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      Kornel Mundruczo Brings Powerful Imagery to Wagner and Film

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      Kornel Mundruczo’s varied career has included the Oscar-nominated movie “Pieces of a Woman,” stage productions across Europe and now, “Lohengrin.”MUNICH — On a recent morning, the atmosphere on the rehearsal stage of the Bayerische Staatsoper, the main opera house here, was charged with anticipation.The director Kornel Mundruczo was supervising Act I of “Lohengrin,” Richard Wagner’s romantic opera about a mysterious knight sent by the Holy Grail to save a damsel in distress, and as they waited for the title character to appear, the vocal soloists and extras milled about in street clothes among rocks and grass scattered on the stage.Mundruczo made adjustments to the performers’ positions and gestures, ensuring that they conveyed nervous excitement. When Lohengrin, played by Klaus Florian Vogt, casually appeared midway through the act, Mundruczo surveyed the scene.“That’s super good,” he said with satisfaction.When the opera opens here on Saturday, it will close an uncommonly busy — and varied — year for the prolific Hungarian director.Over the past 12 months, Mundruczo, 47, has overseen a world premiere opera in Berlin and Geneva; a new play in Berlin; Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” in Hamburg, Germany; and has directed four of 10 episodes in the first season of the Apple TV+ series “The Crowded Room.”Serge Dorny, the Bayerische Staatsoper’s general manager, said he saw “Lohengrin” as “an extremely contemporary story,” adding that Mundruczo’s interest in topical themes, and how he has handled them over a range of artistic genres, was in part what led him to enlist the director for “Lohengrin.”Mundruczo’s production of “Lohengrin” at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich. Over the past two decades, he has produced a multifaceted body of work across numerous countries, languages and genres.W. HoeslEqually important, however, was Mundruczo’s ability to create “powerful images that stay in our memories,” Dorny said.Mundruczo’s style is direct and emotional, but it is often tinged with fantastical elements that veer into magical realism: In one particularly vivid example, a recent Mundruczo production was set almost entirely inside a gigantic salmon.While Vogt said that Mundruczo’s background in film was clear from his ability to create “intense images” in “Lohengrin,” the singer called Mundruczo a “deeply musical person,” who had enormous respect for the score.This artistic versatility makes Mundruczo a rarity among today’s directors. Over the past two decades, he has produced a multifaceted body of work across numerous countries, languages and genres.In the English-speaking world, Mundruczo is best known for his 2020 film “Pieces of a Woman,” which garnered acclaim for the director, its writer, Kata Weber, and its lead actress, Vanessa Kirby, who earned an Oscar nomination for her turn as a mother processing the death of her newborn. Martin Scorsese signed on as an executive producer after seeing an early cut of the film.“With Kornel, you feel and see a real drive to express something in images and sounds,” Scorsese wrote in an emailed statement. “It’s real cinematic storytelling. No matter what Kornel makes, I’m interested.”Vanessa Kirby earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Mundruczo’s “Pieces of a Woman.”Benjamin Loeb/NetflixMundruczo’s production of the opera “Sleepless” was dominated by a giant salmon.Nina Hansch/picture alliance, via Getty ImagesBorn in 1975 in Godollo, a small city outside Budapest, Mundruczo dreamed of becoming a painter as a teenager, but when he first picked up a camera at 21, he knew filmmaking was what he was meant to do.“I wasn’t planning for it to happen, but for me there was no longer any question,” Mundruczo said in an earlier interview in Berlin. “That hasn’t changed.”The director characterized his early shorts and first three features as “bohemian friendship movies, like early Almodóvar,” he created with “whoever was around,” he said, referring to the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. Mundruczo made his first feature film in 2000 while still a student. Of the eight that have come since, six have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, including “White God” (2014), which features a canine takeover of Budapest, and “Jupiter’s Moon” (2017), in which a Syrian refugee learns to fly.While building up his film career, Mundruczo also started directing plays for an independent theater group. In 2009, he co-founded Proton Theater in Budapest, where he serves as artistic director. Before long, his stage productions were getting attention on the international theater festival circuit.Mundruczo suggested that his outsider status as a filmmaker had helped him bring a new perspective to his stage productions, which tour throughout Europe. “I’m not a theater person,” he said, “and the theater festival system always needs new voices.”The director also welcomes a certain degree of cross-pollination between his stage and screen work. Before it was a film, “Pieces of a Woman” was a play written by Weber and first performed in 2018 at the TR Warszawa theater in Warsaw. “Evolution,” another collaboration between Weber and Mundruczo (who are both romantic and artistic partners), started life as part of a staged performance before they developed it into a film.When it comes to switching between genres, “I enjoy that it’s other parts of your soul working,” Mundruczo said. Gordon Welters for The New York Times“Evolution,” which premiered at the 2019 Ruhrtriennale festival in Bochum, Germany, was one of a string of productions in that country that inspired Mundruczo and Weber to move to Berlin from Budapest with their daughter several years ago. They were also guided by concerns about the political situation in Hungary, which continues its rightward slide under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.“I’m sure every New Yorker felt the same during the Trump era,” he said. “It can be tough. You feel a certain pressure.”Although he has never faced direct censorship in Hungary, the Hungarian National Film Board rejected funding for “Pieces of a Woman,” Mundruczo said. “They sent a beautiful letter — I still have it — they wrote that there is no audience for this movie,” he said.When it became a play in Warsaw, its Jewish themes, which were inspired by Weber’s family history, fell by the wayside. “Not that many Jewish people live in Poland, and we all know why,” Mundruczo said. Weber was able to restore some of the Jewish content in the film version, which moved the action to Boston, a city with a large Jewish population.Several of those themes, including a miraculous tale of survival at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust, are elaborated in the film “Evolution,” a multigenerational tale that begins in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and ends in modern-day Berlin.Since “Evolution” premiered at Cannes in summer 2021, Mundruczo has taken a hiatus from the silver screen. This year he made his debut at Berlin’s Staatsoper, directing the world premiere of Peter Eotvos’s “Sleepless,” the production dominated by a giant salmon.Matthias Schulz, the general manager of the Berlin State Opera, said that “first of all,” Mundruczo was a filmmaker. “He’s very precise and gives a lot of hints, just like he has to do when making a movie,” he said, describing “Sleepless” as having the atmosphere of “an opera and a movie at the same time.”Both the Berlin State Opera and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper have invited Mundruczo back to direct in future seasons. In addition to making “The Crowded Room” for the small screen, Mundruczo hopes to return to filmmaking soon, although he said that it was too early to share project details.When it comes to switching between opera, dramatic theater, television and film, “I enjoy that it’s other parts of your soul working,” Mundruczo said. “It’s very healthy when you’re not a one genre maniac,” he added.Perhaps someday he’ll be able to devote himself exclusively to one art form. “But I’m not there yet,” he said with a laugh. More

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      In a German ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ History Has a Starring Role

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      More gruesome than previous film adaptations of the novel, a new Netflix feature looks to other conflicts past and present.“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Erich Maria Remarque’s seminal World War I novel, has had several onscreen adaptations.The book, which has sold up to 40 million copies since it was released in 1929, tells the story of the German soldier Paul Bäumer and his comrades: high school boys who idealistically enlist only to be forced to adapt to the horrors of trench warfare by abandoning their own humanity.“All Quiet” first arrived on the big screen in 1930, in a feature directed by Lewis Milestone that won two Oscars and still appears on lists of the best Hollywood movies. A 1979 CBS color version, starring Ernest Borgnine and Richard Thomas, strove for visual authenticity a few years after the end of the Vietnam War.But Edward Berger, the director of a new, lavish version arriving on Netflix on Friday, said his film included a perspective that helped it capture the antiwar spirit of the original novel better than its predecessors: For the first time, a German-language team is behind the writing, directing and acting.The impact of the country’s two brutal — and fortunately unsuccessful — world wars on the collective German consciousness informed how Berger approached the project.“We all grew up with the subject inside of us,” he said. “We inherited it from our great-grandparents.” He added, “It colors everything you have, your opinion, your sense of aesthetics, your taste in music.”Berger, whose previous work includes “Deutschland 83,” the popular Cold War-era spy series, said he couldn’t pass up the chance to adapt “All Quiet” for the screen in the shadow of recent geopolitical developments in Europe.The actor Daniel Brühl, who produced and starred in the film, said, “It was really interesting to be able to show the essence, and the essential message, of Remarque’s book, which is an antiwar book, that there is nothing heroic in war.”Production began on “All Quiet on the Western Front” in 2021, and it is Germany’s submission for best international film at the 2023 Oscars. Reiner Bajo/NetflixThe resulting feature, which will be Germany’s submission for next year’s international film Oscar, also arrives as Russia wages a land war in Europe, the most significant armed conflict on the continent in nearly eight decades.Production began in 2021, a year before Russia marched into Ukraine, but this “All Quiet” echoes some aspects of that ongoing conflict. Bäumer and his fellow soldiers are promised the war will be over in a matter of weeks, just as Russia apparently planned to hold victory celebrations in Kyiv just days after attacking Ukraine. And the film’s young soldiers, preoccupied with their own survival, are seemingly unaware they have invaded another country, just as Moscow has falsely claimed that territories within Ukraine now legally belong to Russia.Berger said he had felt, in countries like Germany, the United States and Hungary, a distinct change in public discourse in recent years. In the rawer language being used, he saw a new ascension of totalitarian politics — and renewed relevancy for “All Quiet on the Western Front.”“This film seems timely, somehow, because this kind of language existed also in 1920, where there was this patriotism and blindness — and we know where that can lead,” Berger said, referring to the ascension of the Nazis.To emphasize the horrors of war and the risks of blind patriotism, Berger’s production departs from the novel that gave the film its name.At a crucial point in the plot, a quarter of the way into a nearly two-and-a-half-hour run time, the film briefly stops following the humans engaged in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last century to focus on an inanimate object.The viewer observes the journey of a dog tag — one of the metal badges worn by soldiers as identification — from the moment it leaves a soldier’s corpse in the trenches of northern France until it is recorded and counted by senior officers in Germany 18 months later.Not only is it a memorable way to show the toll the conflict took on a generation of young people (about 10 million soldiers were killed in World War I; more than 20 million were wounded), but it also opens onto a wider historical view: The list of deaths is handed to Matthias Erzberger (played by Brühl), the member of the Reich government who signed the armistice to end the war in November 1918.Matthias Erzberger (played by Daniel Brühl in the film) was fiercely criticized in Germany following World War I.Reiner Bajo/NetflixIn moments like this, instead of purely focusing on a small band of fictional soldiers trying to survive, as Remarque does, the film weaves in historical fact, juxtaposing life in the trenches with strategy meetings between higher-ranking players in German command, like the cease-fire negotiations.“The cuts back and forth between the big politics and the life of the protagonists give us an idea of how the ordinary soldier is at the mercy of these decisions,” said Daniel Schönpflug, a historian whose work focuses on that era.The film shows how, by the fall of 1918, more than 40,000 Germans were killed on the front every two weeks. We also discover that, even as Erzberger signed the armistice, the German generals running the country’s disastrous military campaign criticized him for ending the slaughter without having “won” anything in return.In Germany, criticism of the efforts to stop the conflict eventually festered into the “Dolchstoss Legende,” or the stab-in-the-back myth, the false narrative that the war was lost because Jews and social democrats sold out the country.The film’s final battle scene has military barbarism triumphing over rational thought, and Bäumer’s honed animal instinct wins out over his humanity. In Berger’s more historically minded version of “All Quiet,” this battle is just a preamble to worse things.“I thought it was important to show that the end of the First World War was used to start a second one, to put that into historical context,” Berger said.The film shows how, by the fall of 1918, more than 40,000 Germans were killed on the front every two weeks. Reiner Bajo/NetflixBrühl sees the film’s narratives as also resonating with the political divisions highlighted by the war in Ukraine.“What I find so shocking is that in this globalized, connected world, when the chips are down, these fronts can form so suddenly and in such an extreme way,” Brühl said.“It’s a pretty bitter realization,” he added. More

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      in Theater

      Little Amal Arrives in New York, With a Message of Hope and Humanity

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      The 12-foot-tall Syrian refugee puppet traveled from Turkey to Britain last year. Now, she will spend nearly three weeks in the five boroughs taking part in numerous events.As her head peeked out from above metal barriers, Little Amal widened her eyes as she took in the arrivals terminal at Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday. She looked left, then right, clutching her big green suitcase with its rainbow and sun stickers. She was, as newcomers to New York City so often are, a little nervous, and a little lost.But then, some music. As Little Amal lumbered through the terminal, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and its children’s chorus began to perform music of welcome: the final chorus from Philip Glass’s opera about Gandhi’s early life, “Satyagraha” — whose title translates loosely to “resistance.”Amal, a 10-year-old Syrian refugee puppet, appeared transfixed by the music — much like the many travelers strolling by with their suitcases appeared transfixed by the 12-foot-tall puppet suddenly towering before them. Still, she was trepidatious, a tad reluctant to approach the orchestra. At least, that is, until a chorus member — a girl wearing a sunflower yellow shirt — went up to her and took her by the hand.Amal and her puppeteers made their way through Terminal 4, and were welcomed by members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and its children’s choir.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAmal has traveled across Europe and met with Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Now she has made her way to the Big Apple with big plans. For the rest of this month, she will tour all five boroughs, visiting with children, artists, politicians and community leaders as she begins a search for her uncle, and, her creators hope, helps highlight the experience, hardship and beauty of millions of displaced refugees.Her extended walk through New York City will include more than 50 events of welcome like the one at the airport on Wednesday. She will pick flowers at a community garden in Queens, walk across the High Bridge in the Bronx, ride the Staten Island Ferry, dance in the streets of Washington Heights and find herself amid a Syrian wedding procession in Bay Ridge.“She will render visibility to something people don’t want to see,” said Amir Nizar Zuabi, the artistic director of the Walk Productions, which is presenting the public art involving Amal, along with St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.Amal has already traveled quite a distance — 5,000 miles from Turkey to Britain last year — in search of her mother. And on Wednesday, when she stepped into the arrivals terminal she was greeted by a top-flight welcome committee.Embarking on a U.S. walk: Amal will participate in over 50 events across the five boroughs through Oct. 2.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“Opera is about dreaming and it’s also about reflecting our world,” Nézet-Séguin told The New York Times before the welcome. “Especially in the past years and months, the Met has been showing how important it is to welcome everyone to our opera house and also to really, truly respond to our times and connect with everyone in the world.”“I know this is going to be a very moving event,” he added.For those unfamiliar with Little Amal’s story and her journey, here is a look at who Amal is, where she has been, where she is going — and why.The making of AmalAmal, whose name means “hope” in Arabic, is operated by up to four people, including one person on stilts. Designed by the Handspring Puppet Company based in South Africa, Amal is delicate — her arms and upper body are made of bamboo canes — and she sometimes requires maintenance.The puppet is the protagonist in what is ostensibly a traveling theater project meant to remind a news-fatigued public about the children fleeing violence and persecution. Syrian refugees garnered considerable attention in 2015 and 2016 as they fled the country. The Walk in Europe followed a route similar to the one taken by some Syrians who fled.As it happened, Amal began her European walk in the summer of 2021, shortly after the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, which spurred a fresh migration crisis in Europe. Over four months, Amal crossed the continent, stopping at refugee camps, town squares and the Royal Opera House in London. To date, she has been part of more than 190 events in more than 80 towns, cities and villages in 12 countries.Amal and her puppeteers in Calais, France, last October. It was one of many stops she made during a four-month, 5,000-mile journey from Turkey to Britain.Elliott Verdier for The New York Times“We were really taken by the amount of people who took to the streets to welcome her,” Zuabi said during a recent interview conducted via Zoom. “It became very clear that while the governments are talking on a certain level on this issue, the people of the cities are willing to engage.”Now Amal is continuing her journey in New York.“New York’s ethos — or at least the way it perceives itself — is this great human endeavor created by wave on wave of migration,” Zuabi said. “New Yorkers celebrate what they have achieved through this melting pot of migrations and how stories have amalgamated for growth and for culture. Taking Amal here was a way to investigate that and also investigate the United States in a very particular moment.“How do you want to welcome her?” he added. “I truly hope that in this very busy, very hectic city, people will take a moment and come and be empathetic and reach out to each other through this stranger.”As was the case in Europe, many of Little Amal’s stops are planned and include visits with artistic and institutional leaders; other encounters may be more spontaneous. And there are plans in the works, officials say, for a later trip across America.“It’s one big theater show happening for free on your streets,” Zuabi said. “You don’t need to travel far to a fancy theater and get dressed — you can walk down in your pajamas if you want.”July 2021: TurkeyIn Adana, Turkey, children flew flocks of homemade birds around Amal.Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York TimesAmal’s first stop was in Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey just 40 miles from the Syrian border. It’s where many Syrian refugees have settled. At one point, she visited a park where Syrian children sang to her; another group gave her a handmade trunk, filled with gifts for her journey.August 2021: GreeceAmal met some resistance in Greece. She had planned to visit the Greek World Heritage site of Meteora, known for Orthodox monasteries perched upon towering rocks. But a local council banned her scheduled picnic on the grounds that a “Muslim doll from Syria” shouldn’t be performing in a space important to Greek Orthodox believers. (Amal’s religion has never been specified.)Later, in Larissa, in central Greece, people pelted Amal with eggs, fruit and even stones. Then in Athens, her planned events drew protests and counterprotests.September 2021: RomeDuring a visit to Vatican City to meet the pope, Amal embraced a bronze statue in St. Peter’s Square that depicts 140 migrants, including Jews fleeing the Nazis.Remo Casilli/ReutersUpon arriving in Rome, Amal went to the Vatican, strolled through St. Peter’s Square, hugged a bronze statue depicting 140 migrants and met Pope Francis, a vocal supporter of refugees. She proceeded to the Teatro India, one of Rome’s most well-known theaters, where paintings, collages and digital works by the Syrian artist Tammam Azzam flashed up on a wall behind her. The works were nightmarish visions of the war-torn home she’d left behind.October 2021: FranceAt a town square, with locals leaning out of apartment windows, Amal danced to the music performed by a group of refugee and migrant rappers. Then she headed for the beach, where she was joined by 30 other puppets her size. Joyce DiDonato, the American opera singer, offered a serenade.November 2021: EnglandTo close out her long journey, Amal went to Manchester, where thousands of fans waited for her at the Castlefield Bowl, many expecting her to be reunited with her mother. As she took her final steps, a flock of wooden puppet swallows surrounded her and then, in a burst of smoke, an image of a woman’s face appeared — her mother in spirit, if not person.“Daughter, you’ve got so far — so very far away from home — and it’s cold, so stay warm,” a gentle voice intoned in Arabic. “I’m proud of you.”May 2022: UkraineSince completing her 2021 journey, Amal has traveled to Lviv and to several cities in Poland to visit Ukrainian refugee children and families who were forced to flee after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Sept. 14 and 21: QueensTodd Heisler/The New York TimesAfter her arrival at Kennedy Airport on Wednesday, Little Amal will set out for Jamaica, Queens, with her big suitcase. She may get some help navigating the city from her friends at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. But how will she fare in Astoria when night falls?Little Amal will return to Queens on Sept. 21 to visit Corona and Jackson Heights.Sept. 15 to Oct. 1: ManhattanLittle Amal will not leave New York without seeing all of the sights. While in Manhattan, she has planned visits to Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, Times Square, Lincoln Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.Later in her trip, she will go to City Hall, and visit Washington Heights, Harlem, Chinatown and several other neighborhoods.Sept. 19 to Oct. 2: BrooklynAs it turns out, Amal has some roots in Brooklyn: In 2018, St. Ann’s Warehouse presented an Off Broadway play, “The Jungle,” that introduced the character of Amal.The play will return to St. Ann’s early next year.“We left like we needed her here,” said Susan Feldman, the president and artistic director of St. Ann’s Warehouse, an organizer of Little Amal’s New York walk.“If you ask me what is the best thing to do, you want to walk with her,” Feldman said. “The best times are when people first see her.”During her time in the borough, Amal will make stops at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Green-Wood Cemetery and several Brooklyn neighborhoods. She will also make multiple visits to St. Ann’s Warehouse, including on her last day in the city, on Oct. 2.Sept. 25 and 26: The BronxAmal will visit Mott Haven in search of the waterfront. She is also interested in crossing the High Bridge but may need help from the community to overcome her fear of heights.Sept. 30: Staten IslandAmal will ride the Staten Island Ferry, and head to Snug Harbor, where she will be welcomed by a parade.Alex Marshall contributed reporting. More

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      in Music

      U.K. Will Host Eurovision in 2023

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      Organizers had ruled out Ukraine from hosting because of safety concerns from Russia’s ongoing invasion.Britain, the runner-up of Eurovision 2022, will host the popular song contest in 2023 instead of war-torn Ukraine, which won the competition and the right to host next year’s event but was ruled out by organizers because of safety concerns.The announcement on Monday made official what had been widely predicted since Ukraine won the event in May. Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC, said in a statement that the process of choosing a city to host would begin soon.“Being asked to host the largest and most complex music competition in the world is a great privilege,” he said in the statement. “The BBC is committed to making the event a true reflection of Ukrainian culture alongside showcasing the diversity of British music and creativity.”Officials and artists in Ukraine protested last month when the competition’s organizers, the European Broadcasting Union, said that Russia’s ongoing invasion meant Ukraine could not provide “the security and operational guarantees” needed to host the event. Ukraine had offered three potential locations that it said were safe from the fighting: Lviv, in western Ukraine; the Zakarpattia region which borders Hungary and Slovakia; and the capital, Kyiv.Martin Österdahl, Eurovision’s executive supervisor, said in a statement on Monday that the 2023 contest “will showcase the creativity and skill of one of Europe’s most experienced public broadcasters whilst ensuring this year’s winners, Ukraine, are celebrated and represented throughout the event.”Representatives from UA:PBC, a Ukrainian broadcaster, will work with the BBC on the Ukrainian elements of the show, Eurovision said in a statement. Mykola Chernotytskyi, head of the broadcaster’s managing board, said in a statement that the event “will not be in Ukraine but in support of Ukraine,” adding that organizers would “add Ukrainian spirit to this event.”The competition invites artists from countries across Europe, plus some farther afield including Australia and Israel, to compete to be voted the best act. Over 160 million people watched in May as Kalush Orchestra, a Ukrainian rap act, was crowned the winner.Britain has hosted eight times before, most recently in 1998. At least 17 cities in Britain have said they intend to bid for becoming the host city, organizers said. More

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      in Music

      Eurovision 2022: What to Know and How to Watch

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      LONDON — The Eurovision Song Contest started in 1956 as a friendly music competition between public service television broadcasters and has since grown into the world’s largest — and perhaps most eccentric — live music event.This year, the competition takes place while there is a war in Europe; in February, the event’s organizers announced that Russia would be barred from competing, citing “the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine.”This week, 35 other countries, including Ukraine, competed in semifinal rounds ahead of Saturday’s final, which attracts more than 180 million viewers around the world. The event, held in Italy this year, rewards live viewership, with clips from performances and reactions spreading quickly across social media.Below are rundowns on hotly tipped acts, advice about how to watch from the United States and views about how the war in Ukraine is likely to affect the competition.Sweden’s entry this year is Cornelia Jakobs, who sings “Hold Me Closer,” a warm and emotional pop track.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow does the Eurovision Song Contest work?Each country selects an act with an original song that must be performed live onstage. The song is picked either by the national broadcaster or through some kind of contest. (For example, Sweden has the “Melodifestivalen” to choose its entry.) There are a number of rules that entrants must follow, including a limit of three minutes on song length and a ban on lyrics or gestures deemed by the organizers to be political.Despite the name, countries beyond Europe’s traditional geographical borders also compete in Eurovision. Israel debuted in 1973, for example, and Australia has been taking part since 2015. This year, Armenia and Montenegro are returning to the contest after not competing in 2021. Smaller nations are also represented, such as San Marino, a landlocked enclave in Italy with a population of just over 30,000. Last year, San Marino’s entry, performed by the singer Senhit, featured an appearance by the American rapper Flo Rida.The winner of Eurovision is chosen by a combination of votes by viewers at home and by national juries in each country. The scores from the national juries are tallied first, then the fan votes are announced, act by act, starting with the countries that received the lowest jury points. This part of the show can be tense and even uncomfortable to watch, with cameras last year showing entrants from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain each receiving the dreaded “zero points” from the public.After the two semifinals have whittled the entrants down, the qualifiers join entries from the “big five” countries — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — which have an automatic pass to the final because they contribute the most financially to the running of the contest. Twenty-five countries will compete at the final this year.Traditionally, the competition is held in the country that won the previous year. Turin, in Italy, hosts this year after the rock band Maneskin triumphed in 2021.The crowd at Thursday’s semifinal in Turin, Italy.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow can Americans watch the competition?The streaming service Peacock will be airing the final on Saturday from 3 p.m. Eastern time. The service also streamed the competition’s semifinals. The figure skater Johnny Weir will be providing commentary on the broadcast.The commentary can often add some humor to the many long hours of televised competition. In Britain, the comedy host Graham Norton has become renowned for his reactions and quips.“We’ve got a real range of music tonight,” Norton said while introducing the 2021 competition from the Dutch city of Rotterdam. “Brilliant staging, great lighting, some wonderful vocalists, and others — well, some as flat as Holland.”Oleh Psiuk, center, of Ukraine’s entry, Kalush Orchestra, posing this week in Turin with a group of people protesting the war in Ukraine. Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected the competition?Initially, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision, said that Russia could continue to participate because the competition was a “nonpolitical cultural event.”The day after the invasion, however, with Ukraine and other countries threatening to withdraw, the broadcasting union backtracked. Russia could not take part, the union said in a statement, because the country’s inclusion “would bring the competition into disrepute.”Sentimentality, friendly bias and politics can affect the voting. This year, Ukraine is favored to win, with the rap and folk band Kalush Orchestra representing the country. Its song, “Stefania,” is an ode to the mother of one of the band members. The act received special permission from the Ukrainian government to travel for the competition and has performed throughout Europe to raise funds for the war effort.Ukraine won the contest in 2016 with “1944,” by Jamala. The song was a memorial to Crimean Tatars during World War II, but it was also interpreted as a comment on the Russian invasion of Crimea, which took place two years earlier.Kalush Orchestra received special permission from the Ukrainian government to travel to Italy for the competition.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhat happens if Ukraine wins this year?If Ukraine does take the title, the war and humanitarian crisis in the country would most likely present challenges to its hosting the competition in 2023.In the past, when a country has been unable to host, another has stepped in. The last time that happened was in 1980, when Israel declined to host after winning for a second straight year. The competition was held in the Netherlands instead.If Australia ever wins the competition, the logistical difficulties of hosting a primarily European contest on a different continent mean that a European country and broadcaster would co-host the following year’s contest alongside Australia, according to the European Broadcasting Union.Australia’s entry, Sheldon Riley, during a dress rehearsal in Turin. His track reflects on his childhood experiences, including being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhich other acts should I know about?Sweden has won Eurovision six times (second only to Ireland), with ABBA one of the acts to have claimed victory for the country. The Swedish entrant this year is Cornelia Jakobs, who sings “Hold Me Closer,” a warm and emotional pop track that builds with each subsequent verse.The Spanish entry, performed by Chanel, has also been predicted to do well at the final, with a catchy song, “SloMo,” accompanied by a high-energy dance routine.The prospects for Britain, after last year’s zero points overall, are looking up. The country’s entry, “Space Man,” is performed by the TikTok star Sam Ryder and has been gathering some momentum.There has also been praise for Australia’s entry, “Not the Same,” performed by Sheldon Riley. The song reflects his childhood experiences, including a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome he received at age 6.Maneskin has gone on to global fame since winning the 2021 competition, performing on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Coachella festival this year.The duo Subwoolfer, representing Norway, wear wolf masks, surrounded by dancers in morph costumes, for their act.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesAre there any surreal acts this year?Eurovision entrants have a tradition of employing surreal staging, lyrics and costumes to stand out.This year, the Norwegian entry, by the pop duo Subwoolfer, has gained attention. Their song, “Give That Wolf a Banana,” has the pair wearing wolf masks, with backing dancers in yellow morph suits.The Moldovan entry, “Trenuletul,” by Zdob si Zdub and the Advahov Brothers, has built a following by pairing traditional instruments like the accordion with the electric guitar. Their song’s upbeat lyrics are matched by the band’s enthusiastic choreography.Each year, fans travel to the competition to see their country compete. Here, some were in Turin for Thursday’s semifinal.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhat about North American versions of Eurovision?The NBC show “American Song Contest” reimagines Eurovision for the United States, with 56 entries from 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. Instead of airing over the course of a week, like Eurovision does, the contest has been airing weekly on the network since March.The final took place on Monday, when AleXa, representing Oklahoma, won with “Wonderland.” The song received 710 points overall from the jury and public voting, 207 ahead of the second-place entry, from Colorado.But underwhelming ratings suggest that “American Song Contest” failed to capture the excitement of Eurovision. In an interview with The New York Times, Audrey Morrissey, an executive on the show, suggested that U.S. audiences might need time to get used to the format. “It is a very different sort of mechanism — there isn’t another show where performance happens and there isn’t a critique right after,” she said.Next year, there will be a Eurovision Canada, where entries from the country’s three territories and 10 provinces will compete in an offshoot of the original. International expansion has been an ambition for Eurovision. Martin Österdahl, an executive supervisor of the competition, told a podcast recently, “We’re changing our focus slightly in our strategy from managing a contest to managing a brand, and that brand will be a global entertainment superbrand.” More

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      How to Watch Eurovision 2022

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      LONDON — The Eurovision Song Contest started in 1956 as a friendly music competition between public service television broadcasters and has since grown into the world’s largest — and perhaps most eccentric — live music event.This year, the competition takes place while there is a war in Europe; in February, the event’s organizers announced that Russia would be barred from competing, citing “the unprecedented crisis in Ukraine.”This week, 35 other countries, including Ukraine, competed in semifinal rounds ahead of Saturday’s final, which attracts more than 180 million viewers around the world. The event, held in Italy this year, rewards live viewership, with clips from performances and reactions spreading quickly across social media.Below are rundowns on hotly tipped acts, advice about how to watch from the United States and views about how the war in Ukraine is likely to affect the competition.Sweden’s entry this year is Cornelia Jakobs, who sings “Hold Me Closer,” a warm and emotional pop track.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow does the Eurovision Song Contest work?Each country selects an act with an original song that must be performed live onstage. The song is picked either by the national broadcaster or through some kind of contest. (For example, Sweden has the “Melodifestivalen” to choose its entry.) There are a number of rules that entrants must follow, including a limit of three minutes on song length and a ban on lyrics or gestures deemed by the organizers to be political.Despite the name, countries beyond Europe’s traditional geographical borders also compete in Eurovision. Israel debuted in 1973, for example, and Australia has been taking part since 2015. This year, Armenia and Montenegro are returning to the contest after not competing in 2021. Smaller nations are also represented, such as San Marino, a landlocked enclave in Italy with a population of just over 30,000. Last year, San Marino’s entry, performed by the singer Senhit, featured an appearance by the American rapper Flo Rida.The winner of Eurovision is chosen by a combination of votes by viewers at home and by national juries in each country. The scores from the national juries are tallied first, then the fan votes are announced, act by act, starting with the countries that received the lowest jury points. This part of the show can be tense and even uncomfortable to watch, with cameras last year showing entrants from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain each receiving the dreaded “zero points” from the public.After the two semifinals have whittled the entrants down, the qualifiers join entries from the “big five” countries — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — which have an automatic pass to the final because they contribute the most financially to the running of the contest. Twenty-five countries will compete at the final this year.Traditionally, the competition is held in the country that won the previous year. Turin, in Italy, hosts this year after the rock band Maneskin triumphed in 2021.The crowd at Thursday’s semifinal in Turin, Italy.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow can Americans watch the competition?The streaming service Peacock will be airing the final on Saturday from 3 p.m. Eastern time. The service also streamed the competition’s semifinals. The figure skater Johnny Weir will be providing commentary on the broadcast.The commentary can often add some humor to the many long hours of televised competition. In Britain, the comedy host Graham Norton has become renowned for his reactions and quips.“We’ve got a real range of music tonight,” Norton said while introducing the 2021 competition from the Dutch city of Rotterdam. “Brilliant staging, great lighting, some wonderful vocalists, and others — well, some as flat as Holland.”Oleh Psiuk, center, of Ukraine’s entry, Kalush Orchestra, posing this week in Turin with a group of people protesting the war in Ukraine. Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesHow has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected the competition?Initially, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision, said that Russia could continue to participate because the competition was a “nonpolitical cultural event.”The day after the invasion, however, with Ukraine and other countries threatening to withdraw, the broadcasting union backtracked. Russia could not take part, the union said in a statement, because the country’s inclusion “would bring the competition into disrepute.”Sentimentality, friendly bias and politics can affect the voting. This year, Ukraine is favored to win, with the rap and folk band Kalush Orchestra representing the country. Its song, “Stefania,” is an ode to the mother of one of the band members. The act received special permission from the Ukrainian government to travel for the competition and has performed throughout Europe to raise funds for the war effort.Ukraine won the contest in 2016 with “1944,” by Jamala. The song was a memorial to Crimean Tatars during World War II, but it was also interpreted as a comment on the Russian invasion of Crimea, which took place two years earlier.Kalush Orchestra received special permission from the Ukrainian government to travel to Italy for the competition.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhat happens if Ukraine wins this year?If Ukraine does take the title, the war and humanitarian crisis in the country would most likely present challenges to its hosting the competition in 2023.In the past, when a country has been unable to host, another has stepped in. The last time that happened was in 1980, when Israel declined to host after winning for a second straight year. The competition was held in the Netherlands instead.If Australia ever wins the competition, the logistical difficulties of hosting a primarily European contest on a different continent mean that a European country and broadcaster would co-host the following year’s contest alongside Australia, according to the European Broadcasting Union.Australia’s entry, Sheldon Riley, during a dress rehearsal in Turin. His track reflects on his childhood experiences, including being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhich other acts should I know about?Sweden has won Eurovision six times (second only to Ireland), with ABBA one of the acts to have claimed victory for the country. The Swedish entrant this year is Cornelia Jakobs, who sings “Hold Me Closer,” a warm and emotional pop track that builds with each subsequent verse.The Spanish entry, performed by Chanel, has also been predicted to do well at the final, with a catchy song, “SloMo,” accompanied by a high-energy dance routine.The prospects for Britain, after last year’s zero points overall, are looking up. The country’s entry, “Space Man,” is performed by the TikTok star Sam Ryder and has been gathering some momentum.There has also been praise for Australia’s entry, “Not the Same,” performed by Sheldon Riley. The song reflects his childhood experiences, including a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome he received at age 6.Maneskin has gone on to global fame since winning the 2021 competition, performing on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Coachella festival this year.The duo Subwoolfer, representing Norway, wear wolf masks, surrounded by dancers in morph costumes, for their act.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesAre there any surreal acts this year?Eurovision entrants have a tradition of employing surreal staging, lyrics and costumes to stand out.This year, the Norwegian entry, by the pop duo Subwoolfer, has gained attention. Their song, “Give That Wolf a Banana,” has the pair wearing wolf masks, with backing dancers in yellow morph suits.The Moldovan entry, “Trenuletul,” by Zdob si Zdub and the Advahov Brothers, has built a following by pairing traditional instruments like the accordion with the electric guitar. Their song’s upbeat lyrics are matched by the band’s enthusiastic choreography.Each year, fans travel to the competition to see their country compete. Here, some were in Turin for Thursday’s semifinal.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesWhat about North American versions of Eurovision?The NBC show “American Song Contest” reimagines Eurovision for the United States, with 56 entries from 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. Instead of airing over the course of a week, like Eurovision does, the contest has been airing weekly on the network since March.The final took place on Monday, when AleXa, representing Oklahoma, won with “Wonderland.” The song received 710 points overall from the jury and public voting, 207 ahead of the second-place entry, from Colorado.But underwhelming ratings suggest that “American Song Contest” failed to capture the excitement of Eurovision. In an interview with The New York Times, Audrey Morrissey, an executive on the show, suggested that U.S. audiences might need time to get used to the format. “It is a very different sort of mechanism — there isn’t another show where performance happens and there isn’t a critique right after,” she said.Next year, there will be a Eurovision Canada, where entries from the country’s three territories and 10 provinces will compete in an offshoot of the original. International expansion has been an ambition for Eurovision. Martin Österdahl, an executive supervisor of the competition, told a podcast recently, “We’re changing our focus slightly in our strategy from managing a contest to managing a brand, and that brand will be a global entertainment superbrand.” More

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      When Classical Music Was an Alibi

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      The idea that musicians and their work are apolitical flourished after World War II, in part thanks to the process of denazification.On April 16, 1955, the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, bowing as Cio-Cio-san in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” Critics hailed it as a landmark and said it illustrated how much Vienna had changed since the end of World War II, a decade earlier.What went undiscussed by the newspapers at Williams’s debut, however, were the colleagues she performed with: among others, Wilhelm Loibner, Erich von Wymetal and Richard Sallaba, all of whom were active musicians in Austria under National Socialism.Sallaba, a tenor, sang in several special performances of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Nazi leisure organization “Kraft durch Freude” (“Strength Through Joy”) between 1941 and 1943. On July 15, 1942, Loibner conducted a performance of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride” for the Wehrmacht, and barely a month after Hitler committed suicide, he was back on the podium at the Vienna State Opera leading Puccini’s “La Bohème.” Von Wymetal, who coached Williams for her debut, assumed his position as the State Opera’s stage director after Lothar Wallerstein, a Jew, fled in 1938.Was Williams’s milestone tainted because she worked with those whose artistic careers directly benefited from the Nazi regime? Faced with such a question, we might be tempted to say that politics has nothing to do with classical music. It is an argument that has been heard again and again when artists come under scrutiny for their involvement in current events — most recently, musicians whose ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have been questioned.When the soprano Camilla Williams became the first Black singer to appear at the Vienna State Opera, it was alongside musicians who had been active when Austria was occupied by Nazi Germany.Archive/AlamyPerforming classical music, or listening to it, has never been an apolitical act. But the idea that it might be flourished in the wake of World War II, thanks in part to the process of denazification, the Allied initiative to purge German-speaking Europe of Nazi political, social and cultural influence.The American and British military demanded that German and Austrian musicians who wanted to resume work fill out “Fragebogen,” comprehensive questionnaires that sought to determine the extent of their political complicity. This resulted in lists of “white,” “black,” “gray acceptable” and “gray unacceptable” artists — categories that were immediately the subject of disagreement. The process also varied widely by region. American officials were initially committed to systematic denazification and decried the “superficial, disorganized and haphazard” efforts in the zones occupied by France, Britain and Soviet Russia.But even in the American zone, strict blacklists were short-lived. By 1947, responsibility for assessing guilt was transferred to German-run trial courts, which were invested in resuming the rhythms of institutionalized music-making, for cultural and economic reasons. The moral aims of denazification quickly conflicted with the realities of music as an industry and a set of labor practices. Austria’s often-claimed position after the war as “Hitler’s first victim” likewise meant that musical affairs there resumed quickly — with even less public conversation about accountability.Musicians slipped through the denazification process with relative ease. Many rank-and-file artists had been required to join Nazi organizations in order to remained employed, and the correlation of such membership to ideological commitment was often ambiguous. Individuals tended to lie on their forms to obtain a more advantageous status. And artists such as the eminent conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler referred to music’s apolitical status as a kind of alibi, even when they had performed on occasions, and as part of institutions, with deep ties to the regime.Allied forces were keen to “clean up” the reputations of musicians whose talents they valued, and even aided some in gliding through the denazification process. On July 4, 1945, the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was asked to fill out a Fragebogen because she was on the Salzburg register of National Socialists in Austria. Had the form been deemed acceptable, the American military would have approved her return to the stage.But when the American intelligence officer overseeing her case, Otto von Pasetti, realized that she had lied on the form, he destroyed it. The following day, she was asked to fill out another one. Although it was not any more accurate, Pasetti accepted it because Schwarzkopf’s status as a celebrity diva had convinced him that “no other suitable singer” was available for major operatic performances. Shortly thereafter, she climbed into a jeep driven by an American officer, Lieutenant Albert van Arden, and was driven 250 kilometers to Graz, Austria, to sing Konstanze in Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail.”After 1945, then, career continuity was more the norm than the exception. Denazification status defined immediate employability but was only one factor in musicians’ prospects. Artists looking to resume their careers readily identified themselves as POWs, refugees, bombing victims, disabled soldiers and widows, many facing housing and food insecurity. Reference letters used postwar hardship as a justification for priority consideration or tried to explain how a person had been pulled into, as one put it, the “vortex” of Nazi politics. One baritone assured administrators that although he had been detained in a prison camp for several years, he still “had the opportunity to practice.”These claims of hardship easily slid into narratives of victimhood. Bombed concert halls and opera houses in formerly Nazi territories were potent symbols of destruction and the necessity of rebuilding, but also enabled the focus to shift from Nazi atrocities to German suffering. At the opening of the rebuilt Vienna State Opera on Nov. 5, 1955, just months after Williams’s debut in “Butterfly,” the conductor Karl Böhm — who had led concerts celebrating Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938 — was on the podium for the celebration. No Jewish survivors were invited to participate.Performances amid the rubble reignited a sense of community and attempted to rehabilitate classical music as inherently humanistic, universal and uplifting after its supposed “corruption” by propagandistic use during the Nazi era. In “The German Catastrophe” (1946), the historian Friedrich Meinecke evoked the power of German music as a restorative force: “What is more individual and German than the great German music from Bach to Brahms?” For Meinecke, the country’s music was redemptive, expressing the national spirit while still possessing a “universal Occidental effect.”Some composers, encouraged by the Allies, promoted the idea that modernist musical techniques were particularly antifascist because they had been banned by the Nazis — an exaggeration both of Nazi officials’ stylistic understanding and of the level of control they exerted over the arts. Winfried Zillig, a German who composed in the 12-tone style, had many career successes from 1933 to 1945, including major opera premieres and a position in occupied Poland, granted as a reward for his operas’ political values.The composer Winfried Zillig’s career flourished under the Nazis, but he later claimed that the regime had repressed his music.Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesBut Zillig later claimed that the Nazis had repressed his music. Around the time of his denazification trial, he expressed outrage at being “one of the few surviving ‘degenerates’” — that is, composers who, as modernists, were targeted by the regime — who was facing the indignity of being labeled a propagandist. Zillig’s self-flattering version of events was enshrined in Adorno’s writing about him and was not debunked until 2002, long after his death. His career as a conductor and radio director flourished in West Germany, and he played an important role in the dissemination of modern music.Despite the black-and-white thinking that too often accompanies these topics, and how easy it is to retrospectively condemn, Zillig’s career is a reminder that all working Austrian and German musicians were implicated in the Third Reich. The fact that classical music was the industry they worked in does not mean they transcended politics.The more uncomfortable truth may be that the ambiguity of classical musicians’ status under Nazism makes them prime examples of “implicated subjects,” to use the theorist Michael Rothberg’s phrase. Rothberg writes that “implicated subjects occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit or benefit from regimes of domination, but do not originate or control such regimes.”Many German and Austrian musicians occupied this liminal place, neither victim nor perpetrator but a participant in the history that produced both those positions. The well-meaning but blunt categories of denazification after 1945 actually blurred our understanding of the complex systems that led to war and genocide and how musicians operated within them.In 1948, seven years before Camilla Williams sang “Butterfly” in Vienna, the Black American soprano Ellabelle Davis gave a recital there, marking the first time a Black concert singer had performed in the Austrian capital since the outbreak of the war. Calling Davis’s performance “the first fully validated representative of the vocal arts from overseas since the war,” one critic heralded her debut as a turning point in Vienna’s musical journey, an opening of borders and an acceptance of voices that only a few years earlier would have been unthinkable.Commentators also pointed out that Davis was the first Black singer to perform in a Viennese classical venue since Marian Anderson in November 1937, a few short months before the Nazi annexation. At last, these critics said, the city was being restored to its previous era of musical openness. Such comments created a timeline that bridged the Nazi era, cordoning it off as an aberration.Yet other competing continuities also defined Vienna. Only a few months before Davis’s recital, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was Jewish, shared a scathing critique of the city’s postwar racial politics. Schoenberg, who had fled Europe in the 1930s, wrote in 1948, “I have the impression that in Vienna racial issues are still more important than artistic merit for judging artwork.”Later, in 1951, he affirmed that judgment: “I would like it best if performances of my music in Vienna were banned completely and forever. I have never been treated as badly as I was there.” Appeals to continuity after World War II could condemn or vindicate. Both classical music’s history of racism and its universalist aspirations persisted.In moments of war and violence, it can be tempting to either downplay classical music’s involvement in global events or emphasize music’s power only when it is used as a force for what a given observer perceives as good. Insisting on a utopian, apolitical status for this art form renders us unable to see how even high culture is implicated in the messy realities of political and social life. We must work to understand the complex politics of music, even when that means embracing discomfort and ambiguity.Emily Richmond Pollock teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of “Opera After the Zero Hour: The Problem of Tradition and the Possibility of Renewal in Postwar West Germany.” More