Classical Music

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares27 Views

    Natalie Dessay Stars With Her Daughter in a French ‘Gypsy’

    by

    The soprano Natalie Dessay and her daughter, Neïma Naouri, team up to explore one of theater’s most toxic mother-daughter relationships.That “Gypsy” is finally making its debut in France would be noteworthy enough: It took 66 years for one of the most acclaimed works in the musical-theater canon to get there.But there is an extra twist.The production running Thursday through Saturday at the Philharmonie de Paris stars the soprano Natalie Dessay and her daughter, Neïma Naouri, as Rose, the stage mother to end all stage mothers, and Louise, Rose’s long-suffering older child.“Well, that’s acting,” Dessay, 59, said when asked if there was baggage involved with bringing the show’s psychodrama to life with her daughter. “I can play the evil witch and she can play Snow White — it’s theater.”“Yes,” Naouri, 26, interjected, “but sometimes you lose yourself in the character, and I can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction.”They laughed before Dessay jumped back in. “It’s not any more complicated than anything else,” she said. “But above all it’s more pleasant since we know each other very well and we already have this mother-daughter relationship, so we don’t have to create it. We actually have fun with it.”Their bond was clear in a joint video conversation from France as the pair huddled over a phone — Naouri had helped her mother turn on the camera — keeping an animated banter going the entire time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 100 Shares42 Views

      in Music

      More European Opera Houses Welcome Back Anna Netrebko

      by

      The star soprano, who lost work after Russia invaded Ukraine because of her past support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, will return to the stage in Zurich and London.Anna Netrebko, the renowned Russian soprano, was shunned by many of the world’s leading opera companies after Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago because of her past support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Since then, though, a number of Europe’s most prestigious companies have welcomed her back. And next season she will return to two more major opera houses there for the first time since the war began: Zurich Opera and the Royal Opera in London.With those engagements, Ms. Netrebko will have returned to many of the world’s leading stages, with one notable exception: the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where she reigned as a prima donna for two decades.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, severed the company’s ties with Ms. Netrebko three years ago, citing her “close association with Putin.” He has said that he believes Ms. Netrebko, a citizen of Russia and Austria who lives in Vienna, has made a “disingenuous effort to distance herself from the Russian war effort.”Ms. Netrebko sued the Met, accusing the company of discrimination, defamation and breach of contract. A federal judge narrowed the suit last year to gender discrimination claims; her case is still pending.Ms. Netrebko has returned to Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Berlin State Opera, the Vienna State Opera and the Paris Opera, among others. And in recent days London and Zurich both announced that they, too, would welcome her back.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares32 Views

      in Music

      Dismissed Players Take Aim at New York Philharmonic Misconduct Inquiry

      by

      Matthew Muckey and Liang Wang, who were fired by the orchestra last fall, filed amended complaints saying an investigation by the Philharmonic was biased against them.Two musicians who were fired by the New York Philharmonic filed amended complaints against the orchestra on Thursday that assert they were wrongfully dismissed and that an inquiry by the ensemble had been biased against them.The players — the associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey, and the principal oboist, Liang Wang — were fired in October, after the Philharmonic said an investigation had uncovered what it described as credible claims against them of sexual assault and harassment.It was not the first time the orchestra had tried to dismiss them.The orchestra initially tried to fire them for misconduct in 2018, but their union challenged their dismissals and an arbitrator ordered the orchestra to reinstate them. But last year, after New York magazine reported new details of the accusations against them, the Philharmonic conducted a new investigation, suspended them and then moved to fire them. This time their union is not challenging their dismissals.The two musicians had originally filed suit against the Philharmonic and the players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, last spring when the orchestra suspended them. They were later fired, and the amended complaints filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan are responses to those dismissals, which Mr. Muckey and Mr. Wang contend were based on an arbitrary and opaque inquiry designed to find fault against them.Mr. Muckey’s complaint said the Philharmonic and the union had engaged in a “sham process calculated to achieve a predetermined finding of wrongdoing.” Mr. Wang’s lawsuit said the inquiry was “neither impartial nor open-ended.”The Philharmonic declined to comment. (The orchestra has previously said that its inquiry uncovered “patterns of sexual misconduct and abuse of power” by the two men.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares66 Views

      in Music

      Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Alisa Weilerstein Make Sparks Fly at N.Y. Phil

      by

      Guest conductors and the firebrand soloists Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Alisa Weilerstein brought welcome energy to David Geffen Hall.To judge by its marketing materials, the New York Philharmonic is uncomfortable with its leaderless state, created by the gap between the departure last summer of the music director Jaap van Zweden and the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel, who takes over in 2026. Dudamel’s likeness is already splashed all over Lincoln Center, as if the mere promise of him were the orchestra’s best hope for selling tickets. But the parade of visiting conductors passing through Geffen Hall has had its own rewards, shaking the ensemble from its routine and injecting a vital note of unpredictability. Week by week, the orchestra sounds different. The energy in the hall fluctuates. And when a firebrand soloist joins a smoldering conductor, sparks fly.This was the case on Wednesday in an electrifying concert that drew tumultuous ovations. The Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa teamed up with the flamboyant violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who shredded the Stravinsky Violin Concerto — and more than a few bow hairs — on a program that opened with the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s sumptuous “Chemiluminescence” and ended with a glowing reading of the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms.The previous week had featured another ferociously expressive soloist in another world premiere when the cellist Alisa Weilerstein performed a Thomas Larcher concerto, “Returning Into Darkness,” on a program bookended by Mendelssohn and Schumann. There, it was Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider who conducted, drawing chiseled playing from the orchestra that brought out the wit in selections from Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the intricate flow of Schumann’s Second Symphony. Under Hrusa, the collective sound seethed and simmered.Larcher’s one-movement concerto grows out of a single gesture, a swooping glissando across multiple octaves on the solo cello. On a string instrument, glissando results from the player’s finger sliding up or down the fingerboard, drawing an elastic line through all available pitches. Because it blurs the distinction between individual notes, it evokes extra-musical sounds: sirens, moans, the lowing of a wounded animal.Alisa Weilerstein performed the premiere of Thomas Larcher’s “Returning Into Darkness” last week.Chris LeeIn “Returning Into Darkness,” the swooping lines that recur in the solo cello part, interspersed with bouts of frenetic activity, convey a state of emotional emergency and a certain neurotic rootlessness, unmoored but also unwilling to commit. A similar fluidity governs the ensemble sound, which swells and tapers like a swarm of insects that can build to menacing proportions. Moment by moment, Larcher’s command of color and Weilerstein’s forceful performance were compelling, though over the course of 25 minutes, the constant slaloms induced little more than emotional whiplash.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares39 Views

      in Music

      Hania Rani’s Music Is Tranquil. Please Don’t Call It ‘Soothing.’

      by

      The Polish musician is a mainstay of streaming playlists with names like “Calm Vibes.” But she bristles at the notion that her music is therapeutic.When the Polish musician Hania Rani released her first solo album, “Esja,” in 2019, she knew it was a modest debut. Its subtle piano compositions were moody but pared down, and she worried that its serene atmosphere might limit its mainstream appeal.One year later, the album’s placid vibe turned out to be a blessing. As the world locked down against the Covid pandemic, distressed people were turning to streaming playlists with names like “Calm Vibes” and “Peaceful Rhythms” that featured Rani’s music. It became a breakthrough moment. As one critic told BBC radio during lockdown, Rani’s music “makes your problems and woes all sort of vanish.”But now, Rani, 34, has become a shooting star in a genre of pop-inflected minimalist music often referred to as neoclassical, or alt-classical — though she bristles at the notion that her music is meant to offer therapy. “It’s not being composed to help people relax,” she said in a recent interview. “The music might be slow — not so loud, not upbeat — but it’s actually intense.”Her critically lauded follow-up solo albums — “Home” (2020) and “Ghosts” (2023) — have made her one of the biggest names in neoclassical music. Rani has won seven Fryderyk Awards, Poland’s equivalent to the Grammys, and prompted comparisons to other big-name contemporary composers, such as Nils Frahm and Max Richter.Her live shows have also drawn online attention, including a 2022 performance in Paris that has garnered nine million views on YouTube. In recent months, she has embarked on a largely sold-out tour through some of the world’s best-known concert halls, including the Sydney Opera House and the Berlin Philharmonie.Rani has won four Fryderyk Awards, Poland’s equivalent to the Grammys.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares39 Views

      in Music

      Singer Sues Met Opera Over Firing for Post-Pregnancy Vocal Problems

      by

      The mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who suffered vocal problems during and after pregnancy, is suing the opera company — and the union that represented her — after she lost work.The Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was once one of opera’s most sought-after stars, renowned for stirring, powerful performances in works like Bizet’s “Carmen” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”But after she began experiencing vocal problems during pregnancy in 2021, her career suffered. When she returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, company officials later said, she did not sing up to her standard. The Met canceled her upcoming engagements, and she lost work at other opera companies.Now Rachvelishvili, 40, is suing both the Met and the union representing her, seeking more than $400,000 in compensation for lost work. In a complaint filed in late March, she accused the Met of breaching its contracts with her, and she said that her union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, had failed to properly represent her.Rachvelishvili’s lawsuit claimed that the Met had been aware that she had “suffered complications from her pregnancy and birth affecting her voice and vocal range.” The suit described her as being “disabled due to her pregnancy” and accused the opera company of discriminating against her.“I was shocked that I was not given a chance to recover and all of my contracts for the next two years were immediately canceled without pay,” she said in a statement.The Met said it could not comment on pending litigation.Her complaint argues that the Met should compensate her because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay contracted performers even if they later decide not to engage them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares71 Views

      in Music

      Conductor John Nelson Dead at 83

      by

      He revived interest in a “problem child” in the pantheon of high romantic composers, bringing Berlioz overdue recognition as one of France’s greatest composers.John Nelson, a genial American conductor who made France love one of its own underappreciated musical sons, Hector Berlioz, died on March 31 at his home in Chicago. He was 83.His death was confirmed by his daughter, Kari Magdalena Chronopoulos, who did not specify the cause.Mr. Nelson made Berlioz (1803-1869), the wild man of 19th-century French music, his passion, performing and promoting his work ceaselessly during a career that stretched over 50 years on both sides of the Atlantic.As a young conductor, he introduced Berlioz’s epic five-act opera “Les Troyens” (“The Trojans”) to New York in a 1972 Carnegie Hall performance deemed “highly successful” at the time by Raymond Ericson of The New York Times.By the end of his career, Mr. Nelson was so closely identified with Berlioz, one of France’s most extravagant musicians, that the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph wrote, “John Nelson was clearly born with Berlioz in his genes.”That remark came in a 2017 review of Mr. Nelson’s much-praised recording of “Les Troyens” with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra and a cast that included the American soprano Joyce DiDonato.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares56 Views

      in Theater

      The Best Classical Music Performances of March 2025

      by

      Watch and listen to recent highlights, including Nicole Scherzinger on Broadway, a pair of Janacek operas and Cécile McLorin Salvant.The New York Times’s classical music and opera critics see and hear much more than they review. Here is what has hooked them recently. Leave your own favorites in the comments.Nicole ScherzingerAn excerpt from the song “With One Look.”I would not have expected the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, Nicole Scherzinger, to convincingly portray a Hollywood has-been in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s almost irredeemably cheesy musical “Sunset Boulevard.” And yet she is giving a spectacular and audacious performance as Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s dark, stripped-down revival on Broadway.Where Norma typically recedes, a reclusive grande dame floating about the stage in a fog of self-regard, Scherzinger explodes with kinetic energy. Her singing, sculpted and emotive, soars. She stares down the challenge of a rangy song like “With One Look” with a clean, secure belt and still accesses an undeniably pretty, flutelike head voice. Her Norma’s eager desire to entertain and be adored, in stark contrast to the modern-noir staging, becomes a clear sign of her derangement.But there’s pathos, too. When Scherzinger’s Norma shows up to the Paramount lot, her fantastical confidence cracks a bit in front of Cecil B. DeMille, the director on whom she has pinned her hopes of a career resurgence. In her insecure hesitation, she seems to acknowledge, on an almost subconscious level, that Norma knows she’s kidding herself.Like a nuclear reaction, though, that fissure in Norma’s self-perception generates a colossal amount of emotional energy, which Scherizinger pours into a coruscating performance of “As If We Never Said Goodbye.” Norma may be a joke to the outside world, but Scherzinger’s performance creates a world of its own, one where a silent-film star has a magnificent inner life that truly sings. OUSSAMA ZAHRWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares62 Views

      in Music

      Pierre Boulez at 100: What Is His Legacy Today?

      by

      Few musicians could be the focus of an architectural tour. Pierre Boulez is one of them.In the Fourth Arrondissement of Paris, next to the Centre Pompidou, you’ll find IRCAM, the sound research center that Boulez founded in the 1970s. Not far away, on Place de la Bastille, is an opera house where he suffered one of the few failures of his long career. And on the outskirts of the city, at Parc de la Villette, his Cité de la Musique complex produces concerts, exhibitions and classes, a factory of culture where industrial slaughterhouses once sprawled.The most recent addition to the Cité de la Musique is the Philharmonie de Paris, a concert hall whose main auditorium is named after Boulez. It was completed in 2015, a year before his death, at 90, but he never got to see it. Still, it stands today as a kind of monument to this titan of the past century’s music, a composer, conductor, theorist and a canny political force.Michael Haefliger, a friend and colleague from the Lucerne Festival, called Boulez “the Einstein of music.” The conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, an inheritor of Boulez’s ethos, described him as “one of the most influential people in music, period.”What exactly, though, is Boulez’s influence?A hundred years after his birth, and nearly a decade since his death, his legacy isn’t necessarily as a composer. Celebrating his centennial at the Philharmonie in March, two performances of his “Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna” were notable mostly for their rarity. His music, like that of his peers from the post-World War II generation of high modernists, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono, is brilliant but out of fashion, and difficult to program.Benjamin Millepied created a dance for Boulez’s “Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna.”Benjamin Malapris for The New York TimesBenjamin Malapris for The New York TimesTo get a sense of Boulez’s true legacy, look at how “Rituel” was presented. With an accompanying dance by Benjamin Millepied, the evening embraced experimentation, a hallmark of Boulez, a musician who tried to dissolve the boundaries between performers and audience members in the 1970s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More