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      A Mighty Generation of Musicians. A Moving Final Chapter.

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      The conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and Daniel Barenboim have continued to perform as aging and illness loom.LOS ANGELES — At the beginning of the final movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the strings play a mellow, stirring hymn. Then a solo bassoon silences the warmth: A funeral dirge is passing through. But just a few moments later, the strings flood back, violas and violins swooping up through a sudden chord that conjures folk fiddling, energy, passion, life itself.No, they seem to cry. Not death. Not that. Not yet.I have rarely heard the strings’ rich, defiant answer to the bassoon as effusive, as certain, as it was on Sunday afternoon, in the last of three performances of Mahler’s Ninth at Walt Disney Concert Hall here, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Michael Tilson Thomas.It has been nearly a year and a half since Thomas, at 78 one of the world’s leading musicians for more than half a century, announced he would be undergoing treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer. And five months since he told The New York Times that he had been contemplating the music he wants played at his memorial service.Yet M.T.T., as he is widely known, is still with us, and still vital. Conducting Mahler’s valedictory masterpiece, whose ending is the repertory’s great evocation of letting go, he took his time on Sunday but refused to wallow in the obvious, unbearable emotions.The performance came just days after another miracle of a concert from an eminent maestro lately forced to reckon with mortality. On Jan. 6, Daniel Barenboim, 80, stepped down from the podium of the Berlin State Opera, a position he has held since the early 1990s, after a year buffeted by health problems. The following day, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a program streamed live.Thomas comes from a generation of older musicians who have long ruled the classical music landscape, but who are reaching the twilights of their careers.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesLike Thomas’s Mahler, Barenboim’s Schumann and Brahms were autumnal but vigorous, more present-tense than elegiac. While neither man seemed interested in denying reality, both made clear their intention to affirm life while it lasts.Not that. Not yet.Together, these were among the most poignant spectacles I’ve witnessed as a concertgoer. However sketchy and inevitably arbitrary such milestones are, the recent struggles and remarkable late-career concerts of these two men will always mark for me the passing from the scene of their generation of artists — a generation that has loomed over the musical landscape, and stubbornly refused to cede it, for decades.Although in fine health, Riccardo Muti, 81, is stepping down as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this season. The pianist Martha Argerich, also 81, who grew up with Barenboim in Buenos Aires and joined him in Berlin, has lately had her own health issues. At the Salzburg Festival last summer, the pianist Maurizio Pollini, yet another 81-year-old, canceled a recital because of heart trouble after the audience was already in its seats. Last year, a fall caused Herbert Blomstedt, 95, to briefly interrupt his calmly authoritative, jaw-dropping tour of the world’s top orchestras, which will continue at the New York Philharmonic in two weeks.The fact that more attention is being paid to Blomstedt now than 30 or 40 years ago is telling about the field. While classical music has always been fascinated by child prodigies, it is a performing art in which older performers truly hold sway. Even as audience draws: Brian Lauritzen, the host of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s radio broadcasts, wrote on Twitter that Sunday afternoon’s concert was the most full he had seen Disney Hall since before the pandemic.So audiences are sometimes witness to aging bodies pressing up against their limits. I was at Carnegie Hall in 2000 when the great tenor Carlo Bergonzi, who had never sung the title role of Verdi’s “Otello,” finally had to admit, after two painful acts, that his 75-year-old vocal cords were no match for the part and bowed out of the rest. At Salzburg this summer, Barenboim appeared a frail shell of his former self, straining to mount the podium as he led the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the youth ensemble he founded with Edward Said.But while his physical infirmity was disconcerting, what has stayed with me most was the sensitivity showed him by the superstar pianist Lang Lang, the soloist that evening. As they walked on and off and as they played, Lang both deferred to and deftly guided his maestro mentor in a way that did not ignore what was happening but granted Barenboim a full measure of dignity, and provided him the opportunity to make music as best as he was capable.Martha Argerich, left, and Daniel Barenboim — musical companions since the 1940s — appeared together with the Berlin Philharmonic as Barenboim announced his resignation from the Berlin State Opera.Monika RittershausIt was a moving reminder that even amid the little humiliations — when Thomas first returned to the podium after his cancer treatment, in November 2021, his slipping pants had clearly not yet been tailored to the changes in his body — aging and illness open a space for both performers and us in the audience to be vulnerable and graceful. To be connected to a long line of transmitted knowledge and beauty. To be grateful.After he canceled a much-anticipated new production of Wagner’s “Ring” in October, it seemed possible that Barenboim might not conduct again. And when he did return, in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on New Year’s Eve, critics’ accounts painted a grim picture, focusing mainly on the performance’s distended length.But a week later, with the Berlin Philharmonic, he balanced natural flow and robust urgency in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto and Brahms’s Second Symphony. Without lacking vividness, the Brahms had a gentle cast in its opening; the Allegro finale sent off bright energy, but its colors were the blaze of a sunset rather than daylight brashness. It was just the right amount of goodbye.And after the high-spirited delicacy of the Schumann, Barenboim joined Argerich, a musical companion of his since the 1940s, at the keyboard for Bizet’s four-hand piece “Little Husband, Little Wife” from the suite “Children’s Games”: a moment of aching tenderness.Barenboim took the handful of stairs to the stage carefully but without relying on the handrail, and his motions on the podium were sometimes wide and sweeping. But he often seemed to be overseeing as much as conducting: leading with watchful eyes but keeping his arms down, experienced enough to know what the orchestra didn’t need from him.Thomas, too, told The Times in August that his illness had forced him to be more efficient in his gestures. On Sunday he was fluent but restrained, sometimes keeping a simple beat; sometimes slicing his baton horizontally; sometimes pumping his arms firmly downward; sometimes raising his hands, cupped around an invisible ball, as if both to summon and catch the sound.There was the straightforwardness that has always characterized his Mahler. (Among many recorded cycles of the symphonies, his no-nonsense, beautifully performed set with the San Francisco Symphony, which he led for 25 years, was my choice to play straight through on a long road trip last year.) Here in Los Angeles, his pace was patient even in the middle movements, which, more than sardonic or sour, felt proud and feisty. Here I am, they seemed to say. Take me or leave me.The work’s glacial final minutes, with the strings slipping past one another as the beat grows amorphous, seemed, more than ever in my experience, to describe the haziness of the end of consciousness.But there was not, in the silence that follows the dying of the sound, the usual game of chicken between an audience raring to applaud and a conductor unwilling to release. On Sunday there was no battle of wills, no self-indulgence, before the ovation. Thomas let the quiet come, then let it go. More

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      Daniel Barenboim, Titan of Conducting, to Step Down in Berlin

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      The 80-year-old conductor, citing poor health, said he would resign as general music director of the Berlin State Opera after three decades.Daniel Barenboim, a towering conductor and pianist who as general music director of the Berlin State Opera over the past three decades built an artistic empire without rival and helped define German culture in the aftermath of reunification, will resign his post this month because of health problems, the opera house announced on Friday.Barenboim, 80, who was diagnosed last year with a serious neurological condition, said in a statement that his illness made it impossible for him to carry out his duties.“Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated significantly over the past year,” he said. “I can no longer provide the level of performance that is rightly demanded of a general music director.” His resignation is effective Jan. 31.Barenboim, one of classical music’s biggest stars, had hoped to return to his famously frenzied schedule this year. But the ongoing uncertainty of his condition placed strains on the State Opera — the company was left scrambling to find substitutes, including for a highly anticipated new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle last fall — and made it difficult to find a path forward.Matthias Schulz, the State Opera’s director, said that the company was grateful to Barenboim, who turned the Staatskapelle Berlin (the pit orchestra of the State Opera) into one of the world’s most revered ensembles.But, Schulz said, it had become increasingly clear that Barenboim could not be the stable figure the musicians needed, noting that he appeared with the company less than 10 times in 2022, compared with more than 50 times in previous years.“He took responsibility for the fact that he just cannot be sure what he really can fulfill,” Schulz said in an interview.Barenboim was unavailable for comment, a spokeswoman for the opera house said.Born to Jewish parents in Argentina, Barenboim has been a fixture in the German artistic and political scene for decades and has helped define the country’s modern culture since the reunification of East and West Germany. In 1989, three days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he led the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert dedicated to the citizens of East Germany.He has become an influential public figure in Germany and beyond. In 1999, along with the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. he created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, providing a forum for young Arab and Israeli musicians to play together.Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture, called Barenboim “an artist of the century and one of the most remarkable personalities working in Berlin.” He said in a statement that stepping down was the right choice, even though it was not easy for Barenboim.“His decision was made in a reflective manner; it puts the well-being of the State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin in the foreground,” Lederer said. “All of this deserves the greatest respect.”During his tenure in Berlin, Barenboim brought the Staatskapelle to new heights, frequently leading international tours and securing hundreds of millions of euros in government grants to finance his ambitions. He co-founded a music conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Akademie, which opened in 2016. He persuaded officials to build the Pierre Boulez Saal, a Frank Gehry-designed hall housed in the same building as the conservatory, which opened in 2017. And he pushed a costly renovation of the opera house’s main theater, which was finished that same year. The State Opera now has 587 employees and a budget of more than 81.4 million euros ($86.6 million).There have been troubles along the way, but Barenboim maintained his grip on power. In 2019, members of the Staatskapelle accused him of bullying; later that year, though, the opera house, saying that it could not verify the accusations, extended his contract through 2027.He seemed set to reign indefinitely in Berlin, but health woes forced him to cancel performances last spring and summer as he recovered from surgery and grappled with circulatory issues. In October, having disclosed his neurological condition, he said he was taking time off to “focus on my physical well-being as much as possible.” He canceled his participation in the new “Ring,” a herculean undertaking seven years in the making that had been built around him, as well as a planned tour in Asia with the Staatskapelle and a concert in Berlin in November to celebrate his 80th birthday.As he rested at home, he initially resisted resigning his post and told friends and family that he planned to return to the podium. But even as he kept up some appearances, attending rehearsals and teaching classes in Berlin, his ability to lead the opera house full time grew increasingly uncertain.On New Year’s Eve, he appeared to be making steps toward recovery when he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin while sitting down. But critics noted that he at times seemed unsteady and did not deliver remarks to the audience, as he sometimes does on such occasions.His future activity at the podium is uncertain, but this week, he is scheduled to conduct three concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic and the pianist Martha Argerich, a childhood friend, though in an altered, less physically demanding program. It is unclear whether he will reduce his commitments at the Divan Orchestra, the conservatory or the Pierre Boulez Saal.Barenboim’s resignation will mark the end of an era at the State Opera. Schulz said it was too early to know when the company might name a successor.“There’s no need to rush it,” Schulz said. “It’s more important that this institution makes the right decision for the future, and it’s absolutely possible to take time for that.”But it may prove challenging to find a figure of Barenboim’s stature. The Staatskapelle’s musicians have likened their three-decade relationship with him to a marriage.“There are not so many people at the moment who can run an opera house of this size and reputation coming out of the era of Barenboim,” said Manuel Brug, a cultural critic in Germany. “It’s unique that somebody stayed for 30 years and had the possibility to form something like this. It will be hard to follow.”Barenboim said in his statement on Friday that his time at the opera house had inspired him “musically and personally in every respect.” He hoped to continue conducting at the State Opera, he added. He will retain the honorary title of principal conductor for life, conferred on him by the musicians.“Of course, I will remain closely connected to music,” he said, “as long as I live.” More

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      Review: Berlin Takes Wagner’s Approach to Staging the ‘Ring’

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      All four parts of Wagner’s epic were presented within a week, in a new production by Dmitri Tcherniakov inspired by the work’s experimental roots.BERLIN — Lately, the German capital has been looking more like a city to the south: Bayreuth.At least in one respect. The Berlin State Opera, in mounting Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” has taken Bayreuth’s approach — begun by the composer himself — of presenting it all within a week. Most houses build to that marathon slowly, sometimes over the course of several years, but Berlin has unveiled an entire production at once, with the first cycle ending Sunday night.It’s an enormous undertaking — 15 hours of music to be staged and rehearsed by a couple of hundred performers — especially for a busy repertory house like the State Opera. But this new production, a myth-busting and subtly provocative take by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was designed for a special occasion: the 80th birthday of Daniel Barenboim, the company’s long-reigning music director and a titan of Berlin culture.Barenboim’s health, though, has deteriorated in recent months, and he withdrew from the premiere. In his stead came Christian Thielemann, one of very few conductors to have led all 10 of Wagner’s mature operas at Bayreuth. He hasn’t much experience with the State Opera’s orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, but after his first “Ring” with them, he suddenly seems like a worthy contender for its podium when Barenboim eventually steps down.The Staatskapelle executed Thielemann’s vision for the “Ring” — a long crescendo built over the four operas — with sensitivity and skill. His tempos, slower than usual, tested the stamina of singers, but he also had a keen sense of balance, scaling his sound to match theirs onstage. This was an often quiet ring, a near opposite of Georg Solti’s famous (and ever-elevated) studio recording from the mid-20th century with the Vienna Philharmonic. It did, though, reward patient listeners, with Thielemann simultaneously shaping the score on the level of scenes and the immense entirety.Robert Watson as Siegmund and Vida Mikneviciute as Sieglinde in “Die Walküre.”Monika RittershausHe also had a gift for illustrating the representative moments in Wagner’s score: sheets of rain in the opening of “Die Walküre,” or the idyllic forest murmurs at the heart of “Siegfried.” Those, as it happened, were about the only glimpses of nature in Tcherniakov’s “Ring,” which not only demythologizes the work — like the contemporary-dress family drama presented at Bayreuth last summer — but also isolates its characters in a world so human, it’s constructed by their hands and cut off from the outside world.Talk to anyone who saw this “Ring,” and you’re unlikely to hear the same response twice. It’s telling, and satisfying, that the State Opera auditorium was divided in boos and cheers for Tcherniakov during the curtain call for “Götterdämmerung” on Sunday. There didn’t seem to be a passive listener in the house.Wagner’s sprawling, dramaturgically imperfect work — a multigenerational power struggle among gods, creatures and men — has been interpretive fodder for nearly 150 years. In his book “The Perfect Wagnerite,” George Bernard Shaw argued that the “Ring” was a Marxist epic; so did the director Patrice Chéreau in his benchmark centennial staging at Bayreuth.Tcherniakov offers an original reading on the “Ring,” one that departs severely from Wagner but with a story just as rich — unfurling in a challenging, at times obtuse production that defies quick judgment and demands curiosity. The plot doesn’t map onto the libretto, yet like the text, it is many things at once: commentaries on the dangers of playing god; the limits of knowledge and science; the evolution of sexual politics; generational conflict; even the ways in which a renovation can ruin historical architecture. Funny and aching, ironic and horrifying, it is, however irreverent, loyal to the “Ring” as a work of novelistic complexity.Michael Volle as Wotan with Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde in the final scene of “Die Walküre.”Monika RittershausHere, the four operas unfold within the walls of a Cold War-era research center called E.S.C.H.E. (Esche is the German word for ash tree, which in Wagner’s text is mutilated in the name of power, and withers in parallel to the fall of the gods.) It’s a vast facility; the curtain is a blueprint of the third floor, which alone contains 185 rooms. The production’s program refers to Wagner’s lifetime as a golden age of experimentation — sometimes world changing, sometimes perverse. So were the post-World War II years of arms races and scientific pipe dreams, when the story of this “Das Rheingold” begins.The kind of experimentation that takes place at E.S.C.H.E. becomes clear within the opening minutes, in which people gather in a lecture hall to watch a video (by Alexey Poluboyarinov) of a liquid being injected into a brain, stunting neural pathways as they’re being formed. That’s the least of the unnatural acts to come.Wotan, the ruler of the gods — Michael Volle, the production’s high point as a commanding baritone and actor of remarkable range — oversees a kingdom of inquiry into the human mind. Subjects undergo stress tests or are manipulated into love and violence for the sake of observation. In a world where everything is an experiment, nothing emerges as reliably real.The characters visibly age over the four operas. By “Siegfried,” Stephan Rügamer, left, as Mime, and Volle appear decades older than in “Das Rheingold.”Monika RittershausThe ring is not a physical object so much as the idea of knowledge as power. Scenes that would typically be highlights of stage magic — the crossing of the Rainbow Bridge, the blaze that surrounds a sleeping Brünnhilde, the flooding of the Rhine — don’t exist as such in Tcherniakov’s staging, except with unnecessarily winking substitutes. And there isn’t such a high body count; most characters make it to the end of this “Ring” alive.Tcherniakov, as usual, manages details on a level rarely seen in opera. Most impressively, his characters perform to each other rather than at the audience; with no sound, the action could still communicate its essentials. The soprano Vida Mikneviciute, mighty yet fragile as Freia in “Das Rheingold” then Sieglinde in “Die Walküre,” wears years of emotional and physical abuse in her facial expressions and wincing reflexes; Lauri Vasar’s Günther, a boss made into a cuckold in front of his colleagues in “Götterdämmerung,” looks back at one of them with an uncomfortable, sympathetic smile; Claudia Mahnke’s Fricka is a desperate wife who, resigned to a bitter relationship with Wotan, gestures cruelly for him to keep the pen she lends him to sign away Siegmund’s fate.Elsewhere, the cast performs with laugh-out-loud physical comedy, especially Rolando Villazón, however effortful in the unlikely role of Loge. This “Ring” would be an office sitcom if its subtext weren’t so appalling. Tcherniakov traces E.S.C.H.E.’s existence over a half-century or so, beginning in the 1970s and reflected in Elena Zaytseva’s grounding costumes. The place is rotten from the start, seemingly built with dirty money by Fasolt (Mika Kares, who returns in “Götterdämmerung” as a wickedly resonant Hagen) and Fafner (Peter Rose, who comes back in “Siegfried” not as a dragon, but as a psych patient in a straight jacket).Andreas Schager as Siegfried, the ultimate test subject, with Victoria Randem as the forest bird.Monika RittershausThat original sin serves the plot less than it normally would; more important is Alberich’s theft of “gold.” Later scenes suggest that he is an employee at the center, but one who submits to a stress test and breaks under pressure, violently removing the sensors from his head and running out of the lab with as much data as he can carry. He — Johannes Martin Kränzle, a characterful foil to Volle’s Wotan — forms his own dominion of research in the subbasement.Wotan turns out to be the supreme schemer, though, rather than on an equal level with his rival as written: his “Light-Alberich” to the dwarf’s “Black-Alberich.” By “Götterdämmerung,” Alberich — aging throughout the cycle like everyone else — seems to have died, existing only in the mind of Hagen, whereas Wotan appears in all four operas, instead of the usual first three. His cameo at the end, during Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, is where Tcherniakov’s production snaps into focus; much of her monologue, delivered by the soprano Anja Kampe with equal parts anguish and revelation, is an indictment of Wotan sung directly at him, in a reversal of the final scene of “Die Walküre.”It’s almost as though, like Wagner, Tcherniakov started there, with Siegfried’s death, and worked backward. If you follow that thread, you see his “Ring” as a series of missteps and misplaced priorities. The first two operas exist to set up Wotan’s ultimate test subject: Siegfried, born in the center and raised under constant surveillance. And throughout, Erda (Anna Kissjudit, as assertive as Volle) appears at pivotal moments, along with her three Norns, dispassionate witnesses to Wotan’s folly.Not everything adds up. As is often the case with Tcherniakov, you get the feeling that he ran out of time. He introduces an actual ring in “Götterdämmerung,” but because it serves a traditional purpose as a symbol of fidelity, it doesn’t make sense as an object of everyone’s obsession; also made literal are the sword Nothung and Wotan’s spear, their powers mysterious and irrelevant in a world without magic.Kampe with Schager and Volle. During Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene, she delivers the monologue to Wotan as an indictment.Monika RittershausBut where successful, Tcherniakov’s approach is thoughtful, if rending. He shows how, from the 1970s to the present, women have risen from casual workplace cruelty to precarious power; but also how abusive relationships will always take form in ways like Brünnhilde’s neglect by Siegfried (a tireless, crowd-pleasing Andreas Schager), which drives her to depressive behavior and possibly alcoholism. And Tcherniakov demonstrates, through his own scenic design and lighting by Gleb Filshtinsky, how easily history can be taken for granted or erased, whether Wotan’s legacy or the architecture of E.S.C.H.E.Because so few characters die, they are left to live with their mistakes, and perhaps to perpetuate them for as long as the center remains open. But all “Ring” productions should have an element of renewal, and here that is granted to Brünnhilde, sung by Kampe with a heroic but smaller sound than other sopranos in the role. Instead of greeting the flames of Siegfried’s funeral pyre, she walks out of the facility with a bag in hand. On the empty stage’s back wall, Tcherniakov projects Wagner’s Schopenhauer-influenced version of the Immolation Scene that he never set, in which Brünnhilde describes fleeing from the world of delusion, enlightened and having seen “the world end.”She’s tempted by Erda, who flaps the wings of a toy bird in her hand. But Brünnhilde won’t be fooled. She leaves it all behind, pulling the curtain down behind her — without the knowledge her colleagues so carelessly pursue, perhaps, but with wisdom.Der Ring des NibelungenThrough Nov. 6, then again in April, at the Berlin State Opera; staatsoper-berlin.de. More

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      Daniel Barenboim, Star Conductor, Withdraws from ‘Ring’ Cycle in Berlin

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      “I must now give priority to my health and concentrate on my complete recovery,” the conductor said.A new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle at the Berlin State Opera, featuring the eminent conductor Daniel Barenboim, was one of the most highly anticipated events on the classical music calendar this season.But on Tuesday, the production, which opens in October, suffered a setback when Barenboim, who has been grappling with a variety of health issues in recent years, announced he was withdrawing.“I am deeply saddened not to be able to conduct the new ‘Ring,’” Barenboim, 79, said in a statement. “I must now give priority to my health and concentrate on my complete recovery.”The Berlin State Opera, in a statement, said that the conductor Christian Thielemann would take over for the first and third planned “Ring” cycle this fall, and the conductor Thomas Guggeis for the second. The production, which runs through early November, is being staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov.It was the latest setback for Barenboim, a titan in classical music, who has withdrawn from performances lately.“I am still struggling with the consequences of the vasculitis I was diagnosed with in the spring, and with this decision I am following the advice of my attending physicians,” he said in the statement.Matthias Schulz, director of the Berlin State opera, said it was “extremely sad” that Barenboim could no longer take part. In a statement, he called the production “a unique undertaking that is very close to his heart and that of the entire house.”“Preparations have been underway for many years, and we have done everything in our power to make the ‘Ring’ with Daniel Barenboim possible, especially in the year of his 80th birthday,” Schulz said.As music director of the State Opera and principal conductor for life of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle, Barenboim is a towering figure in the European cultural scene. He is also a founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of young musicians from around the Middle East, and he helped create a conservatory, the Barenboim-Said Akademie, as well as a concert hall, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.In his statement, Barenboim said the Berlin State Opera was “very close to my heart.” He praised the conductors who will replace him.“I wish them and everyone involved all the best with this production,” he said. More

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      A Shape-Shifting Opera Singer, With a Debut to Match

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      Marlis Petersen, one of the greatest acting talents in opera, prepares for Janacek’s “The Makropulos Case” in Berlin.BERLIN — You might know her as the world-famous diva Emilia Marty. Or as Ellian MacGregor — maybe even Eugenia Montez or Elsa Müller. It’s an open question in Janacek’s operatic thriller “The Makropulos Case,” about the twilight of a woman who has adopted an assortment of identities throughout her unnaturally long life.Her real name is Elina Makropulos, born 337 years ago on Crete and still going, thanks to an elixir her father tested on her as a teenager. She’s not so different from Marlis Petersen, the soprano playing the part in a new production that premieres at the Berlin State Opera on Sunday.OK, Petersen is a mere 54. But like Emilia, she comes from Greece, and is currently inhabiting just the latest in a long line of personas. There are few singers with Petersen’s dramatic ferocity and intelligence — who understand that opera is, fundamentally, theater.“In the beginning of my career, the singing was most important,” she said in a recent interview at the Berlin opera house. “Then the music became as important as the text, and then came playing the role. And I wouldn’t say it’s 33-33-33. It’s three times 100.”She loves, she added, to linger in and study the psychologies of women. It’s what has made her, despite a voice on the slender side, one of today’s greatest singer-actors — a small club with the likes of Barbara Hannigan, Asmik Grigorian and Karita Mattila — and a director’s dream.“She’s in this extra class of singer,” said Claus Guth, who is directing the new “Makropulos Case.” “This is to a certain degree people with an energy and a little craziness, in a positive way. I would tell Marlis, ‘We do everything upside down and on the moon,’ and she would say, ‘Let’s go for it.’”Petersen playing the changeable diva Emilia Marty in the Berlin State Opera’s new production of Janacek’s “The Makropulos Case.”Monika RittershausPerhaps surprisingly, Petersen never studied acting beyond basic movement in school. “It’s like a gift from nature that I have,” she said. “It came to me by God.”Opera, too, was more of a random discovery than a deliberate plan. Born in Southern Germany, Petersen said music was “a big nothingness” in her house while she was growing up. She learned piano and flute, but didn’t hear much classical music; she listened to pop, but her parents considered a lot of it dirty, like her treasured ABBA cassette tape.Still, they were supportive, and Petersen’s piano teacher exposed her, she recalled, to “everything from Bach to Hindemith.” In a school music class, her voice was noticed, which led to singing in a church choir and learning the sacred repertory of Schubert, Mozart and more. When she was 15, her parents took her to her first opera, Verdi’s “Rigoletto.” She fell asleep.“I didn’t understand anything,” Petersen said. “I came late to opera, actually.”That happened when she studied voice in Stuttgart, financing her education in part by performing in a cover band called Square on weekends. Petersen played keyboard and sang hits like Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love” and Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” With a keyboardist colleague, she would do gigs that included performing “Starlight Express” on roller skates.“It was good training, because the nights were long and there was a bit of toughness involved,” Petersen said. She imitated the voices of the original singers, a skill that paid off later when she entered a competition with categories for classical repertory, then chansons and musical theater. She won the top prize in both, channeling Barbra Streisand in “Yentl” for her show tune.But once she turned 25, she focused entirely on opera. She joined the ensembles of houses in Nuremberg and Düsseldorf. As a light coloratura soprano she sang roles like Ännchen in “Der Freischütz” and Oscar in “Un Ballo in Maschera.” Then, in 2003, she went freelance.Petersen began to develop a more personal repertory, and signature roles. There was Susanna in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” whom she saw as a “quick, funny and inventive” kindred spirit. And the title antiheroine of Berg’s “Lulu,” which she sang in about 10 runs before retiring it at the Metropolitan Opera in 2015. That role, notorious for the complexity and extremity of its music and psychology, was, she said, “the big thing in my life.”There is a little of Lulu in Petersen’s Emilia Marty — the chilly pragmatism and canny manipulation — but she said that this debut has been a challenge. Her colleague Ludovit Ludha, however, who is singing Albert Gregor, Emilia’s pawn, in the production, said that when he first rehearsed with her, he asked her whether she was sure she had no Czech in her blood, she navigated the language so well.“In each rehearsal I was crying,” he added. “It’s basically unprofessional from my side, but she’s so impressive.”Guth’s staging is also tailored, in part, to Petersen. Handsomely designed and stylized, the production has a crucial intervention: a white void, occupied by Emilia in the opening and between acts.Claus Guth’s “Makropulos Case” staging includes a white space that Emilia Marty inhabits between the acts.Monika Rittershaus“There is no single moment where Emilia is alone,” Guth said, “She’s always playing a role. So I invented a special room for her, where we see the emptiness of someone who is going for 300 years through life.”Without music or text, these interludes depend entirely on Petersen’s silent acting. Dressed in a slip and mostly bald, with patches of wiry white hair, she wears Emilia’s true age on her face and throughout her body as she wearily dons the costume for the coming act. The scenes that follow are long decrescendos; always, by the end, her energy is depleted.“This,” Guth said, “is a very specific quality that only Marlis can give me.”Barrie Kosky, who directed her role debut as the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Bavarian State Opera last season — a production she returns to this spring — said that in the rehearsal room, “there’s never anything less than 100 percent,” adding: “There may be marking high notes, but there’s no marking with acting.”He recalled that in preparing the first act of “Der Rosenkavalier,” she began to eagerly eat a croissant when it was brought into the scene. She told him that if her character had been having sex all night, she would be starving.“I thought,” he said, “there is a God in the theater, and he’s given us Marlis Petersen.”Many of Petersen’s latest triumphs have been at the Bavarian State Opera, where last summer she was named Kammersängerin, designating a special relationship with the company — “an old title, but a lovely surprise,” she said. There, she found a partner in the conductor Kirill Petrenko, the house’s former music director, with whom she sang in “Lulu,” Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” and Strauss’s “Salome.”Around the time she was learning that opera, she bought a Harley-Davidson, which she named Salome. “I wanted to give her — yes, her — a fiery name,” Petersen said. The motorcycle is in Munich right now, but she otherwise keeps it with her in Greece, where she has lived since 2009: first in Athens, then in a house she built on land she has long owned in the Peloponnese.“I cry when I come home,” she said. “Whenever I board the plane, the tears begin. I need the sun as an inspiration.”Home is where she also keeps busy with her second calling: olive oil. Her region, she said, produces olives that are second only to those on Crete, and with the harvest on her property she makes oil that she sells, and gives away to friends. (Kosky has a small collection at his apartment in Berlin.)The label? In a coincidence that might remind you of “The Makropulos Case,” it’s called “Diva’s Elixir.” More