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      Only Connect: Meredith Monk’s Antidote to What Divides Us

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      As the story goes, Indra, the king of the gods, takes a net and stretches it across the universe. At each joint is a jewel, unique and infinitely faceted, that reflects all the others in an endless web of interdependence.This tale, from Indian myth, and shared by Hinduism and Buddhism, is the basis for Meredith Monk’s immense, interdisciplinary “Indra’s Net,” which has its North American staged premiere at the Park Avenue Armory on Monday. The concluding installment in a trilogy about connectedness and the natural world, it arrives at the start of Monk’s 60th performance season, and in New York, where her idiosyncratic artistry has long been synonymous with the downtown scene and spirit.“I just am really grateful that I’ve had a life where I’ve done what I’ve loved all these years,” said Monk, 81, a polymathic avant-gardist who has long eluded categorization, and has composed, choreographed, directed, sung and played in her works. “I’ve held out this long, and my voice is holding out.”Listen to Meredith Monk sing a theme from “Indra’s Net.”“Indra’s Net” is preceded in the trilogy by “On Behalf of Nature” (2013) and “Cellular Songs” (2018), but it was the first to enter Monk’s mind. Nearly 15 years ago, she was working on “Weave” for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; written for two vocal soloists, an orchestra and chorus, its structure recalled, for her, the myth’s story. But the title “Indra’s Net” didn’t feel right for that piece, so she held on to it for later.Still, she was haunted by the title and the story. Monk is an artist who embraces humanity with Whitmanesque generosity, and her earlier works have shared themes with the interconnectedness of Indra’s net. It was at the front of her mind as she made drawings after the premiere of “Weave.” And then again one afternoon as she sat at her piano and came up with eight-bar themes for “jewels” in the net. But she put all that away and wrote “On Behalf of Nature” instead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      San Francisco Symphony Chorus Goes on Strike

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      The work stoppage has forced a cancellation of the Verdi Requiem performances.Amid the San Francisco Symphony’s financial troubles, the orchestra’s chorus members on Thursday went on strike, forcing a cancellation of the upcoming performances of Verdi’s Requiem.More than 150 musicians and patrons joined the chorus on picket lines, which started Thursday evening in front of Davies Symphony Hall, just before the Verdi concert was to begin.“Management has repeatedly failed to show how targeting the Symphony’s internationally acclaimed Choristers will solve their alleged financial issues,” said Ned Hanlon, the president of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the chorus union members. “We urge management to immediately return to the bargaining table and work toward a real solution that honors the work of these dedicated artists and gets everyone back to creating beautiful music.”Matthew Spivey, the orchestra’s chief executive officer, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He recently told The New York Times that the orchestra has been “living beyond our means,” having struggled for years with deficits, a shrinking donor base and the decline of the old subscription model of season tickets.Esa-Pekka Salonen, the symphony’s music director, declined through a spokesman to comment.Despite the orchestra’s endowment fund, valued at about $315 million — one of the largest of any ensemble in the United States — the union has said that management pushed “for unsustainable and disproportionate cuts to the Chorus.” More

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      New York Philharmonic Players Reach Deal Raising Base Pay to $205,000

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      Under a new labor agreement, expected to be ratified Friday, the musicians will get a 30 percent raise over three years, making them among the highest paid in the country.The New York Philharmonic, the oldest orchestra in America, has long been one of the most revered. But in recent years, its musicians have been paid significantly less than their peers in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere.That will soon change. Under a new labor contract announced on Thursday, the Philharmonic’s musicians will get a raise of 30 percent over the next three years, bringing the base salary to $205,000. They will be among the highest paid orchestra musicians in the country.“It’s transformative,” said Colin Williams, the associate principal trombone, who helped lead the negotiations. “It speaks to the commitment from the Philharmonic’s leadership to making sure this place is really a destination orchestra.”The Philharmonic’s leaders praised the agreement, which the ensemble’s roughly 100 musicians are expected to ratify on Friday, when their existing contract expires.“This is a restorative settlement that brings our musicians to the level of their peer orchestras,” Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s interim leader, said in an interview.Included in the agreement are changes meant to make the hiring process fairer and more transparent, including provisions that will require musicians to play from behind a screen in the final rounds of auditions. (A screen has been optional in the final round.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lucine Amara, 99, Dies; Familiar Soprano at the Met Saw Bias There

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      She sang with the Metropolitan Opera for decades, often on short notice, including after lodging a successful age discrimination complaint against the company.Lucine Amara, an American singer who continued a decades-long career at the Metropolitan Opera after she successfully brought the company up on age-discrimination charges in a widely publicized case, died on Sept. 6 at her home in Queens. She was 99. Her daughter, Evelyn La Quaif, a soprano and stage director, who had shared an apartment with her mother in recent weeks, said that the cause was respiratory illness and heart failure and that Ms. Amara also had dementia. She had lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for decades.A lyric soprano known for her clear, supple voice, Ms. Amara sang 748 performances with the Met between 1950 and 1991, an impressively long tenure.Her dozens of roles there included Mimì in Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Nedda in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci,” the title part in Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Pamina in his “Magic Flute.”Appearing in a 1964 Met production of Gounod’s “Faust,” Ms. Amara was described by Theodore Strongin in The New York Times as “a first-rank Marguerite in all respects.”If Ms. Amara was not as well known to the general public as other singers in her cohort — among them Roberta Peters and Victoria de los Angeles — it was partly, her admirers say, because she was damned by her own competence and by her matter-of-fact approach to her craft.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Philharmonic Opens Its Season Amid Labor Talks and Troubles

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      The orchestra is working to negotiate a new contract with musicians, resolve a misconduct inquiry and hire a new chief executive.On a recent night at Lincoln Center, a group of New York Philharmonic musicians, dressed in matching black shirts and carrying union leaflets, fanned out and began to evangelize.“Support the musicians!” Thomas Smith, a trumpet player, told a crowd of concertgoers.It was one of the New York Philharmonic’s first concerts of the fall, and the musicians, in the middle of high-stake labor talks, were alerting their audience to what they hoped would be embraced as startling facts.The orchestra’s players have not had a raise since 2019, and they are paid substantially less than colleagues in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles.“We need your help,” Alina Kobialka, a violinist, said as she handed out leaflets.The scene was a reminder of the stark challenges this season for the Philharmonic, which not so long ago seemed to be beginning a vibrant new chapter.The labor agreement between management and the musicians expires on Friday, only a few days before the orchestra’s opening gala, a major fund-raising event.The Philharmonic lacks a permanent president and chief executive, after the sudden resignation in July of its leader, Gary Ginstling. An investigation into sexual harassment and misconduct at the Philharmonic has dragged on. And the ensemble, which is awaiting the arrival in 2026 of the star conductor Gustavo Dudamel, has no full-time music director this season or next.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A (Very) Belated Donizetti Premiere in South Africa

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      The 1838 score for “Dalinda,” which uses chunks of “Lucrezia Borgia,” was found in Naples in 2019. A student company in Cape Town just gave the first staged performance.“Could Donizetti ever have imagined that the world premiere of one of his operas would take place in Africa?”That’s the question Jeremy Silver, the director of Opera UCT, a student company from the University of Cape Town, posed to the audience before the first staged performance of “Dalinda” on Sept. 4.But here it was, an opera discovered just a few years earlier — presented not at an ornate European opera house but at the Baxter Theater, built in the 1970s, and performed by Opera UCT with a cast largely comprising Black singers and supertitles in English and IsiXhosa.The rediscovery of “Dalinda” is a musical detective story with its origins in Donizetti’s frustration at failing to get his opera “Lucrezia Borgia” past the censors in Naples, where he was resident at the Teatro di San Carlo. The composer of “Lucia di Lammermoor,” “La Fille du Regiment” and “Don Pasquale,” Donizetti was a prodigious worker, often producing several operas in a year. But he spent four frustrating years reworking “Lucrezia” while composing other pieces, and in 1838 he decided to change the setting and characters entirely and add new music.He called the new opera “Dalinda,” setting the action in the Middle East at the time of the Third Crusade in the 12th century, and making his title character the dominating wife and daughter of feared Muslim leaders. But Dalinda has a secret: Her illegitimate son is a Christian knight whom she longs to know. The plot revolves around their unexpected reunion when the Franks (as the Christian Crusaders are called) and the Saracens (Muslim fighters) meet to celebrate the end of a three-year war. It doesn’t turn out well.Like “Lucrezia,” the opera has the story of a mother and son at its heart, and Donizetti used “large chunks” of that music in “Dalinda,” the British-born Silver said in an interview at the University of Cape Town’s College of Music, which has produced alumni like Pretty Yende, Golda Schultz and Musa Ngqungwana. “But there is progressively more new music as it goes on, some of it really wonderful.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      R. Peter Munves, Master Marketer of Classical Music, Dies at 97

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      As an executive at Columbia and RCA Records, he popularized the classics for mass audiences by applying the same techniques used to sell pop music.R. Peter Munves, a record company executive who revolutionized the marketing of classical music, died on Aug. 19 in Glen Cove, N.Y. He was 97.His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his son Ben.Mr. Munves carved out a moneymaking niche in what for much of its history has been a low-margin, struggling industry, selling classical music to mass audiences by applying the techniques of pop music marketing.In the 1960s, while at Columbia Records, he created a series called “Classical Greatest Hits” that packaged bits of Brahms, Mozart, Bach and other composers onto single LPs. In 1968 he signed the electronic musician Wendy Carlos to record “Switched-On Bach” — pieces by Bach on the Moog synthesizer.Both ideas were big hits, commercially if not with the critics. Time magazine reported in a 1971 profile of Mr. Munves that the “Greatest Hits” series “scored a solid bull’s-eye in the market and rang up $1,000,000” in revenues. The “Switched-On Bach” album, Time said, was Columbia’s “all-time best classical seller.”In 1968, Mr. Munves signed the electronic musician Wendy Carlos to record an album of Bach compositions on the Moog synthesizer. It was said to be Columbia’s best-selling classical album of all time.Columbia/CBSIn 1981 Mr. Munves produced an album that compiled 222 well-known themes from classical music. One critic called it a “marketing masterpiece.”Columbia/CBSMr. Munves went on to produce an album called “Themefinder” — a compilation of 222 well-known themes from classical music that the New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein called a “marketing masterpiece” upon its release in 1981, adding that Mr. Munves was “an inspired producer.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michael Tilson Thomas Leads Mahler at the New York Phil

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      The conductor led the New York Philharmonic in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, an inspiring opening night for a season starting off unsettled.Back in 1996, when he was just beginning his landmark tenure on the podium of the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the New York Philharmonic in Mahler’s Fifth. In the mold of his mentor, Leonard Bernstein, he was already renowned as a specialist in that composer.“Some people can conduct Mahler and some cannot,” Alex Ross wrote of the performance in The New York Times. “Mr. Thomas certainly can.”As he proved again on Thursday, when he led the Philharmonic in the same symphony at David Geffen Hall. Thomas, at 79, still has both the patience and the passion to take us through Mahler’s sprawling, sometimes shaggy structures.That is even more impressive now. It has been more than three years since Thomas was first treated for glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and he is still relishing his work. In April, he even took on a new teaching role at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.Concerned eyes are always on him, of course, especially after reports in May that he appeared confused during a performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony in London. But on Thursday, other than some slow paging through his score between the second and third movements, and some stiffness getting on and off the podium, Thomas seemed alert and ardent, even hopping a few inches into the air at one full-hearted moment.It was an inspiring opening night for a Philharmonic season that is starting off with some of the unsettled quality of a Mahler symphony.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More