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      Review: A Ukrainian Orchestra Speaks With Quiet Intensity

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      Brahms’s Fourth Symphony doesn’t mean anything. Like much of the classical music repertory, it has no text, no plot. It elicits emotions, but not in a rigidly defined way. At a concert, your neighbor’s experience of it, her explanation of its impact, will almost certainly be different from yours.It’s also, like much of the repertory, chameleonic — a different piece if you’ve suffered a heartbreak or celebrated a joy. On Thursday, when the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra performed the symphony at Lincoln Center, the notes were the same as ever. But, played by dozens of Ukrainian musicians on a mild evening in Damrosch Park, the score took on an air of calm but implacable defiance, what Rimbaud once called “burning patience.” There was no hysteria to this Brahms, just resolute intensity.Though the performance, with its unified, focused passion, seemed like the work of a well-practiced ensemble, this orchestra convened for the first time only a month ago, as an effort to showcase Ukraine’s culture and what the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called “artistic resistance” to the Russian invasion.It is the brainchild of the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who has Ukrainian roots, and her husband, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. Wilson and Gelb rallied sponsors and the assistance of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, which hosted rehearsals and the first show of a 12-city tour, which continues through Saturday in Washington.Anna Fedorova was the soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a nod to the Polish support for the Freedom Orchestra project.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesPlaying under Wilson’s baton, the musicians represent a range of Ukrainian ensembles, and some are members of orchestras elsewhere in Europe. The Ukrainian government made the crucial contribution of allowing male players to participate in the tour, even though men of military age are now barred from leaving the country.But make no mistake: The men and women of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra are fighting. As the critic Jason Farago wrote last month in The New York Times, the risks to Ukrainian culture “are more than mere collateral damage” in this battle. This is, he added, a true culture war; Russia is seeking not just land but also the erasure of a country’s artistic output and history. Anyone who is resisting that is a soldier.“I don’t have a gun,” one of the orchestra’s musicians told The Times recently, “but I have my cello.”So it was natural that the evening had its moments of national pride. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, took the stage to declare “Glory to Ukraine,” and Wilson echoed that sentiment — in Ukrainian — from the podium. A huge Ukrainian flag stretched behind the musicians; at the end, the soloists took a bow wrapped in flags, and still more were waved in the audience.The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, spoke before the performance.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesBut this wasn’t a performance given over to jingoism; it favored refinement. You got the impression that the best way to fight imperialism and authoritarianism — from the concert stage, at least — was with sophistication, craft, rigor, subtlety. For all its moments of high drama, the program was admirably even-keeled and soft-spoken, an embodiment of a cultured nation. Even the arrangement of the Ukrainian anthem at the end was impressionistic and elegant, the opposite of stentorian.There has never been a perfect outdoor orchestral performance; instruments made for warm indoor acoustics take on an edge, and overamplified strings swamp the woodwinds every time. This was not the best possible setting for the American premiere of the pre-eminent Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s Symphony No. 7 (2003), a poignant and canny single-movement work that begins in agony; dips (à la Shostakovich) knowingly into kitschy sweetness; and then slowly dissolves, ending with the eerie, toneless sound of breathing through brasses.The pianist Anna Fedorova was a sensitive, poetic soloist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a nod to the Polish support for the Freedom Orchestra project. The soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska — who replaced Anna Netrebko at the Met after Netrebko’s contracts were canceled in the wake of the Russian invasion — sang Leonore’s aria of rebellion from Beethoven’s “Fidelio.”Flags were also waved by members of the audience at Damrosch Park.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesBut most impressive was the Brahms symphony, not a piece easily thrown together by a pickup orchestra. (On Friday at Damrosch, as the closing night of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City festival, the Brahms will be replaced by Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, and the “Fidelio” aria by Aida’s paean to her homeland, “O patria mia.”)Despite the outdoor acoustics, the sound was remarkably rich in the first movement; the second was eloquent; the third buoyant but still substantial, carried off with understated panache.The finale was less ferocious than you might have thought it would be, given the occasion, and was all the more moving for that restraint. Some have heard in the end of Brahms’s Fourth grimness and destruction, a kind of gorgeous annihilation. This was the opposite: a declaration of continued presence.It’s not quite true that the work is pure music, without any external connections; you just have to dig a bit. Brahms derived the theme of the finale from the final movement of a Bach cantata, the opening words of which could have been this concert’s — and this orchestra’s — credo: “My days of suffering, God will finally end in joy.”Ukrainian Freedom OrchestraThrough Friday at Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, lincolncenter.org. More

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      She Made Glimmerglass a True Festival. Now She’s Moving On.

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      During Francesca Zambello’s 12 years as the festival’s leader, she did what she set out to do: took on “complex issues through storytelling and music making.”COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Before every opera performance at the Glimmerglass Festival, Francesca Zambello, its artistic and general director, cruises around its bucolic campus in a golf cart that she calls “Grane” after Brünnhilde’s trusty steed. Zambello greets audience members, gives welcome lifts to some older patrons, and gets out regularly to mingle. That a leader should be the festival’s public face is something Zambello takes seriously.On a recent steamy Friday afternoon, she was an especially enthusiastic greeter. A performance of “The Jungle Book,” a youth opera she had commissioned, was about to begin at the Alice Busch Opera Theater, and lots of children, including very young ones, were in the crowd. “Hi,” she said to two little girls holding hands. “Is this your first opera?” When the girls nodded yes, Zambello, like a den mother, said: “That’s so exciting. I bet you’ll love it!”After 12 ambitious, innovative years running Glimmerglass, Zambello, 65, is stepping down after this year’s six-week summer festival, which ends on Aug. 21. She will turn her focus to the Washington National Opera, where she has been artistic director since 2012. Proud of her tenure at Glimmerglass, and for leaving the company, in “a very healthy financial position, far different than I found,” she said in a recent interview, she felt the time was right to move on.She has accomplished what she set out to do. “Creating a ‘festival’ environment and focusing on our brand of theater as a bridge to diverse communities,” she wrote in an email, as well as “addressing complex issues through storytelling and music making.”Commissioning youth operas was just one initiative that Zambello brought to Glimmerglass, one that allowed her to give composers and librettists a chance. And it was essential to her, she said, that “young people should see works by living composers; they should know that music is alive.”She also expanded the young artists program, created an artist residency (this year, it’s Kamala Sankaram, the composer of “Jungle Book”), and commissioned works for almost every festival — 11 in all, including one-acts and, a high point, “Blue” (2019), a timely opera with a score by Jeanine Tesori, and a libretto by Tazewell Thompson. A gripping, timely work about a Black policeman and his wife trying to raise a rebellious teenage son in Harlem, “Blue” has gone on to national stages. It plays in Toledo, Ohio, this month and next spring at Zambello’s Washington company and the English National Opera in London.From the start, Zambello set a goal that “a third of the company should be nonwhite,” she said. This was a public manifestation of her efforts at diversity, and for the most part, she delivered.And while most performing arts institutions talk up their community outreach programs, few have made more efforts than Glimmerglass under Zambello, including bringing opera to Attica, the maximum-security prison in western New York.A scene from the “The Jungle Book,” with a score by Kamala Sankara, this year’s artist in residence.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalThese initiatives helped Zambello with her mission — to transform the Glimmerglass Opera, as it was known when she arrived, into the Glimmerglass Festival. Many opera companies and orchestras present summer seasons called festivals that are essentially more of the same. Under Zambello, Glimmerglass has been a true festival, with mostly new productions of works, new and old, with ancillary concerts and talks. All of these often touch on larger themes and issues, a way, she said, to make the festival “more socially responsible,” particularly “during the second half of my tenure.”Last summer, with the pandemic lingering, Zambello presented Glimmerglass on the Grass, with inventively staged, trimmed-down productions performed on a makeshift platform outdoors with amplification. This summer, opera has returned to the main stage — an intimate 918-seat theater — but, to be cautious, no ancillary events were scheduled.This year’s six productions touched to various degrees, Zambello said, on “serious questions around faith, around resistance, around freedom and community.” Especially, to my delight and surprise, “The Jungle Book.”In this version, directed by Zambello and Brenna Corner, Mowgli, the feral boy raised by a pack of wolves, is a girl (the sweet-voiced, impish Lily Grady). In the opening scene, Raksha, the matriarch of the pack (Kendra Faith Beasley), gathers her underlings and tells them: “To get along in the jungle, you have to know who you are.”Sankaram’s music is an enchanting blend of Indian styles, especially from the Carnatic tradition, with Western harmonies, cyclic rhythms, inventive instrumental colors and tender, snappy vocal writing. I hope the young girls and boys in attendance noted that the composer, librettist (Kelley Rourke), conductor (Kamna Gupta), and directors of this enchanting production were all women.A scene from “Taking Up Serpents,” a one-act by Sankaram.Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalSankaram’s range came through in a production of “Taking Up Serpents,” a 2018 one-act opera, with a libretto by Jerre Dye, on a double bill with a Glimmerglass commission and premiere, “Holy Ground,” with music by Damien Geter and a libretto by Lila Palmer. “Taking Up Serpents” is a dark, intense story of a young woman, Kayla (Mary-Hollis Hundley), who has taken a job at a drugstore in an Alabama gulf town to get away from her parents, who lead a rural church that believes in speaking in tongues and practices rituals with snakes.Sankaram and Dye dig below the parents’ seeming fanaticism to explore the spiritual yearnings that drive them and that, in some way, speak to the confused Kayla. “Holy Ground” explores spirituality quite differently. With a fanciful, skillfully written score, the piece presents a beguiling present-day story of a group of hapless archangels having trouble recruiting a young woman to bear God in human form. (Again? Did the first time not take hold?)Within the context of this summer’s offerings, even a work as familiar as Bizet’s “Carmen” came across with extra bite: a tale of exploited female factory workers and a dark portrait of a “community,” Carmen (Briana Hunter) falls in with a group of bandits. Denyce Graves, a renowned interpreter of the title role, directed the psychologically penetrating production. Zambello’s imprint on the festival had never seen clearer.But back in 2010, when her appointment was announced, she might not have seemed a logical choice for the job. For nearly 30 years, Paul Kellogg (who died last year) had brought gracious leadership skills and a “superb aesthetic,” as Zambello said, to Glimmerglass. When he stepped down in 2006, amid staff turmoil, it went into a four-year transitional period under Michael MacLeod. It was ready for an artistic jolt.Zambello had earned international acclaim as an opera director at major houses in Paris, Milan, London, Moscow and more. She had taken her share of knocks for staging concepts that critics felt did not work, especially in the early years. Her 1992 debut at the Metropolitan Opera, “Lucia di Lammermoor,” was deemed by many a symbolism-strewn fiasco. She came back to the Met in 2003 with a visually stunning and emotionally involving production of Berlioz’s epic “Les Troyens.”But she had never run a company.Ben Heppner and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Zambello’s visually impressive and emotionally involving production of “Les Troyens” at the Met, in 2003.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I had hit 30 years of being an itinerant director,” she said. “I wanted to have an anchor.”Sherwin M. Goldman, then the president of the Glimmerglass board (and still a member), said the board took a leap in going with Zambello.“I was not overwhelmed by her taste, to be quite frank,” Goldman said in an interview. “It was more her intelligence than her talent that intrigued me.” Zambello, who was born in New York and grew up in Europe, speaks five languages and talks with sweeping confidence about all facets of theater and the arts.What finally convinced Goldman, he said, was Zambello’s readiness “to fight for what she believed in.” And she was no pushover. “Every day was a fight with Francesca,” he said. “That’s the way she communicated.”At the time, Glimmerglass’s endowment had gone down, and there was a stubborn deficit, Zambello recalled. Along with tireless fund-raising skills, she articulated a bold vision that moved the festival into its next chapter. Her commitment to diversity was clear by her second season, in 2012, when artists from the Cape Town Opera were on the summer roster along with a number of Black American singers. That summer, years before the current discussions about race-conscious casting in opera and theater, Zambello’s festival explored dimensions of this complex issue.Zambello, dressed for “The Sound of Music,” which she director this summer.via The Glimmerglass FestivalThere was a poignant production (by Thompson) of Kurt Weill’s musical “Lost in the Stars,” based on Alan Paton’s novel “Cry, the Beloved Country,” about a Black priest in South Africa struggling to serve his rural congregation. The festival was able to cast with affecting sensitivity to the racial identities of the characters; Eric Owens excelled in the lead role of Stephen Kumalo.There was also a contemporary production of Verdi’s “Aida” directed by Zambello with a Black soprano (Michelle Johnson) in the title role of an Ethiopian princess held captive in Egypt, and, daringly for the time, a Black tenor (Noah Stewart) as Radamès, the leader of the Egyptian forces who is in love with her. The production was asking you to see beyond assumptions about the racial identities of the lovers.Verdi’s opera “is not about race,” Zambello said. “It’s almost a civil argument between Ethiopia and Egypt. It’s not even like there is a fixed border; these are like two tribes.”Then there was a lively staging, by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man.” With so many Black singers to call upon, the town of River City, Iowa, and its small-minded, gossipy citizenry, came across here as a racially mixed community.“The Music Man” was an early entry into Zambello’s series of classic American musicals, presented in fresh productions, with full orchestras (a rarity on Broadway), singers who combine operatic training and musical theater savvy, and, for the most part, no amplification.This summer Zambello directed “The Sound of Music,” starring Mikaela Bennett in a radiant, endearing performance as Maria. In this vibrant staging, with adorable child performers as the von Trapp children, the musical’s themes of faith, community and resistance to tyranny, which often seem smothered in sentimentality, felt real and timeless.Mikaela Bennett, right, as Maria in Zambello’s production of “The Sound of Music.”Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass FestivalZambello’s successor will be Robert Ainsley, who has been the director of the Washington National Opera’s young artists program and its American opera initiative. “Rob will bring his own sensitivity to programming,” Zambello said, adding, “I know he is committed to continuing to provide a range of ways for people to come together around song and story.”For her part, Zambello is gratified to have overseen the return of live opera to Glimmerglass. Nothing, she said, can replace a “group of strangers, responding together, magnifying each other’s sense of tension, shock, wonder and delight.” More

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      A Conductor Comes Into His Own in the Opera Pit

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      SANTA FE, N.M. — “I was skeptical,” James Gaffigan said while waiting for huevos rancheros during a recent lunch here, where his run conducting a taut “Tristan und Isolde” at Santa Fe Opera ends on Tuesday.Skepticism is not normally the emotion you hear expressed, or at least admitted, when interviewing conductors about their next big post. But Gaffigan, 43, is a congenial, quick-talking musician who is more honest and open than many of his peers. And the post in question — the one he was initially skeptical of — is at the Komische Oper Berlin, where he takes over as general music director next year.Already doing a similar job at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, where his first season included “Wozzeck” and a Romeo Castellucci staging of Mozart’s Requiem, it seemed absurd, he said, to take on a second opera house — especially if it was to be the Komische.Not exactly renowned for its conductors, with the small exception of Kirill Petrenko before he had really become Kirill Petrenko, the Komische has been a playground for directors since its founding by Walter Felsenstein in 1947. For the past decade, it has drawn acclaim under the virtuosic showmanship of Barrie Kosky, the outgoing intendant, who will continue to stage new productions at the house.“It’s been the Barrie show, and that’s why my first instinct was to say no, or I’m not sure,” Gaffigan said. “I thought that whatever I did in the pit, how I developed the orchestra, would be overshadowed.”Gaffigan rehearsing Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” in Santa Fe.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesIt’s a hesitation that Philip Bröking, formerly an in-house director who has been promoted to co-intendant alongside the Komische’s former managing director, Susanne Moser, understands, though he makes no excuses for the house’s specific character.“Our choices, and I have to admit these were also my choices, of chief conductors haven’t been as successful as we expected,” Bröking said in an interview. “When Susanne and I got the job as intendants, we asked ourselves, ‘Where can we really improve?’ And we do know that the orchestra has a lot of potential.”But Gaffigan marveled at the orchestra’s flexibility while first conducting them in a streamed concert of Webern, Gulda and Mozart in April 2021, and he agreed to take responsibility for two new productions, four concerts and a number of revivals in each of his four contracted seasons. Kosky, he said, convinced him that a double appointment — one at a newly built Spanish house that concentrates on the standard repertoire, the other among company that is as comfortable in Nono as in Handel, as committed to musicals as to the canon — would be an opportunity, not a burden.“The more I thought about it, I realized they are the most versatile orchestra in town,” Gaffigan explained, adding that his first experience as an audience member at the Komische was a snowy, sold-out Tuesday night of Offenbach’s “Orphée aux Enfers” that showed him just how much its diverse audience trusts in what he called the “wackiness” of the house.“We already have the public behind us because of what Barrie has done, and if we build the musical level even higher, it won’t just be a Regie theater,” he said. “I want people to come for the full package, and I think it’s possible.”Even so, it’s a striking move. Gaffigan’s future had always seemed to lie on the symphony stage, not in the opera pit. Starting his career with junior posts at the Cleveland Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, he then served as the chief conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra for a decade, producing an eclectic list of recordings. He also became the principal guest of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Trondheim Symphony orchestras, tenures that end this season.Only a few years ago, Gaffigan was reputed to be on the shortlists of more than a few American ensembles searching for new music directors, and his enthusiasm, his keen interest in education and his flair for programming made him a strong candidate.Simon O’Neill, left, and Eric Owens in the Santa Fe production of “Tristan.”Curtis Brown/Santa Fe Opera“He’s certainly somebody who American orchestras have their eye on,” said Gary Ginstling, the incoming president and chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, who leads the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, where Gaffigan conducts Bernstein’s “Mass” to celebrate the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary in September. “I think he has a lot of options, and will continue to.”But although Gaffigan has been in the running for a number of American posts, he has decided to step out of the fray for the time being.“I would need it to be the right city in America, with the right vision,” he said. “I don’t want to do the complete Brahms symphonies. Who cares? It needs to be a forward-thinking institution. I don’t want to be repeating the same stuff over and over again, and right now, I don’t see it.”Tired of the old routines, of programs announced far in advance that run through an overture, a concerto and a symphony, Gaffigan is also bothered by orchestras that refuse to reckon with their whiteness.“I hate that something that I love so much is defined as something elitist,” said Gaffigan, a native Staten Islander and public school graduate. “It upsets me that I’m from a country that has so many different types of people, yet when I look into the audience, I only see one type. That hurts me, as an American. I don’t just say it to sound politically correct; it’s something I believe.”Gaffigan may see no good fit for him at home, or none that is open to him, but Bröking said that the conductor’s interest in music not traditionally explored by American ensembles made him a natural choice for the Komische Oper when it was searching for someone to replace its current music director, Ainars Rubikis.“The first phone call with James was in April 2020,” Bröking recalled. “What was very special about this telephone call was that he did not ask: ‘What can my repertoire be? Is it Verdi, is it Puccini, is it Wagner?’ These are the questions you usually get, because as a general music director, you would like to present yourself in the core repertoire, especially in Berlin. He was much more interested in the special situation of the Komische Oper, between the Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper.”Audience members at Santa Fe, where Gaffigan has developed a reputation as collaborative partner.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesWhat also appealed to the Komische is that Gaffigan, ambitious but far from egoistical, actually seems to practice what so many of his colleagues preach about a consciously collaborative style.“In Berlin, we have some experience with old, master conductors,” Bröking said wryly. “They do fantastic work, of course they do, but half of our orchestra are women, there are many young instrumentalists, and they don’t want to be treated as in former times. They want to communicate, they want to build something together, they want to be a team. This is what James is able to do well.”Gaffigan’s “Tristan” in Santa Fe sounded as though it had been carefully prepared, as indeed it had, with him listening to every historical recording he could find and even getting “crazy into poetics,” as he put it. But it was also evident that he was far less concerned with prosecuting his own interpretation of the drama, than in sustaining the staging that was in front of him.“He’s in service to the whole,” said Zack Winokur, who co-directed the “Tristan” with Lisenka Heijboer Castañón and is the artistic director of the avowedly egalitarian American Modern Opera Company. “It’s an unusual thing with conductors, that it’s not Machiavellian, that it didn’t feel manipulative,” Winokur said of the experience. “It felt actually supportive.”Tamara Wilson, the soprano who made a breakthrough debut as Isolde, agreed that Gaffigan’s style is unusual in the opera world, and happily so.“The first thing that he asked,” Wilson recalled of an early meeting on Zoom, “was, ‘How do you want to run rehearsals?’ For a singer, that’s unheard-of. That is never, ever how it goes. I had an immediate sense of relief, because I knew that this was going to be a collaboration, versus me being yelled at.”She added: “Even listening to the Santa Fe orchestra the first time, you could tell it wasn’t about just doing it and getting it right, making it correct — it was about making it special. And that’s what he does. He makes things special.” More

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      At the Salzburg Festival, Riches, Retreads and Notes of Caution

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      Classical music’s pre-eminent annual event had more revivals than usual, but also a breathless new staging of Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova.”SALZBURG, Austria — The premiere of a new production of Janacek’s opera “Kat’a Kabanova” had just ended at the Salzburg Festival here last week. When the lights went up, Kristina Hammer, the festival’s new president, was wiping tears off her cheeks.It was hard to blame her for crying. “Kat’a” is a breathless tragedy about a small-town woman trapped in a loveless marriage and driven to suicide after having a brief affair. Janacek’s music stamps out her ethereal fantasies with the brutal fist of reality.Barrie Kosky’s staging was the highlight of a week at Salzburg, classical music’s pre-eminent annual event, which runs through Aug. 31. Kosky has pared down this pared-down work even further, to its core of quivering human beings.The only set is rows of uncannily realistic models of people, standing, wearing street clothes, and facing away from us — and away from Kat’a and her pain. (I admit: I was fooled into thinking these were many dozens of very still extras.) Behind them loom the stone walls of the Felsenreitschule theater, whose vast stage has rarely seemed bigger or lonelier than when the soprano Corinne Winters races across it, running with nowhere to go.David Butt Philip and Winters in “Kat’a.” Behind them are uncannily realistic models of people standing in street clothes.Monika RittershausJittery and balletic, ecstatic and anxious, Winters has a child’s volatile presence, and her live-wire voice conveys Kat’a’s wonder and vulnerability. She is the production’s center, but the entire cast is powerful; Winters’s interactions with Jarmila Balazova’s headstrong Varvara make years of friendship between the characters easy to believe. The conductor Jakub Hrusa confidently paces the work as a bitter, intermission-less single shot, even if the Vienna Philharmonic — the festival’s longtime house band — sounded a bit thin and uncertain in what should be heated unanimity.There is a kind of familial resemblance between Kat’a and Suor Angelica, the agonized young nun at the center of one of Puccini’s three one-acts in “Il Trittico,” directed here by Christof Loy, with the Philharmonic conducted with sensual lightness by Franz Welser-Möst. Like Winters, the soprano Asmik Grigorian, who stars in all three acts, is an intense actress with a voice of shivery directness. (This is the vocal taste at the moment in Salzburg; the days in which Anna Netrebko’s plush tone ruled here seem over.)Spare yet detailed, unified by an airy buff-color space with shifting walls, Loy’s staging reorders the triptych, beginning rather than ending with the comic “Gianni Schicchi,” which now precedes the grim adultery tale “Il Tabarro,” with Roman Burdenko as a firm Michele.In “Suor Angelica,” Asmik Grigorian, left, faces off against Karita Mattila in a blazing confrontation of dueling pains.Barbara Gindl/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Suor Angelica,” the closer, is the reason to see this “Trittico”; it’s the only one of the three roles in which Grigorian’s lack of tonal warmth plays fully to her advantage. Her face-off against the veteran soprano Karita Mattila — not an alto, as the role of Angelica’s aunt really requires, but properly imperious — is a blazing confrontation of dueling pains. And Grigorian’s final scene, which milks the unexpected poignancy of her simply changing in front of us from her habit into a sleek black cocktail dress and letting down her hair, is just as wrenching.A woman is also on the verge of a breakdown, but far more amusingly, in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” Now that the star mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli runs the springtime Whitsun Festival here, every summer includes a production vehicle for her. But there were snickers when it was announced that Bartoli, at 56, planned to play Rosina, usually sung at the start of careers. (Bartoli made her professional stage debut in the role, 35 years ago.)But her voice — and her rapid-fire coloratura — are remarkably well preserved, and her enthusiasm is irresistible. Directed by Rolando Villazón, the show is a love letter to the movies, like “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” which has characters walking on and off screen. Here it’s the silent era that comes to life, with Bartoli as a diva whose experience is winked at in a rundown of her pictures, from Joan of Arc to pirates, projected during the overture. But the concept is not held to so stringently that it detracts from the adorably madcap fun.Cecilia Bartoli, right, as Rosina in “The Barber of Seville,” a role usually sung at the start of careers.Monika RittershausThe ensemble Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco plays with silky spirit for Gianluca Capuano, who leads a cast as expertly easygoing as Bartoli — including Alessandro Corbelli, Nicola Alaimo and, as a Nosferatu-esque Basilio, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo. And the existence of a rarely performed mezzo version of the climactic aria “Cessa di più resistere” lets Bartoli trade off verses with the agile young tenor Edgardo Rocha.The other opera in the relatively intimate Haus für Mozart this summer also takes a hint from the movies: Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” framed by the director Lydia Steier like “The Princess Bride,” with a grandfather telling the story to a young child — here, three boys. As when this staging was new, in 2018, this is a clever way of super-compressing the work’s extensive spoken dialogue.Four years ago, the production sprawled in the festival’s largest theater; now it’s been smushed into its smallest. Steier has wisely jettisoned a whole strand of steampunk circus imagery and concentrated more on the plot as a parable of the start of World War I, with “Little Nemo” touches. It’s subtle work as the boys gradually become participants in the action, not merely observers. The Philharmonic played under Joana Mallwitz with an ideal mixture of crispness and roundedness.Not every Salzburg Festival includes a revival of a past show; this year there are two. In 2017, the Iranian-born photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat’s staging of Verdi’s “Aida” was that summer’s most eagerly awaited offering, a rare full production conducted by the Verdian giant Riccardo Muti, and Netrebko’s debut in the title role.Rather in the background was Neshat, her first time doing opera — and a pristine, bland effort. Now, with less starry collaborators, her work has come to the fore, still decorous but deeper. To poetic effect, some of her blurry, languid early videos of slow-moving crowds on Middle Eastern streets and coasts have been added; her photographs also now play a part, and some dancers are covered in Arabic calligraphy, a trademark of her art.Directed by Rolando Villazón, “The Barber of Seville” is a love letter to the movies.Monika RittershausThere are some good ideas, like the ominous, violent renderings of the ballet in Amneris’s chamber and the Triumphal Scene. Also some bad ones: Amonasro, Aida’s father, here seems to be a specter, already dead, at the start of Act III, which makes the plot incomprehensible. Alain Altinoglu’s conducting of the Philharmonic is sensibly paced but, compared to the exquisite colors and textures Muti elicited, otherwise ordinary. (The nocturnal beginning of the Nile Scene is one of many passages less evocative this year than in 2017.)Elena Stikhina’s soft-grained Aida and Ève-Maud Hubeaux’s dignified Amneris were impressive, but Piotr Beczala, a shining Radamès, was the only really glamorous singer. And glamour is, like it or not, part and parcel of the ideal Salzburg experience: an extravagance of imagination and achievement that surpasses what you can get at the Met or the Vienna State Opera.There was grumbling among Salzburg watchers about the two revivals and the not-quite-new “Barber,” which premiered in June. An almost $70 million budget for just three truly new stagings?This was clearly a note of caution as the pandemic wears on. “I’m convinced it is the right thing artistically, and from the economic side,” Markus Hinterhäuser, the festival’s artistic director, said when the season was announced last year.But the economic part seems truer than the artistic. “Flute” and “Aida” were improved — the Mozart was tighter, the Verdi more nuanced. The question is whether opera’s most famous and rich summer festival needed repeats of two repertory standards — works that can be seen all over the world during the regular season — in performances that, while solid, weren’t much more distinguished than what you’d get in any major house.It is a telling bit of weakness as Salzburg faces renewed competition, especially from the growing Aix-en-Provence Festival in France — and even from the likes of Santa Fe Opera, which this year presented “Tristan und Isolde,” its first Wagner in decades, and a world premiere (“M. Butterfly”). For all its resources, Salzburg has of late abandoned major commissions in favor of bringing back underappreciated modern works.Aix and Salzburg went head-to-head this summer, both offering productions by the in-demand auteur Romeo Castellucci. It was a showdown that Salzburg soundly lost. Aix got a huge, haunting staging of Mahler’s Second Symphony as the exhumation of a mass grave. Here in Austria, though, as Joshua Barone wrote in The Times, Castellucci’s double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” and Orff’s “De Temporum Fine Comoedia” was a grim, murky slog, played sludgily by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis.But even an expanding Aix lacks the scope of Salzburg’s concert schedule, which begins with a long Ouverture Spirituelle mini-festival and offers an enviable, overlapping array of often superb orchestral programs and recitals.Though less widely publicized, the weekend Mozart Matinees featuring the Mozarteum Orchestra often present the most joyful, vibrant playing of the festival. Marco BorelliThis year the concerts didn’t all satisfy. The pianist Grigory Sokolov’s pillowy touch was alluring in Beethoven’s “Eroica” Variations and Brahms’s Op. 117 pieces, but smoothed Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” into slumber. The tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s voice rarely came alive in a recital whose halves were dully drawn from his two most recent albums.But it was touching to see the superstar pianist Lang Lang show his respect for Daniel Barenboim by joining that conductor and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for Manuel de Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” not at all a virtuoso showpiece. And while the Vienna Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons made a muddle of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Yefim Bronfman, the orchestra sounded sumptuously ripe in Mahler’s Fifth Symphony.More memorable was a less exalted, less widely publicized concert: one of the festival’s 11 a.m. weekend Mozart Matinees featuring the Mozarteum Orchestra. These mornings often have the most joyful, vibrant playing of the festival, and last week’s program was no exception, led with verve by Adam Fischer.The Mozart Matinees are well attended and happily received. But they still feel like a Salzburg secret. More

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      An Orchestra Supports Ukraine, and Reunites a Couple Parted by War

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      “I don’t have a gun, but I have my cello,” a musician says as he joins the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which is made up of refugees who fled the war and artists who stayed behind.WARSAW — After years of struggling to make a living as musicians in Ukraine, Yevgen Dovbysh and Anna Vikhrova felt they had finally built a stable life. They were husband-and-wife artists in the Odessa Philharmonic — he plays the cello, she the violin — sharing a love for Bach partitas and the music from “Star Wars.” They lived in an apartment on the banks of the Black Sea with their 8-year-old daughter, Daryna.Then Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Vikhrova fled for the Czech Republic with her daughter and mother, bringing a few hundred dollars in savings, some clothes and her violin. Dovbysh, 39, who was not allowed to leave because he is of military age, stayed behind and assisted in efforts to defend the city, gathering sand from beaches to reinforce barriers and protect monuments and playing Ukrainian music on videos honoring the country’s soldiers. “We spent every day together,” Vikhrova, 38, said. “We did everything together. And suddenly our beautiful life was taken away.”Dovbysh was granted special permission to leave the country last month to join the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, a new ensemble of 74 musicians that was gathering in Warsaw, the first stop on an international tour aimed at promoting Ukrainian culture and denouncing Russia’s invasion. Carrying his cello, and wearing a small golden cross around his neck, he boarded a bus for Poland, looking forward to playing for the cause, and also to being reunited with another member of the fledgling ensemble: his wife.“I love my country so much,” he said as the bus passed ponds, churches and raspberry fields in Hrebenne, a Polish village near the border with Ukraine. “I don’t have a gun, but I have my cello.”The bus crossed the border and drove into Hrebenne, in Poland, on its way to Warsaw, where the newly formed orchestra would meet for the first time to rehearse.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesWhen his bus arrived in Warsaw, he rushed to meet Vikhrova. He knocked on the door of her hotel room, waited nervously, and then embraced her when she opened it. She teased him about his decision to wear shorts for the 768-mile journey, despite the cool weather, a legacy of his upbringing in balmy Odessa. She gave him a figurine of a “Star Wars” creature, Baby Yoda, a belated birthday present.“I’m so happy,” he said. “Finally, we are almost like a family again.”The next morning, they took their chairs in the new Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, led by the Canadian Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, to prepare for an 12-city tour to rally support for Ukraine. Beginning here in Warsaw, the tour has continued in London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Berlin and other cities, and will travel to the United States this week to play at Lincoln Center on Aug. 18 and 19 and at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Aug. 20.The tour has been organized with the support of the Ukrainian government. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said in a recent statement celebrating the founding of the orchestra that “artistic resistance” to Russia was paramount. The orchestra also has the backing of powerful figures in the music industry. Wilson’s husband, Peter Gelb, who runs the Metropolitan Opera in New York, has played a critical role, helping line up engagements and benefactors, and the Met has helped arrange the tour. Waldemar Dabrowski, the director of the Wielki Theater, Warsaw’s opera house, provided rehearsal space and helped secure financial support from the Polish government.CULTURE, DISPLACED A series exploring the lives and work of artists driven far from their homelands amid the growing global refugee crisis.At the first rehearsal, musicians filed into the Wielki Theater carrying blue and yellow bags; instrument cases covered in peace signs and hearts; and tattered volumes of Ukrainian poems and hymns.The orchestra was the idea of the Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who is of Ukrainian descent. “For Ukraine!” she proclaimed at the first rehearsal.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesAs the musicians began to warm up at rehearsal, Wilson took her place at the podium, locked eyes with the players, and spoke about the need to stand up to Moscow.“For Ukraine!” she said, throwing her fist into the air. Then the orchestra began playing Dvorak.The musicians had arrived mostly as strangers to one another. But slowly they grew closer, sharing stories of neighborhoods pounded by bombs, while the refugees among them recounted their long, tense journeys across crowded borders this winter.Among the violins was Iryna Solovei, a member of the orchestra at the Kharkiv State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater, who fled for Warsaw at the start of the invasion along with her 14-year-old daughter. Since March, they have been among the more than 30 Ukrainian refugees living inside the Wielki Theater, in offices that were converted to dormitories.In March, Solovei, watched from a distance as her home in Kharkiv was destroyed by Russian missiles. She shared photos of her charred living room with her fellow players, telling them how much she missed Ukraine and worried about her husband, who still plays with the Kharkiv ensemble.Our Coverage of the Russia-Ukraine WarOn the Ground: A series of explosions that Ukraine took credit for rocked a key Russian air base in Kremlin-occupied Crimea. Russia played down the extent of the damage, but the evidence available told a different story.Heavy Losses: The staggeringly high rate of Russian casualties in the war means that Moscow may not be able to achieve one of his key objectives: seizing the entire eastern region of Ukraine.Nuclear Shelter: The Russian military is using а nuclear power station in southern Ukraine as a fortress, as fighting intensifies in the region. The risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident has led the United Nations to sound the alarm and plead for access to the site to assess the situation.Starting Over: Ukrainians forced from their hometowns by Russia’s invasion find some solace, and success setting up businesses in new cities.“Everyone has been hurt,” she said. “Some people have been hurt physically. Some people have lost their jobs. Some people have lost their homes.”She reminisced about her days as an orchestra musician in Ukraine, and the deep connections she felt with audiences there. To cope with the trauma of war, she takes walks in a park in Warsaw, where a Ukrainian guitarist plays folk songs at sunset.“The war is like a horrific dream,” she added. “We can forget about it for a moment, but we can never escape it.”Iryna Solovei, left, holding a violin, before the orchestra’s first performance at the Wielki Theater in Warsaw. She has been living in the theater since March.Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesAt the back of the orchestra, in the percussion section, stood Yevhen Ulianov, a 33-year-old member of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine.His daughter was born on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion. He told his fellow players how he and his wife, a singer, had gone to the hospital in Kyiv a few hours before the war started. As she went into labor, air-raid sirens sounded repeatedly, and at one point they were rushed from the maternity ward to the basement of the hospital.“I couldn’t understand what was happening,” he said. “I could only think, ‘How will we get out of here alive?’”Ulianov did not play for two months after the invasion, as concerts in Kyiv were canceled and theaters elsewhere were damaged. The orchestra reduced his salary by a third in April, and he relied on savings to pay his bills. Inside his apartment near the center of the city, he practiced on a vibraphone, taking shelter in a corridor when air-raid sirens sounded.“We didn’t know what to do — should we stay or should we leave?” he said. “What if the Russian army came to Kyiv? Would we ever be able to play again?”‘Half of me is in Ukraine, and half of me is outside.’Before the orchestra’s first concert, late last month in Warsaw, Vikhrova and Dovbysh were anxious.They had spent more than a week rehearsing the program, which included pieces by Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and Valentin Silvestrov, Ukraine’s most famous living composer. But they were unsure how the audience might react. And they were grappling with their fears about the war.Vikhrova had been trying to build a new life in the Czech Republic with their daughter, joining a local orchestra. But she worried about her husband’s safety “every second, every minute, every hour,” she said. She slept near her phone so that she would be woken up by warnings about air raids in Odessa. She grew anxious after one attack there before Easter, when her husband saw Russian missiles in the sky but had no time to take shelter. To take her mind off the war, she played Bach and traditional Ukrainian songs.On their first evening together in five months, Yevgen Dovbysh and Anna Vikhrova, a married couple who were parted by the war and reunited to play together in the orchestra, attended a welcoming party for the new ensemble at Warsaw’s opera house, the Wielki Theater. Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesHolding her husband’s hand backstage, Vikhrova said she longed for the day when they could return to Ukraine with their daughter, who was staying with her mother in the Czech Republic for the duration of the tour.“I feel like I’m leading a double life,” she said. “Half of me is in Ukraine, and half of me is outside.”Dovbysh remembered the fear in his daughter’s eyes when she and her mother left Odessa in February. He recalled taking time to explain the war and telling her she would be safe. He promised they would see each other again soon.When the tour ends this week and his military exemption expires, he is scheduled to return to Odessa. It is unclear when he will be able to see his family again.“Every day,” he said, “I dream of the moment when we can see each other again.”‘We live with a constant sense of worry.’As the war drags on, the musicians have at times struggled to keep their focus. They spend much of their free time checking their phones for news of Russian attacks, sending warnings to relatives.Marko Komonko, 46, the orchestra’s concertmaster, said it was agonizing to watch the war from a distance, likening the experience to a parent caring for an ill child. He fled Ukraine in March for Sweden, where he now plays in the orchestra at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm.“We live with a constant sense of worry,” he said.“We live with a constant sense of worry,” said Marko Komonko, the concert master, far right. Komonko, who now plays at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, was joined at a rehearsal by Ustym Zhuk, who plays the viola, far left, and Adrian Bodnar a violinist, center. Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesFor more than two months after the invasion, he said, he felt nothing when he played his violin. Then, in early May, he began to feel a mix of sadness and hope when he performed a Ukrainian folk melody at a concert in Stockholm.For some, playing in the orchestra has strengthened a sense of Ukrainian identity. Alisa Kuznetsova, 30, was in Russia when the war began; since 2019, she had worked as a violinist in the Mariinsky Orchestra. In late March, she resigned from the orchestra in protest and moved to Tallinn, Estonia, where she began playing in the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra.When she joined the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, she initially felt guilty, she said, worried that the other players would see her as a traitor because of her work in Russia. But she said her colleagues had reassured her that she was welcome.“For my soul, for my heart,” she said, “this has been really important.”In European cultural capitals, the orchestra has been greeted with standing ovations and positive reviews from critics.“A stirring show of Ukrainian defiance,” a review in The Daily Telegraph said of the orchestra’s performance at the Proms, the BBC’s classical music festival. The Guardian wrote of “tears and roars of delight” for the new ensemble.The players got a standing ovation, their first of many on the tour, at their first performance in Warsaw. Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York TimesBut the musicians say the measure of success will not be reviews, but their ability to shine a light on Ukraine and showcase a cultural identity that Russia has tried to erase.Nazarii Stets, 31, a double bass player from Kyiv, has been redoubling his efforts to build a digital library of scores by Ukrainian composers, so their music can be widely downloaded and performed. He plays in the Kyiv Kamerata, a national ensemble devoted to contemporary Ukrainian music.“If we are not fighting for culture,” he said, “then what is the point of fighting?”Wilson, who came up with the idea for the orchestra in March and plans to revive it next summer, said she made a point of featuring Silvestrov’s symphony as a way of promoting Ukrainian culture. Near the end of the piece, the composer wrote a series of breathing sounds for the brass, an effect meant to mimic the last breaths of his wife.Wilson, who dedicated the piece to Ukrainians killed in the war, said she instructed the orchestra to think of the sounds not as death, but as life.“It’s the breath of life, to show that their spirits go on,” she said in an interview.Vikhrova said the tour had brought her closer to her husband and her fellow players. She cries after each performance of the Silvestrov symphony, and when the orchestra plays an arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem as an encore.“This has connected our hearts,” she said. “We feel part of something bigger than ourselves.”Anna Tsybko contributed reporting. More

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      The Lucerne Festival’s Push for Diversity Stirs Debate

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      The Lucerne Festival in Switzerland is trying to shine a light on race and gender disparities. But some are skeptical of its efforts.LUCERNE, Switzerland — The Lucerne Festival here, one of classical music’s premier events, has long had a reputation for exclusivity.For much of the event’s 84-year history, women and people of color have struggled to be heard onstage, and audiences have remained overwhelmingly white and wealthy.But this summer, the festival, which officially begins on Friday, is trying to remake its image, programming its season with an emphasis on diversity: a series of concerts featuring Black and Latino artists, as well as women.“We don’t have to be radical, but we should be aware,” Michael Haefliger, the festival’s executive and artistic director, said in an interview. “We should have this feeling of shaking the ground a little bit and realizing that we have for a long time excluded a certain part of the public.”That drive is part of a broader effort to address severe racial and gender disparities in classical music, a field in which women and people of color are still underrepresented among performers, conductors, composers and administrators.Chi-chi Nwanoku, the founder and leader of the Chineke! Orchestra, which will be featured at the Lucerne Festival this year.Patrick Hürlimann/Lucerne Festival“This is a big step toward shining a spotlight on the problems in our field,” said Chi-chi Nwanoku, the founder and leader of the Chineke! Orchestra, a British ensemble made up largely of musicians of color that will be featured at Lucerne this year. “A lot of the classical music that we pride ourselves on today is inspired by Black artists, Black musicians and Black composers. But we don’t hear that side of the story.”Lucerne’s leaders hope that the focus on diversity will help prompt discussions about racism, sexism and exclusion across classical music. They have tried, with mixed success, to capture the public’s attention. A series of talks related to the theme have been added to the agenda, including a recent one called: “Seeing is Believing? Black Artists in Classical Music!” A marketing campaign features an assortment of chess pieces reimagined for an era of inclusivity: a knight reborn as a purple unicorn, a bishop bearing zebra stripes.But the festival’s efforts have been met with skepticism by some artists, audience members and commentators, who see the drive as mere publicity and say it will do little to address systemic disparities in the industry. And others say the festival’s focus should be on art, not social problems.“This kind of P.R. may alienate the natural audiences of this festival,” said Rodrigo Carrizo Couto, a freelance journalist based in Switzerland. “Why are we doing this? Why are we following some sort of California agenda?”Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed, orchestras have come under pressure to appoint more women and minority artists as music directors; opera companies have faced calls to program more works by overlooked composers; and performing arts organizations have been criticized for not moving swiftly enough to recruit leaders of color. Some groups have been denounced for having performers use dark makeup in productions of operas like “Aida,” long after racist caricatures had disappeared from many stages.At Lucerne, the debate about equity and inclusion has been particularly heated. The festival’s board is made up mostly of white men. Its orchestra includes 81 men and 31 women; only two musicians represent ethnic minority groups.“We don’t have to be radical, but we should be aware,” said Michael Haefliger, the festival’s executive and artistic director. Daniel Auf der Mauer/Lucerne FestivalHaefliger said that he had begun thinking before the pandemic about ways in which the festival could use its platform to shine light on issues of racism and sexism across the industry — inspired by the festival’s 2016 theme, “PrimaDonna,” which featured female conductors. He said he wanted to “break the ice” around discussions of race and gender.“We’re not a political organization,” he said. “But in a way, culture is also social responsibility, and we’re part of society.”The idea of devoting this year’s festival to diversity quickly prompted pushback in Switzerland.Der Bund, a German-language newspaper in nearby Bern, published an article calling the theme “an affront,” saying that while it seemed well intentioned, it could have the effect of making guest artists feel they were invited only because of their skin color.Although this year’s festival, which runs through mid-September, will feature regulars like the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, there are many newcomers. All of the soloists making debuts this year, including the trumpeter Aaron Akugbo, the violinist Randall Goosby and the pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, are people of color. Several renowned artists of color will also take part, including the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the sopranos Golda Schultz and Angel Blue, and the composer Tyshawn Sorey. As part of the pre-festival programming, Ilumina, an ensemble of young South American musicians, performed works by Schubert, Bach, Villa-Lobos and others.Ilumina, an ensemble of young South American musicians, is among Lucerne’s newcomers.ManuelaJans/Lucerne FestivalA particular emphasis will be placed on music by Black composers; 16 will be featured over the course of the festival. At the red-carpet opening on Friday, the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who is also on Lucerne’s board, played a concerto by Joseph Boulogne, a Black composer born in the 18th century.Some musicians said they were pleased that Lucerne’s leaders were tackling issues of representation head-on. Still, they said it was too early to judge the success of the effort, and that the festival could demonstrate its sincerity by inviting back performers and composers of color in the future.“I don’t believe we should embrace diversity as a buzzword,” said Schultz, who will sing a recital at the festival and appear in a semi-staged production of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.” “I appreciate their willingness to grapple with these issues. Someone has to take a risk, and it’s not going to be perfect.”Gerard Aimontche, a pianist of African and Russian descent who performed in the run-up to the festival this week, said it was important to make a special effort to feature Black and Latino artists, given the lack of diversity on the world’s top stages. Still, he added that he longed for a day when it would no longer be necessary to use terms like “diversity” at a festival.The pianist Gerard Aimontche performed in the run-up to the festival.Emil Matveev“For now, you have to provide a special introduction because otherwise no one would never know about us,” he said. “But I hope that in 50 years from now it will be different. Even if the whole orchestra consists of people of color, we will be just another orchestra, and people will come just like they do to hear any other orchestra.”On Tuesday evening, Lucerne’s main concert hall was filled with the sounds of the Chineke! Junior Orchestra, which performed pieces by the Black composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Stewart Goodyear, as well as a Tchaikovsky symphony. The auditorium was not full, but the orchestra was warmly received, with whistles and shouts of “Bravo!”During rehearsal, the Venezuelan conductor Glass Marcano, who led the concert, told the orchestra’s players that performing in Lucerne was a special opportunity. She took selfies with the orchestra and assured the musicians that they would rise to the occasion.In an interview, Marcano said that classical music would thrive only if it welcomed a wide range of voices.“We are presenting classical music in all its richness and diversity,” she said. “From now on, this should be seen as normal.” More

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      Lea Desandre Gives a Modern Voice to Early Music

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      The mezzo-soprano will sing with the Jupiter Ensemble in a concert of 17th-century Italian compositions at the Salzburg Festival.The mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, a member of the Jupiter Ensemble, does not distinguish between the Baroque era and the age of rock ’n’ roll.“We grew up with this music,” she said by video call from Montreal. “Just like we grew up with the Beatles and Amy Winehouse.”The 28-year-old has established herself as one of today’s most exciting voices in early-music performance. She also cultivates 18th- and 19th-century operatic repertoire from Mozart to Meyerbeer, at prominent houses such as Zurich Opera and the Paris Opera.The singer has appeared annually at the Salzburg Festival, on both the opera and concert stages, since 2018. On Saturday, she and musicians of Jupiter arrive at the Stiftung Mozarteum with the program “Lettres amoureuses” (“Love Letters”). The concert of 17th-century Italian music — which the group has thus far performed in France and the Netherlands — juxtaposes arias and instrumental music from well-known composers such as Monteverdi and Handel with exciting discoveries such as Tarquinio Merula and Andrea Falconieri.Ms. Desandre has sung at prominent houses on both sides of the Atlantic, from the Paris Opera to Carnegie Hall, above, where she took the stage with the Jupiter Ensemble. Jennifer TaylorMs. Desandre enjoys something of a symbiotic relationship with the ensemble, which was founded by the lute player Thomas Dunford in 2018. They joined forces last year for her first solo album, “Amazone,” exploring French and Italian repertoire written about the female warriors of Greek myth known as Amazons. Their next recording, scheduled for release this fall, is a lineup of numbers from Handel oratorios titled “Eternal Heaven.”Mr. Dunford, 34, promotes a democratic spirit, taking suggestions from members of the ensemble in the curation of programs. “It’s a bit like a jazz group in that way,” he said by phone from Montreal, where he and Ms. Desandre were on tour with the ensemble Les Arts Florissants (the two met performing with that group in 2015 and maintain a close relationship with its founder, William Christie). “It’s people who love spending time together and working on the music.”For Jupiter’s first album, “Vivaldi,” the members started a poll on Facebook asking about friends’ favorite arias. In another surprising twist, each of Jupiter’s albums ends with a newly composed surprise track: For “Amazone,” Mr. Dunford contributed “Amazones,” a song that addresses the importance of environmental consciousness.Mr. Dunford, a French native with American roots, cited Jordi Savall, a player of the viola da gamba (with whom both his parents studied), and Mr. Christie as among the trailblazers who set the stage for today’s generation of players. “The best lesson we can learn is to be authentic and passionate,” he said. “Because we don’t really know what Vivaldi sounded like [in his time] — we can just understand his music in a logical way and put our personalities into it.”Ms. Desandre contributes a particular affinity for Italian Baroque music. The singer, who is of French-Italian heritage, left the conservatory track to study with the contralto Sara Mingardo in Venice, who had access to unpublished manuscripts by Vivaldi, along with works by rarely heard composers.Spiritual songs by Tarquinio Merula quickly became a starting point for “Lettres amoureuses.” In “Hor ch’è tempo di dormire” (“Now That It’s Time to Sleep”), the text hovers between tenderness and violence as the Virgin Mary has a vision of Jesus’ crucifixion while rocking him as a baby.Ms. Desandre, who debuted at the Salzburg Festival in 2018, has particularly strong memories of singing the role of Despina in the 2020 production of “Così Fan Tutte,” above.Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockMs. Desandre compared the music to “a beating of the heart” or a kind of spiral. “She says ‘sleep peacefully,’ but she knows that something tragic is going to happen,” she explained.Her studies with Ms. Mingardo were based on a holistic, rather than technical, approach to vocal studies. At a certain point, Ms. Desandre said, she was advised to “go out and have a good time, find a boyfriend and live — so that you can transmit this experience onstage.”Further singer-mentors include Natalie Dessay (who inspired Ms. Desandre to enter the profession when she saw her on television at age 12), Vivica Genaux, Véronique Gens and Cecilia Bartoli. The latter two singers perform on “Amazone”; Mr. Christie also joins for an instrumental work by French composer Louis Couperin.“The album is a kind of homage to key people in my life,” Ms. Desandre said. The singer also personally chose the photographer, Julien Benhamou, who works with dancers at the Paris Opera, to create the cover art.This is also a nod to Ms. Desandre’s training as a ballerina, which she says allows her to let go physically onstage. “It is one of the best ingredients for singing,” she said. “To be anchored and not become mentally stressed.”For her Salzburg Festival debut in 2018, the director Jan Lauwers gave her full artistic freedom to dance onstage while singing the comprimario roles of Amore and Valletto in Monteverdi’s “L’incoronazione di Poppea.” The singer said that, if Paris was the city in which she was born and raised, Salzburg had become a “city of the heart, because I found a kind of family there — people who are willing to take risks with me.”A lover of nature, she also pointed to the city’s inspiring landscape. “To leave rehearsals and find oneself in front of a mountain and surrounded by greenery in five minutes is extremely nourishing,” she said. “These are moments of communion which allow us to connect with our energy, center ourselves and be very focused.”Singing the role of Despina in a production of Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” that took place at a scaled-down Salzburg Festival in August 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, remains a particularly strong memory. “There was an intensity during rehearsals,” she recalled. “Of remembering why we love to make music and be together.”A similar spirit drives the Jupiter Ensemble. The group’s members take the time to work on a program until it comes to full maturation, and they always live in the moment.“There are also the experiences we share offstage,” Ms. Desandre said. “Which means that when we perform, we take confidence in each other, we listen to each other, we adore each other. We want to share this happiness with the audience.” More

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      Climate Change Threatens Summer Stages and Outdoor Performances

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      ASHLAND, Ore. — Smoke from a raging wildfire in California prompted the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to cancel a recent performance of “The Tempest” at its open-air theater. Record flooding in St. Louis forced the cancellation of an outdoor performance of “Legally Blonde.” And after heat and smoke at an outdoor Pearl Jam concert in France damaged the throat of its lead singer, Eddie Vedder, the band canceled several shows.Around the world, rising temperatures, raging wildfires and extreme weather are imperiling whole communities. This summer, climate change is also endangering a treasured pastime: outdoor performance.Here in the Rogue Valley, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is seeing an existential threat from ever-more-common wildfires. In 2018 it canceled 25 performances because of wildfire smoke. In 2020, while the theater was shut down by the pandemic, a massive fire destroyed 2,600 local homes, including those of several staffers. When the festival reopened last year with a one-woman show about the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, wildfire smoke forced it to cancel almost every performance in August.“The problem is that in recent years there have been fires in British Columbia and in the mountains in Washington State and fires as far as Los Angeles,” said Nataki Garrett, the festival’s artistic director. “You have fire up and down the West Coast, and all of that is seeping into the valley.”Even before this year’s fire season began, the festival moved the nightly start time of its outdoor performances later because of extreme heat.Wildfires, which generate smoke that pollute air quality over long distances, have already begun burning this year in parts of Europe and the United States. In July, the Oak fire raged near Yosemite National Park.David McNew/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRecord rainfall in the St. Louis area caused flash flooding. Among the effects: The Muny, a major outdoor musical theater, had to cancel a performance of “Legally Blonde” because of flooding on its campus.Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressAshland is not the only outdoor theater canceling performances because of wildfires. Smoke or fire conditions have also prompted cancellations in recent years at the Butterfly Effect Theater of Colorado; the California Shakespeare Theater, known as Cal Shakes; the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Nevada and the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., among others.“We are one giant ecosystem, and what happens in one place affects everywhere,” said Robert K. Meya, the general director of the Santa Fe Opera, which stages open-air productions against a striking desert backdrop each summer, and which, in an era of massive wildfires near and far, has installed sensors to gauge whether it is safe to perform.The reports of worsening conditions come from wide swaths of the country. “Last summer was the hardest summer I’ve experienced out here, because fires came early, and coupled with that were pretty severe heat indexes,” said Kevin Asselin, executive artistic director of Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, which stages free performances in rural communities in five Rocky Mountain West states, and has increasingly been forced indoors. “And the hailstorms this year have been out of control.”Road signs in Ashland, Ore., guide drivers along wildfire evacuation routes.Kristina Barker for The New York TimesIn southern Ohio, a growing number of performances of an annual history play called “Tecumseh!” have been canceled because of heavy rain. In northwest Arkansas, rising heat is afflicting “The Great Passion Play,” an annual re-enactment of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. In Texas, record heat forced the Austin Symphony Orchestra to cancel several outdoor chamber concerts. And in western Massachusetts, at Tanglewood, the bucolic summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, more shade trees have been planted on the sweeping lawn to provide relief on hot days.“Changing weather patterns with more frequent and severe storms have altered the Tanglewood landscape on a scale not previously experienced,” the orchestra said in a statement.On Sunday, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of the nation’s first major climate law, which, if enacted into law, would seek to bring about major reductions in greenhouse pollution. Arts presenters, meanwhile, are grappling with how to preserve outdoor productions, both short-term and long-term, as the planet warms.“We’re in a world that we have never been in as a species, and we’re going into a world that is completely foreign and new and will be challenging us in ways we can only dimly see right now,” said Kim Cobb, the director of the environment and society institute at Brown University.The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is an important driver of the local economy, but smoke and heat associated with climate change have become a growing challenge.Kristina Barker for The New York TimesSome venues are taking elaborate precautions. The American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wis., now requires performers to wear wicking undergarments when the heat and humidity rise, encourages actors to consume second act sports drinks, and asks costume designers to eliminate wigs, jackets and other heavy outerwear on hot days.Many outdoor performing venues say that, even as they are bracing for the effects of climate change, they are also trying to limit the ways that they contribute to it. The Santa Fe Opera is investing in solar energy; the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is planting native meadows; and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is using electric vehicles.The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which before the pandemic had been one of the largest nonprofit theaters in the country, is, in many ways, patient zero. The theater is central to the local economy — the downtown features establishments with names like the Bard’s Inn and Salon Juliet. But the theater’s location, in the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon, has repeatedly been subject to high levels of wildfire smoke in recent years.At the Santa Fe Opera, which offers majestic desert views at sunset, concern about wildfire smoke prompted officials to install air quality sensors. Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesThe theater, like many, has installed air quality monitors — there’s one in a niche in the wall that encircles the audience in the open-air Allen Elizabethan Theater, where this summer “The Tempest” is alternating with a new musical called “Revenge Song.” The device is visible only to the keenest of eyes: a small cylindrical white gadget with lasers that count particles in the passing breeze.The theater also has a smoke team that holds a daily meeting during fire season, assessing whether to cancel or proceed. The theater’s director of production, Alys E. Holden, said that, ever since the time she opposed canceling a performance mid-show and later learned a technician had thrown up because of the air pollution, she has replaced her “show must go on” ethos with “If it’s too unsafe to play, you don’t play.”This year the festival reduced the number of outdoor performances scheduled in August — generally, but not always, the smokiest month.Air quality monitors, now in use at many Western venues including the Santa Fe Opera, can help presenters protect not only audience members but also performers. The opera is particularly concerned about its singers.Ramsay de Give for The New York Times“Actors are breathing in huge amounts of air to project out for hours — it’s not a trivial event to breathe this stuff in, and their voices are blown the next day if we blow the call,” Holden said. “So we are canceling to preserve everyone’s health, and to preserve the next show.”Wildfire-related air quality has become an issue for venues throughout the West. “It’s constantly on our mind, especially as fire season seems to start earlier and earlier,” said Ralph Flores, the senior program manager for theater and performance at the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has a 500-seat outdoor theater at the Getty Villa.Air quality concerns sometimes surprise patrons on days when pollution is present, but can’t be readily smelled or seen.“The idea that outdoor performance would be affected or disrupted by what’s happening with the Air Quality Index is still a fairly new and forward concept to a lot of people,” said Stephen Weitz, the producing artistic director at the Butterfly Effect Theater of Colorado, which stages free shows in parks and parking lots. Last summer the theater had to cancel a performance because of poor air quality caused by a faraway fire.The coronavirus pandemic also remains a concern, prompting crew members in Santa Fe to wear masks as they met before a performance of Bizet’s “Carmen.”Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesAnother theater there, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, is now working with scientists at the affiliated University of Colorado Boulder on monitoring and health protocols after a fire more than a thousand miles away in Oregon polluted the local air badly enough to force a show cancellation last summer. Tim Orr, the festival’s producing artistic director, recalled breaking the news to the audience.“The looks on their faces were surprise, and shock, but a lot of people came up and said ‘Thank you for making the right choice,’” he said. “And when I stepped offstage, I thought, ‘Is this going to be a regular part of our future?’”Planning for the future, for venues that present out of doors, now invariably means thinking about climate change.The Santa Fe Opera’s stunning outdoor location is one of its great attributes, but also makes it vulnerable to climate change.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesOskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which produces Free Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park, said that the 2021 summer season, when the theater reopened after the pandemic shutdown, was the rainiest in his two decades there. “I could imagine performing more in the fall and spring, and less in the summer,” he said.In some places, theater leaders are already envisioning a future in which performances all move indoors.“We’re not going to have outdoor theater in Boise forever — I don’t think there’s a chance of that,” said Charles Fee, who is the producing artistic director of three collaborating nonprofits: the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland. Fee has asked the Idaho board to plan for an indoor theater in Boise.“Once it’s 110 degrees at 6 o’clock at night, and we have these occasionally already, people are sick,” he said. “You can’t do the big Shakespeare fight, you can’t do the dances in ‘Mamma Mia.’ And you can’t do that to an audience.” More