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She took on a wide range of roles in her long international career, which included a stretch as a stalwart of the Metropolitan Opera in the 1970s.Teresa Zylis-Gara, a Polish soprano who displayed a plush voice, impressive versatility and beguiling stage presence during a three-decade international career that included a stretch at the Metropolitan Opera during her prime in the 1970s, died on Aug. 28 in Lodz, Poland. She was 91. Her death was announced by the Polish National Opera. In her early years, Ms. Zylis-Gara was essentially a lyric soprano who excelled in Mozart and other roles suited to a lighter voice. But as she developed more richness and body in her sound, she moved into the lirico-spinto repertory, which calls for dramatic heft along with lyricism, including the title role of Puccini’s “Tosca,” Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Elisabeth in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser.”Her repertory ranged from the Baroque, including works by Claudio Monteverdi, to 20th-century fare by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. She also championed the songs of her countryman Chopin, works that had been surprisingly overlooked.To some opera fans and critics, Ms. Zylis-Gara’s voice, though beautiful, lacked distinctiveness. And in striving for refinement, she was sometimes deemed overly restrained. Peter G. Davis of The New York Times described this mixture of qualities in a mostly glowing review of her performance as Pamina in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” at the Met in 1970.Her “cool, silvery voice does not possess a wide range of color nor any special individuality,” Mr. Davis wrote, “but it is a lovely thing to hear in itself, and she sculpted Mozart’s melodies gracefully and stylishly.” In addition to “naturally feminine warmth and charm,” Mr. Davis said, she “interjected a pleasant note of humor into her early scenes and a genuine tragic pathos later on.”Two years later, reviewing a Met production of Verdi’s “Otello” presented on tour in Boston, the critic Ellen Pfeifer wrote in The Boston Globe that Ms. Zylis-Gara’s Desdemona was “a spirited and mature young woman instead of the usual adolescent clinging violet.” Her singing, Ms. Pfeifer added, “was beautiful, ample in size, with the requisite transparency and flexibility.”In a revealing 1974 interview with The Atlanta Constitution, Ms. Zylis-Gara spoke about the risks of being too emotional in performance. At the time, she was in Atlanta to sing the title role of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly,” and she recalled crying onstage during one particularly intense scene while performing the role as a student.“It was terrible,” she said. “When you cry you can’t sing. Since that time I’ve never allowed myself to get this far, but it’s still a danger for me.”Ms. Zylis-Gara in the title role of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at the Met in 1981. The tenor Giuliano Ciannella sang Des Grieux, Manon’s lover.J. Heffernan/Metropolitan Opera ArchivesTeresa Geralda Zylis was born on Jan. 23, 1930, in Landwarow, Poland, now Lentvaris, Lithuania, near Vilnius. She was the youngest of five children of Franciszek and Jadwiga Zylis; her father was a railway worker, her mother a homemaker.After the postwar political reconstitution of the region, the family settled in Lodz, Poland, in 1946. The 16-year-old Teresa decided to devote herself to singing and began nine years of study with Olga Ogina.She won first prize in the 1954 Polish Young Vocalists Contest in Warsaw, which led to engagements with Polish National Radio and, in 1956, her professional debut with the Krakow Opera in the title role of “Halka,” by the 19th-century Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, a staple of the Polish opera repertory. Further prizes during the next few years in Toulouse, France, and in Munich led to engagements with opera houses in Oberhausen, Dortmund and Düsseldorf in West Germany.Determined to advance her career, she made professional decisions that affected her personal life, as she explained in the 1974 interview.She had married Jerzy Gara, the director of a technical school in Lodz, in 1954. The next year their son, also named Jerzy, was born. But it proved “impossible to be a wife, mother and artist of international fame all at one time,” she said.“I chose to be the artist,” she added. “I accept my choice and everything that has happened in my private life as a result.”When her son was 6, she left him in the care of her own mother in Lodz and settled in Germany to pursue her career, which quickly prospered. (Her marriage ended in divorce.)“It is something special to have a talent,” she said. “It brings a responsibility with it.” She added, referring to her son, “I saw sometimes he was not happy; and this is difficult.”He survives her, as does a granddaughter.Ms. Zylis-Gara in 1968, the year Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” became, as she put it, her “destiny role.” Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMs. Zylis-Gara had a significant breakthrough in 1965 when she sang an acclaimed Octavian in a production of Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, which led to her debut with the Paris National Opera the next year. In 1968, a banner year, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” became her calling card — or, as she put it in a 1969 interview with The Los Angeles Times, her “destiny role.” She sang Elvira for her debuts at the Salzburg Festival (with Herbert von Karajan conducting), the San Francisco Opera and, in December, the Met.Of the San Francisco performance, the Los Angeles Times critic Martin Bernheimer wrote that Ms. Zylis-Gara “sang a Donna Elvira that easily withstood comparison with the finest recent exponents of that difficult role, Sena Jurinac and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.”At the Met, the cast included the formidable Cesare Siepi as Giovanni and Martina Arroyo as Donna Anna. In a 2015 article in Opera News in which various opera professionals were asked to pick their favorite “diva debuts” at the Met, Ms. Arroyo chose Ms. Zylis-Gara’s Donna Elvira. “She sang so well, a pure voice just right in style — one of the very best Elviras,” Ms. Arroyo said.The Met’s general manager, Rudolf Bing, promptly engaged Ms. Zylis-Gara for future bookings. She went on to sing 232 performances with the company over 16 seasons, taking on 20 roles, including the Marschallin in “Rosenkavalier,” Wagner’s Elisabeth and Elsa (in “Lohengrin”), Puccini’s Mimi, Butterfly and Desdemona, and Tchaikovsky’s Tatiana.Through the 1980s, Ms. Zylis-Gara continued to sing in the world’s major houses. In later years, she divided her time between a home in Monaco and visits to her native land, sat often on competition juries, and eagerly taught emerging singers. Asked in a 2009 Opera News interview whether she would ever say farewell to opera, she asserted that this “would never take place!”“The stage lights won’t dim for even a second,” she said, “since I transmit to my gifted pupils all my artistic soul, my knowledge and my experience.”Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw. More

After recording “I Was Born This Way,” a club favorite, he entered the ministry and founded a church for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.Carl Bean, who in 1977 recorded “I Was Born This Way,” a disco song of L.G.B.T.Q. pride that became a much-remixed club favorite — and who then became a minister and AIDS activist, founding a church in Los Angeles that sought to serve the spiritual needs of gay people and others who were marginalized — died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 77.Unity Fellowship Church, which he founded in 1985 and which is guided by the slogan “God is love and love is for everyone,” announced his death on its website. It did not give a cause.Mr. Bean, who was openly gay from a young age, was a singer before he was a preacher and received the title archbishop, recording gospel songs for ABC Records in the mid-1970s as the frontman for the group Carl Bean and Universal Love. The Motown label had acquired the rights to “I Was Born This Way,” a song written by Bunny Jones, set to music by Chris Spierer and recorded in 1975 by a singer using the name Valentino (real name Charles Harris). The chorus went: “Oh yes I’m happy, I’m carefree and I’m gay, yes I’m gay./’Tain’t a fault, ’tis a fact, I was born this way.”Motown approached Mr. Bean about covering it.“I was hesitant to sign with another record label,” he told The Advocate in 1978, “but after I found out what the song was, I knew I had to do it. It was like providence. They came to me with a song I have been looking for my whole life.”The Bean version, with a more pronounced disco flair and a streamlined chorus (“I’m happy, I’m carefree and I’m gay; I was born this way”), became a favorite in gay clubs all over the country and abroad. Some 34 years later, it inspired Lady Gaga’s No. 1 hit “Born This Way.”Mr. Bean had considered the ministry before, but the song helped him focus that calling.“I suppose this song and its message is a sort of ministry to gay people,” he said in the 1978 interview. “I am using my voice to tell gay people that they can still feel good about being gay even if there are people like Anita Bryant around” — a reference to one of the most prominent opponents of gay rights in the 1970s.Archbishop Bean was ordained as a minister in 1982 and began working in Los Angeles, with a particular interest in reaching out to gay Black people and other groups who had felt unwelcome in mainstream Christianity.via Unity Fellowship Church MovementHe always praised Motown for backing the record, but, he said in a 2009 interview with the website Out Alliance, he and the company parted ways “when they wanted me to do songs like ‘Ooh girl I love you so’ — right after they promoted me as openly gay.”So he turned away from a music career and toward the ministry. He was ordained in 1982 by Archbishop William Morris O’Neal of the Universal Tabernacles of Christ Church and began working in Los Angeles, with a particular interest in reaching out to gay Black people and other groups who had felt unwelcome in mainstream Christianity. He started a Bible study group, which grew into the Unity Fellowship Church.The country was in the midst of the AIDS crisis by then, and one of his outreach efforts, the Minority AIDS Project, which he started in 1985, focused on Black and Latino residents of Los Angeles. One thing it tried to do was correct flaws in the educational material put out by the government, or by predominantly white organizations, which was not registering with people of color.“You almost had to have a college degree to understand it,” he told The New York Times in 1987. “We put people of color on the brochure so people couldn’t say, ‘This doesn’t affect me.’”The effort also sought to overcome cultural taboos in minority communities.“AIDS took the cloak off for the world that homosexuality exists, especially for minorities,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1989. “People who wanted to think there was no such thing as a gay Black man or a gay Latino had a rude awakening.”He became a bishop in the church in 1992 and an archbishop in 1999.“While his life and spirit may have inspired Lady Gaga’s iconic song ‘Born This Way,’” Barbara Satin, faith work director of the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force, said by email, “his true legacy will be the way he lived and the countless people his ministry impacted.”Carl Bean was born in Baltimore on May 26, 1944. “Mom was 15, Dad was 16, and they never married,” he wrote in his autobiography, “I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher’s Journey Through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ” (2010), written with David Ritz.Archbishop Bean, who was openly gay from a young age, published his autobiography in 2010.Simon & SchusterIn the book, he portrayed his upbringing as a communal affair. “I was raised by many mothers who took me in and loved me completely,” he wrote, though he also described sexual abuse by a man he thought of as an uncle.Religion was important to him even as a young boy.“I used to carry my Bible and read it on the school bus,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “And after school I’d go over to the church — it was a Black Baptist church — and sit in the church secretary’s office and help her with letters and things. I sang in the choir and expressed a desire to go into the Christian ministry. I was a role model in my community.”But he also knew from an early age that he was gay, and eventually the community turned on him.“A neighbor boy and I were intimate, and his parents told my parents,” he recalled in the Out Alliance interview. “I got the blame.”“I had had all this support — and suddenly I was a pariah,” he added. “I had been little Carl who did well in school and could sing, et cetera. Now suddenly I was the bringer of shame.”At 13, he said, “I went to the bathroom and took every pill in the medicine cabinet and went into my room and locked the door, and wrote a note saying ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.’” The suicide attempt resulted in sessions with a psychiatrist that, Archbishop Bean said, proved life-changing.“She said she couldn’t teach me to be what my parents wanted, but she could teach me to accept myself and be comfortable with who I was,” he told Out Alliance.While still a teenager he moved to New York, where he joined Alex Bradford’s gospel singing group. In 1972 he relocated to Los Angeles.Among the many honors Archbishop Bean received over the years was one bestowed in 1992 by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a global organization: It named an AIDS hospice center in South Los Angeles the Carl Bean House.Information on survivors was not immediately available.In 1995, Archbishop Bean reflected on his experience of being an outcast, and about his motivation in creating an inclusive church.“If I can help other people not to have to face what I did,” he told The Los Angeles Times, “then that’s what Christianity and God and love are all about.” More

Hear tracks by Ed Sheeran, Jazzmeia Horn and Her Noble Force, Ìfé and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Radiohead, ‘If You Say the Word’In 2000, Radiohead ripped apart old, pompous Britpop assumptions. With the sessions that yielded the albums “Kid A” and “Amnesiac,” the band followed its most arty, experimental inclinations and looked inward at the same time. “If You Say the Word” is a song that the group completed but shelved, which will appear on its expanded reissue “Kid A Mnesia.” Its sound is still relatively live — a band with a steady drummer going minimalist — with lyrics that contemplate entombment and liberation. JON PARELESEd Sheeran, ‘Shivers’The producer Max Martin may have coined the phrase “melodic math,” but Ed Sheeran absolutely embodies it in his lyrics, music and production. “Shivers” is just packed with pop trigger words — love, heart, fire, kissed, party, car, dance, sunlight, soul, “tear me apart,” “lipstick on my guitar,” “all day and all night,” “do it like that” — backed by a track that pulls in pizzicato strings and flamenco handclaps over a solid four-chord structure. If computers will dance or fall in love, this is their song. PARELESSam Hunt, ‘23’A balmy track about the one who got away, “23” is about how the power of memory is sometimes more than enough. Sung with wistfulness but no malice, Sam Hunt recalls a love who moved on in a different direction, and he sounds almost as soothing remembering their good times together as imagining how her future might have turned out: “I really hope you’re happy now/I’m really glad I knew you when.” JON CARAMANICALisa, ‘Lalisa’The solo debut single from Lisa of Blackpink is politely exuberant and tautly bubbly. Perhaps her group’s most nimble rapper, she sashays her way through this thumping, popping song. It’s an extension of a familiar brand, with a sprinkle of innovation when the track and video nod to Lisa’s Thai heritage. CARAMANICAYebba, ‘Boomerang’​​Yebba (the singer and songwriter Abigail Elizabeth Smith) harks back to vintage-sounding 1960s pop and soul on her debut album, “Dawn.” In “Boomerang,” she sings about an inevitable payback for the man who, she realized too late, would “drag me through hell.” She gathers her rage in a spaghetti-Western track, with distant drums, castanets and orchestral accents; her “whoo-oo-oo-oo” hook whirls like a boomerang. PARELESJazzmeia Horn and Her Noble Force, ‘Where Is Freedom!?’The vocalist and composer Jazzmeia Horn closes her new album, the rousing big-band effort “Dear Love,” with “Where Is Freedom!?,” carrying a message of self-liberation over a groove that could have come off a 1970s soul record. “What does it mean to ascend after your journey begins?/You just might lose all your friends to be free,” she sings defiantly, as the track nears its summit and the horns’ harmonies pool together behind her. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSleigh Bells, ‘True Seekers’How does a band built for brash, high-gloss, defiant pop address pandemic times? Brashly and knowingly, summoning its usual muscle and melody — Derek Miller’s walloping drum-machine beats and loud guitars behind Alexis Krauss’s chipper voice — but now, on its new album “Texis,” with lyrics that stare down dread and mortality: “Strip away armor, strip away fear/I think I lost it but here it comes again,” Krauss sings. “I’ll find my way out of the grave.” PARELESÌfé, ‘Fake Blood’The genre-crushing group Ìfé is a revelation. Its new song, “Fake Blood,” is a reminder of the boundless promise of music, collaging Auto-Tuned Yoruba prayer, the steady shakes of a maraca and thumping bass into a meditation on colonialism, police violence and mass shootings. Over clattering hand percussion, deep bass and razor-sharp synth stabs, the group asks, “¿Qué es lo que pasa aquí?” (“What’s going on here?”) Drawing on sounds and styles from across the African diaspora, it is an exercise in divination — a demand to imagine a better future, right here, right now. ISABELIA HERRERAFivio Foreign, ‘Story Time’The early waves of Brooklyn drill were light on storytelling, so Fivio Foreign’s breakout performance on Kanye West’s “Donda” album came as a shock. “Story Time” underscores that his narrative gifts are here to stay. It’s a vivid tale about a young man in jail facing unthinkable choices: “He was a little fish when he jumped into the water/and then he grew into a shark.” CARAMANICATirzah featuring Coby Sey, ‘Hive Mind’Like the neon glow of a below-ground cocktail lounge, Tirzah’s “Hive Mind” flickers into cool tranquillity. A kick drum thumps under oblique, dog-bark synths. Tirzah and the vocalist Coby Sey offer a serene, call-and-response conversation: “But who we were/Do we see things through?” By the song’s end, the question is seemingly left unanswered. The effect is a bit haunting and a bit loose, and all the more hypnotic. HERRERASt. Etienne, ‘Pond House’Saint Etienne, which arrived in the 1990s as a suave, optimistic, crate-digging corollary of trip-hop, is downright somber on its album “I’ve Been Trying to Tell You,” billed as music for the film of the same name. “Pond House” meditates in a wide-open soundscape, with a vocal sample from Natalie Imbruglia’s “Beauty on the Fire” — “Here it comes again/Cannot outrun my desire” — hovering above a thudding reggae beat and bass line, as percussion and sea gull sounds open out the horizon. PARELESAakash Mittal, ‘Nocturne III’Visiting Kolkata, India, years ago, the saxophonist Aakash Mittal became inspired by the throbbing energy and lively soundscape of night in that crowded city, and endeavored to write music that captured the feeling. He ended up living there for the better part of two years, and came away with a book of compositions that he referred to as his “nocturnes.” On “Nocturne III,” he was specifically thinking of the way drivers use their car horns — freely, as a form of chattery communication — while drawing from the Carnatic raga of Bageshri. Mittal and his trio (the guitarist Miles Okazaki and the mrudangam drummer Rajna Swaminathan) play in unison, repeating an increasingly urgent rhythm at one pitch before jumping to another, like different cars stuck in a jam. RUSSONELLOCircuit des Yeux, ‘Sculpting the Exodus’Haley Fohr, the composer and singer who records as Circuit des Yeux, brings operatic drama to a sense of loss in “Sculpting the Exodus” from her album due Oct. 22, “-io.” It’s an elegy that begins with a modest, tolling harpsichord motif and swells to an overwhelming orchestral peak in a swirl of ghostly voices, as Fohr clings to a kind of memorial, singing, “The signal goes on repeating.” PARELESSarah Davachi, ‘Abeyant’“Abeyant,” a new work from the experimental luminary Sarah Davachi, is deeply reverent of time. The song is simple but potent: For seven minutes, the fuzz of tape hovers under subdued piano keys and synths, repeating, suspending and lulling melody into a kind of extended, decomposed aria. This is the kind of music that demands repeat listens, urging us to listen closely, deeply and intimately to what might appear to be just texture, but contains the promise of deep contemplation under the surface. HERRERA More

At the largest American ensembles, one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres, a shift might be on the horizon.For years, they have worked their way to the top of the classical music industry. They have confronted stereotypes that they are too weak to lead. They have shared advice about how to deal with sexist comments and even how to dress.Now a group of women could be on the cusp of breaking barriers in one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres: the male-dominated world of orchestral conducting.In the history of American orchestras, only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month. Her departure has ushered in an unsettling era for the country’s musical landscape. Among the 25 largest ensembles, there are now no women serving as music directors.Only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier American ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month.Schaun Champion for The New York TimesAlsop, 64, said in an interview that she was surprised the statistics remain “so shockingly brutal.” When she assumed the top spot in Baltimore in 2007, she expected more women would soon be appointed at other orchestras.They never were. Instead, she said, she met resistance when she tried to bring in more women as guest conductors.Alsop said she feels the current moment could be different, since the #MeToo movement and a broad reckoning over severe gender and racial disparities in classical music are putting pressure on arts leaders.“I hope that we’re past the tipping point,” she said. “It feels that way. But I’ve been naïve in believing that before.”For women in conducting, there are reasons to be optimistic. Administrators at major ensembles in cities like Atlanta, Minneapolis and Cincinnati, as well as Baltimore, are vowing to ensure that women are serious contenders.The Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki is considered a serious contender for a major American position.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSo is Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who leads the City of Birmingham Orchestra in England.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesSearch committees are looking at a mix of established artists and rising stars, according to interviews with 20 committee members, administrators, players and conductors.Among the most frequently mentioned names are Susanna Malkki, 52, the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, 35, who leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain.Mark Volpe, the former president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said that while “progress has been painfully slow,” orchestras were likely to appoint more women over the next several years.“People respond to pressure,” he said. “There is heightened awareness of the imperative to be more inclusive.”Women are winning plum jobs as assistant and guest conductors, typically steppingstones to prestigious posts. Eun Sun Kim has just begun her tenure at the San Francisco Opera, becoming the first woman to serve as music director of a major American opera house.“You’re going to see an acceleration,” said Deborah Borda, the New York Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, who also serves as chairwoman of the jury at La Maestra, an international conducting competition for women. “The foot is on the gas.”The German conductor Ruth Reinhardt, 33, a former assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, said, “My generation is maybe the first one who got equal opportunities to develop and grow.”Still, she said she feels there is a perception that there is only space for a small number of women to rise. “We have thousands of male conductors, and there’s good male conductors and bad male conductors and everything in between,” she said. “There should be a right to have just as many women conductors.”Jeri Lynne Johnson leading the ensemble she founded, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra.Ed A. Kennedy IIIRuth Reinhardt leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia ElzafonOpenings loom: Roughly a third of the music directors at the top 25 largest orchestras in the United States are planning to step down over the next several years. That includes veterans like Louis Langrée, 60, at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, 60, at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The contract of Riccardo Muti, 80, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ends in 2022. Baltimore’s podium is currently empty, and at the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska, 68, is stepping down after the coming season. There are current or coming openings in Indianapolis, Kansas City and Salt Lake City.But some women describe an uphill battle. They continue to face stereotypes that only men can serve as maestros. They also grapple with the perception that they do not have enough experience to lead elite ensembles. This can lead to a paradox: While top orchestras demand their conductors be seasoned, particularly if they’re going to appear on prestigious subscription series, it is hard to get that experience if you do not already have it.Jeri Lynne Johnson, the founder and artistic director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in Philadelphia, said that earlier in her career orchestras turned her down for conducting positions because they said she was not what audiences expected a music director to look like.Johnson, who is Black, said she felt ensembles seemed more willing to take chances on young men than young women. While the average age of music directors skews older, American orchestras have shown a willingness to hire charismatic young men, such as Gustavo Dudamel, who was named to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007, when he was 26. Yannick Nézet-Séguin was 35 when he was hired by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010; Andris Nelsons, 34 when he was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2013.“Female leadership is more necessary now than it ever was,” Johnson said. “We need to allow the insight and perspective of someone who has been kept out of the halls of power, to create more inroads for other people.”Across 174 American ensembles of all sizes, about 9 percent of music directors were women in 2016, the last year for which data is available, according to the League of American Orchestras. Experts say a lack of role models has contributed to gender disparities in conducting. Orchestras also have historically given women fewer opportunities to lead ensembles as guests, making it difficult for them to practice and to build relationships with administrators and players.Xian Zhang is the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Cherylynn TsushimaDalia Stasevska leading the First Night of the BBC Proms earlier this summer.Chris ChristodoulouThe talent pool has widened in recent years. Competitions, master classes and fellowships geared toward women have become more popular. Veteran conductors like Alsop and JoAnn Falletta, the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in New York since 1999, have started programs to mentor rising artists.Falletta, 67, said she helps women navigate a variety of issues, including what to wear while conducting and how to build trust with boards of directors dominated by men.“You have to find your own authority,” she said. “You don’t have to imitate anyone. You don’t have to be like a Toscanini. That actually doesn’t work anymore, to be a conductor with totalitarian power.”Orchestra leaders say they are working to include more women and people of color on hiring committees — a critical step, they say, in ensuring that female candidates are fairly considered.Jonathan Martin, the president of the Cincinnati Symphony, said he believed systemic discrimination in orchestras had kept women from attaining music director posts for decades. He said he rejected the idea that women have only in recent years gained enough experience to be considered for positions at large ensembles.“It was an issue of opportunity,” he said. “It was never an issue of talent.”A lack of diversity among board members has contributed to the dearth of female conductors, many say. Across the industry, boards are about 58 percent male and 92 percent white, according to the League of American Orchestras.Jeannette Sorrell started her own ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, a Baroque orchestra based in Cleveland, in part, she said, because she encountered bias while trying to navigate a traditional career. She said a lack of diversity on boards is a major obstacle.“A lot of orchestras are still led by boards of directors who see their role as the guardians of tradition,” said Sorrell, 56. “That is a very important role for a board, but it’s not the only role.”Orchestras, hoping to expand the pool of experienced, viable candidates for when vacancies arise, have made an effort in recent years to appoint more women as assistant conductors and guests.At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, leaders say change will come only when women are allowed to build long-term relationships with orchestras. Of 40 young conductors who have participated in the Philharmonic’s conductor fellowship program since 2009, about a quarter have been women.Lina González-Granados is among the rising conductors creating buzz.Chris LeeGemma New is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia Elzafon“Conducting doesn’t happen overnight,” said Chad Smith, the Philharmonic’s chief executive. “There’s a lag time here, which is something we’re all struggling with.”Malkki, who serves as the Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor, said orchestras sometimes focused too much on hiring charismatic figures instead of those with solid technical abilities.“Some artists are just put aside because they are not glamorous enough,” she said. “There is talent, and if we give the dedicated people opportunities, then these people will also grow into greater artists.”While search committees at many orchestras are just beginning to convene — Cincinnati announced the members of its panel on Sept. 2 — the wish list for some includes stars like Malkki and Grazinyte-Tyla.Other frequently mentioned names include respected artists like Sorrell; Barbara Hannigan, 50, a Canadian soprano and conductor; Anna Skryleva, 46, a Russian who leads the Theater Magdeburg in Germany; Debora Waldman, 44, the director of the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence in France; the Australian conductor Simone Young, 60; and Xian Zhang, the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Up-and-coming conductors like Reinhardt; Karina Canellakis, 40, the chief conductor of Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; Elim Chan, 34, the chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra; Lina González-Granados, 35, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s conducting fellow; Gemma New, 34, a New Zealand-born conductor who is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, 36, the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the Austrian conductor Katharina Wincor, 26, are also creating buzz.While it may take several years for widespread change to come, some women say they are already noticing a shift. They are getting more invitations to appear with top orchestras, and they say their fan bases are widening.Speranza Scappucci, 48, an Italian conductor who is rising in the opera world, said ensembles should move swiftly.“There are some really amazing women out there,” she said. “I look at it and I think, ‘Wow, it’s 2021. What are we waiting for?’ ” More

The company, which faced steep losses after the pandemic forced it to shut down on March 12, 2020, is working to lure operagoers back to its 3,800-seat theater. Tera Willis was backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, painstakingly adding strand after strand of salt-and-pepper hair to a half-finished wig — one of dozens she and her team were racing to finish in time for opening night later this month after the pandemic had kept performers from getting measured until mid-August.“I would love about six months,” Ms. Willis, the head of the company’s wig and makeup department, said. “We have six weeks.”The chorus was back at work, singing through masks.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesA performer warmed up at a rehearsal for Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which will open the season.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIn the Met’s underground rehearsal rooms, chorus members were straining to project through the masks they must rehearse in, a few pulling the fabric a couple of inches from their face for a moment or two. Just outside its gilded auditorium, which has been empty since the pandemic forced the opera house to close a year and half ago, stagehands were reupholstering some worn red velvet seats. Beneath the arched entry to the opera house, an electrician was installing wiring to make some of the heavy front doors touchless.Reopening after the long shutdown was never going to be easy for the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts company in the nation. Unlike a Broadway theater, which must safely bring back one show, the Met, a $300-million-a-year operation, is planning to mount 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, typically changing what’s on its mammoth stage each night.The financial stakes are high: The Met, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, must now draw audiences back to its 3,800-seat opera house amid renewed concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. Will people return in force, after getting out of the habit of spending nights at the opera? Will the Met’s strict vaccine mandate — it will ban audience members under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated — reassure operagoers, especially older ones? How much will travel bans hurt the box office, where international visitors made up as much as 20 percent of ticket buyers?The Met is warily watching sales. It has sold about $20 million worth of tickets for the season so far, the company said, down from $27 million at the same point in the season before the pandemic. Subscriptions, which have been steadily eroding at American symphony orchestras and opera companies in recent years, are down by about a quarter from before the pandemic, but officials expect more subscribers to renew when they feel safe about attending. Strong recent sales, and the speed with which the Met sold out an affordably priced performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, offered hope that audiences will come back.The financial uncertainty led the Met to seek concessions from its unions, some of which will be restored if and when the box office approaches prepandemic levels. The ensuing labor disputes further complicated the reopening: The company did not reach a deal with its stagehands until July, delaying summer technical rehearsals, and only settled another, with its orchestra, late last month, removing the last major barrier to reopening.Riyo Mitsui, one of the Met’s wigmakers, at work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo now the company is gearing up quickly, preparing to marshal the forces of roughly 1,000 singers, orchestra players, conductors, dancers and actors scheduled to perform this season. It started with two free performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” outdoors at Lincoln Center last weekend; will perform Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday, its first performance back inside the opera house, a concert that will be broadcast on PBS; and it will finally open the opera season on Sept. 27 with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer. The company is hoping that “Fire” and another contemporary opera — “Eurydice,” by Matthew Aucoin — will draw new audiences. The whole organization is getting ready to reopen. Keith Narkon, a ticket seller, was with his colleagues behind the Met’s box-office windows, stuffing tickets into envelopes — and happy to be back after the virus had taken away their jobs for more than a year.In the box office, employees are getting the tickets ready for opening night.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“It was just this numbness,” Mr. Narkon, a self-described opera fanatic, said of the long shutdown. As the opera house buzzes with preseason anticipation, there are still bruised feelings from the labor battles, but there is also a palpable sense of relief to finally be back in the building together and working again after so many months of unemployment checks and uncertainty.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” said Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, as he ripped the worn velvet off a seat cushion.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, said as he reupholstered a chair.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesThe doors to the auditorium got a fresh coat of paint.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut life backstage is still far from normal, as company officials keep a close eye on the Delta variant, and the steps they must take to keep the company and the audience safe..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The company’s vaccination mandate is so strict that an unvaccinated telecom worker who arrived for a job was turned away. A special patron’s entrance area has been turned into a testing center where people in rehearsals must get nasal-swab tests twice a week. And to keep audience members apart from the performers, the first two rows of seats in the auditorium will be blocked off through the end of the year.“On one hand, it’s frightening and frustrating to see the rate of infection,” said Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met. “But it’s so thrilling to see the possibility within grasp of actually opening performances.”Workers cleaned one of the stairways at the opera house.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome bitterness lingers over the labor disputes, which were resolved when the company’s three biggest unions agreed to new contracts that cut their pay modestly, saving the company money by moving some workers to a different health care plan and reducing the number of guaranteed full-time members of the orchestra and chorus.In the props department, where scenic artists were working to create corn on the cob and a pat of butter for a Thanksgiving dinner in the upcoming production of “Fire,” Ryan Hixenbaugh, an artist, lamented that some of the work had been finished in California, where Met management outsourced work after locking out its stagehands in December in the fight over pay cuts. “We had the capability of making all the scenery for all of these operas here,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said.With the opera house empty for more than a year, there was sprucing up to do: Keishla Nieves cleaned a brass railing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesWith no audiences and no crowds for a year and a half, there was no need for stanchions to direct people to the Box Office. But they will soon be put in service again.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome stagehands made ends meet during the shutdown, and the lockout, by building outdoor shelters for the city’s new al fresco dining spots. Others got work in television production, which rebounded before live performance.When they returned to the Met in July, the stagehands found an enormous amount of work. For more than a year, the opera house had sat still, as if frozen in time. The decades-old machinery that makes the Met’s stage run was not built for such dormancy.Two scenic backdrops that had been hanging for months had fallen to the ground earlier in the year. The wheels on the Met’s wagon system — which is powerful enough to quickly shuttle its mammoth sets of Ancient Egypt, Imperial China or Fin-de-Siècle Paris on and offstage — were flattened by the weight of the sets that had been left on top of them. And parts of the fly system, made up of wire rope lines and riggings, had rusted.“To leave it sitting still for that length of time was terrifying,” said David Feheley, the Met’s technical director. “So many of these systems have lasted as long as they have because of constant attention.”Stagehands built sets backstage. When they returned to the opera house, they found that the stage machinery needed a great deal of maintenance work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo accommodate all the urgent maintenance work, the Met’s technical rehearsals were pushed from the beginning of August to the end of the month. One opera, Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” was canceled.The orchestra saw 11 of its 96 regular full-time members retire or leave their jobs during the pandemic, according to the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. A number of veteran stagehands retired too.The company hopes the excitement of working together again will outweigh any residual resentment.“The Met is maybe slightly fractured,” Mr. Gelb said, “but it is a family.”The Met is planning 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, which means a lot of ironing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPaul Tazewell, the costume designer for “Fire,” said that it was odd not to be able to see the faces of performers, who have been staying largely masked.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt this stage of the pandemic, it’s a family that can’t have any members under the age of 12, and not just in the audience. The Met’s performers cannot be young, either. In “Boris Godunov,” which is scheduled to open on Sept. 28, a part that is often sung by a boy soprano will be given to an adult mezzo-soprano. And in “Fire” — which is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times — a 13-year-old, Walter Russell III, will play the role of young Charles, who is supposed to be 7.“I have been trying to get into the mind of a 7-year-old kid,” Mr. Russell said.In the props department, scenic artists prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for the upcoming production of “Fire.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo reopen smoothly, the Met’s staff members still have numerous battles to wage.Everything from fabrics for costumes to machinery for stage lights to basic materials like plywood and steel are proving difficult to obtain because of pandemic supply-chain problems. And booking the international performers opera relies on has become a mess of unpredictable red tape, between visa troubles and virus-related travel restrictions.One of the few times performers can take their masks off these days is when they are being fitted in the costume shop, for photos that are taken to help designers take in the effect of each costume.“If there’s an unspoken feeling, normally I would be able to see that on a performer’s face, but I can’t access that,” said Paul Tazewell, the Tony-winning costume designer for “Fire.”A model of the “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” set.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut, come Sept. 27 — if all goes as planned — the masks will come off, the Sputnik chandeliers will ascend, the curtain will go up and live opera will be back onstage.Zachary Woolfe contributed reporting. More

He and his singing partner, Ros Serey Sothea, drew from a wide range of Western and local influences. They disappeared after the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Before the singer-songwriter Sinn Sisamouth disappeared, he had become a fixture on radio programs and in nightclubs in Cambodia and beyond. For more than two decades, from the 1950s until the mid-’70s, fans praised his smooth voice and evocative lyrics about love and the Cambodian landscape.He and his bandmates — most notably the singer Ros Serey Sothea — stood out for their versatile repertoire of jazz, rock ’n’ roll and popular Khmer ballads, among other styles. Sometimes they would use the melody of a Western song — the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” for example — while adding orchestration and writing original Khmer lyrics for it.They played a major role in defining the sound of Cambodia’s popular music industry, with Sinn Sisamouth emerging as one of the country’s most revered stars.Then, in 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power, enacting a four-year campaign of execution, forced labor, disease and famine that killed at least 1.7 million people. The work of artists and intellectuals was brutally repressed, and Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea were among the many Cambodians who disappeared amid the violence and upheaval.Even now the circumstances of their deaths are unclear, though family members are certain they are no longer alive. Sinn Sisamouth’s granddaughter Sin Setsochhata said that, based on research by her father, her family believes that Sinn Sisamouth disappeared in the southern province of Kandal, which borders Vietnam. Some believe he died in a labor camp. The Guardian reported in 2007 that he had been shot. By some accounts, before his execution, believed to be in 1976, he pleaded to sing one last song.Many of Sinn Sisamouth’s recordings survived, however, and they still exert a deep influence on Cambodian culture.“He was a pioneer,” the Cambodian musician Mol Kamach said in “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll,” a 2014 documentary film, by John Pirozzi, about Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea and other musicians. “He was an example to other professional singers that singing modern is like this.”Sinn Sisamouth was believed to have been born on Aug. 23, 1933, in the northeastern province of Stung Treng. (Some accounts list his birth year as 1932 or 1935.)His father, Sinn Leang, was a prison warden; his mother was Sib Bunloeu, according to a 1995 article in The Phnom Penh Post. At the age of 7 or 8, Sinn Sisamouth moved to the western province of Battambang, where his uncle helped him develop an early interest in playing traditional Khmer music on stringed instruments like the tro khmer, a type of fiddle, and the chapei, a lute.Sinn Sisamouth arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital, when he was 17 and enrolled in a medical school there with the goal of becoming a hospital nurse, but he never lost his love of music. He performed for sick patients to help them relax, his granddaughter said, and spent his breaks playing his mandolin under a tree.He later began performing live at the headquarters of Cambodia’s newly established national radio, and his profile rose.“When it came to singing technique, Sinn Sisamouth was king,” Prince Panara Sirivudh, a member of the Cambodian royal family, said in the documentary. “His voice was so beautiful, and he wrote very sweet songs.”Popular Western music was imported to Cambodia as early as the 1940s by the royal palace and by Cambodians who could afford to travel to Europe, and the country’s rock ’n’ roll scene began in earnest in the 1950s, according to a study by LinDa Saphan, the associate producer of the documentary and a professor of sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City.The sound blended high-pitched, operatic singing with the distorted electric guitar solos that were popular in American music at the time.Sinn Sisamouth became representative of this new style because he had an ability to write both ballads and upbeat rock songs, Saphan wrote, but the voices of Ros Serey Sothea and other female vocalists on his recordings were the “final touch that made this Cambodian mix so enticing.”Early in his career, Sinn Sisamouth was invited to perform with Cambodia’s royal ballet; he appeared in dapper suits and bow ties, his hair combed back. He also traveled overseas — to India, Hong Kong and beyond — with a traditional band formed by the queen’s son, Norodom Sihanouk, a composer and saxophonist (and future king) who played a major role in developing the country’s cultural industries in the postcolonial era.It was a hopeful time in Cambodia’s history: The country had achieved independence from France in 1953 and was shaping its identity and culture.As Sinn Sisamouth’s popularity grew, his former neighbors in the countryside marveled at hearing his songs on the radio. Some referred to him as “golden voice” or the “Elvis of Cambodia.”“A medical student — how can he sing?” the villagers said at the time, his sister recalled in the documentary.He met Ros Serey Sothea when she was 17 at the national radio station and recorded with her for more than a decade.Though they were never romantically involved, “their musical conversations were love stories filled with a sense of yearning and despair, of palpable loss, yet holding out the possibility of reconciliation,” Saphan wrote.By the early 1970s, amid a scene of go-go bands, big hairdos and youthful exuberance, the duo had produced several hit songs, including a few for Cambodian films. Sinn Sisamouth also wrote and directed the 1974 film “Unexpected Song,” which included some of his original music and a performance by Ros Serey Sothea.The duo’s music has received renewed interest. Sinn Sisamouth is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, “Elvis of Cambodia,” and Ros Serey Sothea is the subject of a graphic novel, “The Golden Voice,” which is scheduled to be published next year.Sinn Sisamouth married one of his cousins, Khao Thang Nhoth, and they had three sons and a daughter, according to The Post. One of his sons, Sin Chanchhaya, also became a musician.For all of Sinn Sisamouth’s performing prowess, he was an introvert who spent most of his time alone, his granddaughter said. Often after having dinner with his family he would retire to his studio to compose.“All the emotions — the spirit, the connection, the interior feelings — were expressed through his music,” she said. More

The frontman of his family’s popular band combined the country’s unique, Latin-influenced sound with politically biting lyrics.COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — In the end, it was only appropriate that Sunil Perera, who had entertained generations of Sri Lankans on the radio and on the dance floor with his distinctive, Latin-fused tunes, would go out singing.On his deathbed at a hospital in the capital city of Colombo, Mr. Perera had asked for a guitar, which he wasn’t provided. So he turned to what couldn’t be denied.“The doctor told me that the day before he died, he was singing and entertaining everyone there,” said Piyal Perera, Sunil’s brother and bandmate.Mr. Perera died on Monday at the Nawaloka hospital in Colombo, his brother said. He was 68. While the cause of death was not clear, Mr. Perera had been recovering from Covid-19 when he was rushed into intensive care, Piyal Perera said.Few have made such a large impact on Sri Lanka’s cultural and entertainment scene as Mr. Perera did for half a century. Often dressed in bright colors and a bowler’s hat, he produced hit song after hit song through the Gypsies, the family band, which was preparing to celebrate its golden jubilee this year.The Gypsies specialized in baila, a jolly and rhythmic genre sung mostly in Sinhalese but influenced by the Portuguese, who colonized much of the island in the 16th and 17th centuries.Over the decades he used his lyrics and his voice to amplify concerns about Sri Lanka’s shrinking democratic space. The country, still recovering from years of civil war, has been beset by government pressure against journalists, activists and minority groups. Mr. Perera frequently lambasted a decaying political elite that has become bogged down in bickering and that, he believed, was dashing the nation’s hopes.“He was both popular and a protester,” said Lakshman Joseph-de Saram, a film composer from Sri Lanka. “We rarely have a Bob Dylan and a Michael Jackson in one package.”Mr. Saram added, “He was our baila king.”Tributes poured in after his death, including from politicians Mr. Perera had openly criticized. He directed his anger at the country’s ruling Rajapaksa family and at the opposition that repeatedly disappointed him with the chaos in its ranks.President Gotabaya Rajapaksa called his passing “a great loss.” Sajith Premadasa, leader of the opposition, said Mr. Perera had “pioneered a modern day revolution in the musical history of Sri Lanka.”He was born Uswatta Liyanage Ivor Sylvester Sunil Perera in 1952 to a Roman Catholic family and grew up in the Colombo suburb of Moratuwa. He was one of 10 children of Anton Perera, a former soldier, and Doreen Perera, a homemaker.The elder Mr. Perara built the Gypsies largely around his children. Sunil was a teenager when he joined the band before becoming its lead singer. Sunil described his father as a disciplinarian who had wanted him to complete his higher education but who supported his choice when he left his studies to focus on guitar and voice training. In 2017, the Gypsies recorded a family tribute to the founder.Sunil Perera’s opinionated lyrics and public stances set him apart from other high-profile musicians in Sri Lanka. In his songs he dealt with corruption and politicians soured after their election losses. One song depicted aliens landing in Sri Lanka and turning down an invitation to stay.“It’s 72 years since we got independence,” he said in one interview. “We are in debt to the whole world. Is it the fault of the people? Whose fault is it? I don’t blame one group. I blame the entire set of politicians who ruled us.”He was open about his personal life, discussing what he saw as hypocritical attitudes about sex in Sri Lanka’s conservative society. But his language often got him in trouble, particularly when he described women as “baby machines” in a discussion about how large Sri Lankan families were in his father’s generation.His friends and family acknowledged that Mr. Perera could be divisive, but they said his outspokenness had come from his firm belief that Sri Lanka could overcome the ethnic and religious divides that have led to conflict for decades. His brother, Piyal, said Mr. Perara had declared that what would make him happiest would be if all four of his children married into four different communities.“His head was not swollen with the fame — he was simple,” said Mariazelle Goonetilleke, a fellow musician and friend. “He was not afraid to tell the truth, always spoke his mind. There were people who didn’t like that.”Mr. Perera came down with Covid-19 last month and was hospitalized for 25 days before being discharged, only to be readmitted, this time in intensive care, just days later.He is survived by his wife, Geetha Kulatunga; two daughters, Rehana and Manisha; and two sons, Sajith and Gayan.In a video message after he was initially discharged from the hospital, Mr. Perera looked weak but determined as he thanked the hospital staff and his fans and well wishers. Dressed in a white shirt and a gray hat, his usual colors were missing.“We are thankful to God for giving us such a crowd,” he said. “We will definitely get that blessing again. When we get that time, let’s meet again, like old times.” More

The Colombian star skips innovation and presents an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that established him as a global force on his sixth studio album.If there is one figure in pop music who has perfected the language of feel-good cultural affirmation, it is J Balvin. For over a decade, the 36-year-old Colombian star has claimed he is on a mission to “change the perception of Latinos in music,” using his rainbow aesthetics, smooth reggaeton textures and radio-ready trap hits as ammunition.There have been plenty of milestones, including “Mi Gente” and “I Like It”: his chart-crushing collaborations with Willy William and Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny and Cardi B. Both tracks have become flash points for jejune narratives about “booming” Latino cultural representation: a tale that flattens differences among people of distinct races, languages and countries — and suggests this music is influential only when the Anglo mainstream is paying attention.There was his performance at Coachella 2019, when Balvin became the first reggaeton artist to play the festival’s main stage. There are his cartoonish visuals, leopard-print hairstyles and flowery album covers designed by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. And there are his ad-libs — “J Balvin, man,” “Leggo” and “Latino gang!” — signature catchphrases that have become so trite, they’re essentially begging for meme-ification.“Jose,” his sixth studio album, arrives at a moment when Balvin has finally established himself as a global celebrity. The record considers what is possible when a pop idol, especially one from Latin America, no longer needs to prove himself.At the end of “Jose,” Balvin takes a true gamble. For what may be the first time in his career, he gets deeply personal.So, allow J Balvin to reintroduce himself. “Jose,” Balvin’s first name, is a 24-track behemoth that follows in the vein of other playlists-as-albums — the kind of project intended to dominate streaming platforms, like the recent supersized releases from Kanye West and Drake. But the album struggles to truly innovate: “Jose” is an itinerant, unfocused effort that offers an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that have established him as a force: pop-reggaeton, trap and EDM.The majority of the album (about 13 of its tracks) — like “Bebé Que Bien Te Ves,” “Lo Que Dios Quiera” and “Fantasías” — falls firmly within the sphere of ultrapolished, creamy popetón. It is an unimaginative formula, and one that Balvin has mastered: blend a lilting dembow beat, a candy-coated melody and lyrics about the gushy soap opera of a dance-floor courtship or a sexual fantasy for maximum streams. Elsewhere, Balvin returns to Top 40 trap, another style he’s known for: On “Billetes de 100,” featuring the Puerto Rican star Myke Towers, Balvin offers a self-mythologizing reminder that he can actually rap. “In da Getto,” a resort-ready EDM track produced by Skrillex, elaborates on yet another sound that has helped catapult Balvin to international stardom.Some songs aim for novelty. The opener, “F40,” is a self-assured blast of reggaeton bombast that shifts tempos, slowing to an irresistible, carnal crawl. And “Perra,” a collaboration with Tokischa, is an audacious, X-rated venture into dembow, a street sound born in the barrios of the Dominican Republic that has recently caught the attention of the wider Latin music industry, despite its longtime grasp on popular music in the Caribbean country.It is only in the last third of “Jose” that Balvin takes a true gamble: For what may be the first time in his career, he gets vulnerable and deeply personal. “7 de Mayo,” named for Balvin’s birthday, is a chronicle of his rise from the streets of Medellín to eminence, featuring spoken samples of his mother, Alba, and an awards-show thank you from the reggaeton forefather Daddy Yankee. “In a barrio in the middle of Medallo, this one was born/With sweat on my forehead/Calluses on my hands,” Balvin reminisces in Spanish. While the intimacy is new for Balvin, the song follows the formula of hip-hop origin stories too closely (nearly mimicking Jay-Z’s “December 4th”). It feels like Balvin is being forced to complete a tedious homework assignment, rather than reflecting earnestly on his personal hardships.“Querido Rio,” a soft guitar ballad dedicated to his newborn son with echoes of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” similarly falls flat. Its shallow lyrics and syrupy delivery land with cloying sentimentality: “I don’t just want to be your father/I also want to be your best friend,” Balvin croons in Spanish.For an artist who paints himself as pathbreaking, “Jose” feels remarkably safe. At this point, Balvin does have the power to nuke expectations — those of his own career trajectory, his imagined community and the genres he operates within. Instead, “Jose” colors inside the lines, safeguarding Balvin’s reign by reveling in the familiar.J Balvin“Jose”(Universal Music Latino) More