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      A Conductor Considers Her Future

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      Susanna Mälkki is at the top of her field as major American orchestras search for their next music directors.HELSINKI, Finland — It was late morning recently, not long after sunrise, as members of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra unwrapped their scarves, unpacked their instruments and settled in for rehearsal at the Musiikkitalo concert hall here.The orchestra’s chief conductor, Susanna Mälkki, walked in from the wings, stopping to banter with players as she made her way to the podium. Once there, she removed her medical mask with a feigned look of relief and raised a baton. With no words and barely a pause, a Lamborghini going from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye, the orchestra launched into the galloping grandeur of Szymanowski’s Concert Overture.Mälkki’s rehearsals tend to unfold like this, with seamless shifts between cordiality and efficiency. A former orchestral cellist, she understands the value of concision in a conductor and precisely articulates what she wants. With results: Her performances often strike a remarkable balance of clarity and urgency, whether shepherding a premiere or reinvigorating a classic.The classical music field has taken notice. At 52, Mälkki is one of the world’s top conductors, widely sought between her appearances in Helsinki and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which she is the principal guest conductor. And with openings on the horizon at major American orchestras — especially the New York Philharmonic, which she leads at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 6, and which is searching for a music director to succeed Jaap van Zweden in 2024 — her name is on leading wish lists.“I’m counting my blessings, that I get to work with all these orchestras,” Mälkki said during a series of interviews this fall. “Any speculation — there’s no need for that.”She is aware of the eyes on her, and of the pressure to appoint women in the United States, where there are currently no female music directors among the largest 25 orchestras. (Nathalie Stutzmann takes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s podium next year.)“My standpoint has always been that since I do not wish that my gender is something that is held against me, I also shall not use it to benefit from it,” Mälkki said, adding, “Music, with the capital M, remains its own independent entity — and that, for me, is the best part.”Her work, she said, should speak for itself. And it does: “Susanna has to be at the top of anyone’s list,” said Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief executive.Mälkki leading the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, where she is the chief conductor, in early December.Maarit KytöharjuBorn in Helsinki in 1969, Mälkki has almost always led a life that revolved around music. She played multiple instruments as a child but settled on the cello, rising to become the principal cellist of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in her mid-20s. But she also studied conducting and longed to move into that field, which would have been virtually unthinkable for a woman when she was growing up.Among the first major conductors to see Mälkki wield a baton was her compatriot Esa-Pekka Salonen, at a workshop in Stockholm. “He came to me afterward,” she recalled, “and, unbelievably, he said, ‘You look like you’re in the right place.’ So, if you get rotten tomatoes thrown to you later, you can still think, ‘Well, you know, maybe I’m doing something right.’”In 1998, she made the leap to full-time conducting and gave up her post in Gothenburg, where the orchestra’s manager told her, “I’m sure you’re very talented; it’s just a pity that you can never become anything.”Mälkki said the remark was so hurtful that “for years I couldn’t even tell people about it. But again, it comes back to the music, because I was not thinking of myself; I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do with the music.”She first made a name for herself in contemporary repertory, and moved to Paris to serve from 2006 until 2013 as the director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the group founded by Pierre Boulez. (She still lives there, while also keeping an apartment near the Helsinki waterfront, where she likes to go for restorative walks.)“Those years of all those world premieres — it was an incredible school,” she said. “My brain was overheated many times, but it was actually a really fantastic way to learn the craft, because you have to be able to read your score and organize the rehearsals so that the musicians understand what their part is in the big context.”From left, the singer Fiona McGown, the composer Kaija Saariaho and Mälkki preparing Saariaho’s opera “Innocence” in France.Jean-Louis FernamdezIn 2016, Mälkki became the first female chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. She had made guest appearances with the orchestra before, but this was a homecoming that felt, she said, “like the chance to make a contribution to Finnish music life after the fantastic education I had received.”Her players now included old classmates from the nearby Sibelius Academy, the prestigious school that has produced other conducting luminaries, such as Salonen, as well as emerging talents like Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Klaus Mäkelä.That same year, Mälkki was named the principal guest conductor in Los Angeles, at an orchestra she had first led in 2010. The ensemble had not had a principal guest since Michael Tilson Thomas and Simon Rattle, then rising stars, in the 1980s. But the players liked her, and she was invited back repeatedly after her debut.At the time, the orchestra was run by Deborah Borda, who is now the New York Philharmonic’s chief executive. Mälkki had made an impression with her “very deep connection to the music,” Borda recalled recently.“She’s very passionate, but it’s a quiet passion, a quiet charisma,” Borda added. “It’s stunning: More than an outward manifestation, this is like a flower that opens.”During a rehearsal in Los Angeles in October, Mälkki was, as in Helsinki, amiable and assertive. Carolyn Hove, the Philharmonic’s English horn player, described Mälkki as “100 percent prepared” by the time she arrives at the podium, and that “when a conductor is really efficient, it just makes our jobs so much more fun.”While running through Scriabin’s “Le Poème de l’Extase,” Mälkki gestured to sections of the ensemble but also let her gaze shift upward. (“Some people listen with their eyes closed,” she said, “and I guess my way of looking up is the same, that I want to free my ears.”) All the while, she kept notes in her head that she rattled off as soon as the playing stopped.Those notes were thorough, and crucial, as the orchestra rehearsed for the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Vista,” a piece dedicated to Mälkki, who is a leading navigator of Saariaho’s idiosyncratic sound world. “I always trusted her, and she understands my music,” Saariaho said in June, shortly before Mälkki conducted the world premiere of her opera “Innocence” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.Over the past two decades, their relationship has developed to the point where, Saariaho said, “we don’t need to verbalize very much.” When “L’Amour de Loin” arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, Saariaho insisted that Mälkki conduct it. (She will return to the Met to conduct Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” this spring.)Mälkki’s specialty in living composers like Saariaho is one of the reasons she was brought to Los Angeles, Smith said. “The other part,” he added, “was just the way she thinks about programming, which is unique.” He used that October concert as an example: opening with “Vista,” followed by Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and the “Poème.”Mälkki rehearsing a program of works by Saariaho, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October.Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“On paper those things are not related to each other, but there’s this remarkable thread that goes from the Kaija through the Scriabin,” Smith said. “You experience it as a listener, as a musician. It informs the way each piece is played.”Mälkki continues to learn new works — “little by little,” she said. “Some young people want to do the Mahler right away, and we know many of those, whilst I actually waited quite a long time because I wanted to make sure that I had all my tools.”Some composers, she added, demand maturity — like Bruckner, whose symphonies she is studying now. And, experienced in 21st-century operas by Saariaho and Unsuk Chin, she is looking back toward Wagner.“It’s just quite extraordinary to think that there’s all this repertoire,” she said, “and I could actually just keep exploring that endlessly.”The question is what comes next. The Helsinki Philharmonic recently announced that Mälkki would step down in summer 2023 and become the orchestra’s chief conductor emeritus. A mix of symphonic and opera appearances will follow. Where or whether a music directorship fits into that is anyone’s guess.Borda, the chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, said that a list of candidates for her orchestra’s opening is “always going” in her head. But, she added, “you cannot rush one of these searches,” and at any rate she is more focused at the moment on the renovation of David Geffen Hall, which is set to be completed by fall 2022.Though the orchestra has never had a female music director, Borda added that she is “not striving to demonstrate a social agenda in this appointment.”“We are striving to make the right choice,” she said. “It’s a chemical equation. There has to be combustion, no matter what. Even if you have social goals and aims, you have to, in working with the musicians and the board, make sure that it’s the best person for the job.”There’s also the matter of whether Mälkki would want it.“I think this is a question that will be carefully thought about if it comes up,” she said with diplomatic care. After a pause, Mälkki continued: “There are all sorts of things to be considered, and it would be wrong to choose something just for the prestige of it. It’s ultimately a choice of artistic fulfillment. We’ll see.” More

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      Disney Hires Geoff Morrell to head P.R. and Government Relations

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      The Walt Disney Company has found a new image protector and polisher: Geoff Morrell, 53, who helped the fossil fuel giant BP brighten its reputation after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster and who served as the Pentagon’s press secretary during the Iraq war.Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive, announced the hiring of Mr. Morrell as chief corporate affairs officer, a newly created job, on Tuesday. The position will combine several global functions — communications, public policy, government relations, corporate social responsibility and environmental issues — that previously had been distributed between Disney departments.Mr. Morrell faces many challenges. Disney is going through a choppy regime change: Mr. Chapek became chief executive last year, but his well-liked predecessor, Robert A. Iger, has remained as executive chairman. (He leaves for good on Dec. 31.) The company is also trying to transform itself into a streaming titan while dealing with a shift in the country’s culture: Its family-friendly brand is meant to be for everyone, but neutrality in today’s hyperpartisan world is almost impossible.Mr. Morrell’s hiring, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, ends a guessing game about who Mr. Chapek would select to succeed Zenia B. Mucha, who announced her retirement as Disney’s chief communications officer in July. Among other duties, Ms. Mucha, 65, commanded Disney’s 500-person global media relations team for 19 years.Mr. Morrell will relocate to Los Angeles from London, where BP is based. He will start at Disney at the end of January. “Few companies are as beloved as Disney, and I am committed to doing everything I can to make sure it remains that way,” Mr. Morrell said.In a memo to BP employees on Tuesday, Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive, cited the “modernization” that Mr. Morrell brought to the company’s communication efforts. “He helped me change the tone of the corporate voice so that it is hopefully now much more human,” Mr. Looney wrote. Mr. Morrell most recently served at BP as executive vice president of communications and advocacy.Early in his career, Mr. Morrell was a reporter at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, serving as a White House correspondent from 2004 to 2007. He left journalism in 2007, when he joined the Pentagon during the Bush administration, serving as chief spokesman for Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and the U.S. military.“I trust this guy to do and say what I want,” Mr. Gates wrote of Mr. Morrell in his 2014 memoir, “Duty,” while recounting how he had fought to keep him as Pentagon spokesman when President Barack Obama took over in 2009. Mr. Morrell, he wrote, was “one of the handful of people I could count on to criticize me to my face, to tell me when I had given a poor answer to a question, to question my patience (or impatience) with others in the Pentagon, and to question a decision.” More

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      American Ballet Theater Taps Beyoncé Associate as Chief Executive

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      Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s entertainment firm, will lead the dance company as it works to recover from the pandemic.A leader of Beyoncé’s business empire will serve as the next chief executive of American Ballet Theater, the dance company announced on Tuesday.Janet Rollé, general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company, will in January assume the role of chief executive and executive director of Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious ballet companies. Rollé, 59, who is Black, will be the first person of color to lead the company.In a statement, she said she would seek to “preserve and extend the legacy of American Ballet Theater, and to ensure its future prosperity, cultural impact and relevance.”“To come full circle and be in a position to give back to the art that has given me so much is a source of unbridled and immense joy,” said Rollé, who has long had an interest in dance and was 8 when her mother, an immigrant from Jamaica, took her to her first class.Rollé will face several immediate challenges, including helping Ballet Theater recover from the turmoil of the pandemic, which resulted in the cancellation of two seasons and cost the company millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees. The pandemic has brought fresh urgency to the company’s efforts to attract new audiences and expand its pool of donors.The company is also searching for an artistic director to replace Kevin McKenzie, who plans to leave next year after three decades in the position.Andrew Barth, chairman of Ballet Theater’s board, said Rollé’s experience in marketing and strategy would be an asset. She has spent most of her career in the media sector, holding senior positions at CNN, Black Entertainment Television and AOL. She also sits on the board of BuzzFeed.“She is brimming with ideas to lead A.B.T. into the next decade, all while respecting Ballet Theater’s history and legacy,” Barth said.Rollé succeeds Kara Medoff Barnett, who stepped down earlier this year to take a role at First Republic Bank. More

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      Changing of the Guard at Williamstown Theater Festival

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      Mandy Greenfield has resigned and Jenny Gersten will be interim artistic director. The festival gave no reason for the move, but it follows complaints about working conditions.The artistic director of the prestigious Williamstown Theater Festival has stepped down after complaints by some employees about working conditions there.The festival said Monday that Mandy Greenfield, who has been the artistic director since 2014, had resigned late last month. Jenny Gersten, who had led the festival from 2010 to 2014, will return as interim artistic director during the search for a new leader.The summer festival, which runs in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts and has traditionally relied in part on a pool of young seasonal workers, did not offer a reason for the change of leadership. But it follows a pair of reports in The Los Angeles Times detailing concerns by employees — sound crew members who objected to working outdoors, on a show set in a reflecting pool, during rainy weather, and former employees, many of them onetime interns, who expressed other safety concerns.The festival said in a news release that the leadership change “will ensure a future vision that not only expands on the Festival’s well-respected legacy, but one that is accountable, safe and equitable for all.”In a statement, Greenfield said that her “goal as artistic director was to swing for the fences, make art and try to improve and evolve every day.”“In 2019, I declined to renew a multiyear contract offered to me by the Festival; while flattered to be asked to continue, I agreed instead to stay on for two years, on a year-to-year basis,” she said. “I also publicly committed to leadership transition as I deeply believe, influenced by the British tradition, that theatrical institutions must empower new, diverse leaders in regular, shorter intervals than is the custom in the United States.”Jenny Gersten, who had led the festival from 2010 to 2014, is returning as interim artistic director.Stewart Cairns for The New York TimesGreenfield’s tenure featured a notable number of artistic successes, including Broadway transfers for “Grand Horizons,” “The Sound Inside,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “Fool for Love” and “Living on Love,” as well as multiple Off Broadway transfers.Gersten has held a variety of positions in the theater world. Currently, she is producer of musical theater at New York City Center, and is a line producer of “Beetlejuice,” which is returning to Broadway next spring. She plans to continue in both of those roles. More

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      Dawn Hudson, the C.E.O. of the Motion Picture Academy, will step down in 2023.

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      Dawn Hudson, the chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is beginning a long goodbye from the job she’s held since 2011.The academy announced Monday that Ms. Hudson, 65, will step down at the conclusion of her current contract. It expires at the end of 2023.In recent years under Ms. Hudson, the Academy has moved aggressively to expand and diversify its membership, a response to the #OscarSoWhite controversy that arose in 2015 after the group nominated only white actors for the Oscars. Since then, the Academy has swelled to 9,362 voting members from 6,446, 33 percent of whom identify as women and 19 percent coming from underrepresented communities. (When Ms. Hudson came aboard, Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male.)Ms. Hudson was also integral in the opening of the Academy Museum, which debuted last month after a nearly decade-long slog and budget overruns that totaled close to $100 million.“Dawn has been, and continues to be, a groundbreaking leader for the academy,” the academy’s president, David Rubin, said in a statement. “The diversity and gender parity of our membership, our increased international presence, and the successful opening of a world-class Academy Museum — a project she revived, guided and championed — are already part of her legacy.”Ms. Hudson’s successor will face big challenges. As with all awards shows, the academy has seen the viewers for its annual telecast — which through its licensing deal with ABC generates the majority of the organization’s operating budget — decline precipitously over the years. This year brought a new nadir of only 10.4 million viewers, a decline of 56 percent from 2020. In 2012, the first year of Ms. Hudson’s tenure, 43 million people watched the show, with Ellen DeGeneres as the host.The academy said it would begin looking for Ms. Hudson’s replacement shortly and “she will have a vital role in the transition.” More

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      Alan Horn, a top creative executive, is the latest high-ranking Disney departure.

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      One of Hollywood’s senior statesmen announced his retirement on Monday, adding to a startling changing of the guard at the Walt Disney Company.Alan F. Horn, 78, will step down on Dec. 31 as chief creative officer of Disney Studios Content, a division that includes Marvel, Lucasfilm, Searchlight Pictures, Pixar, 20th Century Studios and Disney’s traditional animation and live-action movie operations. His position is not expected to be filled.“It’s never easy to say goodbye to a place you love, which is why I’ve done it slowly,” Mr. Horn said in a statement. “But with Alan Bergman leading the way, I’m confident the incredible Studios team will keep putting magic out there for years to come.” Mr. Bergman, a steady hand at Disney’s movie division since 1996, succeeded Mr. Horn as chairman of Disney Studios Content last year.Mr. Bergman, 55, called Mr. Horn “one of the most important mentors I’ve ever had.”Mr. Horn’s retirement adds to brain drain at the world’s largest entertainment company as a new generation of executives rise to power — led by Bob Chapek, who became chief executive last year. While not unexpected, the parade of retirements has contributed to an unsettled feeling inside the conglomerate, which is still recovering from an almost complete shutdown during the early part of the pandemic.Robert A. Iger, the executive chairman, is decamping in December. Alan N. Braverman, Disney’s top lawyer, and Zenia B. Mucha, its chief communications officer, plan to leave around the same time. Other departures have included Jayne Parker, who led human resources; Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley, who ran Searchlight, Disney’s art film studio; and Gary Marsh, a longtime Disney-branded television executive.Mr. Horn’s entertainment career has spanned nearly 50 years. He joined Disney in 2012 after being squeezed out of a senior role at Warner Bros. to make room for a new generation of managers. At Warner, where he expertly steered the Harry Potter and Batman franchises, he forged a strategy that ultimately swept through Hollywood — focusing on effects-filled franchise pictures, or “tent poles,” that resonate overseas.The growth at Disney’s movie division under his tenure was jaw-dropping. In 2012, Disney-distributed movies collected about $3.3 billion at the global box office. In 2019, the studio generated $9 billion in ticket sales. More

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      Head of Paramount Pictures is ousted as ViacomCBS focuses on streaming.

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      In 2017, Viacom turned to one of Hollywood’s most seasoned and respected executives, James N. Gianopulos, to revive its flatlining Paramount Pictures operation. Mr. Gianopulos quickly stabilized the 1910s-era studio — repairing relationships with filmmakers and producers, building a thriving television division from near-scratch, and restoring Paramount to profitability.He was ousted on Monday, with his status as the consummate Hollywood insider having curdled into a liability, at least to ViacomCBS, the conglomerate that owns Paramount, where streaming, streaming, streaming is the new currency of the realm.Brian Robbins, 58, who runs Viacom’s children’s television business, will succeed Mr. Gianopulos, 69, as chief executive of Paramount Pictures, ViacomCBS said. Emma Watts, 51, the president of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group, was notably passed over for the job.The reversal of fortune for Mr. Gianopulos, who had two years left on his contract, did not shock the movie capital, where speculation about his standing inside ViacomCBS had been gossiped about for months. Shari Redstone, who controls the company, had signaled in private that Mr. Gianopulos had become a frustration. In particular, he had, at times, resisted a ViacomCBS effort to prioritize the Paramount+ streaming service at the expense of ticket sales and theaters. Big-screen releases remain of crucial importance to studio partners like Tom Cruise, who stars in Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible” series and coming “Top Gun” sequel.Shari Redstone, the chair of ViacomCBS, in July. She has been pushing the company to prioritize streaming.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesBut the ouster rattled the film business nonetheless. It was seen by some as barbarous — tradition holds that senior statesmen get to write their own endings. And it added to a changing of the guard: Ron Meyer, a longtime film power at Universal, left last year amid a sex scandal, and Alan F. Horn, the chief creative officer at Walt Disney Studios, is widely expected to retire in the coming months.Bob Bakish, the chief executive of ViacomCBS, said in a statement that the leadership change would “build on Paramount’s strong momentum, ensuring it continues to engage audiences at scale while embracing viewers’ evolving tastes and habits.” He said Mr. Robbins was an “expert” at developing franchises by “leaning into the unique strengths of new and established platforms.”Mr. Bakish called Mr. Gianopulos “a towering figure in Hollywood” and thanked him for revitalizing Paramount. In the same statement, Mr. Gianopulos recounted a list of major changes he had successfully navigated over his nearly 40-year career — such as the introduction of VCRs and online film rentals — and wished Mr. Robbins “all the very best success.”For many film industry stalwarts, Mr. Robbins is an affront to their identities; he comes from television, said while holding one’s nose. Mr. Robbins has experience as a movie producer and director. But much of the Hollywood establishment also looks down on that part of his résumé, which includes “Norbit,” a commercially successful but critically reviled Eddie Murphy vehicle from 2007. Not exactly Oscar bait.Mr. Robbins gained fame as a young actor in the 1980s by playing a mulleted rebel on the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class.” In the 1990s and 2000s he worked as a television producer (“Kenan & Kel” on Nickelodeon, “Smallville” on the WB) and a film director (“Norbit,” “Varsity Blues”).By 2009, however, Mr. Robbins started to become disillusioned with Hollywood. Younger audiences — his specialty — were living online. He began experimenting with low-budget films starring YouTube personalities like Lucas Cruikshank (a.k.a. Fred Figgelhorn) and started a YouTube channel, AwesomenessTV, aimed at teenage girls. In 2013, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was then running DreamWorks Animation, bought AwesomenessTV for about $33 million. (Mr. Katzenberg remains a mentor.)“There is no movie business anymore!” Mr. Robbins was quoted by Fast Company as saying in 2013. “The model’s broken, and I see that as an opportunity.”Mr. Robbins was named president of Nickelodeon, which is also owned by ViacomCBS, in 2018. He has become known inside Viacom as a plain-spoken, never-say-die futurist who believes that Paramount+, the company’s relatively small streaming service, must be supercharged. Mr. Robbins has eagerly rerouted new children’s programming toward Paramount+ and away from Nickelodeon’s traditional cable channels. One such show, a reboot of “iCarly,” has been a hit for the streaming service.Mr. Gianopulos, or “Jim G” as everyone in Hollywood refers to him, will remain a consultant until the end of the year, ViacomCBS said. “Jim is nothing less than legendary in this business, and I am humbled and grateful to him for his years of mentorship and friendship,” Mr. Robbins said in a statement.Mr. Robbins will continue to lead Nickelodeon, ViacomCBS said. But he will not get all of Mr. Gianopulos’s portfolio; Paramount Television Studios will now report to David Nevins, the chairman and chief executive of Showtime Networks. More

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      Theater Director With Exaggerated Résumé Quits, Citing Mental Illness

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      Christopher Massimine found success as a theater executive in New York and Utah, but resigned after facing questions about errors on his résumé, saying he had mental illness.Christopher Massimine, whose job as the managing director of the Pioneer Theater Company in Salt Lake City was thrown into doubt after a local television affiliate found that he had embellished his résumé with untrue claims, announced Monday that he would resign his post and said that he had long struggled with mental illness.Massimine announced his resignation shortly after The New York Times published an article about his career, and the discrepancies and errors on the résumé that had helped him win the position at the Pioneer, the largest professional theater company in Salt Lake City. “Despite many good things that have happened over the last two years under my direction, effective Aug. 20, 2021, I will resign my position at Pioneer Theater Company in order to address issues in my personal and professional life, stemming from untreated and at times an incorrectly treated mental health condition,” he said in a statement. Massimine, who said that he had battled with mental illness for his entire life, and that most of his friends and colleagues had not known of his condition, had come to the Pioneer Theater from the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene in New York. Massimine was something of an unusual choice to lead the Folksbiene, a small nonprofit with a niche audience. In 2012, when he became an executive with the century-old theater that produces shows for a largely older audience, he was a 26-year-old Italian American Catholic with limited experience as a theatrical administrator and even less with Yiddish.But when he left seven years later, the Folksbiene’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” directed by Joel Grey, was moving from its own theater, within the Museum of Jewish Heritage, to Stage 42, one of Off Broadway’s largest venues. The show had already enjoyed a sold-out run at the museum, and the theater’s revenue had more than doubled in a year to nearly $5 million.“He was smart, dedicated, motivated, professional and always a pleasure to deal with,” said Ron Lasko, a publicist who worked with Massimine at the Folksbiene.To the surprise of many, though, Massimine did not stick around to celebrate the successful transfer of “Fiddler” to a new theater. He instead left the Folksbiene in early 2019 and soon accepted a job as the managing director of the Pioneer Theater Company.“Chris has a proven track record of success,” Dan Reed, a vice president with the University of Utah, which oversees the professional theater on its campus, said at the time of Massimine’s appointment.But two years into his tenure there, Massimine was accused of embellishing his life story with wildly inaccurate depictions of his theatrical pursuits and side gigs.“Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish was so popular at its home theater, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, that it later transferred to an Off Broadway theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWorking from public records and tips, Salt Lake City’s Fox affiliate KSTU-TV reported earlier this year that Massimine did not have a master’s degree from New York University, as asserted on his résumé. The station said his claims to have helped develop popular video games and some major advertising campaigns did not check out.And, though he said he had received a national arts advocacy award — and released a picture of himself wearing the medal — the bestowing organization does not appear to exist.Adam Herbets, a reporter for the television station, said his sources included people who had seen Massimine’s résumé and found it “unbelievable.”“And, you know,” he continued, “unbelievable sometimes has a positive connotation and sometimes has a negative connotation. In this case it’s literally not believable.”Massimine, whose representatives had denied some of the accusations that he had misrepresented his accomplishments, acknowledged Monday night that there had been “errors” in his résumé. “Local and national news outlets have reported this year that I misrepresented my work history on my résumé, in press releases and interviews, both prior to accepting the P.T.C. position and during my tenure here,” he said in the statement. “There is a fair amount of truth within the reporting, withstanding discrepancies. Regardless, I take responsibility for errors in my résumé but stand by my work product throughout my career.”As it turns out, Massimine’s embellishments extended beyond what the TV station had reported, to include claims that he was born in Italy and was once a full-time employee of the Dramatists Guild.Before the resignation, Chris Nelson, the Utah university’s director of communications, had acknowledged that some “misinformation” had been found on Massimine’s résumé and that his position was put “under review.”Massimine was credited with raising the profile of the Folksbiene, and its revenue doubled in his last year as its chief executive. Richard Drew/Associated PressIn prior remarks, his wife, Maggie Massimine, had said that her husband was on family medical leave and not available for interviews. A spokesman for Massimine, Michael Deaver, had said that some of the discrepancies might have been attributable to misunderstandings on matters such as his client’s work on ad campaigns, where he had been employed by a subcontractor.Maggie Massimine had denied that her husband had exaggerated or misled people, but she did not directly discuss his mental state and said she could not address some of the discrepancies. “Our side of the story has not been told,” she said in an interview several weeks ago. “I really wish I could say more.”At N.Y.U., Massimine earned a bachelor’s degree in dramatic literature in 2007, a university spokesman said, after three years of study. Maggie Massimine said her husband thought he had earned both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree, until KSTU reported he had not. “He was as surprised as everyone else,” she said.A photograph appears to show Massimine at the White House during a 2020 trip to Washington to pick up an award. But the organization said to have taken the photo and bestowed the award does not appear to exist.Massimine’s profile on LinkedIn, the professional networking site, reports that during his college years he also served for more than 18 months as “publications manager and creative affairs coordinator” for the Dramatists Guild, the national trade association for playwrights, composers and others.However, Tari Stratton, director of education for the guild, said it seems Massimine spent only four months there as an unpaid intern. “We do not have any records indicating Mr. Massimine held any paid positions with the guild or had any title other than intern,” she wrote in an email.Massimine did serve in a number of roles with theatrical organizations before joining the staff of the Flea, a small, scrappy New York theater, in 2011. The following year he was hired by the Folksbiene and was promoted to chief executive in 2016.At the Yiddish theater, framed letters from Hal Prince, the legendary Broadway producer and director, hung in Massimine’s office. He counted Manny Azenberg, a producer and eight-time Tony Award winner, among his mentors, and appeared poised to continue advancing through the ranks of Manhattan’s theater ecosystem.Bruce Cohen, a retired publicist who worked with the Folksbiene to promote its Drama Desk-nominated operetta “The Golden Bride,” said Massimine was “a very sweet man” capable of deftly navigating tempestuous artist egos.Beck Lee, who served as a publicist for the Folksbiene during much of Massimine’s tenure, described him as an ambitious hard worker.“He did a great deal to raise the profile of the company,” Lee said, “and was sometimes prone to exaggeration, which I have learned is typically a tool of impresarios and showmen. If anything I thought he was a 21st-century version of a David Merrick, happily pushing his shows to the public and the press with bluster.”Certainly there were issues with a 2018 profile of Massimine that ran in The Daily Beast under the headline, “Meet Christopher Massimine, the ‘Nice Goy’ Running the National Yiddish Theatre.”The piece, based on an interview with Massimine, reported he had come to the United States as an infant from Italy and had appeared on Broadway as a child in shows like “Beauty and the Beast” and “Les Misérables.” But he was born in New Jersey and there are no records of him performing in either show, according to the Broadway League’s database, which is widely viewed as authoritative.Maggie Massimine said her husband had not been born in Italy and had requested a correction from The Daily Beast, a contention that the website recently took issue with.“Our editorial staff has no record of any request from Mr. Massimine for a correction to his profile,” a Daily Beast spokesman said.Despite his success in leading the Folksbiene, the circumstances under which Massimine left the theater are not clear, and its executive director declined to comment. Beck Lee, the former publicist for the theater, said that he was told by theater officials that Massimine was asked to leave after having invested theater funds in an unrelated production without authorization.“He was given the opportunity to admit his behavior, and leave without further incident,” Lee said.A second person with knowledge of the dispute agreed that Massimine had left after an issue over an investment.But Maggie Massimine denied there had been any problem like that, and noted that her husband had been invited back to attend the opening of “Fiddler” at Stage 42 in February 2019.The Pioneer Theater at the University of Utah.Robert ClaytonIn Utah, Massimine was hired at a salary of $152,000 to run a theater with nearly a $5 million operating budget. The school had paid a search firm, Management Consultants for the Arts, nearly $36,000 to recommend candidates.“That résumé was so extraordinary that it probably intoxicated people,” said Brant Pope, chair of the drama department at the University of Texas at Austin and past president of the University Resident Theater Association. “It probably blurred their vision.”Maggie Massimine said her husband had heard of the Utah job through his relationship with Azenberg, the producer who has been an influential backer of the Yiddish theater. Azenberg’s daughter, Karen, a former Broadway stage manager, has served as the artistic director of the Pioneer Theater since 2012.“The search committee was looking for a managing director who would help this theater grow and would support my desire to develop new musicals,” Karen Azenberg wrote in an email.In Utah, Massimine continued to promote his own accomplishments. Two years ago, using information he provided, his new theater put out a news release stating he had been named “Humanitarian of the Year” by the National Performing Arts Action Association and would be honored at a reception in Washington.Jenny Thomas, a spokesman for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that neither she nor several other colleagues who work for similar nonprofits have heard of the National Performing Arts Action Association.No organization by that name has a website or is mentioned by news outlets aside from those that picked up the news release from the theater.But Massimine traveled to Washington in January 2020, purportedly to pick up the award, and later billed the university nearly $800 for his expenses. An image of him on the trip, supposedly taken at the White House and wearing a medal, was credited to the fictitious National Performing Arts Action Association and appeared two months later on a website with an article about Massimine’s relationship with his mother.The writer of the piece said the photograph, caption and credit information were provided by Massimine.Joseph Berger contributed reporting. More