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      Peek at Broadway Comeback: Times Event With “Me and the Sky”

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      When The Times staged a musical number for its live event series, the performance served as a sneak preview of a theater world preparing for takeoff.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In March, Zoe Gertz, an Australian actress, was asked by The New York Times if she would be interested in singing the soaring anthem “Me and the Sky” for an episode of its Offstage event series, which examines the theater industry during its pandemic hiatus. The number is from the Australian touring production of the 9/11 musical “Come From Away.”After teams worked on in-house music and stage direction, Ms. Gertz belted the ebullient anthem to the rafters of a simple stage at Her Majesty’s Theater in Melbourne, sans audience but backed by six musicians and five castmates of the production’s female ensemble. And it all came together in just over two weeks.“I am suddenly aliiiiiive,” Ms. Gertz sang with an irrepressible smile as she told of her character’s love for flying.The sentiment seems to be spreading. Broadway’s reopening will now occur in August. In Australia, “Frozen,” “Hamilton” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” were running at or near full capacity in Sydney and Melbourne for months (though masks were still required) until a recent lockdown in Melbourne put shows in that city on hold again. The performance for the Times event served as both a reminder of theater’s vitality during the pandemic and a preview of the energy to come.The musical number began to take shape in early March after The Times’s theater reporter, Michael Paulson, suggested recording a special video of the inspirational song for the Offstage series, which streamed live on April 29 and is still viewable by Times subscribers.“We wanted a song that was both good and would make sense out of context for people who hadn’t seen the show,” Mr. Paulson said. “It’s also a song that works without a very elaborate band or orchestra and is essentially a solo number.”The four-and-a-half-minute track chronicles the tale of the real-life American Airlines pilot Beverley Bass, who was among the pilots with planes full of passengers who were diverted to Newfoundland on Sept. 11, 2001.“One of the many emotions captured in this song is Beverley having to come to terms with the job she loves being put on hold, and not knowing when she might fly again,” said Rachel Karpf, the director of programming at The Times who helped plan the event with Beth Weinstein and Rachel Czipo. “We saw some parallels to the experience of theater workers in Australia and around the world this past year, as their industry was brought to a near-total standstill by the pandemic.”Ms. Karpf said the Events team began discussing ideas for the episode in early January with Mr. Paulson; Scott Heller, then The Times’s theater editor; and Damien Cave, the Sydney bureau chief. Mr. Cave and Mr. Paulson were working on a story about the return of Broadway shows in Australia, which has been much more successful at containing the virus than the United States. More

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      Some Venue Owners Get a Federal Lifeline. Others Are Told They’re Dead.

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      The first applications for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, offering $16 billion in federal aid, were approved.As the emails finally started arriving late last week, some business owners got the good news they had been long awaiting: They would be awarded a piece of a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic.But other applicants ran into fresh obstacles — including the discovery that the government thinks they’re dead. It was the latest bureaucratic mishap for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, an aid program created by Congress late last year that has struggled at nearly every turn to disburse badly needed relief funds.Derek Sitter, the owner of the Volcanic Theater Pub, a 250-capacity music and performance venue in Bend, Ore., was at home on Saturday watching a British soccer game when an alert popped up on his phone: “Congratulations,” ran the subject line of an email from the Small Business Administration, which manages the grant program.Mr. Sitter ran outside to tell his wife and daughter the news, with tears swelling in his eyes. “My heart rate increased,” he recalled in an interview. “But it was a good increase.”The Volcanic was awarded about $140,000, Mr. Sitter said, though the funds have not yet arrived. (The size of the grant is pegged at 45 percent of a venue’s gross revenue from 2019.) Just how many venues have learned that their applications have been approved is unclear, but members of the network of small venues — which became a tightly connected hive during the pandemic — say they have heard of only a few so far. The Small Business Administration has not released details on how many claims it has approved.Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, is stuck in bureaucratic limbo. Bob Hansan, the venue’s managing partner, said that his application was stalled because the government thinks he is dead. Charles King/C King MediaOther applicants got grimmer news. Bob Hansan, the managing partner of Bobby McKey’s, a piano bar near Washington, received a cryptic email Tuesday afternoon that began: “Your name appears on the Do Not Pay list with the Match Source DMF.”A few minutes of frantic Googling revealed that was a reference to the government’s Death Master File, a record of more than 83 million people whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration.Mr. Hansan immediately called Social Security’s headquarters, which referred him to his local office, which told Mr. Hansan that they could find no record of his name anywhere on the death list. The office agreed to send him a form affirming that he’s alive, but the document can only be sent by mail, he was told — a process he worries will be slow.“It’s this continual drip-drop of delays,” he said.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York — and a prominent figure in the independent music world — also received notification early Wednesday that he was considered dead, and said that he was beside himself trying to understand how to correct the error.“What do I do? What kind of proof do they need?” Mr. Swier said. “Can I say over the phone, ‘It’s me’?”Representatives of the Small Business Administration did not answer questions about the erroneous death data.Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, was told he was considered dead. (He is alive.) “What do I do?” he asked. “What kind of proof do they need?”Michal Czerwonka for The New York TimesThe glitches were the latest to bedevil the program, which has suffered many delays, including a complete failure of its online system on the day it tried to start taking applications. (The application system finally opened in late April.)Some 13,000 people applied, seeking a total of $11 billion. The Small Business Administration has not yet released details on how many it has approved.In Facebook groups and on Twitter, frantic business owners have been swapping tips and trying to glean where in the application process their own claim might be.Some venues are beginning to get good news.Hugh Hallinan, the executive producer of Downtown Cabaret Theater, a nonprofit venue in Bridgeport, Conn., spent weeks checking the S.B.A.’s grant portal each day, and last Thursday learned that his theater had been approved for a $541,000 grant.On Tuesday the theater held a news conference with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.“We’ve been in Bridgeport for 41 years, and we’ve never gotten recognition like this,” Mr. Hallinan said in an interview. “I just thought, ‘We’re going to soak it all up right now. We’re going to bask in it.’”Downtown Cabaret came close to shutting down last year. Downtown Cabaret Theater, in Bridgeport, Conn., which came close to shutting down, learned that it had been approved for a $541,000 grant. Richard Pettibone“If all patrons who had tickets called in and said, ‘I need a refund,’ it was game-over time,” Mr. Hallinan said. Instead, many opted for a credit on their account, and about a third of donated the cost of their tickets back to the venue, Mr. Hallinan said.The funding has not yet started flowing to Broadway. A spokeswoman for the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said that none of its members had notified the group about receiving application approvals. Charlotte St. Martin, the group’s president, had said last month that officials had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of May, but that deadline has now passed.And several major performing arts organizations in New York City that are planning summer or fall reopenings are also still waiting. Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, the Public Theater and the Metropolitan Opera have not yet heard. Many will not be eligible until a later round of awards.Mr. Sitter, in Oregon, said he had no idea why the Volcanic got its award so early. Like many applicants, it had lost at least 90 percent of its revenue during the pandemic, which qualified the Volcanic for the first round of grants. Others who lost less will be eligible for awards in mid- to late June.The Volcanic received some federal money last year from an earlier round of federal pandemic relief. That got it through 2020, Mr. Sitter said. But by last month, the Volcanic was down to its last few thousand dollars, not enough to cover its rent and monthly bills for June, Mr. Sitter said. He was considering whether to sell or shut it down.With the shuttered venue grant, the Volcanic can stay open until next year, when Mr. Sitter expects its pipeline of shows to be back to normal. This weekend, it is planning to put on its first shows since last summer, at 50 percent capacity.“There’s certainly not a lot of profit going to be made here,” Mr. Sitter said. “This is simply to lift the spirits of people, to say, ‘We can kind of do this, we’re doing good, and there is a way out.’” More

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      in Movies

      Lines Never Felt So Good: Crowds Herald New York’s Reopening

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      Museums broke attendance records, movie theaters sold out and jazz fans packed clubs on a Memorial Day weekend that felt far removed from the prior year’s pandemic traumas.The line outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art trailed out the door, down the rain-swept stairs, around the trees and past the fountain and the hot-dog stands on Fifth Avenue as visitors waited under dripping umbrellas. They were among more than 10,000 people who had the same idea for how to fill a rainy Sunday in New York City, turning the holiday weekend into the museum’s busiest since the start of the pandemic.In Greenwich Village, jazz fans lined up to get into Smalls, a dimly lit basement club with a low-ceiling where they could bop their heads and tap their feet to live music. All five limited capacity screenings of Fellini’s “8 ½” sold out on Monday at the Film Forum on Houston Street, and when the Comedy Cellar sold out five shows, it added a sixth.If the rainy, chilly Memorial Day weekend meant that barbecues and beach trips were called off, it revived another kind of New York rainy-day tradition: lining up to see art, hear music and catch films, in a way that felt liberating after more than a year of the pandemic. The rising number of vaccinated New Yorkers, coupled with the recent easing of many coronavirus restrictions, made for a dramatic and happy change from Memorial Day last year, when museums sat eerily empty, nightclubs were silenced, and faded, outdated posters slowly yellowed outside shuttered movie theaters.Most museums are still requiring patrons to be masked.Lila Barth for The New York TimesFor Piper Barron, 18, the return to the movies felt surprisingly normal.“It kind of just felt like the pandemic hadn’t happened,” she said.Standing under the marquee of Cobble Hill Cinemas in Brooklyn, Barron and three friends who had recently graduated high school waited to see “Cruella,” the new Emma Stone movie about the “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” villain. Before the pandemic, the group was in the habit of seeing movies together on Fridays after school, but that tradition was put on hold during the pandemic.“We haven’t done that in a long time — but here we are,” said Patrick Martin, 18. “It’s a milestone.”In recent weeks, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has relaxed many of the coronavirus restrictions that limit culture and entertainment, and Memorial Day weekend was one of the first opportunities for venues to try out the new rules, with a growing numbers of tourists and vaccinated New Yorkers looking forward to a summer of activity.The Met is drawing twice as many visitors as it did two months ago.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAt the Met, Saturday and Sunday each drew more than 10,000 visitors, a record for the museum during the pandemic, and roughly double what it was logging two months ago, before the state loosened capacity restrictions, said Kenneth Weine, a spokesman for the museum.Despite the near-constant rain, museum visitors and moviegoers agreed: this was much better than whatever they did over Memorial Day weekend last year. (“Nothing, just stayed home,” recalled Sharon Lebowitz, who visited the Met on Sunday with her brother.)And when the sun emerged on Monday, people did too, with the High Line in Chelsea drawing crowds that rivaled the old days.Of course, the pandemic is not yet over: an average of 383 cases per day are being reported in New York City, but that is a 47 percent decrease from the average two weeks ago. And there were physical reminders of the pandemic everywhere. At Cobble Hill Cinemas, there were temperature checks and a guarantee that each occupied seat would have four empty ones surrounding it. At the Met, a security staffer asked visitors waiting in line for the popular Alice Neel exhibition to stand further apart from each other.At the Met, visitors waiting in line to see its popular Alice Neel exhibition were asked by a security guard to stand further apart from each other.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAnd, everywhere, there were masks, even though Mr. Cuomo lifted the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals in most circumstances earlier this month. Most museums in the city are maintaining mask rules for now, recognizing that not all visitors would be comfortable being surrounded by a sea of naked faces.“It’s certainly not all back to normal,” said Steven Ostrow, 70, who was examining Cypriot antiquities at the Met.“If it was, we wouldn’t be looking like Bazooka Joe,” he added, referring to a bubble gum-wrapper comic strip, which has a character whose turtleneck is pulled high up over his mouth, mask-like.And at the Museum of Modern Art, the gift shop was offering masks on sale for up to 35 percent off, perhaps a sign that the precaution could be on the way out.Smalls Jazz Club, in Greenwich Village, drew a crowd to hear Peter Bernstein on the guitar, Kyle Koehler on the organ, and Fukushi Tainaka on the drums, with the saxophonist Nick Hempton.Lila Barth for The New York TimesAlthough the state lifted explicit capacity limits for museums and other cultural venues, it still requires six feet of separation indoors, which means that many museums have set their own limits on how many tickets can be sold each hour. And some have retained the capacity limits of previous months, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which has capped visitors at 50 percent, and El Museo del Barrio, which remains at 33 percent.Venues that only allow vaccinated guests can dispense with social distancing requirements, which is proving a tempting option for venue owners eager to pack their small spaces. And there seems to be no shortage of vaccinated audience members: On Monday, the Comedy Cellar, which is selling tickets to vaccinated people and those with a negative coronavirus test taken within 24 hours, had to add an extra show because there was such high demand.No one was more pleased to see lines of visitors than the venue owners, who spent the past year eating through their savings, laying off staff and waiting anxiously for federal pandemic relief.Lila Barth for The New York TimesLila Barth for The New York TimesHaving Smalls back open was a relief to its owner, Spike Wilner. “It feels like some kind of Tolstoy novel: there’s the crash and the redemption and then the renewal,” he said.   Lila Barth for The New York TimesDuring the lockdown, Andrew Elgart, whose family owns Cobble Hill Cinemas, said he would sometimes watch movies alone in the theater with only his terrier for company (no popcorn, though — it was too much work to reboot the machine). Reopening to the public was nothing short of therapeutic, he said, especially because most people seemed grateful to simply be there.“These are the most polite and patient customers we’ve had in a long time,” he said.Reopening has been slower for music venues, which tend to book talent months in advance, and who say the economics of reopening with social distancing restrictions is impractical.Those capacity limits and social distancing requirements have kept most jazz clubs in the city closed for now, but Smalls, in the Village, is an exception. In fact, the club was so eager to reopen at any capacity level that it tried to briefly in February, positioning itself primarily as a bar and restaurant with incidental music, said the club’s owner, Spike Wilner. That decision resulted in a steep fine and ongoing red tape, he said.Still, for Wilner, there was no comparison between this year and last, when he was “in hiding” in a rented home in Pennsylvania with his wife and young daughter.“It feels like some kind of Tolstoy novel: there’s the crash and the redemption and then the renewal,” he said as he shepherded audience members into the jazz club. “Honestly, I feel positive for the first time. I’m just relieved to be working and making some money.” More

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      John Davis, a Voice Behind Milli Vanilli, Dies at 66

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      The singer was one of the voices behind the pop duo Milli Vanilli, fronted by Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, who later admitted that they did not sing on their albums or in concert.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.John Davis, one of the real voices behind the lip-syncing duo Milli Vanilli, died in Nuremberg, Germany, on Monday. He was 66.His daughter, Jasmin Davis, who confirmed the news of his death on Facebook, said he had Covid-19.While living in Germany, Mr. Davis started unknowingly singing for Milli Vanilli in the 1980s after he met Frank Farian, a German music producer. Mr. Farian asked Mr. Davis to work on a project, but he did not disclose that his voice would be used for others to lip-sync, Mr. Davis told The Hustle podcast on an episode posted in April.Only later would he discover that his voice was being used by Fabrice Morvan, one-half of the pop duo Milli Vanilli, with Rob Pilatus.“The truth is, I signed a contract with Frank Farian before I even knew who Milli Vanilli was,” Mr. Davis said. “One evening, I was sitting at home watching my TV, and I saw Fab singing ‘Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.’”Milli Vanilli was best known for hits like “I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Girl You Know It’s True,” and won the Grammy for best new artist in 1989.By 1990, Milli Vanilli’s work had sold more than seven million copies, but after Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus admitted that they did not actually sing on Milli Vanilli’s albums or in concerts, they were stripped of the award.Mr. Morvan and Mr. Pilatus then told The Los Angeles Times that they wanted to give the award to those who actually voiced their work, including Mr. Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw.“I didn’t want the Grammy because it was their faces and our voices,” Mr. Davis said. “I was mad.”Mr. Pilatus died in 1998, but Mr. Davis and Mr. Morvan later had an amicable relationship and even performed together.On Friday, Mr. Morvan shared a video with pictures of him performing with Mr. Davis.“Your golden voice will continue to be heard, you best believe that those classic records will live just like you eternally,” Mr. Morvan said on Twitter.Additional details about survivors were not immediately available on Saturday.Mr. Davis, who was born on Aug. 31, 1954, in Anderson, S.C., was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army and stayed there for much of his life, he told The Hustle podcast.In Germany, Mr. Davis found many opportunities to play in Army clubs in the 1970s, he told the podcast.Mr. Davis said he learned how to play music from his father, a choir director who played piano and guitar.“My one mission I had on this earth was to become a musician and to play music,” Mr. Davis said.Those We’ve LostThe coronavirus pandemic has taken an incalculable death toll. This series is designed to put names and faces to the numbers. More

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      A Beloved London Concert Hall Grows Bold as It Turns 120

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      Smart choices in the pandemic mean that the Wigmore Hall is reopening in a more confident position than many other British venues.LONDON — “Welcome!” said John Gilhooly, the general director of the Wigmore Hall, standing in front of the auditorium’s small circular stage. The audience applauded wildly — for a crowd of chamber music fans.It was May 23, and the first Sunday morning concert since the pandemic had closed down the hall last March. “I like to choose something special for each performance,” said Gilhooly, 47. “The Elgar Quintet you will hear today was premiered in this hall on the 21st of May, 1919, when the country was coming out of another major crisis.”The Wigmore is emerging from its most recent crisis with aplomb. As an early adopter of livestreamed concerts at the beginning of the pandemic, it won large dividends of good will and public donations. Whereas many small performing venues in Britain are reopening nervously after six months of forced closure, the Wigmore Hall is confidently poised to celebrate its 120th anniversary with an ambitious program, starting Sunday.The hall has occupied a special place in music lovers’ hearts since 1901, when it was opened as a recital hall by the German piano manufacturer Bechstein, which had a showroom next door. The discreet wooden doors under an art nouveau canopy that lead into the 540-seat hall, with its red plush seats, marble, gilt and dark wood panels, are a portal to another era.Probably the most important chamber-music venue in Britain, the Wigmore has an intensely loyal London audience that filled the hall for most of the 500-plus concerts a year it was staging before last March.The German piano manufacturer Bechstein opened the Wigmore Hall as a recital space in 1901.Kaupo Kikkas, via Wigmore HallJohn Gilhooly, the hall’s general director, became its executive director at 27 and took the top job five years later.via Wigmore HallBut even the best-loved British concert halls and theaters have been in peril since the onset of the pandemic, with revenues reduced to zero, costs still to be met and anxieties about the future running high. Live shows for reduced audiences opened briefly in the fall, only to close again in early December. Venues then remained shut until May 17, when they were allowed to open with limited capacity.If all goes according to plan — and given concern about new coronavirus variants circulating in Britain, it might not — full houses will be possible after June 21, according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Even then, most halls won’t open at full capacity.“It has been a much longer and more intense struggle than any of us had feared,” said Gillian Moore, the director of music at the Southbank Center, a London performing arts complex. “The economics are really challenging, but we can’t immediately go to full audiences, because we need to see how everything will work logistically.”Gilhooly, who was born in Limerick, Ireland, and trained there as a singer, became the executive director of the Wigmore Hall at 27 and then its general director five years later. And while he might not give the impression of a risk-taker, throughout the pandemic he has been decisive about getting musicians into the hall — many of them famous, but some lesser-known — and daring in his programming.Beginning last June, the Wigmore Hall presented free daily concerts from the empty hall, livestreamed by the BBC. Over the past year, through opening up and locking down, the Wigmore has streamed 250 programs by 400 artists, including major London-based artists like Mitsuko Uchida, Iestyn Davies and Stephen Hough. The concerts were acclaimed by classical music enthusiasts as a beacon of light in a somber time.“People wrote to me from all over the world,” said Hough, whose opening recital on June 1 garnered about 800,000 live views. “The return of live music was a symbol, like Myra Hess giving concerts at the National Gallery during World War II.”The Wigmore was able to get off the starting blocks quicker than most because Gilhooly and his board had invested in sophisticated cameras and recording equipment in 2015, when they began to broadcast a concert every month. It was a quietly progressive step for an organization that exudes an air of staid tradition, and last year’s decision to broadcast free concerts even more so.Mitsuko Uchida perfroming at the Wigmore Hall in March.via Wigmore HallThe Wigmore receives a subsidy of 300,000 pounds from the British state, but raises most of its own £8 million — about $11 million. It gets just over half of its income from the box office (when there isn’t a pandemic), and most of the rest from fund-raising.“The Wigmore have been fantastic leaders in terms of online activity,” said Kevin Appleby, the concert hall manager at the 350-seat Turner Sims in Southhampton, England. “But there is the inevitable question of how you monetize it.”“Do you keep the online model? A hybrid model?” Appleby added. “Will part of the audience, especially older people, not come back if they can watch at home?”Gilhooly said that even though the livestreamed concerts were free to watch, they had brought money and attention to the hall. The recitals have had about seven million views online from around the world, and grateful contributions have poured in: “a million pounds in £20 increments, and quite a few bigger amounts from individuals and foundations,” Gilhooly said. The Wigmore hall’s paying membership has increased from 10,000 to 15,000, and it now has 400,000 people on its mailing list.The soprano Gweneth Ann Rand, one of the Wigmore Hall’s associate artists, performing in the auditorium in October 2020.via Wigmore HallThis growth was wasn’t hampered, Gilhooly said, by more adventurous programming, including the work of the little-known Black American composer Julius Eastman and concerts by contemporary music groups like the Hermes Experiment and Riot Ensemble. “I lost fear about people objecting to more experimental programs, because I wasn’t having that direct contact with audiences,” he said, adding that regular subscribers whom he considered musically conservative often liked those concerts.To mark the hall’s upcoming anniversary, Gilhooly recently announced the appointment of nine new associate artists, including sarod players, viola players, saxophonists and a performer of the sarod, an Indian stringed instrument. He also outlined plans for a series of concerts focusing on music from Africa.“He is introducing the audience to new musical worlds, which takes knowledge, courage and vision,” said Gweneth Ann Rand, a soprano who is one of the new associates.Yet none of these innovations and successes will necessarily shield the Wigmore Hall from the uncertainty around the future of the performing arts in postpandemic Britain. As Angela Dixon, the chief executive of the Saffron Hall, a 740-seat concert space in southern England, put it, “You end up spending money in order to be open.” Social distancing rules mean that the Saffron Hall can only sell a fraction of its seats.“When you are reliant on people buying tickets for half your annual expenditure, you can’t afford to let people forget about you,” she said.A socially distanced audience in the venue in September 2020. At full capacity, it seats 540 people.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGilhooly said that his core audience was mostly vaccinated and returning to in-person concerts. (Because of social distancing, demand now outstrips availability, and tickets are being allocated by ballot). But he concurred that if the June 21 opening up is pushed out much further, classical music in Britain will be in trouble. “There has been so much suffering in the industry already,” he said, “particularly for freelancers who fell between the cracks.”For the start of the Wigmore Hall’s 2021-22 season in September, Gilhooly said he had “A, B, C and D scenarios.”“The best-case going forward,” he said, “is that we open on Sept. 1 with full houses and a really ambitious eclectic season. Our stage is a tiny space, but a place I can dream up huge ideas.” More

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      10 Classical Concerts to Stream in June

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      The Met Orchestra’s return, an opera from Paris and a Philip Glass circus work are among the highlights.With in-person performances just beginning to return in many places, here are 10 highlights of the online music content coming in June. (Times listed are Eastern.)Dallas Symphony Orchestra/Met OrchestraAvailable through June 4; dallassymphony.org.One of the most dramatic musical coups of the pandemic came a month ago, when players from the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra — which went unpaid for nearly a year — traveled to Texas to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for benefit performances of Mahler’s First Symphony. It was a reunion with Fabio Luisi, who was the Met’s principal conductor for more than five years and is now the music director in Dallas. The filmed result is fresh, vivid and cumulatively quite moving. ZACHARY WOOLFE‘Circus Days and Nights’June 1 at noon; malmoopera.se; there are several more livestreamed performances through June 13.Circus juggling was one of the highlights of Phelim McDermott’s recent staging of Philip Glass’s opera “Akhnaten.” Might that have given Glass a new idea? Whether it’s coincidence or not, his latest stage work — a collaboration with the librettist David Henry Hwang and the circus director Tilde Bjorfors — is being advertised as a “never-before-seen fusion of circus and opera,” streamed live from the Malmo Opera in Sweden. SETH COLTER WALLS‘Desert In’June 3 at noon; operabox.tv; available indefinitely.Filmed opera continues to take pandemic-prompted steps forward, including this pivot to episodic narrative. Available on Boston Lyric Opera’s operabox.tv platform, “Desert In” is an eight-part mini-series in which a married couple runs what is described as “a mysterious motor lodge where guests pay to be reunited with lost loves.” (The episodes, projected to last between 10 and 20 minutes each, will roll out on a weekly basis, two at a time.) The rotating creative team is promising, with composers like Nathalie Joachim and Nico Muhly taking turns writing episodes, for a cast that includes the star mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and the cabaret performer Justin Vivian Bond. SETH COLTER WALLSDetroit Symphony OrchestraJune 3 and 4 at 7:30 p.m.; dso.org; available through June 17 and 18.Kent Nagano, an insightful and dynamic conductor, is presenting two 45-minute programs with the Detroit Symphony — both of which, in characteristic Nagano style, offer intriguing pairings of old and new. On June 3 he leads Toshio Hosokawa’s Percussion Intermezzo from “Stilles Meer,” an opera written in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, alongside Schubert’s ebullient Fifth Symphony. The next day he pairs Britten’s “Fanfare for St. Edmundsbury” with Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memory of Britten,” before concluding with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, with the elegant pianist Gilles Vonsattel as soloist. ANTHONY TOMMASINIAdam Barnett-Hart of the Escher String Quartet, which livestreams a program of Bartok and Sibelius on June 10.Ian Douglas for The New York TimesEscher String QuartetJune 10 at 7:30 p.m.; chambermusicsociety.org; available through June 17.Scheduled for December of last year, before the pandemic intervened, the exciting Escher String Quartet performs live from the Rose Studio under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The program opens with Bartok’s final quartet, first performed in 1941 and a work that arrestingly combines aching grief — his mother died and World War II was grimly unfolding — with teeming intensity. The concert ends with Sibelius’s unconventional and engrossing “Voces Intimae” in five movements, written in 1909. It’s the “kind of thing,” Sibelius wrote of this work, that “brings a smile to your lips at the hour of death.” ANTHONY TOMMASINIKronos FestivalJune 11 at 10 p.m.; kronosquartet.org; available through Aug. 31.Global in scope, this is the first of three meaty streamed programs which, together with some ancillary offerings and films, make up this intriguing festival of new work presented by the Kronos Quartet and its creative foundation. The premieres include music by Nicole Lizée, Soo Yeon Lyuh, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté and Mahsa Vahdat; other pieces are by Clint Mansell, Jlin and Pete Seeger (his sadly ever-relevant “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”). ZACHARY WOOLFE‘Le Soulier de Satin’June 14; chezsoi.operadeparis.fr; available indefinitely.As the summer sun invites you outside, the last thing you may want is to stare at a screen for over six hours. But if you have the patience — or if a rainy day keeps you indoors — set aside time for the Paris Opera’s latest premiere: the third in its cycle of works inspired by French literature, as well as Marc-André Dalbavie’s third opera. It’s an adaptation of Paul Claudel’s sprawling drama “Le Soulier de Satin” (“The Satin Slipper”) — in preview clips rich with misty orchestration and long melodies — directed by Stanislas Nordey, conducted by its composer and starring the bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni and the mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux. JOSHUA BARONE‘Terra Nova’June 17 at 7:30 p.m.; 5bmf.org; available through Dec. 31.Those passing by the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch at Grand Army Plaza on a hot recent Saturday afternoon could experience an unexpectedly sophisticated new song cycle musing on the tangled history of exploration and colonization. Written by the bookish performer-composer collective Oracle Hysterical and played with the quartet Hub New Music, the sometimes propulsive, sometimes sultry music was superb when Majel Connery was airily singing, and foundered only in two long, talky sections at the end. It will be released for streaming in a version filmed at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art on Staten Island. ZACHARY WOOLFETo close her time as composer in residence at the Chicago Symphony, Missy Mazzoli has planned two streaming concerts.Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesCSO SessionsJune 24 at 12:01 a.m.; cso.org/tv; available through July 23.Missy Mazzoli closes her tenure as the Chicago Symphony’s composer in residence with two rich streaming programs of new and recent music. This, the second of the concerts, includes the premiere of Courtney Bryan’s “Requiem,” which draws on different mourning traditions and is scored for vocal quartet, winds, brass and percussion; there are also works by Gilda Lyons, David Reminick and Tomeka Reid on offer. (The first program, which goes online June 10, is no slouch, either, featuring pieces by Nicole Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith and Mazzoli herself.) ZACHARY WOOLFEPhilharmonia OrchestraJune 24 and 25 at 2:30 p.m.; philharmonia.co.uk; available until Sept. 16 and 17.One of the great partnerships in music — the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the excellent Philharmonia Orchestra in London — ends in June with Salonen’s final concerts as principal conductor. (Rest assured, the group seems in good hands with his successor, Santtu-Matias Rouvali.) Both programs are meaty affairs: one beginning with Beethoven’s First Symphony and ending with Sibelius’s Seventh, bookends to Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto (with Yefim Bronfman) and Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments”; and the other surveying Bach through the eyes of 20th-century artists, along with the premiere of Salonen’s “Fog,” adapted for orchestra, and Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, with Mitsuko Uchida the tantalizing soloist. JOSHUA BARONE More

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      Taiwan Was a Covid Haven for Performers. Then Cases Flared.

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      One of the few places where performances continued steadily for much of the pandemic has had to shut down theaters just as they are reopening elsewhere.TAIPEI, Taiwan — For much of the past year, Taiwan has been a sanctuary for performing artists, the rare almost-Covid-free place where audiences could cram into concert halls to hear live music and sip coffee together at intermission.The island played host to modern dance festivals, full-fledged productions of “La Traviata” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” and a recital of Bach’s cello suites by Yo-Yo Ma, which was attended by more than 4,000 people.But a recent surge in cases — Taiwan’s worst outbreak since the start of the pandemic — has brought a halt to cultural life on the island, forcing performing arts centers, concert halls and museums to shutter just as they are coming back to life in the rest of the world.Performers from Taiwan and abroad have been caught in the middle, grappling with lost income and an avalanche of canceled engagements.“Everything blew up,” said the American clarinetist Charles Neidich, who recently made the 7,781-mile trip from New York to Taipei only to have his first live performance in more than 400 days canceled.Neidich, who had been engaged to play a clarinet concerto by the American composer John Corigliano with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, endured two weeks of hotel quarantine, one of the strict measures that had helped Taiwan tame the virus. Then Taipei went into a state of semi-lockdown last week, so he packed up and went home.“This is my non-adventure,” he said.The outbreak, coming as the government’s vaccination program has gotten off to a slow start, is forcing Taipei to shut down just as other cities around the world are finally reopening. In London, the theaters of the West End brought up their curtains last week. Officials in New York announced that Radio City Music Hall would soon allow full capacity, maskless crowds back inside, as long as they have been vaccinated.The American clarinetist Charles Neidich flew from New York to Taipei to give his first live performance in more than a year, but the concert was canceled.I-Hwa Cheng for The New York TimesTaiwan’s experience is a reminder of the ongoing uncertainty of life in the pandemic, the threat posed by the virus and its power to upset even the most carefully crafted of plans. Semi-staged performances of Verdi’s “Falstaff” have been called off. The French musical “Notre Dame de Paris” has been postponed.Even though the number of cases in Taiwan is low compared with many parts of the world — 283 cases were reported on Tuesday, fewer than in New York City — the authorities are doubling down on restrictions, hoping that lockdowns can bring the virus under control within weeks or months as Taiwan tries to speed its lumbering vaccine rollout.Artists are optimistic that concerts, dances, plays and museum exhibitions will soon return.“This is a place used to earthquakes and typhoons,” said Lin Hwai-min, the founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theater, a contemporary dance troupe, which has delayed performances until later in the summer. “The crisis comes, you deal with it and you come back to restore everything.”Over the past year Cloud Gate has suffered financially from the cancellations of its planned tours to the United States and Europe. But with infections near zero in Taiwan and residents hungry for entertainment, the company has offset those losses with strong demand at home, premiering new works before sold-out crowds.“It used to be so surreal that we could perform,” Lin said. “Now for the first time we are confronting the reality of the virus, like our peers in Western countries.”Taiwan’s closing of its borders early in the pandemic and its strict public health measures, including mask mandates and extensive contact tracing, turned the island of 23.5 million into a coronavirus success story. But the emergence of more contagious variants in recent months, a relaxation of quarantine rules and a vaccine shortage gave the virus an opening.Before that, the lack of widespread transmission in Taiwan made it easier for performance venues to operate near full capacity. And theaters and concert halls enforced tough public health measures that have been adjusted depending on the number of confirmed cases.At many venues, attendees were required to provide their names and phone numbers to be used for tracing in case of an outbreak. Masks and temperature checks were required. Some concert halls barred the selling of food and drinks. Seats at some spaces were staggered to resemble flowers, in an arrangement that came to be known in Taiwan as “plum blossom seating.”Despite the vigilance, there were occasional scares. More than a hundred people were forced to quarantine in March of last year after coming into contact with the Australian composer Brett Dean, who tested positive for the virus after performing in Taiwan. The incident was front-page news in Taiwan, with some people fuming that Dean — whose “Hamlet” is scheduled at the Metropolitan Opera in New York next season — had been allowed to perform even though he had a cough.Lydia Kuo, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, which collaborated with Dean, said the scare taught the orchestra the importance of maintaining strict health measures even when infections were near zero.“We were facing an unknown enemy,” she said. “We were lucky to face this reality very early.”Taiwan’s still-active cultural scene attracted talent from around the world over the past year when many artists were without stable work and confined at home. There were visits by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the German organist Felix Hell, and Ma, the renowned cellist, who chartered a flight to the island for a tour in November.Many musicians with roots in Taiwan have also returned, some for an extended visit. Ray Chen, a violinist, came back in August at the urging of his family and has taken part in about 20 live concerts, master classes and music education outreach events since then. He said he was struck by the care people showed toward one another and the widespread adherence to public health rules, even when Taiwan went months without any reported infections.“Everyone is willing to play a part,” Chen said. “Everyone values life.”Taiwan’s strict approach has not been popular in all corners of the artistic world. After the outbreak this month, some artists questioned the government’s decision to close performance venues, concerned that it would hurt performers’ income.Lang Tsu-yun, a Taiwanese actress who leads a theater troupe, provoked controversy when she suggested, in a sharply worded Facebook post, that the restrictions would be devastating to arts groups.“Do you know how long we rehearse?” Lang wrote. “Do you know how many of us are working hard?” (After coming under criticism for her comments, Lang deleted the post and apologized.)A masked crowd at a performance at the National Concert Hall in Taipei in November, when low numbers of coronavirus cases allowed for a virtually normal cultural life.Ann Wang/ReutersThe government has provided tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to arts groups during the pandemic, but some performers say the grants have not been enough to offset losses. Officials say restrictions on large gatherings are necessary to curb the rising rate of infections.But for visiting performers caught in the middle of the latest surge, the experience has been frustrating.The violinist Cho-Liang Lin was excited to arrive in Taiwan last month, his third trip to the island since the start of the pandemic. After livestreaming for months and playing in empty halls in the United States, where he lives, he had come to relish the energy of live performances in Taiwan, where he was born, despite the mandatory quarantine.Then this month, Lin’s concert with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra, with which he was going to perform Korngold’s Violin Concerto, was canceled two hours after his first rehearsal. He was also forced to cancel a summer festival for young musicians that he leads in Taipei. He was devastated, going out with friends to drink Scotch.“All that work and waiting around went for nothing,” said Lin, who returned home to Houston last week. “I can’t help but notice the irony here. The model citizen of the world now has become a bit of a problem child.”Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting. More

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      After Tragedy, an Indianapolis Theater Stages a Comeback

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      Bryan Fonseca, the founder of a notable company, died of complications from Covid-19. But at the theater named for him, the show goes on.INDIANAPOLIS — On a breezy, 80-degree evening, the sun still in the sky, the actor Chandra Lynch walked to the center of the Fonseca Theater Company’s outdoor stage-in-the-round. At her back was a semicircle of oversized blocks, each with printed words that together formed the sentence “Blackness iz not a monolith.”She turned to face a section of a dozen mostly white audience members, part of the sold-out opening night crowd of 50.“White folks call what I’m about to do ‘exposition,’” she said, her mouth visible through a clear face shield. “But the Black folks in the audience know I’m about to preach.”The Fonseca Theater, located in a working-class neighborhood on the city’s west side whose actors are more than 80 percent people of color, staged its first show on Friday night since its founder, Bryan Fonseca, died from complications from Covid-19 last September.And not just any show — the world premiere of Rachel Lynett’s play “Apologies to Lorraine Hansberry (You Too August Wilson),” a metafictional meditation on Blackness that was recently selected as the winner of the 2021 Yale Drama Series Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for playwrights.Chandra Lynch getting ready backstage for the play.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“This play allows us to just be 100 percent, unapologetically Black,” said Latrice Young, who plays Jules, a young queer woman who chafes at the regulations of her all-Black community. “There aren’t a lot of spaces outside the home environment where I can do that.”Friday’s sold-out premiere, held in the theater’s parking lot, was the culmination of a nearly nine-month journey back to the stage after Fonseca’s death — and one of the first shows to be held in Indianapolis since the pandemic closed theaters across the country in March 2020.And it was far from easy. The theater’s 27-year-old producing director, Jordan Flores Schwartz, had to adjust to taking on a top-dog role she hadn’t been expected to assume for years. Then the comeback was pushed back by two weeks after rain delays put the theater behind on set construction — and two of the actors tested positive for the coronavirus four days before opening night.“It’s been a journey,” said Schwartz, who is juggling her new role with coursework for a master’s degree in dramaturgy from Indiana University. “But there was never a question of whether we would continue. We had to.”Theater for the CommunityFonseca had long enjoyed a reputation as one of the most daring producers in the Indianapolis theater scene. He co-founded the Phoenix Theater in 1983, which became a home for productions that might never have found a place on the city’s half-dozen more mainstream stages.Aniqua Chatman, left, and Chinyelu Mwaafrika wait backstage for their cue.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesHis shows included Terrence McNally’s exploration of a group of gay men, “Love! Valour! Compassion!” — which attracted picketers — “Human Rites,” by Seth Rozin, which deals with female circumcision, and offbeat musicals like “Urinetown” and “Avenue Q.”“His personal mission was to bring diverse work to Indianapolis, because he firmly believed we deserved that, too,” Schwartz said.She and Fonseca had been a team since 2016, when he hired her at the Phoenix as a summer intern while she was working on her master’s degree in arts administration at the University of Oregon — one of the few paid internships available in the industry, she said.And when he left the Phoenix in 2018 after 35 years following a dispute with the board, she became a collaborator on his next venture: the Fonseca Theater Company, a grass-roots theater in a working-class neighborhood that champions work by writers of color. The theater, which has an annual budget of roughly $180,000, still often plays to majority-white audiences, though Schwartz said the share of people of color who attend is growing.Fonseca envisioned one day creating a community center in the building next door, with a coffee shop, free Wi-Fi, space for classes and gatherings, and laundry and shower facilities open to anyone.“He really wanted to give the neighborhood a seat at the table,” said Schwartz, who said 10 percent of the company’s audience members come from the surrounding Haughville, Hawthorne, Stringtown and WeCare communities.Jordan Flores Schwartz, who had been mentored by Bryan Fonseca, has now taken over as the theater’s producing director.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesFonseca became one of the first producers in the city to resume performances during the coronavirus pandemic last July, when he staged a socially distanced production of Idris Goodwin’s “Hype Man: A Break Beat Play,” which centers on the police shooting of an unarmed young Black man, in the theater’s parking lot.“He always believed theater had the power to unite people,” Schwartz told The New York Times last summer. “He wanted to be part of the conversation around the Black Lives Matter protests.”Fonseca took precautions, such as requiring masks and situating actors and audience members six feet apart, but “Hype Man” was forced to close a week early after one of the actors became ill. He was tested for the virus, but the theater declined to divulge the results, citing privacy.Fonseca became sick in August, Schwartz said. He died a little over a month later, a few weeks after the theater wrapped a second production, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm’s “Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies.” (She said it was unclear how he contracted the virus.)He had already planned for the theater to take a hiatus, a decision that proved prescient when Schwartz, who had just begun her master’s program, took on the role of interim producing director.Josiah McCruiston, whose character often serves as comic relief, onstage in the production.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBut there was never a question as to whether the theater would continue after his death, maintained Schwartz, who is Mexican-American and Jewish and has long worked in community and children’s bilingual theater.She began plotting a four-show outdoor season of ambitious plays by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Fernanda Coppel and Carla Ching, all women of color. One script in particular jumped out at her — Lynett’s “Apologies,” a play she’d first read in March 2020, and which seemed newly relevant in light of the racial justice protests and reckoning in the theater industry.The play is set after a second Civil War, in the fictional world of Bronx Bay, an all-Black state devoted to protecting “Blackness.” Five residents debate what makes someone Black enough to live in their community — conversations that allow Lynett to emphasize that Blackness is not a monolithic experience.But unlike “Fairview” or “Slave Play” — two works Lynett said she admires — hers is not aimed at white viewers. It’s about finding Black joy, she said in a video discussion hosted by the theater.“What does it mean to be a Black woman who’s sexually assaulted onstage every night in front of a mostly white audience?” she added. “I wanted to write a play that really avoided the trauma.”Just Getting StartedIn April, the theater’s board voted to promote Schwartz to full-fledged producing director, Fonseca’s former role. And the company has raised about half of the $500,000 it needs to create the community center, which it hopes to begin construction on by the fall.But the biggest milestone has already been achieved: returning to the stage.The play’s ending, according to the script, is the most important part. It calls for the five actors to each answer the question, as themselves: “What does Blackness mean to you?”On Friday night, Josiah McCruiston, whose character, Izaak, often supplies comic relief, picked up one of the blocks, labeled “Monolith,” and carried it to the center of the stage.Audience members watching the production, which is being staged outdoors.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times“I feel this play helps me scream at the top of my lungs about who I am,” he said. “That because I’m Black, I have a story, that I am rich, complex and deep. But I still think some white eyes will say I was funny.”Aniqua Chatman, another actor, said, “I can say ‘Blackness is not a monolith,’ but I still feel the white stares looking at me.”Then Chinyelu Mwaafrika said, “White people, raise your hands.” Thirty hands went up.“I say racism, you say sorry,” he said. “Racism.”“Sorry.”“Racism.”“Sorry.”“Racism.”“Sorry.”With that, the play ended, and the chorus was replaced by applause. More