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      At the Met, a Refurbished ‘Bohème’ and an Art Deco ‘Ballo’

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      A gift from a board member recently paid for the company to rebuild sets for Franco Zeffirelli’s deathless 1981 production of Puccini’s classic.If you go to “La Bohème” at the Metropolitan Opera this season and are convinced that the big snowdrift in Act III looks a little fresher than usual, you’re not hallucinating.A million-dollar gift from a board member recently paid for the company to rebuild some of the sets for Franco Zeffirelli’s deathless 1981 production of Puccini’s classic, and the snow that dominates a wintry scene on the outskirts of Paris was one of the targets. It now looks more newly fallen — though the seam between the set piece and the stage floor was gapingly obvious from the orchestra level on Saturday evening.Some whiter snow was the news of this “Bohème” — alongside an unusually assertive, stylish Schaunard from the young baritone Sean Michael Plumb, in a small part that often fades into Zeffirelli’s teeming backgrounds.Federica Lombardi’s focused soprano created a Mimì more forthright, even indignant, than the norm, making her fatal Act IV more tender by comparison. The bass-baritone Christian Van Horn sang a soberly resonant “Vecchia zimmara,” and the soprano Olga Kulchynska was a bright Musetta. As Rodolfo, the veteran tenor Matthew Polenzani pushed his voice out at climaxes but otherwise often sounded faded, and a few hairs flat.The sets for David Alden’s 2012 Met staging of Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” have not been rebuilt — but, only 11 years old, they sometimes seemed shakily resistant to being moved when the opera was revived on Friday.Quinn Kelsey, front left, as Renato and Liv Redpath as Oscar in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” at the Met.Ken Howard/Met OperaHere, the cast was the exciting part, at least by the end of the evening. The performance seemed to settle in as it went on, with the tenor Charles Castronovo’s tone as Gustavo — pale for much of the opera — finally taking on more color, fullness and freedom.And after an uncertain beginning, the soprano Angela Meade delivered a memorable Amelia. Her sound is essentially cool, but it got fuller and more inflamed as the weird, tragic plot developed, ending up lean yet glowing, like a red-hot poker.One singer required no warming up: the baritone Quinn Kelsey, who seems ever more a pillar of the Met, particularly in Verdi. “Ballo” is the story of a Swedish king, Gustavo, who is in love with Amelia, the wife of his closest friend — and Kelsey plays Renato, the agonized friend who goes from Gustavo’s confidant to his assassin.His presence hulking and brooding, Kelsey has that most special of operatic attributes: an instantly recognizable voice, capacious and moody, with a smoky, slightly nasal, sneering, sinister edge but also a fundamental seductive smoothness and nuanced eloquence.His and Meade’s back-to-back arias in the third act — her plea “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” into his wounded “Eri tu” — were together the musical highlight on Friday. The mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova sang Ulrica with steady power, and the soprano Liv Redpath sounded lucid and gentle as the sprightly page Oscar. Carlo Rizzi, one of the Met’s often underappreciated maestros in the Italian repertoire, conducted both “Ballo” (with steady drive) and “Bohème” (with sumptuous clarity).“Ballo,” which premiered in 1859, is from the period after Verdi’s canonical trio of “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore” and “La Traviata,” and before his late-stage epics “Don Carlos” and “Aida.” In this middle period — think also of “Les Vêpres Siciliennes” and “La Forza del Destino,” which the Met is presenting in a new production this winter — he experimented with shades of emotional ambiguity and sometimes jarring juxtapositions of tone.In “Ballo,” he combined elements of Italianate melodrama and champagne-bubbly French high spirits in a mixture that can be excitingly volatile. Alden’s staging is a kind of stylized, largely grayscale Art Deco explosion, with a degree of strange excess intended to echo the piece’s own — like a Busby Berkeley production number at the end of the first scene, complete with dancing waiters; and, in Act II, a conspirator frantically hurling himself against a wall.With severely raked sets, sickly floodlighting and surreal touches like skull masks and angel wings, Alden suggests that much of the opera is Gustavo’s fever dream, or fantasy. But the eerie elegance of some moments diffuses elsewhere into some awkwardness, with the chorus milling around. When it premiered, the production seemed like its many ideas hadn’t yet gelled. They still haven’t. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Welcomes Back an Old Friend

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      David Robertson returned to the podium to lead the orchestra’s first in a series of performances to celebrate the centennial of Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth.It’s always a good sign when an orchestra’s players light up with smiles at a conductor.And on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall, that happened over and over, with grins passing between the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and its podium guest, David Robertson, throughout a beguiling, smart program.The concert began the Philharmonic’s festivities to celebrate the centennial of the Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth. Robertson led the U.S. premiere of “Mifiso la Sodo,” a short work for chamber orchestra that Ligeti wrote as a student in Budapest in 1948. He began revisions three years later, but never finished the job; the piece lay dormant until last year.With its punchy, fake Italian title, “Mifiso” is crammed full of little musical jokes, show-off brilliance and jovial accents. Ligeti gave it the subtitle “Cheerful Music,” which is both an ironic riposte to the Stalinesque dictums that ruled the Hungarian arts in the 1940s and ’50s and a true description of this piece.Robertson also resurrected a Ligeti work that the Philharmonic hadn’t played since 2004 (conducted by him back then, too): “Concert Romanesc,” or “Romanian Concerto,” a hurricane of color and exuberant virtuosity from 1951 that draws upon Romanian folk music. In this concerto for orchestra, there’s a particularly charming portion in which the basses pluck away, in gritty gutbucket style, while the violins whirl overhead in a zippy dance.Another concerto — the Russian-born, London-based composer Elena Firsova’s Piano Concerto — provided a marked contrast in a delicate work that inverts the genre’s traditional fast-slow-fast structure. Firsova wrote it in 2020 for Yefim Bronfman, who gave its New York premiere on Thursday. (The performance was also the Philharmonic’s first of Firsova’s music.)Firsova’s concerto diverged from the energy of Ligeti by ushering in a meditative pause with a solitudinous, brief introduction. One of her main themes is a wistful, upward-spiraling scale that darts through the piano and the various instruments of the orchestra. Near the end, she retreats into evanescent, gossamer textures from which a haunting, music box-like set of patterns emerges from the glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells and the piano, which is played near the top of its range. Bronfman, an assiduous supporter of Firsova’s work, played with commanding surety.The evening’s second half was devoted to Brahms’s Serenade No. 1, which originally was envisioned as a small chamber piece, but then Brahms kept expanding it. In its final version, the piece’s instrumentation is still lithe — just two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns and trumpets, plus timpani and strings — but the winds and brasses in particular brought in a welcome plushness. The phrasing, under Robertson’s baton, was shapely and intentional, while tracing a persuasive through line back from Ligeti at the start of the program.Robertson’s name has been raised from time to time over the years as a potential music director of the Philharmonic. While that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, those big grins from players across the stage — not to mention their committed, warm performances — made the musicians’ feelings clear.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      After 47 Years, the Emerson Quartet Has One More Weekend

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      The group, famed for its rich vitality, easy power and a vast repertory that it recorded prolifically and toured tirelessly, is saying farewell.Five years ago, Eugene Drucker, a violinist in the Emerson String Quartet, got a call from a financial adviser. To sketch out a plan for Drucker, the adviser needed his target retirement age.“When he asked me, it seemed like a fairly academic question,” Drucker, now 71, recalled recently. “The quartet had not at all discussed an endgame.”He told the group the anecdote as something of a joke. (This is a foursome that laughs — a lot.) To his surprise, it spurred a more serious discussion about the future of the Emerson Quartet, one of the most celebrated ensembles in classical music for almost half a century.The conversation eventually led to a decision, and on Saturday and Sunday at Alice Tully Hall — next to the Juilliard School, where the quartet formed — the quartet will play its final concerts. With three members near or over 70, and little desire to keep the name alive without its founders, it’s quitting while it’s ahead.Setzer and Drucker, the violinists at left, were original members of the quartet, which was founded in 1976 when they were students at Juilliard.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“There’s a feeling I think we all had: We were afraid of going on too long,” said Philip Setzer, the other violinist. “People have memories of what it was like to go to an Emerson Quartet concert, and we didn’t want to start having them hear a lesser version of that. I’m a big sports fan, and you see people play past when they should stop.”Lawrence Dutton, the group’s violist, added: “We saw it with teachers and mentors and players we had incredible respect for. It’s not pretty when it happens.”And from its formation in 1976, the Emerson Quartet sounded pretty. It became famous for its rich vitality and easy power in a vast repertory that it recorded prolifically and toured tirelessly.“Particularly in the U.S., the Emerson was maybe the only reference a lot of people had for a string quartet,” said the violinist Ryan Meehan of the Calidore Quartet, one of many younger groups the Emerson has mentored. “It speaks to their incredible artistry and their recording and performing: how far their reach was, even for people who weren’t really classical concertgoers.”Setzer and Drucker met as students of Oscar Shumsky at Juilliard and were original members. In the country’s bicentennial year, it seemed right to name the group after the great idealist American writer.Signing CDs at Watkins’s home. The group recorded profusely for Deutsche Grammophon.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“The sound, the gravitas, the way they treat each other is so beautiful,” the soprano Barbara Hannigan, an Emerson collaborator, said in an interview. “It’s a model for living, really. I’ve never seen any tension between them. I’ve seen discussion and critical thinking, but there’s no ‘this side’ and ‘that side.’”From the Juilliard Quartet, long illustrious by the 1970s, the group learned the lessons of raw vigor and commitment to a broad repertory, including new commissions. Listening to the Guarneri Quartet, younger but already august, the Emerson took on a polished, burnished, sheerly beautiful tone. (For certain listeners, on certain nights, that beauty could tip into blandness.)“There wasn’t really a long-term plan, because we were young,” Drucker said. “But there was the greatness of the repertoire for string quartet. And as a proto-Emerson student group, we had elicited a fairly strong positive reaction, which made an impression on us that this was something to pour energy and time and resources into.”By the end of the ’70s, Dutton and the cellist David Finckel had joined, and the roster was set for more than three decades. It didn’t change until 2013, when Finckel stepped aside to focus on other endeavors, including the leadership of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which is presenting the finale. He was replaced by Paul Watkins, the baby of the group at 53.Watkins said he prepared for his first session with the others, a kind of audition, by listening to Emerson recordings.The group’s final recording, “Infinite Voyage,” with works by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Berg and Chausson, was released last month.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“But I didn’t want to imitate what David had done,” he added. “I wanted to show that I could be sympathetic to them, and bring my own personality and sound into it as well. It needed to happen instinctively, and quickly: love at first sound. And thank god, it did.”A quartet is an intimate, intense unit — “a benevolent four-headed monster,” Hannigan said. Peter Mennin, then the president of Juilliard, went to an early Emerson concert and told its members that if they could survive five years, they might be able to go the distance.Five years later, in 1981, came a milestone: a marathon performance of Bartok’s six string quartets at Tully Hall for the composer’s centennial, two and a half hours of demanding, opulently bristling music. Many groups were playing the works that year, but not like that.“At first people said, ‘That’s ridiculous; you’re just doing it for show,’” Setzer said. But the concert was an unlikely sensation, establishing the Emerson as an ensemble to be reckoned with.The group was also notable (and, initially, somewhat polarizing) for having Drucker and Setzer switch between the first and second violin parts for different pieces. This is common in student ensembles, but professional quartets usually have set first and second violinists.At Alice Tully Hall, the musicians will play Beethoven’s Opus 130 and Schubert’s Cello Quintet, in which David Finckel, a former member, will join them.Amy Lombard for The New York Times“It’s close to 300 pieces we’ve done, which is a lot,” Setzer said. “And part of that was because of the switching. I can’t imagine doing that amount if I’d had to do first violin in all of it.”With a smooth, vigorous, cleanly modern sound that also nodded to the golden glow of an earlier era, the Emerson was, Dutton said, “at the right place at the right time, blossoming just as the CD boom was happening.” The ensemble scored a contract with the eminent label Deutsche Grammophon, which wanted new digital versions of as much music as the group could set down.The explosion of albums made the Emerson omnipresent, and included benchmark recordings of the complete Beethoven, Shostakovich and Bartok quartets. And there is also — among some three days’ worth of recorded sound — warmly lucid Bach, Haydn and Mozart; nostalgic yet energetic Dvorak and Tchaikovsky; and contemporary music by composers as different as Gunther Schuller and Ned Rorem.All this was toured indefatigably, with over 140 concerts one year. “The sheer volume, playing this incredible repertory, it takes its toll,” Dutton said. (“If you do it right,” Setzer added.) The group tapered its schedule, but was still regularly playing almost 100 performances a year until the pandemic.“The sound, the gravitas, the way they treat each other is so beautiful,” the soprano Barbara Hannigan, an Emerson collaborator, said in an interview. “It’s a model for living, really.”Amy Lombard for The New York TimesThe end of the Emerson Quartet doesn’t mean full retirement for its members, who will maintain a variety of solo performing, arts administration and teaching duties. For more than 20 years the group has been in residence at Stony Brook University, where last Saturday they gave a preview of their magisterial Tully program: Beethoven’s Opus 130, rendingly fragile and vulnerable, and Schubert’s Cello Quintet, in which Finckel poignantly joined.Their final recording, “Infinite Voyage,” with bracing yet seductive works by Schoenberg, Hindemith, Berg and Chausson, was released last month, featuring Hannigan.“We were rehearsing onstage,” she said, recalling her farewell appearance with the group on Oct. 10 in Milan, in Schoenberg’s Second Quartet. “And they were still playing it over slowly, tuning every note, discussing, ‘Is this really the right tempo?’ It was the last rehearsal before a piece they will never play again, and they were still saying: ‘What do you think he meant here?’”“We’re lucky because our very different personalities fit together,” Dutton said. “We respected each other. We knew we were different, but we had one purpose: to make great music. And we achieved that.” More

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      Review: Kate Lindsey Brings Women’s Tales to the Armory

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      Kate Lindsey, accompanied by the pianist Justina Lee, programmed cycles of life, love and creation by Schumann and Fauré.At her recital at the Park Avenue Armory on Monday night, the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey told the stories of two women, each in her own way an originator.There was Schumann’s “Frauenliebe und -leben,” one of the first song cycles written from a woman’s point of view, a worthwhile artifact of a time when the genre was only a few decades old, and one that persists on concert programs despite its hidebound social mores. And there was “La Chanson d’Ève,” a spare, late-career work from Fauré that excises the first man from the Creation story and wraps its heroine in music of sensual mysticism.For an artist with a daring, theatrical sensibility, it was a retrograde pairing, as though Lindsey were achieving an element of surprise by playing against expectations. Her inventive portrayals at the Metropolitan Opera have included a slick, untrustworthy Nicklausse in Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and a wired Nerone bursting with nervous energy in Handel’s “Agrippina.”In the Armory’s Board of Officers Room, though, Lindsey was serene, her voice sheathed in obsidian, as she enlivened women created as companions for men who were nowhere to be found. “I don’t know where Adam is; he’s never mentioned,” she said of the Fauré, to much audience laughter.“Frauenliebe und -leben” is the opposite. The lover is mentioned constantly, everywhere, shaping practically every utterance. The piece sees a woman through the milestones she creates with a man: falling in love, getting married, having a baby, mourning his death. Lindsey tinged the narrator’s first blush of love with russet colors and a penetrating glint. A luscious line wove through “Du Ring an meinem Finger,” an almost sacred intimacy through “Süsser Freund, du blickest.” But the gushiness of “Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben” felt forced.The intimate Board of Officers Room can make some vocal instruments sound big and overwhelming, but in Lindsey’s case, it allowed the audience a luxurious communion with her voice that isn’t possible in the Met’s cavernous auditorium. Her timbre, dark and occluded, is at once compelling and withholding; in vulnerable moments, she uses a threadlike straight tone.In the 10 Fauré songs, Lindsey was often enchanting: the profound whispers of “Paradis,” the conversational warmth of “Prima verba,” the gorgeous exaltations of “Comme Dieu rayonne.” The poetry’s endless talk of sighs, sun, flowers and fruits, though, took on a certain sameness; in Lindsey’s interpretation, Eve is more demigod than human. Justina Lee’s piano, at times plodding, made Eden feel earthbound rather than exquisite, the hardiness that made her Schumann comfortingly solid rendered the Fauré stolid.The concert ended with a brief set of Stephen Sondheim songs that introduced an imbalance to the evening. But only a pill could argue against hearing these wonderful pieces. Lindsey’s gentle, honest vibrato was disarming in the most poignant lines of “Losing My Mind,” but she struggled a bit with fitting her operatic technique to “Take Me to the World” and performed an abbreviated, less powerful version of “Being Alive.”The Schumann and Fauré cycles both end with meditations on death, which is where Lindsey summoned her stagecraft. In the long postlude for piano that closes “Frauenliebe,” a motif from the first song emerges as a sad, mournful echo, a memory of happier times. Lindsey’s protagonist, with no words left to sing and no man left to love, seemed to age a lifetime in a moment. There was a sense that now her life, and the person she was to be, would begin.Kate Lindsey and Justina LeePerformed on Monday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan. More

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      In an Opera About Civil War Spies, Dancers Help Drive the Drama

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      Houston Grand Opera, known for innovation, unveils Jake Heggie’s “Intelligence,” directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and featuring Urban Bush Women.In a theater at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan one recent afternoon, a rehearsal for the coming opera “Intelligence,” about Civil War-era spies, was about to begin.But as the stage lights came on and the music blared, there were no singers in sight. Instead, six dancers from Urban Bush Women, a dance troupe in Brooklyn, were front and center, locking arms, jumping into the air and improvising movements inspired by African traditions.“I want to see if we can find that physical charge,” Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of Urban Bush Women, who is directing and choreographing the opera, told the dancers. “Let it breathe. Let it flow.”“Intelligence,” which opens the season at Houston Grand Opera on Friday, tells the story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a member of an elite Confederate family, who operates a pro-Union spy ring with the help of Mary Jane Bowser, an enslaved woman in her household. The opera, with music by Jake Heggie and a libretto by Gene Scheer, offers a meditation on the legacy of slavery and the overlooked role of women in the war.“Intelligence,” more than eight years in the making, stands out for another reason. While dance is an afterthought or an embellishment in many operas, it drives this drama, with eight performers from Urban Bush Women sharing the stage with seven singers, including the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Van Lew and the soprano Janai Brugger as Bowser. The dancers serve as a Greek chorus, falling like soldiers on a battlefield or passing secrets along a chain.“It’s a big story, and dancers are an integral part of the storytelling force,” Zollar said. “They’re not just coming in for their number or routine.”The dance-centered approach may be unusual, but it is a natural fit at Houston Grand Opera. For decades the company has been known for innovation, helping birth important 20th-century works like Leonard Bernstein’s “A Quiet Place” (1983) and John Adams’s “Nixon in China” (1987).Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is directing and choreographing “Intelligence” for Houston Grand Opera. “It’s a big story, and dancers are an integral part of the storytelling force,” she said.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesUnder David Gockley, Houston Grand Opera’s general director from 1972 to 2005, the company embarked on an ambitious effort to commission dozens of new works and garnered an international reputation for risk-taking. “Intelligence” is the company’s 75th premiere — and the fourth opera by Heggie to debut in Houston.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said the company aimed to build on its legacy.“We can be an important opera company, but also maintain our nimbleness and spirit of innovation,” she said. “We aren’t having debates about whether change is good. We’re always thinking about what’s next.”Houston Grand Opera’s agility served it well during the pandemic. While many cultural organizations are still struggling to win back audiences, Houston is in a relatively strong position, with a budget this fiscal year of about $33 million, compared with about $24 million before the pandemic. Ticket sales were up about 8 percent last season, compared with the 2018-19 season, even as subscriptions fell. Donations have been robust; earlier this year, the company secured a $22 million gift, the largest in its history.And audiences remain enthusiastic. The company has been working to draw more Black, Latino and Asian residents by venturing outside the opera house more often. Last season, it partnered with 140 community groups and presented operas at 32 locations across Houston. On a night in late October, “Intelligence” will be performed before an audience of nearly 2,000 primarily low-income high school students.“Most of our audience at Houston Grand Opera does not experience us in the opera house; they experience us in their neighborhood or at a school,” said Patrick Summers, the company’s artistic and music director. “We let people in our own community tell us their stories.”The artistic focus is also shifting, even as classics like Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” remain staples of the repertoire.Last season the company premiered “Another City,” a chamber opera about homelessness in Houston that is based on interviews with residents, inside a nondenominational Christian church and service organization. And in 2021, the company staged the premiere of “The Snowy Day,” an opera based on the 1962 children’s book known as one of the first to prominently feature a Black protagonist.“Every opera company is really a reflection and expression of their city,” said Dastoor, the first woman to serve as general director. “I want our operas to look and feel and sound like Houston.”“Intelligence,” which was originally scheduled to premiere in 2021 but was delayed by the pandemic, highlights neglected voices, with themes that connect to modern-day social issues.Zollar rehearsing with Vincent Thomas, left, Johnson and Medina.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesHeggie got the idea from a docent who approached him during an event at the Smithsonian in Washington and suggested that he look into Van Lew and Bowser for his next opera.“I started Googling their names, and my jaw was just on the floor,” he said. “I had been looking for what the next story would be, and I knew it was right because I felt this fire and this shiver.”Heggie turned to Scheer, a frequent collaborator, for the libretto, and he approached Houston Grand Opera about commissioning the work, encouraged by its history of championing new music.“You can’t guarantee success with a new piece,” he said. “But Houston is willing to give it a chance.”Heggie said he was given a choice early on, based on budget considerations, to feature a dance company or a chorus. He had already written operas with prominent choruses and said he thought that the seven singers of “Intelligence” could together sound like a chorus.He thought dance would be a better fit, he said, a way to fill in some of the “question marks in the storytelling” arising from the limited records of Van Lew and Bowser’s intelligence-gathering operation.“Dancers can explore the emotional world of this — really where there aren’t words but there can be movement that might give us clues,” he said. He wrote a percussive score to match.Heggie reached out to Zollar, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021, who founded Urban Bush Women in 1984 as a way to elevate the stories of women in the African diaspora. She was hesitant at first — she had never directed an opera — but started to see connections between opera and dance. It helped that she was a fan of Heggie’s first opera, “Dead Man Walking,” which premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2000 and opened the Metropolitan Opera season this fall.Heggie and Scheer visited Zollar in Tallahassee, Fla., where she teaches at Florida State University.“They were really interested in the points of view that I would bring to the story, not just as a name attached,” she said. “And the dance. They definitely wanted the dance.”The creative team for “Intelligence” includes the conductor Kwamé Ryan, the set designer Mimi Lien and the costume designer Carlos Soto.In preparation for the opera, Zollar and other members of the team visited the South for research. They toured the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., visited the former site of the Van Lew mansion and walked the Richmond Slave Trail.Zollar said those visits offered a “spiritual grounding” for the opera and a reminder that the country was still grappling with the legacy of slavery. “It’s still vibrating,” she said. “It’s still with us in the air.”In choreographing the opera, she drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the African writing system called Nsibidi, as well as the Kongo cosmogram, a symbol from the BaKongo belief system in West Central Africa.Zollar said she wanted her dancers to be a spiritual force in the opera: “They are what’s whispering in your ear, what’s around us that we cannot see.” From left, Cook, Gaskins, Medina, Johnson, Ware and Earle.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesZollar said she wanted the dancers of Urban Bush Women to be a spiritual force in the opera; she calls them the “is, was and will,” referring to their ability to speak to the present, past and future. They play with notions of entanglement and secrecy, echoing the themes of the opera.“They are what’s whispering in your ear,” she said, “what’s around us that we cannot see.”At the Guggenheim rehearsal, she encouraged the dancers to draw on their own influences — club dancing, jazz, Cuban music. She worked with Mikaila Ware, a member of Urban Bush Women, to refine a sequence of jumps and falls.“It’s so beautiful,” Zollar said. “Can you give me a little bit more suspension? Can you give me a little bit more air?”A central challenge for Zollar was adjusting to the scale of opera. She has been fine-tuning the dancers’ movements so they resonate at the Brown Theater in Houston, which has more than 2,400 seats.Having the backing of a prominent opera company, she said, allowed her to spend the time necessary to immerse herself in the work. She added she was feeling a mix of “sheer terror and excitement” ahead of the premiere.“Usually, I operate on prayers, spit and gaffer’s tape,” she said. “Now we can fully realize our vision. Now we can create something new.” More

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      In Debut, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Gets the Philharmonic

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      The New York Philharmonic’s renovated hall is a proving ground for guests to balance the orchestra. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla did so with assurance.Welcome to Season 2 of the New York Philharmonic in its renovated David Geffen Hall. If there is one story line that has carried over from Season 1, it’s the sound.The new Geffen Hall’s acoustics are clearer, if chillier than before. Because every detail in the orchestral playing is more easily audible, so too is every choice about balance — making the hall a tough proving ground for conductors. Guests can find themselves neatly sifted into one of two categories: those who intuitively grasp how to steer the Philharmonic in this space, and those who don’t.Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who made her Philharmonic debut on Wednesday night, gets it.This Lithuanian conductor led her first program at Geffen with assurance across varied styles — a feat that hasn’t been easily matched by some of her peers in the hall. Sometimes, modern or contemporary works can sound admirably chiseled, while 19th-century ones stint on warmth, and thus charm.The evening, which the Philharmonic dedicated “to those impacted by the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Israel and the Gaza Strip,” included music from a living composer, Raminta Serksnytė’s “De Profundis”; a repertory war horse, Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto; and a rarity from Sibelius, excerpts from the “Lemminkainen Suite.” But no era or style felt shortchanged on Wednesday. The strings in particular were hard-edged when they needed to be (in the Serksnyte), then icy and glinting (in the Sibelius).Schumann’s concerto was the lush highlight of the program. In the first movement, low strings and percussion had their forceful say, as expected. But subtler delicacies were plentiful: Winds collaborated on heavenly blends; trumpet notes came across as peppery without blaring; violins swooned alongside the soloist.That soloist was Daniil Trifonov, an artist constitutionally incapable of a wan take. He offered a personal, thrilling, at times idiosyncratic approach to Schumann’s famed binary of contrasting alter egos: Florestan and Eusebius. There was plenty of thrusting force in opening chords, representing Florestan and played with abandon reminiscent of Martha Argerich’s style in this concerto. Elsewhere, he delivered winning grace, embodying the moods of Eusebius.But Trifonov did more than run between those bases — he brought them into extended, unexpected dialogue. In quiet stretches, he practically halted his momentum, putting confrontational, 20th-century concepts of space and negation into the flow of the beautiful writing. Likewise, amid fierce tutti passages for piano and orchestra, the fine mechanisms of his playing reached a state of meditative delirium normally associated with Schumann’s dreamy, Eusebian side.Gražinytė-Tyla was alert to each new blend, and matched the orchestra to Trifonov’s prismatic turns. At the close of the first movement, she seemed to use the quick cutoff of Geffen’s acoustic to underline new rhythmic patterning in the score, helping familiar music feel sparkling and alive.Serksnyte’s “De Profundis,” an early work from 1998, opened with motivic boldness and some quickly roving ideas about rhythmic fragmentation, but spun its wheels a bit before a rousing-then-hissing finale. And the three sections of Sibelius’s suite had charm — including a mellow English horn solo from Ryan Roberts in “The Swan of Tuonela” — though it’s hardly material from this composer’s top drawer.And yet the orchestra, heard in its best form on Wednesday, found joy and merit throughout the program. For Gražinytė-Tyla, this was the kind of debut that immediately has you thinking about her future with the Philharmonic. She’s famously happy with freelancing. And, well, New York is a freelancer’s kind of town.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Riccardo Muti Takes a Victory Lap With the Chicago Symphony

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      The orchestra’s former conductor — now its music director emeritus for life — opened Carnegie Hall’s season with a two-night engagement.When Riccardo Muti stepped down from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last season, after 13 years as its conductor, the ensemble promptly turned around and named him music director emeritus for life.In a two-part season opener at Carnegie Hall this week, it was easy to hear why.Under Muti, the Chicago Symphony is all power and finesse with no unsightly edges. On Wednesday, in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” the orchestra’s playing, strong yet nimble, drew on reserves of unforced power and charm. The following night, in an Italian-themed collection of programmatic works by Mendelssohn, Strauss and Philip Glass, a certain politesse crept into an otherwise classy performance.There’s no better illustration of the orchestra’s might than the final movement of the Mussorgsky, “The Great Gate of Kyiv.” Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s delightful piano suite reaches its apotheosis here, and on Wednesday, Muti built a magnificent edifice out of it, with crashing cymbals, all-out brasses and majestic strings. Using an extreme economy of gesture, he barely had to move for the players to unleash torrents of stupendous, beautifully balanced sound.At the risk of cliché, the ensemble’s remarkable cohesion feels like a kind of Midwestern humility, focusing attention on the music instead of individual players. Tasteful instrumental solos, like that of the concertmaster Robert Chen in Strauss’s “Aus Italien,” didn’t disturb the musical fabric. Technical mastery emerged in what wasn’t there: The heavenly woodwinds were airborne without being breathy, and the guest principal harp, Julia Coronelli, conveyed beauty without pluck in the Strauss and in Glass’s “The Triumph of the Octagon.” Muti’s dynamic mapping avoided jolts or spikes; ardor and neatness coexisted.His “Pictures at an Exhibition” balanced theatricality and unity in the vividly drawn scenarios of Ravel’s orchestration. The first “Promenade,” in which Mussorgsky depicts himself wandering through the art show of his dearly departed friend, the painter Viktor Hartmann, had a gracious, wide-footed gait. Timothy McAllister’s satiny alto saxophone wafted like a mist through the wide stone halls of “The Old Castle.” “Tuileries” traded the unseemly lilt of whining children for a singsong quality. “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” lurched with delicious, brutal violence. Muti interpreted the score’s attacca markings (indicating that the movements should be played without pause) as seamless transitions instead of opportunities for surprise.Leonidas Kavakos, left, was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on Wednesday night.Todd RosenbergThe orchestra’s plush power in the Tchaikovsky evoked the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, so it’s a shame that the evening’s soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, derailed the performance with curdled tone, sloppy passagework, cracked high notes and tuning issues. There were pretty turns of phrase in the second movement, and Kavakos could hide his unpolished sound in the guttural character of the third. For a performer of a normally high caliber, though, it was a shabby showing.Glass’s “The Triumph of the Octagon,” dedicated to Muti, opened the second night. It’s a 10-minute piece inspired by a photo of a 13th-century Italian castle that Glass saw hanging in the maestro’s studio at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, a memory from Muti’s childhood. The music gradually accumulated a mysterious timelessness with the shifting emphases of its time signatures and the delicate deployment of woodwind timbres.Muti avoided any inkling of stridency in the dashing opening of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, which rushed forward with grace and buoyancy. Melodies intertwined delicately in the Andante. The perpetual motion of the third movement felt unobstructed but also unhurried; the strings played all the way through phrases and left them hanging in the air, and the brasses were unafraid to assume a blanched color to maintain the movement’s particular tint.The elegant passion on display in the Mendelssohn hampered the players in the Strauss, his first tone poem, a piece that wraps together images of Italy with the swooning ecstasies they arouse. Still, some passages are recognizably pictorial, such as the third movement’s suggestion of the shores of Sorrento, with the dappling of the sun on the surface of the sea rendered in shimmery chromaticism. There, the orchestra was quite enchanting, but in the second movement, it lacked punch. Too often, Strauss’s impetuous reveries were flattened into a predictable sameness.A truer sense of romance and spontaneity could be found in the encores on both evenings. They were drawn from Italian opera, a specialty of Muti, who was the longtime music director of Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Following the adrenaline rush of “The Great Gate of Kyiv,” Muti struck up the intermezzo from Giordano’s “Fedora” with seductive vulnerability.On the second night, the overture to Verdi’s “Giovanna d’Arco” had everything the Strauss didn’t: crackling energy and a sense of reveling — not just in the music, but also in the ensemble itself. It provided a handsome, though still subtle, showcase for the winds to take a victory lap — and for Muti to do so too. More

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      Review: New York Philharmonic Plays New Steve Reich Piece

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      In “Jacob’s Ladder,” which premiered at the New York Philharmonic on Thursday, Reich’s signature chugging rhythms returned.Thursday evening was a major moment for musical Minimalism.The Chicago Symphony Orchestra brought Philip Glass’s new piece, “The Triumph of the Octagon,” to Carnegie Hall. And further uptown, at David Geffen Hall, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere of Steve Reich’s “Jacob’s Ladder.”It is no longer news that these composers, indelible faces of an era-defining movement, are eminences. Reich turned 87 on Tuesday, and Glass reaches the same age in January.But don’t forget: They were once downtown rebels, writing for their own ensembles rather than major symphonic forces. (In 1973, Reich’s “Four Organs” was nearly heckled off the Carnegie stage.) Imagine predicting, back then, that they would have new work presented on the same night by two of the country’s great orchestras, in the two temples of New York’s musical establishment.And that it would be cheered. At Geffen Hall, “Jacob’s Ladder” and Reich were warmly received at the center of an excellent concert that placed the premiere between a pair of repertory masterpieces, all conducted by the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden.“Jacob’s Ladder” is something of a return to form for Reich after a quietly daring departure. Since his breakthrough experiments of the late 1960s, his music has been defined by its chugging pulse.But in “Traveler’s Prayer” — begun before the pandemic, completed during lockdown and first performed in 2021 — the pulse was gone. That piece seems to float, with mellow vibraphone charting the calm, patient chant of four voices as a piano makes occasional, deep interjections — somehow questioning and affirming at once.Reich’s work for voices has long suggested the combination of purity and complexity in medieval polyphony; he has cited Pérotin as an important influence. But “Traveler’s Prayer” really felt medieval in its rapt yet free stillness.“When I began to write ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ I had to ask myself, ‘To pulse or not to pulse?’” Reich says in an interview with his publisher. To pulse, he eventually decided. L’chaim!And from the start, the 20-minute new piece burbles with a steady, propulsive rush of vibraphone. The rhythms are far more tart than in “Traveler’s Prayer,” the melodies more brightly etched and stepwise — more ladderlike. The intimate forces are similar to those Reich used in his last work, with the vocal quartet, small circle of string players, piano and pair of vibes now joined by a handful of flutes, oboes and clarinets that add more lilting vividness.Like its predecessor, “Jacob’s Ladder” sets biblical text in the original Hebrew — in this case, the verse from Genesis in which Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven, angels ascending and descending on it. But Reich means for the consonants to be smoothed, almost blurred, and on Thursday the four singers of Synergy Vocals managed the difficult task of sounding simultaneously precise and misty, with an antique nasal tang in the two male voices and cool freshness in the women.Swaths of the piece are just instrumental, and the Philharmonic musicians approached the whole thing with forthright gusto. Presumably Reich observed rehearsals and sanctioned the performance style, but the string players used an amount of vibrato that sometimes jarred with the straighter tone of the singers and other instruments; this premiere wasn’t ideally clear.The piece is not as plainly poignant as “Traveler’s Prayer”; the musical and emotional landscape of “Jacob’s Ladder” is more changeable, even flickering. Reich flashes — without lingering — on jeweled moments, and at one memorable point, briefly brightening harmonies in the strings are brought back to somber earth by just a few dark piano notes.Yet nothing is overstated; even the dissonances in this subtle work are softly luminous. Energetic while meditative, “Jacob’s Ladder” doesn’t feel insubstantial, but it does feel light, graceful, refreshing. Twenty minutes passed like a song.Programming the piece alongside Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony seemed less about drawing musical comparisons than about proving how easily Reich fits in with the classics. New works are sometimes doomed by juxtaposition with beloved standards, but “Jacob’s Ladder” plays serenely yet confidently with the big boys.The pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, returning to the Philharmonic for the first time since 2018, did the first movement of the Beethoven concerto with lucid authority and some superb textures, like downward runs that truly sounded as if they were sliding. His slow movement had poetry without indulgence, and the witty, visionary transition from that Adagio to the lively Rondo finale had an exciting sense of improvisation.Schubert’s “Unfinished” was a questionable choice, since the Philharmonic last played it just six months ago. Yet here, as in the Beethoven, van Zweden was strong but not hectoring, with depth and focus to the orchestra’s sound. In the second (and final completed) movement, passages of storminess and lyricism were both persuasive and vibrant.The orchestra played with polished precision. I’ve criticized van Zweden for overly manicured, pushy performances, but on Thursday, in both concerto and symphony, the phrasing felt sculpted with panache, the tension honestly built.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More