Music

Slowed but not stopped by the pandemic, Wilson has had a busy fall that continues with his production of “Turandot” at the Paris Opera.PARIS — The American director Robert Wilson has one of the most recognizable styles in modern theater. Honed over decades, his starkly drawn tableaus of abstract lines and shapes, lit with minute precision, have adorned Shakespeare plays and Philip Glass operas alike.And Wilson, who turned 80 in October, isn’t about to depart from that formula.Last week, as the Paris Opera put the finishing touches on his production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” which premiered at the Teatro Real in 2018 and opens here with a preview for young audiences on Wednesday, Wilson zeroed in on the minuscule imperfections, nudging performers centimeters closer to their marks. A misshapen reflection of the moon on the stage brought rehearsal to a stop. As the lighting team scrambled to fix the spot, he turned to them and asked, “Where is it?”“Some of his shows have 2,000 light cues, so you have to be very organized,” John Torres, a lighting designer who has worked with Wilson for a decade, said during a rehearsal break. “It’s a little bit of a puzzle.”Wilson’s “Turandot” production premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2018.Javier del Real/Teatro RealWilson has 184 stage productions to his name, along with many revivals, and neither age nor the pandemic have slowed him down. “I forget that I’m 80, because I’m fortunate that I’m still working,” he said in an interview at the Opéra Bastille. “I’m booked for the next two years, solid.”In Paris alone this fall, Wilson has brought four shows to stages around town. In addition to “Turandot,” his “Jungle Book,” a 2019 musical inspired by Rudyard Kipling, brought stilted animals to the Théâtre du Châtelet. He also reunited with the choreographer Lucinda Childs, with whom he staged Glass’s landmark “Einstein on the Beach” in 1976: As part of the Paris Autumn Festival, they presented a new creation (“Bach 6 Solo”) and a revival (“I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating,” from 1977).While Europe has long celebrated Wilson as one of the most important directors of the past century, he has been less of a prophet at home. His boundary-pushing artistic statements — “Deafman Glance,” a hit in France in 1971, was seven hours long and wordless — never secured him regular commissions in the United States, even though Wilson has had what he calls his own arts “laboratory,” the Watermill Center on Long Island, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year.Speaking about his busy Paris season, Wilson said that he probably won’t have as many productions in New York “until I die.” His longstanding disdain for naturalism hasn’t helped. “What are they thinking about, in these dramas in New York?” he asked. “They have all this psychology. Does it have to be that complicated?”Wilson, center, during a rehearsal for “Turandot,” one of four shows he has in Paris this fall.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesIn lieu of psychology, Wilson’s work is driven by image and sound, and was shaped by early encounters with forward-looking choreographers. After a difficult youth as the gay son of a conservative family in Texas, where he initially studied business administration, Wilson moved to New York in 1963 and discovered the work of Merce Cunningham and, especially, George Balanchine, whose large repertoire of plotless ballets have Wilson’s favor. (Nonetheless, he admitted to liking Balanchine’s ever-popular “Nutcracker” staging, a fixture of the holiday season at New York City Ballet and elsewhere.)“That changed my life,” Wilson said. “I thought that if theater could be like that, if opera could be like that, then I was interested.”Wilson approaches theater and opera in the same way. Even when he works with straightforward plays, as in his production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that opened in October in Sofia, Bulgaria, sentences tend to be distorted in artificial ways.“His take on text is almost strictly musical,” said the French performer Yuming Hey, who plays Mowgli in “Jungle Book.” In an email, Childs, the choreographer, said that “rhythm and timing are his foremost concerns” and that Wilson’s vision “hasn’t changed” much in the five decades she has known him.In fact, Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, down to details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures. To his critics, this sameness glosses over the differences between the works he stages. To Wilson, it’s just a way of acknowledging that a stage is “unlike any other space in the world,” as he told the cast of “Turandot,” and to craft visuals that help the audience “hear better than with their eyes closed.”“To see someone try to act natural onstage seems so artificial,” he said in an interview later. “If you accept it as being something artificial, in the long run, it seems more natural, for me.”Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, including details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures.Javier del Real/Teatro RealHey said that during preparations for “Jungle Book,” the first step for him was to learn what he called “Wilson’s grammar,” which is often taught by assistant stagers. In auditions, he was given exercises with directions such as “stand still, like a sun, and shine while keeping the position and staying focused.”Somewhat paradoxically, Wilson’s work has consistently been described as avant-garde as other aesthetic trends have come and gone. “It’s a very interesting word, because for me, avant-garde means to rediscover the classics,” Wilson said. “All my works are based on classical patterns.”Work, for Wilson and his team, starts at 7 a.m. and often extends late into the evening. “It’s just what he does, so he kind of expects everyone to do the same,” said Julian Mommert, who was Wilson’s assistant for two years and now works as international relations and tour manager for the choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou. Mommert remembered Wilson as “very open and funny and warm,” but ultimately left in 2014, because of exhaustion.Wilson’s only break each year is a one-week trip to Bali around Christmas. “I go to a very modest hotel,” he said. “I’ve been going there for 30-something years, and no one knows who I am. I like the people; I like the food.”“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesWilson didn’t even take a substantial break during the pandemic. In 2020, he spent several months in Berlin, at the Akademie der Künste. “I had a beautiful studio and I made lots of drawings,” he said. How did he fare away from the stage? “Of course one is upset, but working is like breathing. I just kept on breathing.”Still, the forced pause had “a tremendous impact” on his production machine, Wilson said. Performances were canceled, along with the Watermill Center’s 2020 summer festival and gala — which, he said, typically brings in “as much as 2 or 2.4 million” dollars. For summer 2021, because of travel restrictions, he did not invite his usual international roster of guests and residents but more local artists instead, for a weeklong festival organization with the artist Carrie Mae Weems.“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said. “I’m still the same person I was when I first started working in the theater.”And at the Paris Opera, behind his single-minded focus and solemn demeanor, a hint of playfulness occasionally resurfaced with the cast of “Turandot.” Wilson described the opera as “a fairy tale, another world,” in which the Chinese princess Turandot, who initially refuses to marry, “is having fun being evil.” His minimalist aesthetic steers clear of orientalism, although the comic trio of ministers, renamed Jim, Bob and Bill when the production was performed by the Canadian Opera Company in 2019, are here restored as Ping, Pang and Pong.“The reason we make theater is to have fun,” Wilson told the singers. “You can’t take this work too seriously.” More

Yannick Nézet-Séguin said a nearly four-week break from the podium would allow “time for me to re-energize” after a busy autumn.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, will not conduct, as planned, a revival of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” in January, the company announced on Monday evening.Nézet-Séguin will be “taking a brief, almost four-week sabbatical from all conducting duties commencing Dec. 19,” the Met said, and quoted him as adding, “This short break will allow time for me to re-energize as we return in the new year with more inspiring art.”The Philadelphia Orchestra, of which Nézet-Séguin is also music director, announced that Xian Zhang would take over his scheduled concerts on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2, but said that his time off would not affect his appearance with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 11, nor two subsequent weeks of subscription concerts in Philadelphia in January.Nézet-Séguin — who earlier in his career was known for keeping a particularly hectic schedule, and sometimes canceling — is currently in the midst of leading the Met’s run of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice.” It is the second company premiere he has conducted this fall, after opening the season with Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”He also led the Met’s forces in outdoor performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony and a nationally telecast version of Verdi’s Requiem for the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as concerts in Philadelphia, at Carnegie and in Montreal, where he is the music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain.He conducts Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Met from Thursday through Dec. 18, as well as a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” that opens on Feb. 28.For the “Figaro” run, which opens on Jan. 8, Nézet-Séguin will be replaced by Daniele Rustioni — who is at the Met to conduct a new production of “Rigoletto” starting New Year’s Eve — and (for the final performance, on Jan. 28) Gareth Morrell. Five more “Figaro” performances scheduled for April will be conducted by James Gaffigan. More

Ballet companies are reworking the holiday classic partly in response to a wave of anti-Asian hate that has intensified during the pandemic.A new character is featured in the Land of Sweets in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Nutcracker” this year: Green Tea Cricket, a springy, superhero-like figure meant to counter stereotypes of Chinese culture.Tulsa Ballet, hoping to dispel outdated portrayals of Asians, is infusing its production with elements of martial arts, choreographed by a Chinese-born dancer.And Boston Ballet is staging a new spectacle: a pas de deux inspired by traditional Chinese ribbon dancing.“The Nutcracker,” the classic holiday ballet, is back after the long pandemic shutdown. But many dance companies are reworking the show this year partly in response to a wave of anti-Asian hate that intensified during the pandemic, and a broader reckoning over racial discrimination.“Everybody learned a lot this year, and I just want to make sure there’s absolutely nothing that could ever be considered as insulting to Chinese culture,” said Mikko Nissinen, artistic director of Boston Ballet, who choreographed the ribbon dance. “We look at everything through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. That’s the way of the future.”Ao Wang performs the ribbon dance, which Mikko Nissinen added to the Boston Ballet’s “Nutcracker.”Liza Voll, via Boston BalletArtistic leaders are jettisoning elements like bamboo hats and pointy finger movements, which are often on display during the so-called Tea scene in the second act, when dancers perform a short routine introducing tea from China. (It’s one in a series of national dances, including Hot Chocolate from Spain and Coffee from Arabia.)At least one company, the Berlin State Ballet, has decided to forgo “Nutcracker” entirely this year amid growing concern about racist portrayals of Asians. The company said in a statement last week that it was considering ways to “re-contextualize” the ballet and would eventually bring it back.The changes are the result of a yearslong effort by performers and activists to draw attention to Asian stereotypes in “Nutcracker.” Some renowned groups — including New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet in London — several years ago made adjustments to the Tea scene, eliminating elements like Fu Manchu-type mustaches for male dancers.The sharp rise in reports of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, as well as a recent focus on the legacy of discrimination in dance, opera and classical music, have brought fresh urgency to the effort.Performers and activists have called on cultural institutions to feature more prominently Asian singers, dancers, choreographers and composers. Some opera companies are re-examining staples of the repertoire like “Madama Butterfly” and “Turandot,” which contain racist caricatures. Others, such as Boston Lyric Opera, are hosting public discussions of the works and their stereotypes.“Folks are finally connecting the dots between the idea that what we put onstage actually has an impact on the people offstage,” said Phil Chan, an arts administrator and former dancer who has led the push to rethink “The Nutcracker.”In 2018, Chan began circulating a pledge titled “Final Bow for Yellowface,” which calls for eliminating outdated and offensive stereotypes in ballet. He has gathered about 1,000 signatures from dancers, choreographers, educators and administrators.The move to excise racist elements in dance has not been without controversy, especially in Europe.Annie Au, center, a traditional Chinese dance specialist, works with Alice Kawalek, left, and Kayla-Maree Tarantolo for the Scottish Ballet’s production.Andy RossScottish Ballet this year eliminated caricatures like head-bobbing and ponytails from its “Nutcracker.” The production also breaks with tradition by having both male and female dancers play the role of the magician Drosselmeyer.“We ended up in a place where we can celebrate what we’re putting onstage rather than trying to defend it,” said Christopher Hampson, artistic director of the Scottish Ballet.But some observers were not happy.“In what way is it racist to portray a culture’s most recognizable attributes?” said a commentary about the new production, which aired in November on Russian state television. “In 2021, not even ballet is safe from the P.C. police.”The decision by the Berlin State Ballet to skip “Nutcracker” this year angered some cultural critics, who cited concerns about freedom of expression.“People are not stupid,” Roger Köppel, a former editor of Die Welt, a German newspaper, said in an email. “They can think for themselves and do not have to be shielded and protected from art that is declared politically incorrect by people who want to force their worldview on all of us.”The stakes are high. For many ballet companies, “The Nutcracker” is the biggest show of the year — a financial lifeline that generates a large percentage of annual ticket sales.Dancers and artistic leaders said that reimagining “Nutcracker” was essential to attracting diverse audiences. But some said there was still room for improvement.KJ Takahashi, a City Ballet dancer who stars in the Tea scene in this year’s “Nutcracker,” which opened the day after Thanksgiving, said he welcomed the changes. Takahashi, who is Japanese American, said the revisions made him feel more included. Still, he said, there was more that could be done, noting that he finds the costumes dated and inauthentic.“The little things make a big difference,” he said. “We can go even deeper into accuracy.”Colorado Ballet staged a “Nutcracker” this month with new costumes, including in the Tea scene. The rainbow colors of a dragon that appears onstage were inspired by Asian street food.Some companies are reworking the Tea scene entirely, believing more can be done to make it resonate with modern audiences.Peter Boal, artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, has been experimenting with ways to tone down Asian stereotypes in its “Nutcracker” since 2015. But as Boal saw the rise of anti-Asian hate this year, he set out to make further changes in time for opening night, on Nov. 26.He had long wanted to add a cricket, a symbol of good luck in China, to “Nutcracker.” He gained permission from the Balanchine Trust, which owns the rights to the version the company performs, just a few weeks ago. (The trust had found early sketches too buglike, Boal said.)During the visit to the Land of Sweets, the cricket now emerges from a box rolled onstage and performs a series of acrobatic moves, much like the choreography in the original, in which a man dressed in stereotypical Chinese clothes came out of the box.“The importance of change really came home this year,” Boal said, noting the spread of anti-Asian hate. He said he wanted a production that was “in line with our sensibilities today and our respect for other people and audience members and the community.”Smaller dance groups are making changes as well.At Butler University in Indianapolis, professors and students found themselves increasingly uncomfortable with the national dances, which they felt reduced cultures to caricatures. This year, they have renamed the Tea scene “Dragon Beard Candy,” after a favorite Chinese sweet. The choreography for the scene was partly inspired by the Monkey King, a mythical animal warrior in Chinese classical literature.“There could be a chance that you’re not concerned with these issues because you don’t have to be,” said Ramon Flowers, an assistant professor at Butler who is choreographing parts of the production. “But by highlighting and putting this out there as often as possible, we can inspire change.”Dancers and choreographers of Asian descent say the revisions to “Nutcracker” are long overdue.Ma Cong, resident choreographer of Tulsa Ballet, said he was confused when he first saw “Nutcracker” productions featuring exaggerated makeup and stereotypical costumes. Ma, who grew up in China, recalled thinking, “That is not Chinese.”Tulsa Ballet will premiere a production of “The Nutcracker” on Dec. 10 choreographed by Ma and Val Caniparoli. For the Tea scene, Ma is incorporating elements of tai chi and classical Chinese dance.Ma said the rise in anti-Asian violence and the spread of terms like “China virus” had emboldened him to bring more elements of Chinese culture to the production.“It’s one simple word: respect,” he said. “It’s truly important to have respect for all cultures, and to be as authentic as possible.” More

Our chief classical music critic remembers playing and teaching the unforgettable scores of “Sweeney Todd,” “Sunday in the Park With George” and other shows.“Sweeney Todd” had been open for a few months on Broadway when, one Saturday afternoon in June 1979, I passed by the theater where it was playing. I assumed that Stephen Sondheim’s latest musical was sold out, but I decided to take a chance and see if I could get a ticket to the matinee.Amazingly, there was a great one available — fourth row center. I was unshaven, in jeans and a T-shirt, carrying a stuffed backpack. I didn’t care. Elated, I took my seat.Then who walks in and sits directly in front of me? John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Would I be distracted by their presence?Not a bit. Even two cultural gods faded before the engulfing beginning of “Sweeney.”Sondheim, who died on Friday at 91, establishes the work’s dark, gothic mood in strange, chromatically wandering organ music right at the start. Then the deafening blast of a factory whistle breaks in, and the orchestra starts the prologue, a subdued, murmuring minor-mode riff over which the hushed chorus sings: “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.”I was immediately riveted by the grim, suspenseful drama of the music. Even in those opening moments, the musician in me wanted to know more. What were those harmonies, the chords that the rippling figure was tracing? What were those notes that seemed to escape from the orchestra and jab me with touches of dissonance? When the bass line that grounds the music took a sudden low plunge, it seemed, briefly, like the harmonic floor had opened a chasm. I had to get the score, to study the music, to see if I could figure out what was going on.Twenty-two years later, by then the chief classical music critic for The New York Times, I found myself seated at a piano, playing that opening music to “Sweeney” in front of its composer and asking Sondheim questions about it. During that Times Talks event in 2001, I also played other extraordinary passages from the show — like the moment early on when Sweeney, obliquely telling the young sailor Anthony the story of his tragic life, sings, in understated phrases, “There was a barber and his wife,” over a slow accompaniment that echoes the prologue.Then, Sweeney adds, “And she was beautiful.” At that final word — “beautiful” — the chord below, which repeats three times, is piercingly, hauntingly dissonant. A graduate seminar in music theory could devote considerable time to deciphering the elusive harmony. It has always struck me as a counterintuitive touch. Shouldn’t the wife’s beauty be conveyed through something more melting, more radiant?Yet, as we learn, it was this young woman’s beauty that made her the prey of the lecherous, powerful Judge Turpin. In our interview, Sondheim acknowledged that the moment had this subtext, yet denied that he had calibrated the effect; he said he had just followed his musical instincts.I also played excerpts from “Merrily We Roll Along,” never his most popular but perhaps my desert-island Sondheim musical, and one of his most appealing, ingeniously intricate and moving scores. All the songs are “interconnected through chunks of melody, rhythm and accompaniment,” as he put it in the liner notes for the original cast recording.I tried to show the audience how those chunks break down and fit together. Sondheim mostly just smiled and listened, nodding and saying, basically, “Yep, that’s it.” He never liked to discuss the inner workings of his music in front of the public. This was his business, he felt.He did offer detailed analyses of several of his works in a series of interviews in 1997 with Mark Eden Horowitz, a music specialist from the Library of Congress, later published as an essential book, “Sondheim on Music.”If you want specifics, this is your source. Of a passage in “Passion,” Sondheim says that two chords “represent the entire progression” of the sequence.“I write long-line stuff in either whole notes or half notes,” he added. “A whole note could represent four bars, eight bars, 12 bars, 16 bars,” but the “glue has to be harmonic” — “has to be spinning out the triad and spinning out the harmony.”Between my first time seeing “Sweeney” — I went back twice! — and getting to know him personally in the late 1990s, Sondheim was a singular presence in my life and work. When I taught music theory at Emerson College in Boston, I used Sondheim songs like “The Miller’s Son” (from “A Little Night Music”) and “Barcelona” (from “Company”) as illustrations of how he, while hewing to a tonal musical language, activated harmonies and folded elements of jazz and Impressionist styles in his own distinctive, exhilarating voice.In the early ’90s, at several memorial services for friends who had died of AIDS, I played “Good Thing Going,” a wistful song about recalling imperfect but cherished relationships. “Marry Me a Little,” cut from the original production of “Company” but beloved in later revivals as the protagonist’s statement of determination and despair, was another piece I relished performing; I still use the demanding perpetual-motion piano part as an exercise to keep my finger technique limber.In 2010, I made an 80th birthday tribute video to him for the Times website, in which, among other excerpts, I played and analyzed the wondrous chords at the start of “Sunday in the Park with George.” Here, the hero, Georges Seurat, speaking to the audience, explains the elements of painting, how the artist must bring “order to the whole” through design, composition, balance, light — and, finally, harmony. Each word is accompanied, almost musically illustrated, by a variant of a five-note arpeggio figure that uncannily embodies each concept. The chord for light is so piercing and bright you almost want to squint.In 2016, I posed to Sondheim the question of why such a master composer so seldom wrote a purely instrumental work. Yes, he was one of the greatest lyricists in the history of musical theater. But wasn’t he tempted to put words aside now and then, and just compose, say, a piano sonata?He answered that it wasn’t really the words that generated his musical ideas. “I express the character,” he said. “Let’s see what happens to him. I express it musically.” He was endlessly fascinated by the “puzzle of music,” he added. But when he gets solely into music, the “puzzle takes over.”I’ve been thinking since his death about a trip to the Bronx Zoo my husband and I took in the spring of 2019 with Sondheim and his husband, Jeff Romley. They were passionate animal lovers, and my cousin Kathleen LaMattina works and lives there with her husband, Jim Breheny, the zoo’s director. In a special room, these honored guests could pet sloths and penguins, and even get close to a cheetah, under a staff member’s calm control. I have pictures of Sondheim feeding leafy tree branches to a giraffe.I’m looking as I write this at the piano-vocal score to “Sweeney Todd” Sondheim signed for me the first time he came to dinner, in 1997.“To Tony,” his inscription reads. “With thanks for the enthusiasm.”That enthusiasm will never diminish, and the thanks will always go the other way. More

The lyricist and composer, who died on Friday, wrote dozens of piercing tunes for Broadway. Here is a selection of his most brilliant and surprising.The career of Stephen Sondheim, the celebrated Broadway songwriter who died on Friday at the age of 91, spanned decades and included 20 major productions, including forays into television and film. Here is one song from each of those 20 in chronological order, highlighting a genius that was evident from a jarringly early age (even if critics took a while to catch on) for mixing longing and ambivalence into clever, spiky, dependably unexpected lyrics.‘What More Do I Need?’From “Saturday Night,” 1954Dyspepsia lurks way in the background of “Saturday Night,” his first complete musical (which wouldn’t see a New York stage until almost a half-century later). But in this song, performed here by Liz Callaway, Sondheim depicts a level of dewy-eyed optimism — “Why, I can see half a tree/And what more do I need?” — that will become rare in his later musicals, which tended to pull the rug out on his clearly deluded dreamers. Here is the work of someone barely out of college who can’t believe he is already creating would-be standards.‘Something’s Coming’From “West Side Story,” 1957If this were a list of Leonard Bernstein songs, “Maria” or “Tonight” or “Somewhere” might easily take this spot. But it fell upon Sondheim to depict the inchoate yearnings of a street youth, played by Larry Kert, and offer a plausible glimpse into a mind barely able to glimpse it himself. Sondheim spent the next 60-plus years grumbling about the quality of his “West Side Story” lyrics: the unintelligible passages, the too-clever-by-half internal rhymes. We should all be so flawed.‘Rose’s Turn’From “Gypsy,” 1959How to pick just one song from what many consider is the greatest musical ever? None other than Cole Porter gasped at one of Sondheim’s lyrics in “Together, Wherever We Go,” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” earned the 29-year-old a spot in Bartlett’s book of quotations. But it is Ethel Merman’s absolute tour de force — one that, owing to the composer Jule Styne’s previous engagement one fateful night, Sondheim largely willed into being at a rehearsal piano — that gave the clearest example of what lay ahead.‘Comedy Tonight’From “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” 1962The galumphing opening chords marked the first time Broadway audiences heard Sondheim’s music as well as lyrics. And they were this close to instead hearing an opening number called “Love Is in the Air,” which is sprightly and charming and the absolute wrong way to kick off an evening of vaudeville turns and eunuch jokes. Luckily, Jerome Robbins caught an out-of-town performance just before its New York transfer and mentioned this to Sondheim, who wrote that weekend the no less hummable “Comedy Tonight,” sung here by Jason Alexander. As exacting as he was with his notes and his words, Sondheim did what he had to do in order to make a show work.‘Anyone Can Whistle’From “Anyone Can Whistle,” 1964There is a frequently cited notion (one that Sondheim just as frequently refuted) that the show’s title song represents the purest, most unadulterated look into his own emotionally stunted psyche. Leaving that aside, the song — performed on the original cast recording by Lee Remick — is a bittersweet oasis in a show stuffed with ideas and set pieces and pastiche numbers and the sorts of Big Ideas that Sondheim would soon learn to convey more adroitly. It’s not all so simple, not by a long shot.‘We’re Gonna Be All Right’From “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” 1965Sondheim didn’t want to go back to solely writing lyrics, and he quickly regretted teaming up with Richard Rodgers, the longtime writing partner of Sondheim’s mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. One of the collaboration’s many skirmishes involved this song, a wry evisceration of an unhappy marriage that apparently sounded an awful lot like Rodgers’s own. The version that made it to opening night is clever; the one that got tossed, later resurrected and sung here by Jason Danieley and Marin Mazzie, is brilliant.‘I Remember’From “Evening Primrose,” 1966Not even the “I want” song remained intact in Sondheim’s visionary hands. This quirky made-for-TV romance, in which the female lead ruminates on the years she has lived inside a department store and pines to see the sky again, had all but disappeared until Mandy Patinkin invited his “Sunday in the Park With George” co-star Bernadette Peters to record the score with him on a 1990 album. With its trees like broken umbrellas and ice like vinyl, the song is more than a little bit creepy and altogether marvelous.‘Getting Married Today’From “Company,” 1970Possibly the greatest artistic hot streak of the 20th century (take note of the dates on this and the next two entries) began with this quasi-Brechtian look at marriage through the eyes of 35-year-old Bobby, who — maybe, sort of, kind of — wants no part of it. This anxiety-drenched patter song from one of his friends, sung on the original cast album by Beth Howland, doesn’t do much to allay Bobby’s fears. In the process, the already high-bar of Sondheim’s lyrical virtuosity vaulted several notes higher.‘The Road You Didn’t Take’From “Follies,” 1971The word “ambivalence” typically surfaces in a discussion of Sondheim and his themes, with “Company” as Exhibit A. (That score includes the song “Sorry-Grateful.”) But while the “Follies” score is chockablock with such barn burners as “Broadway Baby” and “I’m Still Here,” along with the piercing “Losing My Mind,” this character study, sung on the original cast album by John McMartin, sublimely lays the groundwork for the misgivings to come. And its final two lines — “The Ben I’ll never be/Who remembers him?” — should hang in a museum.‘Send in the Clowns’From “A Little Night Music,” 1973The haunting “Every Day a Little Death” and the virtuosic triptych of lust that is “Now/Soon/Later” would be career-defining works for just about anyone else. But any time Sarah Vaughan, as heard here, and Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins and Barbra Streisand and Judi Dench and Krusty the Clown of “The Simpsons” can agree on anything, let alone a bittersweet rumination on lost love with an oscillating time signature, the choice is obvious.‘Fear No More’From “The Frogs,” 1974As reluctant as Sondheim was to write lyrics for other composers, it was almost unheard of for him to write music for other people’s lyrics. But he made an exception for William Shakespeare (as one tends to do) in this curiosity that debuted in a Yale University swimming pool and reached Broadway 30 years later. In this adaptation of an Aristophanes comedy, Shakespeare squares off against George Bernard Shaw in an agon, the high-stakes debate that was common in ancient Greek comedies; Sondheim’s gossamer arrangement of this soliloquy from “Cymbeline,” sung here by George Hearn, helps earn the Bard a ticket out of the underworld.‘Someone in a Tree’From “Pacific Overtures,” 1976Sondheim described the frequent request to name a favorite of his own songs as “understandable but unanswerable.” Still, he repeatedly answered it anyway by suggesting this prismatic song, in which an eyewitness and an earwitness give markedly different accounts of a meeting (accounts that are muddied further by the re-recollections of the eyewitness as an old man). Perhaps it was his wish to essentially elevate his audiences to collaborators: Whether high up in a branch or seated in a Broadway theater, the very act of experiencing something makes that thing real (“Without someone in a tree/Nothing happened here”).‘A Little Priest’From “Sweeney Todd,” 1979Seconds before this song, the titular “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has morphed from a revenge seeker into an indiscriminate psychopath in the bruising aria “Epiphany.” Only one song remains before intermission. How could the tension possibly heighten even further? It can’t, and so Sondheim (and book writer Hugh Wheeler) instead puncture it with an uproarious one-liner from Sweeney’s murderous counterpart, Mrs. Lovett, followed by a ghoulish list song — possibly the greatest of Act I finales — in which the two, here Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou on the original cast album, make macabre sport of listing the various individuals they plan to grind into meat pies.‘Good Thing Going’From “Merrily We Roll Along,” 1981What do you call a recapitulation whose narrative unspools backward? A precapitulation? The DNA of this sadder-but-wiser lament can be found throughout the show, including in an earlier (or later, by the show’s logic) up-tempo iteration and in the evening’s very first (which makes it the very last) piece of music, a high school commencement song. But the third (first?) time is the charm, complete with a devastating and just-flashy-enough final line that helped turn it into a crossover hit for Sinatra, heard here.‘Finishing the Hat’From “Sunday in the Park With George,” 1984Seeing as Sondheim named not one but two books after this song (the second edition is called “Look, I Made a Hat,” and both are essential reading), it clearly had significance for him. As a teenager, I thought this depiction of creation — and the combination of rigor and abandon that it requires — ended on a note that was equal parts proud and rueful. How wrong I was about the rueful part. And the immensity of “What you feel like, planning a sky,” sung here by Mandy Patinkin, will never dissipate.‘On the Steps of the Palace’From “Into the Woods,” 1987So many of the most astonishing moments in Sondheim’s lyrics come from decisions made then and there: young Gypsy Rose Lee finding her voice mid-striptease, Bobby in “Company” resolving to be alive by not being alone, Sweeney Todd settling on the idea of mass slaughter. Perhaps the most beguiling is this number, in which Cinderella, played here by Kim Crosby, turns the act of leaving her glass slipper behind into a conscious choice. Sondheim credited his “Woods” book writer, James Lapine, for the idea, but the sparkling execution is his alone.‘The Ballad of Booth’From “Assassins,” 1990More than 30 years into a convention-shattering career, Sondheim still raised eyebrows when he announced he was about to musicalize the likes of John Hinckley Jr. and John Wilkes Booth. Some of those eyebrows never totally lowered: A Broadway revival was postponed in the wake of 9/11. But this early set-piece, in which Booth (Victor Garber, joined by Patrick Cassidy as the Balladeer) mashes up grandiose poetry, self-pity, cogent criticism and vile racism in a plaintive cri de coeur, went a long way toward reminding audiences that they were in very good and very frightening hands.‘What Can You Lose?’From “Dick Tracy,” 1990Madonna’s slinky “Sooner or Later” may have won the Academy Award, and “More” may be more chockablock with musical theater Easter eggs. But it’s this Harold Arlen-inspired song of unrequited love that gives Warren Beatty’s rather cluttered film the closest thing to a heartbeat. Sondheim’s original duet has become a heart-rending solo for the likes of Audra McDonald, Gavin Creel and, from his virtual 90th-birthday celebration, Judy Kuhn.‘Loving You’From “Passion,” 1994“Passion” was the first musical I saw (and saw again and again) in its original run. And those initial audiences hated Fosca, the grasping, manipulative, unprepossessing third point of the show’s love triangle. This song comes late in the piece, just as she reappeared in a way that had people around me snickering and groaning at the mere sight of her. These 135 seconds — one of Sondheim’s simpler melodies — changed pretty much everything. Fosca, played here by Donna Murphy, was every bit as suffocating as before, and maybe even more baffling. She was also a heroine.‘Isn’t He Something!’From “Road Show,” 2008This show — which started as “Wise Guys” and then became “Bounce” before settling as “Road Show,” each time with a starry new director and a commensurate lurch in direction — went through very public growing pains, including an ill-fated reunion with Hal Prince and lawsuits with Scott Rudin. This melancholy charmer, sung by a doting mother (here, Alma Cuervo) about her ne’er-do-well son, entered the show’s ever-changing song stack fairly early on and remained a high point each step of the way. More

The country singer and musical-theater fan was grateful to play the intense title role in “Waitress” not long after her Broadway-themed album came out.Sara Bareilles and Jennifer Nettles have been friends for over a decade, and Nettles had long been itching to step into Bareilles’s musical “Waitress.”“For years we kept trying to make it happen but it never worked on the logistics side,” she said in a recent video call.Everything finally fell into place this fall, and on Wednesday Nettles, who is most famous as half of the Grammy-winning country duo Sugarland, wrapped up a five-week run playing Jenna, a pie-making wiz dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, in the show, as it returned along with Broadway itself.“It’s a beautiful, sacred space, and Broadway is such a community,” Nettles, 47, said of finally getting to tie on Jenna’s apron. “It was very poignant to be in this show for this reopening.”Bareilles was happy to see Nettles connect with her show as well, and with the song “She Used to Be Mine.”“Jennifer so clearly knows who Jenna really is,” she said by email. “I watch my friend disappear onstage and I see only Jenna’s complexity. Her final moments in ‘She Used to Be Mine’ are some of my favorite of all time. She digs down deep and does not come up for air, connecting the musical phrases as her character finds her strength.”Nettles in her dressing room, preparing for her final performance in “Waitress.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesSeeing Nettles thrive on Broadway may surprise those who only know the singer-songwriter from Sugarland or her thriving solo career. But “Waitress” wasn’t Nettles’s first show-tune rodeo. She played Roxie Hart in “Chicago” in 2015 and Donna Sheridan in “Mamma Mia!” at the Hollywood Bowl two years later. In June she released a collection of musical-theater numbers titled “Always Like New.”She also has a burgeoning screen career with roles in the movie “Harriet” and as the matriarch of a televangelist family in the HBO comedy “The Righteous Gemstones.”The effervescent Nettles spoke about becoming a mom, sensible shoes and, er, poison from her dressing room at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, shortly before one of her last performances in “Waitress.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve loved musicals since you were a kid. Why did you end up choosing country music?All the way through high school and college I was able to do both because there were programs and community theater. I started having traction in music in college and had that fork-in-the-road moment, and I thought, “Music has some momentum, I’m going to go over here.” But I always longed to be able to do both, and I was just one person [laughs].“I wish it could have been longer but in some ways it’s just the right-size bite, you know?” said Nettles (signing programs and photographs for fans) of the five-week run.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesWhen did you start planting the seeds for a turn to musical theater?Around 12 years ago, I was going to do Elphaba in “Wicked” on tour and then make my way to Broadway. But I was dealing with a ton of acid reflux at the time, before we really knew that was such a thing for singers. I was really, really stressed and I pulled out because I didn’t know what was going on with my instrument. The right thing always happens at the right time, you know, and in 2015 I was able to enjoy going right to the Broadway stage in “Chicago.”Between the new album and Broadway reopening, did it feel like musical-theater serendipity for you?I had been recording “Always Like New” over the course of 2019 and we recorded the last note of the last song on March 12, 2020. I walked out of the vocal booth and our phones started lighting up, saying Broadway was closing. I put the record out in June and that felt sort of like waving this flag of, “OK, we’re coming back,” because we knew of the plans of hopeful September reopening. So to move from an album I’ve always wanted to make to stepping on to the very stages that inspired it — artistically that felt like this is how it’s supposed to be.What’s your take on Jenna?The journey of motherhood, for me as it is for some women, was such a confluence — I have jokingly called it a bludgeoning of identity. I was never one of those women who thought she always wanted to have kids. I was open to it and I love children, but I already had another purpose. The loss that happens to everybody but specifically to mothers who have a pre-existing job purpose outside of family — the loss was extreme. The gains were beautiful, too, don’t get me wrong, but both of your hands are full in motherhood: There is sacrifice and loss and death, and there is birth and beauty and fullness. I relate to Jenna as a woman, as being Southern, but that transformation where she’s just like, “Wow, what is happening to my life? Who am I? What do I want?” is so accessible to me.You have done Jenna’s showstopper, “She Used to Be Mine,” in concert. What was it like singing it in the show?It’s so different. In concert you’re just doing it as a piece of music. To do it within the character and within the arc, and that being her 11 o’clock moment. Performing while crying is its own animal.Did you look forward to the number or did you dread it?Once I figured out how to sing it and act it and cry it and scream it all at the same time, I actually did look forward to it. So much tension has been building for her this whole time that to allow for that release is very cathartic every time I do it.Fellow cast members surround Nettles at the final curtain call.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAt least you got to do it in sensible shoes.Thank you, Lord! I’m glad she is a waitress and able to wear those shoes, that’s for sure.What’s going through your mind as you are wrapping up with the show?I wish it could have been longer but in some ways it’s just the right-size bite, you know? I would rather leave still a little bit hungry than over-full and like, “Get me out of here!”You’re writing the score for a new musical inspired by Giulia Tofana. What can you tell us about her?She was a slow poisoner in the 17th century. She’s attributed with what they call the first Italian divorce, where she helped women get out of their marriages by killing their husbands [laughs]. Which just makes it fun.It’s definitely a different career path from pie or country music.And to be able to tell a story of a woman who isn’t this 20-year-old ingénue! I have gone into way darker transformative caves as a woman in my 40s than I ever did in my 20s. The stakes are higher. This isn’t some budding hero’s journey — this is a blossoming warrior’s journey. Very different. It is also a warning that we still have very far to go where women are concerned. Sexism has been so delicately woven in that, oftentimes, we don’t see it and we think, like, “Oh, we’ve come so far.” Have we? So I am excited to tell this story — to celebrate her, to offer conversation, provocation. More

Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman have resurrected their Christmas act for “a big, old chosen family reunion.”Kiki and Herb, the glamorous and harrowing cabaret duo created by Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman, never performed as reliably as the Radio City Rockettes. But for a while in the early 2000s, no Christmas felt complete without them — especially if you are the kind of person who prefers a belt of Canadian Club to eggnog.In those days, Bond played Kiki as an elderly “boozy chanteusie,” with Mellman as Herb, her childhood friend and put-upon accompanist. In fright drag, with age makeup crisscrossing her face, Bond’s Kiki would stalk through the crowd like a bloodthirsty elf, savaging holiday carols and performing medleys that intermixed “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” with “Suicide Is Painless.”“It seemed like a gift to an audience that wouldn’t necessarily be going home for Christmas, wouldn’t necessarily have the best relationship with their family,” Mellman said recently. Their shows wrapped that present in spilled drinks and smeared mascara.Kiki and Herb played their last holiday show, “Kiki & Herb: The Second Coming,” in 2007. Bond and Mellman dissolved their artistic partnership not long after. Mellman continued in the cabaret scene and performed with the band the Julie Ruin. Bond wrote new music and evolved as a visual artist. They didn’t speak for years. After reuniting at a memorial for their friend José Esteban Muñoz, they performed together again, in a show called “Seeking Asylum!,” at the Public Theater in 2016. And now, they have resurrected their Christmas act for what Bond calls, “a big, old chosen family reunion.”Beginning Tuesday, Mellman and Bond will debut “Kiki & Herb: SLEIGH at BAM,” for five performances. Studded with fan favorites — Tori Amos’s “Crucify,” Belle and Sebastian’s “Fox in the Snow” — the show will include new numbers, like Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke.” (During the duo’s last hiatus, Mellman built a file of 300 potential new songs.)On a recent weekday afternoon, Mellman and Bond met at a coffee shop in Brooklyn to chat about reclaiming Christmas and how their characters might spend the holiday. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.It’s been 14 years since your last holiday show. Why restart the tradition now?JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND Before the pandemic, Kenny found this footage of our 1999 show at Flamingo East. I had a meeting with David Binder [the artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music] to propose recreating it. He goes, “You should do a Kiki and Herb Christmas show.” They never take the good idea, I thought at the time. But then history happened, and I was feeling pretty sad last Christmas. As I started looking at what we could do as things opened up again, David sent me another email. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to get together with everybody for Christmas.This set list is mostly familiar material, right?KENNY MELLMAN It’s a question of when you go to see your favorite band and they play none of the songs you want to hear. We skirted that for years, but I felt it’d be nice to give people a Christmas present this year of being like, here. Have it.BOND We’re unpacking all the broken ornaments.How were Kiki and Herb birthed into the world?BOND I created the character of Kiki during the AIDS crisis. I was a young person in my 20s, a street activist. I felt like saying all the things I wanted to say as myself would sound too strident, too earnest. To have this boozed up old person who had done it all, seen it all, I could say anything as this character.MELLMAN All the glitz and craziness and insanity and surrealism lends it a gravitas that it would not have if you just said it in a very straight way.BOND I brought elements of people I really knew into Kiki — very intimidating, very smart women who had just gotten a [expletive] hand dealt, who somehow became these amazing creatures. So that was always there. Herb was based on this guy who worked in a piano bar that we performed at sometimes, this single guy who would drink tequila and had a picture of his cat on the piano.MELLMAN He would drink tequila and just start crying.How has the act changed over the years?MELLMAN We started this as a kind of street theater inside a bar [in San Francisco]. We were both super young, going to queer clubs, protesting every night. Coming to New York — a different atmosphere, a different queer scene — it became less like, Oh, we have to be screaming at the end of the world.BOND We started performing Kiki and Herb here in January of ’95, and ’95 was the year that the cocktail [the antiretroviral therapy for H.I.V.] came and started making lives last longer. So, it became different.MELLMAN We stopped doing mushrooms. So that changed it.BOND It’s New York, we’d better raise our game, we’d better stop doing mushrooms.What was it like to move through adulthood performing these characters?BOND That’s part of why I had to stop. I just felt like I didn’t know fully who I was. I always feel like I’m a disappointment. Because I know that people love that character so much. And I’m not that character. I remember, I thought, maybe if I just did a reality show, and I just lived as that character, people would like me more and I wouldn’t be so lonely.MELLMAN Back in the day, we were doing late-night shows, and then going out even later because we wanted to hang out with all these amazing people. There was no balance.BOND Last year when I was doing streaming performances from my house, I discovered that after 30 years in the business, that I never did a show where I didn’t go out and greet the public afterward. That’s probably why I don’t have any intimacy in my life.But as wild as the act could be, as grotesque as it could be, it was also about love.MELLMAN Like no matter what Kiki does Herb will be there. I find that really lovely and something to aspire to in a weird way. As much as a real psychological expose of that relationship would probably be horrifying, at the base of it is this incredible love for each other that transcends everything.It’s the idea that what if someone saw you at you’re just absolutely worst —MELLMAN And would still be there.So do the shows reach for a kind of emotional truth?MELLMAN Oh, for sure. There was always an emotional center to the act, because it came from a place of survival. I was recently just picturing what San Francisco was like when we created this. I wrote a poem that had the line, “The freshly dead are walking the streets.” That’s what it felt like.BOND Also it goes back to the people that I based the character on, who I had so much love for and who I felt were judged so harshly. My whole drive was to be this very unlovable character, whom people could not help but just love.How do you think Kiki and Herb would be spending this holiday?BOND Probably like us when we were young — meeting at some dive bar and playing pinball and drinking all day. Which sounds nice to me actually.MELLMAN They’d be like, I heard there’s a free buffet.BOND Right? Bottomless cocktails and free buffet at Christmas.MELLMAN Perfect. More

Jake Gyllenhaal, Patti LuPone, Judi Dench and an all-star Zoom trio find the wit, pathos and heartbreak in a remarkable songbook.Songs are there to serve the story and the show, Stephen Sondheim insisted. That’s not to say that his poignant duets, skittery patter songs and ambivalent tributes to old Broadway can’t deliver thrills even out of context. Here are 10 videos that show why, in mourning his loss, performers and writers are expressing thanks for his genius.‘Finishing the Hat’Jake Gyllenhaal’s turn in the title role of “Sunday in the Park With George” was meant to last three concert performances, but the response was so glowing that what started as a 2016 Encores! fund-raiser was retooled for Broadway. This backstage rendition of “Finishing the Hat,” a lament for the artistic struggle, shows why.‘Loving You’Judy Kuhn starred as the lovesick Fosca in the Classic Stage Company’s 2013 revival of “Passion,” one of Sondheim’s most austere, yet romantic scores. Among those who have covered this aching ballad are Barbra Streisand and Barbara Cook; Kuhn is onstage now at the same theater, playing Sara Jane Moore in Sondheim’s “Assassins.”Judy Kuhn, accompanied by Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf on cello, sings “Loving You” from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical “Passion,” now in revival at the Classic Stage Company.‘The Ladies Who Lunch’Sondheim’s 80th birthday was marked in an all-star tribute with the New York Philharmonic, in which Patti LuPone ripped into “The Ladies Who Lunch,” the boozy “Company” showstopper she is performing on Broadway in the revival now in previews. (Elaine Stritch, who introduced the song in the original production, was there, watchfully watching; she gave her all to “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”)‘The Ladies Who Lunch’While the composer’s 90th birthday fell in the middle of the pandemic, a Zoom tribute still managed to hit the heights, no higher than when Audra McDonald, Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski knocked back the vodka stingers to “drink to that.”‘Giants in the Sky’A spate of stripped-down revivals have brought new life and young fans to the Sondheim songbook. Here Patrick Mulryan, playing Jack (of Beanstalk fame) in the Fiasco Theater’s 2014 “Into the Woods,” sings the plaintive “Giants in the Sky.”Mr. Mulryan sings “Giants in the Sky” from the Fiasco Theater’s production of the musical “Into the Woods,” with Matt Castle on piano. The show is at the Laura Pels Theater through April 12.‘I’m Still Here’Yvonne DeCarlo originated this showbiz survivor’s anthem in “Follies” on Broadway 50 years ago, and Ann Miller, Polly Bergen and Shirley MacLaine (onscreen in “Postcards From the Edge”) have done it, too. Tracie Bennett got the plum assignment in the National Theater’s lush 2017 revival; its director, Dominic Cooke, is on tap to make the very-long-awaited movie.‘Losing My Mind’The middle-aged former showgirl Sally Durant sings this “Follies” classic, but Jeremy Jordan proves this ballad of obsessive love and lifelong regret is truly universal.‘Send in the Clowns’Sondheim’s one true pop hit, thanks to Judy Collins, has become a full-fledged American songbook standard, thanks to Judi Dench and other performers who’ve gotten under the skin of the rueful actress Desiree Armfeldt in “A Little Night Music.”‘Not While I’m Around’This duet between the murderous Mrs. Lovett and her young charge Tobias offers the rare glimpse of unadulterated affection in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” though it turns out to be short-lived. Melissa Errico keeps things uplifting in this lilting track from her much-praised “Sondheim Sublime” album.‘Move On’Singing from home, earbuds and all, can’t dampen the emotion of this unforgettable “Sunday in the Park With George” duet between the artist Georges Seurat and his mistress (and model) Dot, played on Broadway by Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. More