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      The Breakout Stars of 2021

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      In a year that offered glimmers of hope across the world of arts, these performers and creators rose to the occasion.Olivia Rodrigo, members of the cast of “Reservation Dogs” and a scene from “Sanctuary City.”Clockwise from left: Mat Hayward/Getty Images; jeremy Dennis for The New York Times; Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe cultural world began to sputter back to life this year, and in turn, so did many of us — slipping out of our sweats and into movie theaters, clubs and Broadway shows. Even for those who were less confident rubbing (or bumping) elbows in public, artists brought us plenty of joy in the safety of our home. It may not have been the beforetimes, but in 2021, these artists and creators from across the arts gave us a fresh outlook.Pop MusicOlivia RodrigoFor those of us over 30, Olivia Rodrigo seemed to come out of nowhere with her colossal debut single, “Drivers License,” a heartbreak ballad that dropped in January and stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks. But for a younger audience, Rodrigo, 18, was familiar from her time as a Disney child star. Despite that pedigree, she didn’t drag along a squeaky clean image.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic at The New York Times, called “Sour,” her debut album from May, “nuanced and often exceptional,” deploying “sweet pop and tart punk equally well.” He called Rodrigo, a California-raised Filipino American, “an optimal pop star for the era of personalities, subpersonalities and metapersonalities.”As Rodrigo told GQ magazine in June, “Something that I learned very early on is the importance of separating person versus persona. When people who don’t know me are criticizing me, they’re criticizing my persona, not my person.”Olivia Rodrigo’s colossal debut single, “Drivers License,” stayed at the top of the charts.Mat Hayward/Getty Images for IheartmediaTelevisionLee Jung-jaeBlood-drenched, brutally violent entertainment is rarely synonymous with nuanced, complex performances. But in Netflix’s “Squid Game,” a dystopian thriller from South Korea that became a global streaming sensation, Lee Jung-jae, 49, pulled off just that. As the protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a gambling addict who is deeply in debt, he gives a wrenching and surprisingly subtle performance as he battles his way through unspeakable horrors.But Lee, a model-turned-actor who has starred in several hit Korean films like last year’s gangster drama “Deliver Us From Evil,” doesn’t play Gi-hun as a hero or a villain, a bumbling fool or a savvy con man. “Gi-hun’s emotions are very complicated,” Lee told The Times in October.“Squid Game,” he went on, “is not really a show about survival games. It’s about people.”TheaterThe Authors of ‘Six’In October, “Six” became the first musical to have its opening night on Broadway since the pandemic shutdown in March 2020, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. An exuberant and cheeky pop musical about the wives of Henry VIII, it brought much-needed fun and noise to the stage — thanks to Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who wrote the book, music and lyrics. (Moss also directed the show with Jamie Armitage.)The hit show is “a rollicking, reverberant blast from the past” that “turns Henry VIII’s ill-fated wives into spunky modern-day pop stars,” as Jesse Green, the theater critic at The Times, and Maya Phillips, a critic-at-large, put it. Think Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj, whom the leading divas were in some ways modeled after.Marlow came up with the idea for “Six” while daydreaming during a poetry class at Cambridge University, where he and Moss, now both 27, became fast friends. “This,” Moss told The Times in 2019, “is obviously the craziest thing that’s ever happened to us.”MoviesAunjanue EllisIn 1995, The Times called Aunjanue Ellis an up-and-comer for her role in the Shakespeare Festival production of “The Tempest” in Central Park. Ellis “projects nearly as much force offstage as she does in character as Ariel,” the article read. That fire hasn’t wavered in the years since, whether on film —“Ray,” “The Help,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” — or on TV in “When They See Us” and “Lovecraft Country,” both of which earned her Emmy nominations.Now, in the movie “King Richard,” Ellis delivers a megawatt performance as Oracene, the mother of Venus and Serena Williams (opposite Will Smith as Richard) — turning a supporting role into a talker and generating Oscar buzz.In an interview this fall, Ellis, now 52, talked about what makes her say yes to a role: “Can I do it and not be embarrassed and stand by the fact that I’ve done it?” she says she asks herself. “Is it fun to play and am I doing a service to Black women?”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Classical MusicEun Sun Kim“An artist is never satisfied,” said Eun Sun Kim after the San Francisco Opera’s production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” on Oct. 14 — despite an extended ovation and shouts of “Bravo!” from the audience.After all, Kim — the first female music director of a major opera company in the United States and the first Asian to take on such a role, a monumental appointment that became official in August — has a lot on her plate. Not only is she grappling with the company’s financial fallout from the pandemic, she inherited the opera’s previous problems, like declining attendance.“It’s a hard job, it’s a big job, whether you’re a woman or a man,” she told The Times in October. “I want to be seen just as a conductor.”Kim, 41, whose conducting debut in the states was in 2017 with the Houston Grand Opera production of “La Traviata,” is aiming to broaden the art form’s appeal in the digital age. The company hopes her appointment will do the same; there were advertisements featuring her image with the words “A new era begins” around the city.“Opera is not boring or old,” she said in October. “It’s the same human beings, the same stories, whether it was 200 years ago or nowadays.”Eun Sun Kim, the first female music director of a major opera company in the United States, at the San Francisco Opera in October.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesArtJennifer PackerLast year, Jennifer Packer, 37, a painter who depicts contemporary Black life through atmospheric portraits and still lifes, told The Times that she’s driven by thoughts of “emotional and moral buoyancy in the face of various kinds of impoverishment and de facto captivity.”Now, that perspective is on display in her biggest solo exhibition, “The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing,” on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The show includes about 30 of her works from the past decade, including the painting “A Lesson in Longing,” which was featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial — as well as works that speak to Black lives lost to police brutality. Her largest painting, “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (Breonna! Breonna!),” referring to Breonna Taylor, was created during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.In reviewing Packer’s Whitney exhibition for The Times, Aruna D’Souza wrote that no other artist right now is doing as much as Packer “to make those who have been rendered invisible — on museum walls, in public culture, in political discourse — visible.”MoviesCooper HoffmanIn “Licorice Pizza,” the new comedy-drama-romance from Paul Thomas Anderson, Cooper Hoffman plays an unlikely teenage hero. Cooper, 18, is the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anderson’s muse before the actor’s death in 2014. Before this movie, Hoffman had never really acted, except with Anderson in something akin to home movies, he said during a press event in November. “It was on a very lower scale, with an iPhone and his kid,” Hoffman joked, referring to Anderson’s child. “I would always play the bad guy, and his kid would beat me up, and it was good fun.”In her review of the film, Manohla Dargis, co-chief movie critic at The Times, said that Anderson’s love for Cooper’s character, Gary, is special — “as lavish as that of an indulgent parent.” His affection for Gary, she continued, “is of a piece of the soft nostalgic glow he pumps into ‘Licorice Pizza.’”Cooper plays opposite Alana Haim, who also had no acting experience before “Licorice Pizza.” The pair had met briefly through Anderson several years ago, she told The Times, never thinking their paths would cross again. As soon as they read together, though, Haim recalled, “It was like, oh, we’re a team. We can take on the world together.”Cooper Hoffman, foreground, stars in “Licorice Pizza,” which was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.Melinda Sue Gordon/MGMDanceLaTasha BarnesLaTasha Barnes — a leader in the dance forms of house, hip-hop and the Lindy Hop — bridged worlds this year. Barnes is “a connector, or a rather a re-connector,” Brian Seibert wrote in the Times. In particular, she works to reconnect Black audiences and Black dancers (like herself) to their jazz heritage. To watch her dance, Seibert said, “is to watch historical distance collapse.”Barnes, 41, has been admired in dance for years, but it was her showing in “The Jazz Continuum” (the show she presented at Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum in May and later at Jacob’s Pillow) and her appearance in “Sw!ng Out” (the contemporary swing-dance show that debuted at the Joyce Theater in October) that caught the attention of many. In November, she won a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer.Discouraged by dance teachers at a young age because of her body type, Barnes pivoted to gymnastics and track and field; at 18, she enlisted in the Army. She later weathered athletic injuries, as well as a broken hip, back and wrist after being hit by a car. Despite it all, her zeal for dance continued.“I was always looking at myself as the perpetual outsider,” she told The Times, “without realizing that it was actually the reverse.”The dancer LaTasha Barnes works to reconnect Black audiences and Black dancers to their jazz heritage.Cherylynn Tsushima, via The BessiesTelevisionThe Cast of Reservation Dogs“Reservation Dogs,” a dark comedy about four teenagers living on a Native reservation in Oklahoma, is a game-changer. That’s how one of its stars, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, described it, and he wouldn’t be alone. The series, from FX on Hulu, is the first on TV with an entirely Indigenous writer’s room and roster of directors. That backbone allows the undeniable synergy among its core cast members — Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Lane Factor and Paulina Alexis — to flourish.On previous sets, Jacobs said she was “literally the only Native person for miles.” The industry “should feel embarrassed that 2021 is a year for firsts for Indigenous representation,” she went on.For Alexis, her acting dreams once felt so impossible, she felt embarrassed to tell anyone about them, she told The Times. “There was no representation on TV. I didn’t think I would make it.” Now she has a role in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” and will star in a second season of “Reservation Dogs,” which was renewed in September.The stars of “Reservation Dogs,” a groundbreaking show from FX on Hulu: from left, Paulina Alexis, Lane Factor, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Devery Jacobs.Jeremy Dennis for The New York TimesPop MusicMickey GuytonAfter Mickey Guyton was nominated for three Grammys in November, she told The New York Times, “I was right.” She was referring to her instinct for the direction of “Remember Her Name,” her debut full-length release. “This whole album came from me and what I thought I should release,” she said, “and that’s something I’ve never done.”In January, alongside major players like Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton, she will have three chances to win: for best country album, best country song and best country solo performance (for the title track). Last Grammys, she became the first Black woman to be nominated for a solo country performance award for the track “Black Like Me.”Guyton, 38, is also an outspoken activist in Nashville, with song titles like “Different” and “Love My Hair.”“What’s being played on country radio has been played on country radio for the last 10 years — I can’t do that,” she told Jon Caramanica of The Times in September. “I can’t do it spiritually. I can’t write songs that don’t mean something.”The country singer Mickey Guyton, performing in New York in December, is also an outspoken activist in Nashville.Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesTheaterSharlene CruzIn September, amid theater’s reopening, “Sanctuary City,” a play from the Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, resumed Off Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Like much of Majok’s work, it takes on the “plight of undocumented immigrants, with a glowering side-eye cast on the rest of us,” as Jesse Green of The Times put it in his rave of the play.Sharlene Cruz brings to life the smart, impulsive G — performing opposite Jasai Chase-Owens as B, both playing undocumented teenagers. Cruz, who is in her 20s, renders her character smartly, impulsively and with a lot of subtext. “Impulsiveness can just seem stagy — youth, a caricature,” Green told this reporter, but Cruz gets the rhythm right and is disciplined enough to put that quality in service of the character’s goals.As those goals change — G ages a few years in the play — Cruz convincingly shows how that impulsiveness hardened into hotheadedness, and youth into something that’s not quite maturity.Sharlene Cruz, left, and Jasai Chase-Owens play undocumented teenagers in “Sanctuary City” at the Lucille Lortel Theater in New York. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesArtPrecious OkoyomonPrecious Okoyomon, 28, a multidisciplinary artist and poet who has only been exhibiting for a few years, creates massive site-specific installations using organic materials. “I make worlds,” Okoyomon, who won the Artist Award at Frieze New York this year, told The New York Times Style Magazine. “Everything, every portal I make, is its own ecosystem.”Okoyomon, who lived in Lagos, Nigeria, as a child before moving to Texas and then Ohio, added: “I attach myself to materials such as earth, rocks, water and fire because these are things I can’t control on my own.”As part of the Frieze win, Okoyomon conceived and presented a performance-based installation at the Shed titled “This God Is A Slow Recovery,” which focused on communication or the lack thereof. “It’s about destroying our language, building it up, crashing the words into each other,” Okoyomon said. “How do we create the language to get to the new world?”This month, Okoyomon won a Chanel Next Prize, a new award from the French fashion brand established to nurture emerging talent, nominated by a group of cultural figures and selected by the jurors Tilda Swinton, David Adjaye and Cao Fei.DanceKayla FarrishIn September, the dancer and choreographer Kayla Farrish — teaming up with the jazz, soul, and experimental musician Melanie Charles — transported Maria Hernandez Park in Brooklyn to a vivid scene of grace and power.The performance — as part of the platform four/four presents, which commissions collaborations among artists — was “sweeping and robust work braiding music and spoken word with choreography” that encompassed the best of technical dance and athletic drills, said Gia Kourlas, the dance critic at The Times.The result turned its five dancers — Farrish, 30, was joined by Mikaila Ware, Kerime Konur, Gabrielle Loren and Anya Clarke-Verdery — into a vibrant union of musicality, tenderness and power,” Kourlas wrote. 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      Review: ‘Messiah’ Brings the New York Philharmonic to Church

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      Jeannette Sorrell led superb voices and a stylish orchestra in Handel’s classic of the holiday season at Riverside Church.When performing arts institutions reopened in New York this fall, there were serious fears that audiences would stay away. But while ticket sales for classical music and opera have reportedly been soft elsewhere in the country, most of the events I’ve attended here in the city have had sizable audiences.So it was on Tuesday, when the New York Philharmonic — joined by Apollo’s Singers, the chorus of the early-music ensemble Apollo’s Fire, and four superb vocal soloists, all led by Jeannette Sorrell — gave a splendid performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Riverside Church.Before the concert, ticket holders waited patiently in a line that circled the block to enter the church, after going through a vaccination check and temperature reading. With seating for about 1,430 inside, the performance was sold out. (There are limited tickets through Saturday.)“Messiah” is so familiar that it’s difficult for a performance to stand out. But this one did — not because Sorrell brought any striking interpretive approach to the score, but because she guided a lithe, glowing and elegant performance from the fine soloists, stirring chorus and orchestra.This was the Philharmonic debut of Sorrell, who founded Apollo’s Fire, based in Cleveland, 30 years ago. Starting with the Sinfonia, the players brought qualities associated with early music to bear: focused sound (with just a touch of vibrato), supple flow and clear articulation.Though there was wonderful vitality in the performance, Sorrell tapped into the melancholic underside of Handel’s work, even during spirited choruses — sung with rich, robust sound and crisp diction by Apollo’s Singers — and ardent arias. (She made some cuts to keep the evening, with an intermission, to two hours and 15 minutes.)This “Messiah” offered as rewarding a quartet of soloists as you are likely to hear this holiday season. The appealing tenor Nicholas Phan set the mood for the evening in the recitative “Comfort ye, my people,” performed with melting sound and beguiling sincerity, and the rousing aria “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted.”The soprano Amanda Forsythe, in her Philharmonic debut, sang with shimmering sound and tenderness. The formidable bass-baritone Kevin Deas brought chilling fervor to “Why do the nations so furiously rage together,” yet exuded palpable joy in “The trumpet shall sound” (abetted by Christopher Martin’s clarion trumpet playing).Then there was the remarkable countertenor John Holiday, also making his Philharmonic debut, who is having a momentous week in New York. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Orpheus’s double in Matthew Aucoin’s “Eurydice,” a role he created when the work premiered in Los Angeles in February 2020. (Holiday will sing the final performance of the opera on Thursday, his only night off from this string of “Messiah” performances.)His gleaming voice is natural and full-bodied, even in its top range. And there is almost a baritonal cast to his singing when he dips lower. Beyond his sound, the directness and charismatic intensity of his singing were captivating. An auspicious debut.At the end, the audience, having gone through some rigors to enter the church, was in no hurry to leave, as a hearty ovation went on.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at Riverside Church, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Review: In Time for the Holidays, Radiant Praetorius Carols

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      Tenet Vocal Artists marked the 450th anniversary of the German Baroque composer Michael Praetorius’s birth, and the 400th of his death.The German hymn commonly known as “Lo, how a rose, e’er blooming” has long been a beloved Christmas carol. It’s sung by church choirs and high school choruses. Versions have been recorded by Linda Ronstadt and Sting.But we have the early German Baroque composer Michael Praetorius to thank for the original single, so to speak: “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen.” The text and hymn melody were first printed together in 1599. But in 1609, Praetorius wrote a tender, four-part setting that plumbed the melody for all its harmonic possibilities, and became the equivalent in its day of a hit tune.On Saturday, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, the splendid ensemble Tenet Vocal Artists performed, with 14 exquisite singers and 11 vibrant players of period instruments, a ravishing account of the beautifully direct yet intricate Praetorius version, part of a generous 75-minute concert of this composer’s works.The program — while Jolle Greenleaf is Tenet’s artistic director, this one was led by Jeffrey Grossman, who played organ — honored the fact that this year marks both the 400th anniversary of Praetorius’s death and the 450th anniversary of his birth. (An on-demand video of the concert will be available for a month starting Tuesday at tenet.nyc.)Praetorius was a leading figure of the German Lutheran chorale tradition — the practice of using hymn tunes as components of pieces that often unfold with striking complexity, as in the wondrous “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” which Tenet performed compellingly. On one level this music comes across as a multi-section, chorale-like setting of an alluring melody. But just below the surface the music teems with inner details: flourishes of offbeat counterpoint for the voices, squiggling riffs for the instruments.In the later phase of his career, Praetorius was increasingly influenced by new styles coming out of Italy, including the technique known as “cori spezzati,” in which groups of singers and players were divided into smaller ensembles so that phrases could be bounced back and forth.In this regard Praetorius was indebted to a younger German contemporary, Heinrich Schütz, whom he got to know when they both worked in Dresden. Schütz had studied in Venice for three years with a progenitor of the technique: Giovanni Gabrieli, the composer and organist at St. Mark’s Basilica. In a nod to Schütz’s influence, Tenet began the program with his “Jauchzet dem Herren,” in which mini-phrases are boldly echoed.That Praetorius brought his own take to the technique was amply demonstrated with a performance of four fleet dances for instruments from his collection “Terpsichore,” his only surviving secular music. The interplay went beyond echo effects; sometimes a flourish was tossed from one group to another with an open invitation to elaborate on it. In several of the large-scale choral works, the Tenet singers enhanced the dramatic impact of the cori spezzati passages by positioning themselves well apart from one another in the church.The revelation, for me, was a performance of the lengthy “Vater unser im Himmelreich,” from Praetorius’s 1619 collection “Polyhymnia Caduceatrix” — magnificent music, laid out in multiple sections, with sublime stretches of overlapping counterpoint and plush harmonies that cadence into radiant consonance. Historians point to this score as the German Baroque counterpart to Monteverdi’s seminal Vespers of 1610.Yet some of the more modest fare was just as rewarding, like the setting of what’s familiar today as the carol “Joseph Dearest, Joseph Mine.” How often do you get to hear Praetorius’s subtly ingenious and glowing version?Tenet Vocal ArtistsPerformed on Saturday at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Manhattan. More

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      Review: ‘Density’ Keeps Expanding the Flute’s Universe

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      Now in its eighth year, Claire Chase’s multidecade project to create a modern repertory for her instrument shows no signs of slowing.It was a familiar, comforting sight: the flutist Claire Chase, standing atop a scaffold and softly lit, a warmly glowing star in the expansive darkness of the Kitchen’s performance space.Since 2013, a scene like this has greeted every audience to witness an installment of “Density 2036,” Chase’s multidecade initiative to commission a new program of flute music each year, leading up to the centennial of Edgard Varèse’s brief but influential 1936 solo “Density 21.5,” a work that, she once wrote, “unfurled genre-dissolving possibilities for the instrument.”These programs — theatrical as well as musical, vocal as well as instrumental — have taken on the reliability of holiday gatherings. And, like many such gatherings, Chase’s was jeopardized by the pandemic: The seventh installment, Liza Lim’s “Sex Magic,” premiered online last December.What a relief it was, then, to be back at the Kitchen on Friday for Part VIII of “Density” — one of the great musical undertakings of our time, a singular project by a singular artist on the messily ambitious scale of Wagner’s “Ring” and Stockhausen’s “Licht.” The climax will be a 24-hour marathon concert, but until then, “Density” is unfolding incrementally, with Chase as the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe.This latest performance — dedicated to the composer Alvin Lucier, whose “Almost New York” was featured in Part I, and who died recently at 90 — opened with Lim’s “Sex Magic,” in the form of the excerpt “Throat Song,” for ocarina and voice, blending and blurring the two in gentle polyphony.Lim’s piece was a reminder that, while “Density” is, on paper, a mission to develop a modern solo flute repertory, it has in practice been much broader. Chase and her cohort of composers have made an encyclopedic embrace of the flute family — especially in Marcos Balter’s “Pan,” which constituted Part V — and remained open to the ways in which the human body can produce sound, such as in Pauline Oliveros’s monodrama-like “Intensity 20.15: Grace Chase,” from Part III. Some works haven’t even been solos. (And some, it should be said, have been easier to respect than love.)The concerts are anything but straightforward. Friday’s came with a host of additional credits, including for Levy Lorenzo’s sound, Nicholas Houfek’s lighting and production design, Monica Duncan’s projections and Kelly Levy’s stage management. The reason was clear the moment Chase began to play Wang Lu’s “Aftertouch,” which complements three types of flute with street noise, a club-worthy beat and videos, by Polly Apfelbaum, of spinning singing bowls. It seems like a lot, but the elements wove together naturally: the city’s restlessness; the dizzying video; Chase’s arpeggios, amplified and, through electronics, feeding one another in waves of sound that transformed into clashing ripples.If “Aftertouch” courted dance, the low frequency of its beat rattling the rafters, then Ann Cleare’s “anfa,” which followed, invited something like the opposite. Its title, according to the program notes, comes from the Irish word for “a disturbance in the elements,” and its baseline is deceptive stasis. Chase stood with her towering contrabass flute against the backdrop of a projected film landscape, by Ailbhe Ni Bhriain, of an Irish bog — a site, Cleare says, of rich industrial and geological history.The video has the look of a still image, but Cleare’s score reveals that there is always more to a landscape than meets the eye. Accompanied by electronics, Chase sounded both of the earth and beyond it, shifting textures with tectonic patience and warping time. Quietly, but alarmingly, the image changes to another in which inky plumes erupt with increasing frequency; by the end, their slowly spreading tendrils begin to overtake the bog.Matana Roberts’s “Auricular Hearsay” countered Cleare’s muted intensity with piercingly loud extroversion. Written for flute, video and the option of collaborators, it uses a mixed-media framework that Roberts calls “Endless Score,” and is, the composer writes, “a visual and sonic exploration of the brains of the neurodiverse,” inspired by how they “operate in starts, stops, spurts.” Improvising from a set of instructions, Chase played no fewer than a half-dozen instruments, including slide whistles, percussion and panpipe, alongside Senem Pirler’s scene-stealing live electronics and against blazing projections.It’s a marvel that, after this rush of premieres, Varèse’s original “Density 21.5” had the freshness of a new discovery. But its inclusion also put a lot of pressure on the pieces that preceded it: Will they still have such an eager audience in 2136?And what about artists able to take them up? So much of “Density 2036” has been written specifically for Chase, tailored to her nimble technique, vocal prowess and charismatic presence. Although each addition has been a gift, it will be even more impressive if these works break the trend — all too common in new music — of coming and going like the burst of breath that makes a flute sing.Density 2036, Part VIIIPerformed Thursday through Saturday at the Kitchen, Manhattan. More

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      Review: ‘Magic Flute’ Welcomes Children Back to the Met

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      A winning cast opened the company’s holiday season with a trimmed, English-language version of Mozart’s classic.It’s always heartening to see lots of eager children in the audience when the Metropolitan Opera presents its family-friendly version of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” during the holidays.But when the company reopened in September, their return was uncertain. The Met, which since the start of its season has required all who enter to be vaccinated, de facto banned children under 12, who were not eligible for vaccines.When eligibility expanded at the end of October, though, the door was open for kids to come back. And they did on Friday, to Julie Taymor’s fantastical production — trimmed to just under two intermissionless hours and performed in J.D. McClatchy’s snappy English adaptation.The tenor Rolando Villazón as Papageno, a role usually sung by baritones, and the soprano Hera Hyesang Park as Pamina.Karen Almond/Metropolitan OperaThe performance boasted a winning cast and glowing playing from the orchestra, led with elegance and insight by Jane Glover. I’ve long been in the minority in finding Taymor’s stylized, puppet-filled staging overly busy — too inventive for its own good. But the audience applauded each scenic touch and stage trick, including some children near me, though there seemed not that many of them in attendance overall. (The company is also offering an abridged, English-language version of Massenet’s “Cinderella,” which opens on Friday.)From the melting love aria that Prince Tamino sings early on, the tenor Matthew Polenzani — who sang the role at this staging’s premiere in 2004 — was in warm, ardent voice. When the questing Tamino exchanges questions with the Speaker (the robust bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi), who oversees the entrance to a temple of wisdom, Polenzani’s heated earnestness lent the scene dark intensity. And his English diction was a model of clarity.Pamina, with whom Tamino falls in love, was sung beautifully by the plush-voiced soprano Hera Hyesang Park. Pamina’s mother, the Queen of the Night, was the soprano Kathryn Lewek, who dispatched her florid leaps and super-high notes with fearless brilliance. The powerful bass Morris Robinson made an imposing yet trustworthy Sarastro, the spiritual leader of the temple.In a bold move, the tenor Rolando Villazón sang Papageno, the hapless bird catcher — traditionally a baritone role. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Villazón, a star since the early 2000s, was candid about the vocal troubles and mental setbacks that almost led him to retire in recent years. He said in the interview that he believed his voice was mended. But on Friday, his low range was weak and patchy, and even his higher notes had trouble carrying in the house.Still, he sang honestly and energetically, and brought a charming blend of comedic antics and wistful yearning to his portrayal of this bumptious character who yearns for love — and finds it, eventually, with Papagena, here the sunny soprano Ashley Emerson.On the podium, Glover balanced warmth and brightness, breadth and high spirits, and rightly received an enthusiastic ovation. When she made her Met debut in 2013 in this holiday “Magic Flute,” she was just the third woman to conduct at the company. This current run is her first time back.Glover has worked with the Royal Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival in England, the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Danish Opera and other major houses. Isn’t it time for the Met to utilize her full capabilities?The Magic FluteThrough Jan. 5 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      Review: For Once, Singing of Complete and Utter Clarity

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      “Voices of the Immaculate,” a new cantata by Kati Agocs performed on Thursday by Lucy Dhegrae, was entirely, word for word, lucid.It can be hard to understand people when they sing. Melodies are often complex; accompaniments are dense; vocalists favor the musical line over crisp diction. Millions, after all, have thought the Beatles wrote the lyric “The girl with colitis goes by.”Proponents of performing opera in English translation — in English-speaking countries, of course — say that intelligibility is their goal. But the results are often no clearer to the audience than German or Italian would have been.So it was no small feat that the text in “Voices of the Immaculate” — a simmering new cantata by Kati Agocs, given a resolute premiere performance by Lucy Dhegrae at the Miller Theater at Columbia University on Thursday — was entirely, word for word, lucid. What a relief not to be reaching for the program every other sentence to find out what was being sung.Indeed, “Voices,” scored for singer and quintet, was conceived, as Agocs said in an onstage discussion, with transparency as a first principle. Her text — an alternation of fragments from the Book of Revelation with lines from the testimony of survivors of sexual abuse by the clergy — demands to be heard, and is. In Dhegrae’s calm, purposeful delivery, there was no escaping what she and Agocs were saying in this seven-section, 30-minute piece.Not that their story isn’t ambiguous. Revelation is quoted here not, as usual, for its apocalyptic fervor, but in a mood of utopian sweetness. Is this meant to be an ironic counterpoint to the accounts of the abused? If so, the irony is held very close to the vest, with music that feels quietly, unremittingly sincere.Dhegrae, while not embodying a character per se, presented a beautifully underplayed childlike persona.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesMoving solemnly around the stage, Dhegrae, while not embodying a character per se, presented a beautifully underplayed childlike persona. A passage of scat turned into something eerily like baby talk, and a section of testimony with the refrain “I believe God should have been there with me” was delivered with plain, luminous simplicity.It isn’t Sprechstimme, but the vocal line has the naturalness of speech; direct without being tuneful, it recalled at moments the mid-20th-century American art song style of a Samuel Barber. This heavy material could have been milked for mawkish portentousness; Agocs and Dhegrae realized that restraint would be more powerful.In the accompaniment, from the quintet Third Sound (Sooyun Kim, flute; Romie de Guise-Langlois, clarinet; Karen Kim, violin; Michael Nicolas, cello; Mika Sasaki, piano), slight jittery motifs yielded to arid expanses. In one section, Sasaki switched to celesta, for a chilling melding of ominousness and guilelessness.All isn’t near-silence. A moment of aggressive winds illustrates the fires of Revelation, and the piece is filled out with spacious — if still understated — postludes after the vocal sections. But Agocs usually paints with a light brush: a faint drone in the strings, say, with a dark rumble in the piano underneath.This was the resumption of the Miller’s signature Composer Portraits series, and Third Sound opened the concert with Agocs’s intimate “Immutable Dreams,” from 2007. Its first movement is a gradually intensifying assemblage of feathery, glassy wisps; the second, dominated by a piano solo that harkens to Romantic heft; the third, an earnest elegy with tangy harmonies and an effusive cello line.Thursday also marked the return of in-person performances at the Miller. (Composer Portraits devoted to Luca Francesconi, Felipe Lara, Matana Roberts and Thomas Meadowcroft fill out the season.) To be back in a space that presents new music so warmly and, in the best sense, casually was a gift.Composer Portraits: Kati AgocsPerformed on Thursday at the Miller Theater, Manhattan. More

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      Amid Virus Surge, Salzburg Festival Announces Next Summer

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      Classical music’s most storied annual event will return to prepandemic scale, with more than 200 events over six weeks.Austria went into lockdown recently to counter a record number of coronavirus cases. But in Salzburg, where the surge has been sharp, there are plans for a brighter future.On Friday the Salzburg Festival, classical music and opera’s most storied annual event, announced its 2022 summer season — back to prepandemic scale, with more than 200 events over six weeks beginning July 18.A double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Orff’s rarely performed “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” will be staged by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Teodor Currentzis. The soprano Asmik Grigorian will star in all three one-acts of Puccini’s “Il Trittico.” The director Barrie Kosky and the conductor Jakub Hrusa will collaborate on Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova.”Cecilia Bartoli will take the main role in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and Shirin Neshat’s 2017 production of Verdi’s “Aida” and Lydia Steier’s 2018 staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” will get return engagements. There is a rich lineup of spoken drama, orchestra concerts — many featuring the festival’s house band, the Vienna Philharmonic — and recitals, including the usual enviable array of pianists.The season will be the first under Kristina Hammer, the festival’s ne-w president, whose appointment was announced on Nov. 24. A marketing and communications specialist, Hammer follows Helga Rabl-Stadler’s quarter-century tenure, and she joins Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic director, and Lukas Crepaz, the finance director, in a triumvirate that will continue to negotiate the pandemic, as well as oversee a major renovation of the festival’s theaters..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Hammer’s appointment “is a conscious step taken by the board in order to further internationalize the Salzburg Festival,” Wilfried Haslauer Jr., the region’s governor, said in a statement.Buoyed by government subsidies and sponsorship deals, Salzburg has been able to weather the pandemic, putting on a fairly robust season in 2020 for limited audiences and returning to something akin to normal in 2021. The commemoration of the centennial of the festival, which was established in 1920, ended up being spread over the past two years.The Overture Spirituelle, a week or so of events originally instituted to draw audiences in the quiet period before the operas are running in earnest, comes into its own next summer as truly “a festival in the festival,” Hinterhäuser said in an interview.Some distinguished Overture ensembles include Currentzis’s MusicAeterna; Klangforum Wien; John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists; the Tallis Scholars; and “Messiah” forces led by Jordi Savall. Their performances lead up to the premiere of “Bluebeard” and “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” — a grand, frantically apocalyptic oratorio unveiled at Salzburg in 1973 — and a concert version of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 chamber opera “Jakob Lenz.” (Among the other highlights: The actress Isabelle Huppert takes the meaty spoken title role in Honegger’s oratorio “Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher.”)Of the six staged operas, two are revivals, and a third (“Barbiere”) will have premiered in June at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, which Bartoli directs. This is an unusually high percentage of rehashes for a festival that prides itself on its ambitious slate of new productions. But Hinterhäuser insisted that both the “Aida” and “Die Zauberflöte” would be substantially rethought versions of shows that were not wholly successful in their original incarnations.“I’m convinced it is the right thing artistically, and from the economic side,” he said.Among the Vienna Philharmonic’s concerts is an ambitious juxtaposition, led by Daniel Barenboim, of the second acts of Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila” and Wagner’s “Parsifal,” with Elina Garanca, Brandon Jovanovich and Michael Volle singing in both. Amid a broad re-evaluation of touring as the pandemic wears on, the only American ensemble scheduled to appear is the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck, on the final day of the festival, Aug. 31. More

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      Rolando Villazón Returns to the Met Opera in Mozart's “Magic Flute”

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      Rolando Villazón, a onetime star plagued by vocal issues, is returning to the house after eight years for “The Magic Flute.”It was deep into Julie Taymor’s playful production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost.“Papageno,” Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly “Flute” that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. “Are you still with me?”As he rotated past on a set piece, the tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papageno’s lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, “I’m right here.”Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Met’s mighty stage. Though he was once one of the company’s brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight years. Many — him included — assumed he would never appear at the Met again.Villazón, 49, in rehearsal for “The Magic Flute.” In the mid-2000s he was one of the Met’s brightest rising stars.Jonathan Tichler/Met Opera“We can call it a roller coaster,” Villazón, 49, said in an interview. “A very bumpy career.”Plagued for much of the past 15 years by vocal problems and mental fears, Villazón lost his consistency and his nerve. “Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “At least at the Met. He had some vocal setbacks and disappeared from our radar.”Villazón had reconciled himself to the end of his career, but during the pandemic he stumbled across a new approach to singing — and now believes he isn’t yet finished. Returning to the Met as Papageno, a role almost always sung by a lower voice, might still appear to be an admission of weakness: a tenor losing his high notes and scrambling to the safety of baritone territory.Not so fast.“I’m not a baritone,” Villazón said, noting that Mozart wrote the part for Emanuel Schikaneder, the “Flute” librettist, who was a famed actor and impresario but far from a traditional opera singer. “There are some low notes that aren’t really for a tenor, like B flat. But they’re mostly in the harmony. The lowest when he sings alone is a C, which is very central.”“Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “At least at the Met.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesIt’s true, though: When Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, asked him to sing Papageno for a recording in 2018, Villazón at first demurred. “I mean, in terms of the character, I love the character,” he said, “But, of course, baritone role, ta ta ta. …”In other words, people might take his casting as an admission that the voice that had brought him celebrity was in permanent retreat. It was a fear he soon got over.“To be honest,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I am worried about what people think.”This is still a course few would have predicted when he rose, in the early 2000s, as a lyric tenor, boyish and ardent in “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” — even if there was always a duskiness to his tone, allowing him to be convincing in, for example, the heavier title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” A 2005 profile in The New York Times observed that Villazón was being compared to Plácido Domingo, at whose Operalia competition Villazón got his big break in 1999.“The voice, at this early stage,” the Times profile said, “weighs in on the light side but is tinged like Mr. Domingo’s with the dark shading of a baritone.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That summer, Villazón and Anna Netrebko, also fast-rising at the time, created a sensation in Willy Decker’s spare, vivid staging of “La Traviata” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, and were swiftly anointed opera’s next onstage power couple.“He seemed,” Gelb said, “to be the most exciting tenor in 2005, ’06.” In 2007, Villazón and Netrebko were the stars of a gala celebration of the Met’s 40th anniversary at Lincoln Center.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesBut while Netrebko’s career continued to skyrocket, calamity struck Villazón: He began to crack on some high notes, a tenor’s lifeblood. Cancellations piled up, including a Live in HD broadcast of “Lucia di Lammermoor” from the Met alongside Netrebko.A cyst was eventually discovered inside his vocal cords; after a delicate operation in 2009, he couldn’t speak for some time, let alone sing. He gingerly re-emerged on opera and concert stages, including a Met run of “Eugene Onegin” in 2013. (“Despite some initial cautiousness in the first act, in which he sometimes sounded underpowered,” the Times review said, “he sang with confidence and poise.”)“It was for me very important to reestablish myself, to reposition as a tenor,” Villazón said. But the long period of uncertainty and tweaks to his technique had left their mark, and he began to lose confidence in himself and his instrument.“Around 2015, 2016, that’s when I started to develop stage fright, because I was afraid of getting something else,” he said. “I was hitting nine out of 10 high notes. When you are in this business, and at this level, you hit 10 out of 10. They might not be all beautiful, but you hit all of them. If you’re not hitting one of those 10, you start thinking, Is this the one? And then you start hitting eight out of 10, and seven out of 10.”He worked with sports coaches, and tried taking a small amount of anti-anxiety medication before performances. That helped with his fear, but took away the internal fire that he felt fueled his best work.“How do I stop it being hell to go on and perform?” he recalled thinking. He re-embraced the Baroque repertory that he had done earlier in his career under the conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, moving away from the high notes that had turned perilously unreliable. Then he developed what he called “uncomfortable sensations,” even in the middle of his voice.With a breakthrough during the pandemic, Villazón believes he has mastered some of the vocal problems that have plagued him.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn 2017, 10 years after headlining the Met’s 40th-anniversary gala, Villazón dropped out a few days before his appearance at its 50th. He felt basically done: “I thought, Let me reach 50 and I can call it quits as a singer.”It helped that singing wasn’t all he was doing by that point. He had some success as a television personality, was directing productions and had been named the artistic leader of the Mozartwoche festival in Salzburg. He had even started writing novels.But he wasn’t yet ready to give up performing entirely, and discovered that acid reflux was causing his new round of problems. He had another operation, at the end of 2018, and slowly his vocal steadiness, though not his high notes, came back.Then, practicing during the pandemic, he hit a note — an F — and immediately knew something had shifted in the way he produced sound. Working with coaches, he revised his approach to his voice; even some of his older, higher-flying roles felt possible again.“The way it feels, I’m entering the greatest moment of my career,” he said. “I have no ambitions. I don’t need to achieve, professionally, anything else. It’s all artistic achievements.”So his coming seasons will include Mozart’s Tito and Idomeneo; Edgardo in “Lucia”; even Loge, the trickster fire god in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” which Villazón was working on when he had his pandemic breakthrough.“I certainly plan to sit with him and discuss other roles with him,” Gelb said. “I don’t want this to be a drive-by appearance. But it’s up to him, and what he feels comfortable with.”Papageno, then, is hopefully not the beginning of the end for Villazón, but a delightful lark — a part for which he doesn’t feel the need to apologize, and on which he can lavish his fascination with the figure of the clown.“They never lose, they never die, and they never quit,” he said. “The clown goes on.” More