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      John Williams, Hollywood’s Maestro, Looks Beyond the Movies

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      The composer of “Star Wars” and “Jaws,” who turned 90 this week, says he will soon step away from film. But he has no intention of slowing down.UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, when film production came to a halt and recording studios shuttered, John Williams, the storied Hollywood composer and conductor, found himself, for the first time in his nearly seven-decade career, without a movie to worry about.This, in Williams’s highly ritualized world — mornings spent studying film reels and improvising at his Steinway; a turkey sandwich and glass of Perrier at 1 p.m.; afternoons devoted to revisions — was initially disorienting.But in the months that followed, Williams came to relish his freedom. He had time to compose a violin concerto, immerse himself in scores by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, and go for long walks on a golf course near his home in Los Angeles.“I welcomed it,” Williams said in a recent interview. “It was an escape.”Now the film industry is back in action, and Williams, who turned 90 on Tuesday, is once again at the piano churning out earworms — pencil, paper and stopwatch in hand.Even as he plans to slow down his film scoring, Williams is focused on conducting and composing concert music for collaborators like Yo-Yo Ma.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut Williams, whose music permeates popular culture to a degree unsurpassed by any other contemporary composer, is at a crossroads. Tired of the constraints of film — the deadlines, the need for brevity, the competition with ever-blaring sound effects, the work eating up half a year — he says he will soon step away from movie projects.“I don’t particularly want to do films anymore,” he said. “Six months of life at my age is a long time.”In his next phase, he plans to focus more intensely on another passion: writing concert works, of which he has already produced several dozen. He has visions of another piece for a longtime collaborator, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and he is planning his first proper piano concerto.“I’m much happier, as I have been during this Covid time, working with an artist and making the music the best you can possibly make it in your hands,” he said.Yet the legacy of his more than 100 film scores — the “Star Wars,” “Jaws” and “Harry Potter” franchises among them — looms large, to say nothing of his fanfares, themes and celebratory anthems for the likes of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “Sunday Night Football,” the Olympics and the Statue of Liberty’s centennial.The Music of John WilliamsThe composer of “Star Wars” and “Jaws” has been a fixture in the film industry for half a century.Beyond the Movies: The 90-year-old Hollywood maestro will soon step away from film to focus on another passion: writing concert works.In the Concert Hall: Williams’s symphonic pieces tend to be skillful but less imaginative than his film scores. Here are five examples.A Source of Inspiration: “Star Wars” is rooted in the classics, and so is Williams’s music for the soundtracks. Listen to these comparisons.“He has written the soundtrack of our lives,” said the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, a friend. “When we listen to a melody of John’s, we go back to a time, to a taste, to a smell. All our senses go back to a moment.”Williams’s music harkens back to an era of Hollywood blockbusters, when crowds gathered at theaters to be transported. He has excelled at creating shared experiences: instilling in every member of an audience the same terror about a menacing shark, conjuring a common exhilaration in watching spaceships take flight.The pandemic has robbed Hollywood of some of that magic. But Williams’s admirers say his music, with its appeal across cultures and generations, is an antidote to the isolation of the moment.“We need him more now than we’ve ever needed him before,” said Hans Zimmer, another storied film composer.Leatherbound scores for a small sampling of the many films Williams has worked on, including the “Harry Potter” series and “War of the Worlds.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWilliams — a fixture in the industry since the 1950s, with 52 Academy Award nominations, second only to Walt Disney, and five Oscars — recognizes that he might be the last of a certain type of Hollywood composer. Grandiose, complex orchestral scores, rooted in European Romanticism, are increasingly rare. At many film studios, synthesized music is the rage.“I feel like I’m sort of sitting on an edge of something,” he said, “and change is happening.”Born in New York, Williams became interested in composing as a teenager, entranced by the orchestral scores and books brought home by his father, a jazz percussionist.After stints as a studio pianist in Hollywood in his 20s, he found work as a film and television composer, making his feature film debut at 26, in 1958, with “Daddy-O,” a comedy about street racing.In the 1970s, Williams’s work caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, then an aspiring filmmaker searching for someone who could write like a previous generation of Hollywood composers: Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Bernard Herrmann.“He knew how to write a tune, and he knew how to support that tune with compelling and complex arrangements,” Spielberg recalled in an interview. “I hadn’t heard anything of the likes since the old greats.”The two began a partnership that has spanned a half century and more than two dozen films, including “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Schindler’s List” and “Jaws,” for which Williams’s two-note ostinato became a cultural phenomenon.“When everyone came out and said ‘Jaws’ scared them out of the water, it was Johnny who scared them out of the water,” Spielberg said. “His music was scarier than seeing the shark.”Williams pointing to a sketch of a Tyrannosaurus rex chase scene from “Jurassic Park.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIn 1974, when he was 42, Williams suffered what he called “the tragedy of my life” when his first wife, the actress Barbara Ruick, died suddenly.“It taught me who I was and the meaning of my work,” he said, but added that the next several years were difficult, and he struggled as a single parent of three children with a busy career. “Star Wars,” which premiered in 1977, brought a new level of fame and marked the beginning of a four-decade-long project that has encompassed nine films, dozens of musical motifs and more than 20 hours of music.George Lucas, the creator of “Star Wars,” said Williams was the “secret sauce” of the franchise. While the two sometimes disagreed, he said Williams did not hesitate to try out new material, including when Lucas initially rejected his scoring of a well-known scene in which Luke Skywalker gazes at a desert sunset.“You normally have, with a composer, giant egos, and wanting to argue about everything, and ‘I want it to be my score, not your score,’” Lucas said. “None of that existed with John.”Williams’s career as a conductor also took off. In 1980, he was chosen to succeed Arthur Fiedler as the leader of the Boston Pops. Over the next 13 years in the position, he worked to promote film music as art, and forged friendships with leading classical artists.In 1993, when he was working on “Schindler’s List,” he called the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman. “I hear a violin,” he said, according to Perlman. To this day, Perlman added, the aching theme from that film remains the only piece that audiences specifically request to hear at his concerts.Perlman said Williams had a talent for conveying the essence of disparate cultures: evoking Jewish identity in “Schindler’s List,” for example, or Japanese traditions in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”“His music has a fingerprint,” he said. “When you hear it, you know it’s John.”Williams’s bookshelves at home, with a bust of Aaron Copland and a copy of Cole Porter’s lyrics. “I hadn’t heard anything of the likes since the old greats,” Steven Spielberg says.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesWilliams’s concert works, more abstract than much of his film music, have been less widely embraced. But Ma, for whom Williams has written several pieces, said curiosity and humanity anchored his works. In 2001, moments before Ma was to begin a recording session of “Elegy,” a piece for cello and orchestra, he recalled that Williams told him he had written the music in honor of two children who had been murdered.“I think of him as a total musician, someone who has experienced everything,” Ma said. “He knows all the ways that music can be made.”Inside his studio on the back lot of Universal Studios Hollywood, Williams is surrounded by mementos: a miniature bust of Beethoven, vintage movie posters chosen by Spielberg and, on a coffee table, a yellow bumper sticker reading, “Just Say No.” A model of a dinosaur, a nod to “Jurassic Park,” watches over the piano.At 90, he is astute and energetic but soft-spoken, looking much the same as he has the past two decades: black turtleneck, faint eyebrows and a wispy white beard.This year, he will complete what he expects to be his final two films: “The Fabelmans,” loosely based on Spielberg’s childhood, and a fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” series.“The Fabelmans” has been particularly emotional, he said, given its importance to Spielberg. On a recent day, he recounted, the director wept as Williams played through several scenes on the piano.Williams said that he expected “The Fabelmans” would be the pair’s final film collaboration, though he added that it was hard to say no to Spielberg, whom he considers a brother. (Spielberg, for his part, said that Williams had promised to continue scoring his films indefinitely. “I feel pretty secure,” he said.)“Music has been my oxygen,” Williams says, “and has kept me alive and interested and occupied and gratified.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAt the end of his film career, Williams is making time to pursue some longtime dreams, including conducting in Europe. His works were once considered too commercial for some of the great concert halls. But when he made his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2020, players asked for photos and autographs.The violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter said she was disappointed that there had been skepticism about his music.“Everything he writes is art,” said Mutter, for whom Williams wrote his second violin concerto, which premiered last year. “His music, in its diversity, has greatly contributed to the survival of so-called classical music.”And his peers say he has helped establish, beyond doubt, the legitimacy of film music. Zimmer, who wrote the music for “Dune,” said he is “the greatest composer America has had, end of story.” Danny Elfman, another film composer, called him “the godfather, the master.” Dudamel drew comparisons to Beethoven.Williams is more modest, describing himself as a carpenter. “I don’t know if it’s a passion,” he said of composing, “as much as an almost physiological necessity.”He said he still gets a thrill when people tell him that his music has been formative in their lives: He was delighted several years ago when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he had insisted on playing “Star Wars” at his bar mitzvah, over his parents’ objections.Williams said he tries not to fixate on age, even as hundreds of ensembles around the world — in Japan, Australia, Italy and elsewhere — host concerts to mark his birthday. And he said he does not fear death; he sees life as a dream, at the end of which we awaken.“Music has been my oxygen,” he said, “and has kept me alive and interested and occupied and gratified.”Williams recalled a recent pilgrimage to St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where Bach once worked as a cantor. He listened intently as a pastor described the efforts to protect the great composer’s remains during World War II; he marveled at the dedication to preserving Bach’s legacy.On his way out of the church, he paused. An organist was filling the grand space with the hymn-like theme from “Jurassic Park.”Williams, beaming, turned to the pastor.“Now,” he said, “I can die.” More

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      John Williams in the Concert Hall: An Introduction

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      Listen to five works that Hollywood’s reigning composer has written for symphony orchestras and star soloists like Yo-Yo Ma.John Williams has been Hollywood’s leading composer for over half a century. A keeper of the Golden Age flame of soaring grandeur and indelible melodies, he is the musical mind behind the two-note terror of “Jaws,” the operatic fanfare of “Star Wars” and the mischievous charm of “Harry Potter” — along with the sounds of some 50 other Academy Award-nominated scores.Over the years, Williams has also maintained a robust career in the concert hall. But while his soundtracks are the stuff of cultural immortality, his symphonic works have never found a foothold in the repertory. Even now, as his music is programmed by the storied ensembles of Vienna and Berlin, it’s more likely to be “E.T.” than his “Essay for Strings.”Williams’s concert works tend to be skillful but less imaginative than his film scores. And some — particularly pièces d’occasion like the larky “Soundings,” written for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003 — are understandably obscure. At his best, though, he is a vivid tone painter with a masterly command of orchestration and form. Here are five examples.Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1976)Reminiscent at times of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto and, like it, written in the wake of loss — for Williams, the sudden death of his wife — this entry into the genre moves fluidly, and often unpredictably, in and out of lyricism, volatility and breathlessness. Premiered in 1981 by Mark Peskanov, it found a broader audience when recorded three decades later by Gil Shaham and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with which Williams has a long association.‘The Five Sacred Trees’ (1993)More or less a bassoon concerto, this commission for the New York Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary opens with a long solo that conjures the first (and wisest) of five trees from Celtic mythology. The movements that follow are arboreal portraits in music: a puckish, dancing duet for the bassoon and a violin; a mysterious nocturne; curlicue phrases choked into fragments; and patient brooding.Cello Concerto (1994)Williams composed this for Yo-Yo Ma to inaugurate Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. (Among Williams’s works for the instrument, it has aged better than Three Pieces for Solo Cello, a 2001 meditation on Black history with titles like “Pickin’.”) Tailored to its soloist like a film score to its scenes, the concerto is designed to reflect different angles of Ma’s artistry: as a heroic virtuoso, a nimble genre-hopper and, in the ruminative finale, an expressive communicator.Horn Concerto (2003)Dale Clevenger — the Chicago Symphony Orchestra horn master for whom this was written, and who died last month — once told an interviewer that he had requested an “audience-friendly” concerto from Williams. The result is difficult to play yet often warm, while also being nearly programmatic in its succession of tone poems that verge on the Coplandesque in the third-movement Pastorale.‘Markings’ (2017)If this atmospheric and discursive work seems like the start of something larger, it kind of is. Written at the urging of the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and leaning into her trademark eloquence, it was the first in a series of collaborations that have since included an album of Williams’s film music arranged for her and orchestra, as well as his Second Violin Concerto, which premiered last year and comes to Carnegie Hall in April. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Music for Dance

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      Reggae, house, step, ballet, tap, jazz: Listen to the sounds that have inspired great choreographers.In the past we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, piano, opera, cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, flute, string quartets, tenors, Brahms, choral music, percussion, symphonies, Stravinsky, trumpet, Maria Callas, Bach, the organ and mezzo-sopranos.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love music — of many different styles — made to be danced to. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Brian Seibert, Times writerI think I first heard it in a TV commercial for beef, but Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo” was written for ballet. A particularly American ballet — about a cowgirl! — choreographed by Agnes de Mille in 1942. Like Copland’s “Billy the Kid” and “Appalachian Spring,” written for Martha Graham, “Rodeo” forged a mythical sound of Americana that was taken up by pops concerts and advertisers. But this is dance music, as you can feel from the start, when the scene-setting of open spaces accelerates into a trot and then kicks into the broncobusting, heel-cracking main theme. That Justin Peck’s 2015 choreography for New York City Ballet successfully ditched the story and held onto the rhythms is a testament to their power.Copland’s “Rodeo”New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Camille A. Brown, choreographerWhen we did “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” this fall at the Metropolitan Opera, we included step dance, an African-American social dance form used in fraternities, sororities, H.B.C.U.s. I connect it to Juba dance; enslavers would sometimes take the drums away from the enslaved, who would continue to use their bodies as a way of communicating.It’s about the body being an instrument — using your hands and feet and body to create rhythms that are a musical composition. I tried to create a score, a rhythmic score, inside of Terence Blanchard’s opera score. This was the first time that step dance had been on the Met stage, and I tried to honor the ancestors and what this movement means as best I could.“Fire Shut Up in My Bones”Camille A. Brown, choreographer (Metropolitan Opera)◆ ◆ ◆Taylor Stanley, New York City Ballet principal dancer“Apollo” is full of nuance. After Apollo’s first solo, there is a musical shift when he’s introduced to the three muses. You can hear the delicacy of each muse, and there’s this coy energy as the god discovers himself through dancing with them. Stravinsky’s score is so layered and intricate; you hear melody on top of melody, just as Apollo supports all three women as a partner. And then those layered melodies culminate in a really lush, beautiful resolve. It’s the music that creates this image of openness and fills the space with density. It’s a moment of harmony that melts my heart.Stravinsky’s “Apollo”London Symphony Orchestra; Robert Craft, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Siobhan Burke, Times writerThe first time I saw “Grace,” Ronald K. Brown’s 1999 hit for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, I had to check the fine print in the program. What was that song? The one that had me itching to get up and move along with the dancers? Thus began my habit of listening on repeat to Roy Davis Jr.’s “Gabriel,” featuring Peven Everett. The 1996 British garage track — with its infectious house beat, luminous trumpet and mellow yet passionate vocals — was made to be danced to in contexts other than a theater. But in Brown’s hands, it’s equally at home onstage, where his intricate, cyclical movement slinks into the music’s subtler grooves and widens its spiritual dimensions.Roy Davis Jr. and Peven Everett’s “Gabriel”(XL)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorMany people’s first experience with live ballet is “The Nutcracker.” It was mine, too, and though I knew nothing about dance, I couldn’t get enough of Tchaikovsky’s score. I later loved the symphonic drama of his “Swan Lake” and then came to “The Sleeping Beauty,” immediately hooked by its famous Rose Adagio. A moment of stasis yet suspense, the fairy tale scene is set by a flowing harp, followed by Romantic strings and dignified brasses as Aurora receives and rejects a series of suitors. The ending, regal and rattlingly loud, is a triumph not only for the princess, but also for any ballerina who emerges unscathed.Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty”Vienna Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Phil Chan, Final Bow for Yellowface co-founderA good piece of dance music is an aural guide for the body to explore the freedom of movement. It changes directions. It grabs onto your heartbeat and pulses through your veins. It makes you tap your feet. One of my favorite pieces of dance music is for the Tinikling, the national folk dance of the Philippines, which emulates the swift footsteps of the tikling bird. The virtuoso melody provides variations on a theme, syncopated rhythms, changing tempos to build excitement and, finally, a crescendo release. Fair warning: Only the most musical dancers avoid the sore ankles that come with the closing snap of the bamboo poles.The TiniklingUCLA Samahang Pilipino Cultural Night, 2017◆ ◆ ◆Robert Battle, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater artistic directorThere is a mystery to “Reflections in D,” unlike many other songs by Duke Ellington, who called his compositions “American music” rather than jazz. Though abstract, the song suggests a poignant story behind the haunting, bittersweet melody. In 1962 Alvin Ailey was moved to create a dance to this music, so when we listen to it now, we see and hear the prowess and vulnerability of both these great artists. Though the piece is brief, it says everything needed, with nothing superfluous, something that can only be achieved by masters of their craft. Our own memories are freed by the tranquil poetry. “Reflections in D” is a meditation on being.Duke Ellington’s “Reflections in D”(Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorTwyla Tharp’s 1986 masterpiece “In the Upper Room” has many moments of quiet intimacy. But as you can guess from the music alone, the final section is a relentless full-ensemble Olympics. In the score Tharp commissioned from Philip Glass, she got the sonic equivalent of her surging, athletic choreography, with the dancers (by this point dripping in sweat) soaring through the fog and shadows created by Jennifer Tipton’s lighting. Many, many people have set Glass to movement, never more exhilarating than this.Philip Glass’s “Dance IX”(Orange Mountain Music)◆ ◆ ◆Lauren Lovette, choreographerI respect and value “Trio per Uno” for the sheer genius behind the percussion syncopation, and its variety of color and mood. I have always been drawn to percussion for dancing because of its obvious physicality and the impulse to move from places internal. But I often find that single-movement percussion works fall too far into a single rhythm, making the dance one-dimensional. So when I came across this piece I was immediately taken by its changes in direction throughout, and how recklessly it ends. The duet I set to it is one of my favorite pieces of my choreography.Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic’s “Trio per Uno”Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic, Benjamin Toth, Fernando Meza, percussion (Bis)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerGiven its premiere at the Paris Opera in 1931 as the successor to his “The Spider’s Feast,” Albert Roussel’s undeservedly overlooked “Bacchus et Ariane” is a magnificently symphonic kind of ballet — painted in bright, bold colors, graced with soaring lyricism and driven along with grinding, mechanistic rhythmic force. After Bacchus’s kiss leads into a gloriously rapt dance for Ariane, a pounding bacchanal cavorts out of control, before Ariane reaches her apotheosis and is crowned in stars. There are more graphic accounts of this music out there, but nobody matches Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for finding the beauty in the carnage.Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariane”Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Jean Martinon, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Justin Peck, choreographerWhat I love about dance music is that it can be anything. It can be a piece that inspires me to choreograph a ballet for the stage, or something that causes me to glide in synchronized rhythm around my kitchen as I prepare dinner. It’s all fair game. In the case of “Become a Mountain” by Dan Deacon, it’s all of the above: the centerpiece of a longer dance that I choreographed a few months ago for the Juilliard School Class of 2022, and also a stand-alone track that gets my blood pumping on these frigid winter days in New York.Dan Deacon’s “Become a Mountain”(Domino)◆ ◆ ◆Ayodele Casel, tap dancer and choreographerArturo O’Farrill is a musician with great love of and respect for the art of dance. Our collaborations have explored both the freedom of improvisation, composing music on the spot, and working with his vast catalog for choreographic inspiration. “The Sandbox” is one of our many improvisational moments, recorded for my show “Chasing Magic.” Playfully we flow through Latin, jazz, classical and blues music in five minutes. Our interaction reflects the freedom, tradition, stop-time, call-and-response nature of jazz and tap. We always surprise ourselves when our rhythm and cadence uncannily sync, like magic.Arturo O’Farrill and Ayodele Casel’s “The Sandbox”(Ayodele Casel)◆ ◆ ◆Benjamin Millepied, choreographerThe sabar is a dance form of the Wolof people, who mainly live in parts of Senegal and Gambia. The dancing is accompanied by a style of drumming with the same name. I grew up in Senegal, with this musician’s family as a neighbor. The sophisticated rhythmic language of sabar inspired me to begin dancing at an early age. It is a freeing way to approach dance, as individuality and improvisation are key elements, and the energetic, mathematical polyrhythms triggered a lifelong desire in me to choreograph my own variations on movement.Doudou N’Diaye Rose’s “Rose Rhythm”(Real World)◆ ◆ ◆Kyle Abraham, choreographerWith its slick grooves, percussion, guitar licks and beautiful vocals, “Betray My Heart,” by D’Angelo and the Vanguard, is one of the rarest love songs I know. I included it in my newest evening-length work, “An Untitled Love,” because it is so pure, honest and sincere that I’m given a glimpse into what the joys of love should feel like. There’s something in the song’s lyrics and arrangement that makes me want to cry, and then get up and dance with the biggest smile on my face. My backbone slips, my shoulders roll, my heart thumps, and my head bops in its declaration.D’Angelo’s “Betray My Heart”D’Angelo and the Vanguard (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Gia Kourlas, Times dance criticHindemith’s score for Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” — known in dancer shorthand as “Four T’s” — resulted in a groundbreaking merging of music and dance exploring the notion that in every person there are four humors, or temperaments. “Phlegmatic,” the third variation, evoking the unemotional, indifferent side of the psyche, starts out with strings that make the body droop and rise. The spare, strong notes of the piano part are like light cutting through mist to pave the way for a melody that builds and bounces, all the while conjuring physical sensations: gliding, floating, flying. The music’s spirit may belong to Balanchine, yet somehow it makes room for more — within it, there are so many dances waiting to be danced.Hindemith’s “The Four Temperaments”Los Angeles Philharmonic; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor (Sony)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times writerNew York boasts plenty of places where you can check out improvising composers plying their craft — but not nearly so many spaces to dance while they play. That has made live concert interventions like the pianist Jason Moran’s “Fats Waller Dance Party” particularly inviting at venues like Harlem Stage. On Moran’s accompanying album, “All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller,” he keeps alive the social aspect of early jazz, with a contemporary twist. During a track like “Lulu’s Back in Town,” Moran injects rhythmic fillips that call to mind producers like J Dilla, while still doing honor to Waller’s rendition from the 1930s.Harry Warren and Al Dubin’s “Lulu’s Back in Town”Jason Moran, piano (Blue Note)◆ ◆ ◆Javier C. Hernández, Times classical music and dance reporterProkofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” has a tortured history. Its premiere was repeatedly delayed; the music was derided as impossible to dance to; and the score was subjected to Soviet censorship. But it has become one of his most beloved works — by turns fiery, lyrical and haunting. There are also moments of irreverence, such as in this carnival-like dance featuring the mandolin. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under Marin Alsop, brings anguish and electricity to the score.Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor (Naxos)◆ ◆ ◆Charmaine Warren, dancer and teacherI am Jamaican, and I love reggae music. Chronixx, one of Jamaica’s celebrated young singers, known for his rapturous songs, invites listeners to hearken back to the Rasta skank of Bob Marley. In “Smile Jamaica,” he starts off by singing about a girl he’s met; they exchange names and sweetly, just when the beat drops, we find that her name is Jamaica. He sings: “And I said smile, girl, smile. Smile for me, Jamaica.” In Jamaica we say “di music sweet mi,” and so I can’t help but drop my head, drop deeper into my swaying hips, pump my bent arms, smile, and sing along with the chorus.Chronixx’s “Smile Jamaica”(Silly Walks Discotheque)◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Review: International Orchestras Are Finally Back at Carnegie

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      The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London was the first foreign ensemble to play at the hall since February 2020.What sets a cultural capital apart is not just the quality of its music-making, but also the quantity and variety. No American symphonic ensemble, for example, is better than the Cleveland Orchestra, but it stands largely alone at home. Few big groups travel to Cleveland the way they do to New York.Or did. The city’s performing arts landscape has blossomed again following long pandemic closures, but virus surges, visa issues, quarantine requirements and financial concerns have meant that orchestral tours — usually the meat of Carnegie Hall’s season — are still slumbering, almost two years later.But tours, too, are slowly reawakening. The marquee offering comes later this month, when the mighty Vienna Philharmonic comes to Carnegie for a three-night stand. A landmark arrived on Monday evening, however, when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London became the first international orchestra to appear at the hall since the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on Feb. 24, 2020.The Royal Philharmonic, with a solidly spirited concert under its new music director, Vasily Petrenko, also celebrated its own milestones: its 75th season, and its first appearance at Carnegie in 25 years. (If you want to talk about a real cultural capital, the group, founded by the conductor Thomas Beecham in 1946, is one of at least five major orchestras based in London.)Kian Soltani was the soloist in Elgar’s Cello Concerto.Richard TermineThe program was standard-issue: the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s opera “Peter Grimes,” Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Holst’s mammoth suite “The Planets” — British composers, all. There is, in an era of thoroughly internationalized ensembles, something quaint and a little silly about the notion of touring with your country’s repertory.Particularly when the works are, like these, chestnuts done all the time. I endorse British ensembles advocating British music, but “The Planets” is hardly in need of advocacy, and the Royal Philharmonic, for all its liveliness, didn’t sound in it much different than, say, the New York Philharmonic would have. The number of orchestras with actual sonic or interpretive idiosyncrasies in music of their compatriots is by now almost or actually zero.But with Petrenko a tall, animated presence on the podium — bouncing up and down, shimmying, and hypnotically curling the long fingers of his left hand, witchlike — it was a pleasant evening. From the Britten on, the orchestra’s winds and brasses were particularly mellow and secure, sounding dewy in Holst’s “Venus” and adding to the bronzed ominousness of “Saturn” and the sensual hush of “Neptune,” which also featured the offstage voices of Musica Sacra, under Kent Tritle.The cellist Kian Soltani, the soloist in the Elgar, played with buttery understatement and intimacy, and considerable wit in the Lento. It speaks to his collegiality that his encore included five of the orchestra’s cellists in his arrangement of an excerpt from Shostakovich’s film score for “The Gadfly.” At the end of the concert, the full ensemble’s encore also abandoned Britain for Russia, with a cheerful rendition of the “Dance of the Tumblers” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden.”Royal Philharmonic OrchestraPerformed on Monday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      A Conductor in Demand, and in Control

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      MUNICH — Let’s get this out of the way: Don’t expect Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla to be the music director of a major American orchestra any time soon.“At the moment, I will be much more content to be a simple freelancer,” Gražinytė-Tyla, 35, said in a recent interview at the Bavarian State Opera here, where she was preparing a new production of Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen.”It’s an unusual statement coming from a young conductor in demand, especially one whose current appointment — as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain — concludes this spring. Even more unusual since Gražinytė-Tyla, along with the likes of Susanna Mälkki, is often mentioned as a leading contender to fill vacancies on the horizon at top American orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic.But as administrators search for a conductor of her stature, as well as for someone to tip the scale of gender balance in the United States — where there won’t be any female music directors among the country’s 25 largest orchestras until Nathalie Stutzmann starts with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra next season — Gražinytė-Tyla is a defiant rarity: an anti-careerist who has resisted industry pressure in favor of artistic and personal fulfillment.Her star might be on the rise, but she is keeping it on a short leash. Gražinytė-Tyla designed her calendar this season so that it was dominated by “The Cunning Little Vixen” — both in concert, as in Birmingham, and staged, as in Munich. She has retained a remarkable amount of control over her schedule, ensuring time for family: her partner and two sons in Salzburg, Austria, with a third child on the way. (The Birmingham orchestra recently announced that, because of the pregnancy, she would no longer conduct her planned final concerts in June.)“She’s very in tune with herself,” said Barrie Kosky, who directed the new “Vixen,” which runs through Feb. 15. “She’s very sure her decisions are the right decisions for her. She couldn’t care less about all the tra-la-la.”Born to a family of professional musicians in Lithuania, and finding early success with the baton, Gražinytė-Tyla (pronounced grah-zhin-EE-tay teel-AH) was teed up for the typical life of a conductor: jet-setting hustle and steppingstone appointments — leading, perhaps, to a prestige podium.But she also long had a streak of independence. She began to study music formally at 11 against the wishes of her parents, who wanted to spare her the difficulties of an artistic life. Although experienced as a singer, she wasn’t a trained instrumentalist, so she joined the only school program that was available: conducting. She was a natural and, at 16, took first prize at a Lithuanian competition.Gražinyte-Tyla rehearsing at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. “She’s very in tune with herself,” said the stage director Barrie Kosky.Roderick Aichinger for The New York Times“I remember thinking, Oh no, what am I going to do now?” Gražinytė-Tyla said. “There was this pressure, and I knew it would be so hard to maintain that level. It was a huge challenge, but also a mix of joy and responsibility.”The pressure didn’t end there. Completing her studies, adding Tyla (the Lithuanian word for silence) to her professional name, and winning the Salzburg Young Conductors Award, she was then given a fellowship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she would go on to serve as an assistant, then associate, conductor. She first appeared with the C.B.S.O. in summer 2015, and by the following January had been appointed its music director.The speed of all that, Gražinytė-Tyla said, “puts you into shape and can give you a good kick to do something fast.” But, she added, it also made her value an introspective pause. “I think it is incredibly important to stay very aware of what is happening inside, because a person shouldn’t be a machine, and shouldn’t be a little part of this big mechanism that says, ‘You go this way and this way.’”“People are different,” she continued. “But I think I need time where I am not studying or conducting or traveling or rehearsing to just be a whole human being.”A breakthrough came during a conversation with the violinist Gidon Kremer. She recalled him telling her that her career would always feel like it had two different doors. Behind one would be record labels, managers, festivals and a variety of conflicting demands; behind the other, “all your dreams are there, and your imagination, and the things you can go for and explore.”She has opened both doors. Insistently private, she speaks strategically, at times even euphemistically, about her home life. Her partner hasn’t been publicly identified beyond having a job with the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg; in the interview, she referred to family time as “human relations.”Yet she did take the job in Birmingham, which has a high profile and a reputation as a star-maker, with such recent music directors as Simon Rattle and Andris Nelsons. A recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon followed her appointment. In both cases, she was a first: as a woman on the Birmingham podium and as a female conductor with that storied label. Those milestones were noted publicly, Gražinytė-Tyla said, but only in passing.“This is something that our generation has to be incredibly grateful for,” she said, referring to the struggles of female conductors. “There have been a lot of painful memories for our colleagues in the past, and I have had some small experiences myself, but nothing in the amount that someone in Susanna Mälkki’s generation had to go through.” (Mälkki is 52.)Gražinytė-Tyla was warmly received by the players in Birmingham, said Oliver Janes, a clarinetist with the ensemble. “She has this rehearsal technique where you forget you’ve ever played a piece before,” he added. “And once you’ve completely forgotten how it goes, you feel like you’re starting again.”She also, he said, gave the orchestra — and its public — a jolt. At their first BBC Proms appearance under her direction, they encored with Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” and the moment it ended she shouted to the audience inside the vast Royal Albert Hall in London, “See you in Birmingham!”She has released several Deutsche Grammophon recordings with the orchestra, including as part of a benchmark pairing of symphonies by the often overlooked Mieczyslaw Weinberg — a reflection, she said, of her tendency to take a project-based approach to conducting. Just as there will be more Weinberg to come, she is in the midst of a “Vixen” immersion.“I am totally aware that this is a complete luxury,” she said. “Some people see the profession of a conductor as: You have to be incredibly fast and know all the repertoire. These are fantastic qualities. On the other hand, for myself I only can say I believe less and less I could be such a type of conductor.”Over time and multiple performances, she added, “Vixen” has revealed its “incredible jewels and connections” to her. Janes, the clarinetist, said that in Birmingham, she knew every corner of the text, to the point where, “if all the singers went ill, she could do the whole concert and sing every part.”When Kosky started planning the Munich production with Gražinytė-Tyla, he said, she wanted their first conversation to be about text, “which delighted me from the top of my head to my toes.”“I said to her, ‘That’s all the work,’” he added. “The work itself is how the text is propelled by the music. She breathes the text, and she breathes with the music. Without that in Janacek, you’re dead.”“At the moment, I will be much more content to be a simple freelancer.”Roderick Aichinger for The New York TimesText was central even at her recent rehearsals with the Bavarian State Opera’s orchestra. Standing at the podium, her small frame belying a deep voice that commands as easily as it lets out booming laughter, she alternated between straightforward notes and explaining scenes in detail — especially in relation to Kosky’s staging. She later did the same when the cast joined for the sitzprobe, the first meeting of the singers and instrumentalists.The tenor Jonas Hacker, singing the role of the Schoolmaster, said that Gražinytė-Tyla’s directions tend to be “very color-motivated” and that she “breaks things down into tiny segments,” which, he added, comes from the score itself: “Janacek tends to be so fragmented, she’ll just take a few bars and figure out really what is the text saying and what its mood is, and really taking the time.”Throughout, Kosky said, he has remained convinced that she is “a theater person, which to me is so fundamental.”“There aren’t many opera conductors in the world,” he added. “You can be a great symphony conductor and be a lousy opera conductor. And there is an absolute shortage of genuinely talented opera conductors. It’s a bit of a worry; get your truffle pig out at the moment. But Mirga is one of them.”Gražinytė-Tyla hasn’t announced future performances beyond a brief revival of “Vixen” during the Munich Opera Festival this summer. But for now, she is confident that whatever follows will not be a long-term post with any orchestra.“The luxury to focus on the ‘Vixen’ — I think it will remain a very important point for me to deal with certain repertoire in the rhythm I feel is the right one, right now, for me,” she said, adding with a hearty laugh: “I’m not sure the big orchestras will be interested in having me if I say I’ll do only ‘Vixen’ for the whole season.” More

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      Review: An Opera Sings of a World on the Verge of Ending

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      Ricky Ian Gordon’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” is set in a community of Italian Jews just before World War II.One of the many things that came to an end in the conflagration of World War II was the great Italian opera tradition. Puccini, its apotheosis, had died in 1924; in the conflict’s wake, modernism ruled European music, and a certain strand of lyric theater was over.Which adds a bit of poignancy to the fact that Ricky Ian Gordon’s paean to that tradition, his new opera “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” is set in Ferrara, Italy, on the cusp of the war, amid members of the city’s Jewish community who are largely blind to the tragedy that awaits them. Their coming destruction is mirrored by that of the emotive, melodic form being used to tell their story.Emotive and melodic, yes, but here also overdone and overlong. Based on Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel of the same name, which Vittorio De Sica adapted into a 1970 film, Gordon’s opera replaces its source’s poetic richness with stentorian earnestness that feels like it continues unabated for, with intermission, three hours.Presented by New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan, the work is, because of pandemic delays, opening almost simultaneously with another Gordon opera, “Intimate Apparel,” at Lincoln Center Theater. Together, they are a substantial showcase for a composer best known for his artfully impassioned songs, and for his eclecticism and versatility. “Intimate Apparel,” set in 1905 New York, draws on Americana and ragtime; “Finzi-Continis,” italianità.But while Gordon is clearly aiming for Puccinian sumptuousness and extroversion, the score is not exactly tuneful; the 15-member orchestra, conducted by James Lowe, doesn’t offer hummable hits so much as a plush carpet and punctuation for the fervid singers. The vocal lines aren’t ear worms, either. They just keep surging forth in full-throttle monologues and ensembles.It’s a bellowing take on a story that’s not without whispers. Giorgio is a middle-class young man who gets caught up in the circle of the Finzi-Continis, aristocratic Jews living on their verdant estate in idyllic insulation from the increasingly unfriendly world. He falls madly in love with Micòl, the family’s daughter, as the Fascists take over Italy and antisemitism is codified in law.Ciaramitaro, right, plays Giorgio, a middle-class young man who enters the aristocratic circle of the Finzi-Continis.Alan ChinStraightforward enough, but in the opera, far too much incident is crowded into 19 scenes, not counting a prologue and epilogue — an uninterrupted trudge of exposition. Michael Korie’s libretto could have been significantly culled; among other things, the subplot of Micòl’s brother, a closeted gay man longing for his former roommate as his health fails, could have been easily excised. And Korie’s text, which often tips into rhyme, can tend risible: “A feeling I infer of anarchy astir.”As Giorgio, the tenor Anthony Ciaramitaro hardly stopped roaring at the performance on Sunday, but at least he did it indefatigably and with pure tone. The soprano Rachel Blaustein brought a sweetness to Micòl that persevered through her character’s capriciousness. Michael Capasso and Richard Stafford’s staging did its best to handle the flood of episodes, relying on a simple set illuminated by John Farrell’s evocative projections.The opera’s ending jarred surprisingly with the post-Holocaust imperative — doctrine at this point — to “never forget.” Standing after the war in the ruined synagogue of Ferrara, Giorgio addresses his memories, singing, “To live my life, I need to let you go.” It is an intriguing turn from tradition in a work that otherwise hews to it all too ceaselessly.The Garden of the Finzi-ContinisThrough Sunday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Manhattan; nycopera.com. More

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      Review: Philip Glass and the Bangles, Mashed at the Symphony

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      Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond brought their gleeful opera-cabaret show “Only an Octave Apart” to the New York Philharmonic.It’s not like the New York Philharmonic hasn’t been queer before. I can’t have been the only boy for whom Jessye Norman’s hair, when she sang Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene with the orchestra on national television in 1995, was a turning point. The ensemble backed Mariah Carey in Central Park, and Elaine Stritch for Sondheim’s 80th. It once paired Lou Harrison and Bruckner.But it’s safe to say it hasn’t presented anything quite like Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond’s Philharmonic debut as a duo on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Performing a rich helping of their recent show “Only an Octave Apart,” they cracked jokes about G spots and traveling for sex, mashed up Purcell’s Dido with Dido’s “White Flag,” layered Philip Glass over the Bangles, and generally camped up the joint.When “Only an Octave Apart” played at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn last fall, it was a riff on Beverly Sills and Carol Burnett’s high-low 1976 special of the same name, bringing together Costanzo, an operatic countertenor, and Bond, the gleefully savage cabaret diva. I went in with a little trepidation — a fan of both performers, but not quite sure whether the experiment would go off. Would it be too stiff? Too silly? Too talky? Too self-indulgent?It was sublime.By turns hilarious and tender — those dual Didos are very much not played for laughs — the show was a small miracle of careful craft and improvisatory looseness, of arch personae and moving sincerity. Costanzo was a superb, well, straight man to Bond’s battiness, and their voices — one slender and pure, the other husky and vibrato-heavy — improbably blended. The return to live performance after a year and a half of lockdowns only increased the poignancy and delight of their obvious mutual love and respect. It was a confection that nourished.It still is. Alongside the release of an album version, the show is an apt opener for the festival “Authentic Selves: The Beauty Within,” organized by Costanzo as part of his Philharmonic residency. Focused on marginalized identities and (forgive the self-helpism) being yourself, the festival’s programs include a pair of premieres sung by Costanzo, as well as a rare countertenor take on Berlioz’s song cycle “Les Nuits d’Été.”On Thursday I missed Zack Winokur’s daffy yet elegant full staging of “Only an Octave Apart,” especially Jonathan Anderson’s delirious gowns. But the 90-minute show compressed nicely into a 50-minute concert half, the union between classical and cabaret smoothed by Nico Muhly’s lush yet subtle orchestrations.Costanzo also joined the orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, in the premiere of Joel Thompson and Tracy K. Smith’s “The Places We Leave.”Chris LeeSome moody Nelson Riddle-style string arrangements — like the scoring of a Douglas Sirk melodrama — nodded to what came before intermission: the premiere of Joel Thompson’s “The Places We Leave.” Setting a new text by the poet Tracy K. Smith, Thompson also reveled in sumptuous, worried strings, and gave Costanzo mellow, narrative vocal lines that surge into piercing climaxes. There was even a patch of exhausting Handelian coloratura, a wink at the text’s account of a lover who “left me breathless,” and at a Costanzo specialty. (He appears in “Rodelinda” at the Metropolitan Opera in March.)The concert opened with Joan Tower’s stout “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” No. 1, and also included Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, “Classical.” What was this chestnut doing here? Particularly as conducted by Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director — who was otherwise a sensitive leader — with his all-too-characteristic clenched, unwitty approach to the standard repertory.But an aspect of the choice resonated. Like “Only an Octave Apart,” Prokofiev’s First was created in a time of crisis, the violence of the February Revolution in Russia, but has little hint of that darkness in a work of sparkling energy and grace.Is making joyful music in grim times escapist, even reactionary? Sometimes the opposite: The “Classical” looked, as does “Only an Octave Apart,” to the past with a fresh spirit, a kind of progressive nostalgia. And like Costanzo and Bond in their show, Prokofiev used the work not to rest on his laurels but to spur himself to develop; the symphony was the first big piece he wrote without leaning on his beloved piano as a composition tool. It made his future possible.As unlikely yet satisfying a pairing as Costanzo and Bond, then, these two works — bridging an intermission and a century — are a reminder that what emerges and survives from our distressing era may not be what we expect. All we can do is give artists the space to create, and keep our ears open.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Reawakening the Antichrist (and Other Lost Opera Gems)

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      It can be challenging to revive forgotten works like “Antikrist.” But the absence of entrenched traditions can be liberating.BERLIN — The Whore of Babylon, in a grotesque fat suit, belts out a hymn to hedonism midway through the Deutsche Oper’s new production of “Antikrist” here.Ersan Mondtag’s riotously colorful, boldly stylized staging of what this work’s Danish composer, Rued Langgaard, called a “church opera” is a near-breathless swirl. Nodding to various early-20th-century art movements, including Symbolism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus, it is only the third full staging of the work, which was written and revised between 1921 and 1930, but which remained unperformed at the time of Langgaard’s death, in 1952.Inspired by the Book of Revelation, “Antikrist” premieres Jan. 30 and runs through Feb. 11. It is the latest in a series of operatic rediscoveries at the Deutsche Oper, which, in recent decades, has made a point of highlighting works from outside the canon. In recent seasons, it has lavished attention on Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète” as part of a series devoted to that once-renowned 19th-century composer, as well as two early-20th-century titles, Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane” and Zemlinsky’s “Der Zwerg.”A scene from “Der Zwerg,” another rarely performed work that was revived at the Deutsche Oper.Monika RittershausAlong with the Deutsche Oper’s commitment to commissioning new operas, these rediscoveries are a way of refreshing and enlarging opera’s notoriously narrow repertoire. An essentially unknown work like “Antikrist” presents a host of logistical challenges, from training singers to attracting audiences, but it can provide its director with rare creative license. The absence of entrenched performing traditions can be artistically liberating.“It’s totally crazy,” Mondtag, who also designed the sets and helped design the costumes, said of the piece. “It’s something between Schoenberg and Wagner, and like a sacred opera without linear narration. So you have the freedom to do whatever you want.”Mondtag, one of Germany’s leading young avant-garde directors, was putting the finishing touches on “Antikrist” when the pandemic locked the country down for the first time, in March 2020. Since then, he’s staged two other rarely performed 20th-century works, Schreker’s “Der Schmied von Gent” and Weill’s “Silbersee,” both for Vlaamse Opera in Belgium. A relative newcomer to opera, Mondtag said it was hardly surprising that he’s been getting assignments like these, rather than war horses like “Tosca.”Mondtag onstage at the Deutsche Oper. He says he didn’t set out to become a specialist in unknown operas: “It just happened that way.”Gordon Welters for The New York Times“It’s considered more experimental to do unknown things,” Mondtag said. In his short time working in opera, he added, he has acquired something of a reputation as an “expert of unstageable or unknown operas. I didn’t choose that; it just happened that way.”When the Deutsche Oper returned to live performance in the summer of 2020, it concentrated on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring.” All four titles premiered at the house during the pandemic, but after the “Ring” played its last performances earlier this month, the company turned its attention to the delayed “Antikrist” premiere.“It’s such impressive music that I think it’s necessary to do it,” said Dietmar Schwarz, the Deutsche Oper’s general director. He added that while he would love it if Mondtag’s production inspired new interest in “Antikrist,” he was mostly focused on finding a curious and open audience in Berlin.“We’re not necessarily doing it for the survival of this old opera,” he said.Isolated productions of rediscoveries rarely catch fire. One exception was David Pountney’s acclaimed staging of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s punishing 1965 work “Die Soldaten,” which was first seen in 2006 at the Ruhrtriennale festival in Germany and traveled to the Park Avenue Armory in New York two years later. A spate of productions followed in Berlin; Munich; Salzburg, Austria; and elsewhere.A scene from a 2008 performance of “Die Soldaten” at the Park Avenue Armory. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera had been revived at the Ruhrtrienniale festival in Germany two years before.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYet even if rediscoveries are confined to a single production, German opera administrators have increasingly made them a priority. This contrasts with the United States: These days, it is more common for the Metropolitan Opera or the Lyric Opera of Chicago to present an attention-generating world premiere than to dust off a forgotten work. (Leon Botstein’s full-production revivals at Bard College in New York are a notable exception.)“There is a treasure trove of stuff out there,” said Barrie Kosky, who leads the Komische Oper in Berlin. Since arriving at that company in 2012, he has scored some of his greatest hits with productions of long overlooked works, including operettas by German-speaking Jewish composers like Paul Abraham and Oscar Straus.“Let’s face it, we can’t survive on just a diet of the 20 most famous titles,” Kosky said.“Of course, it’s always a risk because sometimes you bring back a piece and it doesn’t work,” he said. Or, he added: “You say: ‘Look, we’re bringing this back. It’s not a perfect piece, but this score is still worth hearing.’ I think that’s also very legitimate and valid; I don’t think everything has to be a masterpiece.”Kosky pointed to his own eclectic programming at the Komische Oper — where, before the pandemic, the house was selling 90 percent of its seats — as evidence that theaters can be filled with works by composers other than Mozart and Puccini.“All of that’s been blown out of the water when I see that we can sell out ‘The Bassarids’ completely,” he said, referring to Hans Werner Henze’s 1965 opera, which Kosky staged in 2019. “Or we can have incredible advance sales for an operetta where people don’t even know the title or the music.”Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, center, in “The Bassarids,” a sold-out production at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2019.Monika RittershausWhen Matthias Schulz, the general director of the Staatsoper in Berlin, programmed a Baroque festival in his first season leading the company, he didn’t go for the usual suspects.“I wanted to do everything except Handel,” he said.The centerpiece of the festival’s first edition, in 2018, was Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie.” Since then, two rarities have followed: Scarlatti’s “Il Primo Omicidio” and, this past fall, Campra’s “Idoménée,” far more obscure than Mozart’s later “Idomeneo.”Hidden in the corners of opera history, Schulz said, “there are real masterworks and we have a responsibility to find them. We need to convince the audience that what we do is interesting, and to challenge them.”A scene from a 2021 production of Campra’s “Idomenée” at the Staatsoper in Berlin.Bernd UhligThat process looks different in Berlin, with a rich opera landscape thanks to three full-time companies, than it does in smaller cities. Laura Berman, the artistic director of the Staatsoper in Hanover, in northern Germany, said that drawing an audience with obscure titles can be a challenge. But, she added, the right work and the right production can also put a smaller house on the map.In her first season in Hanover, Berman scored a hit with Halévy’s religious potboiler “La Juive” — which, like Meyerbeer’s grand operas, faded from the repertory by the early 20th century. Lydia Steier’s production conjured a historical survey of antisemitism, starting in post-World War II America and working back to 15th-century Konstanz, Germany, the setting specified by the libretto. The 2019 staging was acclaimed, and helped the company earn the title of Opera House of the Year from Oper Magazine.Berman said she wasn’t surprised that a production about the need for tolerance had resonated in Hanover, a religiously and ethnically mixed city she that called “extremely diverse.”“People have always talked in the theater about ‘hooks’: how to get the audience hooked into going to see something,” she added. “I truly feel today that the topic is major, especially for younger audiences, more than the title.”A scene from the Staatsoper in Hanover’s 2019 production of Halévy’s “La Juive.”Sandra ThenShe added that works like “La Juive” were excellent for convincing people “that an opera house is a forum for social and political discussion — which, in the end, it always has been, for at least several hundred years.”The Staatsoper’s next big premiere in Hanover will be Marschner’s “Der Vampyr” in late March — directed by Mondtag. “His visual world is really special,” Berman said. “But for me, the main factor is being able to think through works and being able to bust them open.”That is less “terrifying,” she added, “if you do a work where there are no preconceived notions.” More