Jessie Davidson and Roman in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesManilow, Sussman and Carlyle mostly succeed in balancing the shifting moods, which is no easy feat because they must shuffle broad humor and, well, Nazis. The “comedian” in the band’s name was to be taken literally, for example, and the singers were as famous for their stage antics and novelty songs as for their tight singing.The downside is that there is a thin line between speedy and rushed, and the men are drawn in brushstrokes. A pair of love interests, Mary (Sierra Boggess) and Ruth (Jessie Davidson), are even less than that — one is loving, the other feisty, and that’s pretty much it.At least those two women get the epic “Where You Go,” which has the heart-on-sleeve grandeur of the finest Michel Legrand ballads. Such “Harmony” songs as that one, “This Is Our Time” and “Every Single Day” create a sense of out-of-time inevitability, yet they also remain grounded in the story: It is impossible to forget why we are watching the show.HarmonyThrough May 8 at the Edmond J. Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nytf.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      Modern Love Podcast: First Love Mixtape, Side B

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      Listen and follow Modern LoveApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWhat’s the song that taught you about love as a teen?Brian ReaWhen we asked this question at the start of the season, the responses came pouring in. We heard from present-day teens streaming their anthems on repeat, and we heard from listeners who have been with their partners for over 50 years. There were stories of jazz and rap, adrenaline rushes and loneliness, and many lessons in matters of the heart. (“Don’t let your friends choose your boyfriends,” Amy from St. Louis said.)On our season finale, we share more of these songs and stories. Then, we fast-forward to an essay about the end of love. After more than 50 years of marriage, Tina Welling decided that she wanted a divorce — a decision that turned out to be liberating.Thank you to all of the listeners who sent us their teenage anthems. We’ve compiled them into one glorious Spotify playlist. Take a listen below.Hosted by: Anna MartinProduced by: Hans Buetow, Julia Botero, Anna Martin and Mahima ChablaniEdited by: Sara SarasohnExecutive Producer: Wendy DorrEngineered by: Elisheba IttoopOriginal Music: Hans Buetow and Dan PowellTheme Music: Dan PowellEssay by: Tina WellingRead by: Suzanne TorenFounder, Modern Love: Daniel JonesEditor, Modern Love Projects: Miya LeeSpecial thanks: Mahima Chablani, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Julia Simon, Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolnick, and Ryan Wegner at Audm.Thank you to so many listeners who shared their teenage songs and stories, including Kate Mitchell, Ankit Sayed, Helen Coskeran, Michal Vaníček and Sara Molinaro.Thoughts? Email us at modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com. More

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      F.D.R. Speeches and Alicia Keys Album Added to National Recording Registry

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      A hit by the band Journey, radio accounts of the 9/11 attacks, “Buena Vista Social Club” and a recording of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run also made the registry.Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech about “a date which will live in infamy.” The rock band Journey’s song about “a small-town girl livin’ in a lonely world” who takes a midnight train going anywhere. And firsthand descriptions of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.Each of those are “unforgettable sounds of the nation’s history,” the Library of Congress said on Wednesday, adding that they are among 25 recordings selected this year for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.Since 2002, the Librarian of Congress, with advice from experts, has picked recordings that are at least 10 years old and are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” for inclusion in the registry.The program, library officials said, aims to provide a long-term archival home for the preservation of the recordings and to acknowledge their importance.The registry “reflects the diverse music and voices that have shaped our nation’s history and culture,” the librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, said in a statement.“The national library is proud to help preserve these recordings,” she added.Other recordings selected this year include Alicia Keys’ first album, “Songs in A Minor”; the 1997 album “Buena Vista Social Club”; a 1956 recording of Duke Ellington and his orchestra at the Newport Jazz Festival; and the 1974 radio call of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, which broke a record previously held by Babe Ruth.The 575 recordings already included in the national registry include classical music; opera performances; blues and pop songs; monologues and poems; and speeches and radio broadcasts reflecting momentous news events. Among those are Robert F. Kennedy’s speech upon the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the 1973 Wailers album “Burnin’” and a 1977 recording of a Grateful Dead concert at Cornell University.That diversity can also be seen in this year’s selections, which include all of Roosevelt’s speeches as president and the 1981 Journey single turned karaoke favorite, “Don’t Stop Believin’,” which the library described as “the personal empowerment anthem of millions.”One of the more somber recordings chosen this year consists of the Sept. 11, 2001, broadcasts by the radio station WNYC, which was located at that time in Lower Manhattan, blocks from the World Trade Center.That morning station employees broke with scheduled programming to describe the chaos of the terror attacks on the Twin Towers, broadcasting what the library called “the tragedy’s first eyewitness accounts.”“As the story unfolded,” the library wrote, “the dedicated staff of WNYC remained on the air.” More