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    Four Takeaways From the Metropolitan Opera’s Risky Season

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    The company has bet that new operas will attract new, more diverse audiences and revitalize a stale repertory. Is the gamble paying off?For years, the Metropolitan Opera — the nation’s largest performing arts institution, with a $300 million budget and 4,000-seat theater — was like an ocean liner, changing course slowly, if at all.But now it is trying to be more like a speedboat. Since the pandemic, with costs up and ticket sales down, the Met’s programming has taken a sharp swerve toward contemporary works, which used to come along once in a blue moon. In recent seasons, the Met has done fewer productions than it used to, but about a third of its operas now come from our times.Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, has staked a large part of his legacy on the bet that these new operas will attract new and more diverse audiences, revitalizing a house repertory better known for presenting “Tosca” and “La Traviata,” year after year. With the Met entering its summer break this week, is that bet paying off, artistically and financially?The experiment is, at best, a work in progress.The Met put on 18 operas during this so-so season, and if you line them up in order of paid attendance, only one of the six contemporary pieces, Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” is in the top half. Modern opera is not selling well, at least not better than classics like “The Magic Flute,” “Carmen” and “Turandot.”The Met’s economic model revolves around being able to efficiently bring back most pieces and have them find an audience. But this season raised alarms about how newer titles will do when revived. Gelb’s gamble on swiftly restaging two top sellers of recent seasons — Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” — fizzled, with the theater over a third empty for both. (The average performance across the season was 72 percent full.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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

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

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      The Met’s ‘Dead Man Walking’ Goes to Sing Sing

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      One by one, the inmates filed into a chapel at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. — past a line of security officers, past a sign reading, “Open wide the door to Christ.” Under stained-glass windows, they formed a circle, introducing themselves to a crowd of visitors as composers, rappers, painters and poets. Then they began to sing.The inmates had gathered one recent afternoon for a rehearsal of “Dead Man Walking,” the death-row tale that opened the Metropolitan Opera season last week. Together, they formed a 14-member chorus that would accompany a group of Met singers for a one-night-only performance of the work before an audience of about 150 of their fellow inmates.“I feel like I’m at home,” said a chorus member, Joseph Striplin, 47, who is serving a life sentence for murder, as the men warmed up with scales and stretches. “I feel I’m alive.”Steven Osgood, the conductor, with Sister Helen Prejean. Osgood rehearsed with the inmates for more than five hours, practicing rhythm, diction and dynamics.James Estrin/The New York Times“Dead Man Walking,” based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 memoir about her experience trying to save the soul of a convicted murderer at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, has been staged more than 75 times around the world since its premiere in 2000.But the opera, with music by Jake Heggie and a libretto by Terrence McNally, had never been performed in a prison until last week at Sing Sing, which is home to more than 1,400 inmates.There were no costumes or props. Chorus members, who were dressed in prison-issued green pants, had to be counted and screened before entering the auditorium, lining up by cell block and building number. Arias were sometimes interrupted by the sound of security officers’ radios.Yet the opera, with its themes of sin and redemption — and of the pain endured by victims’ families — resonated with inmates.Michael Shane Hale, an inmate, with Jake Heggie, the composer of “Dead Man Walking” and DiDonato. Working on the opera, Hale said, “reminds you not to get lost in prison.”James Estrin/The New York TimesMichael Shane Hale, 51, a chorus member serving a sentence of 50 years to life for murder, said that he often thought of himself as a monster. In the 1990s, prosecutors sought the death penalty in his case. (New York suspended the practice in 2004.)Hale said the opera, which portrays the friendship between Sister Helen and Joseph De Rocher, a death-row prisoner, had taught him to see his own humanity.“We feel so powerless; we feel so invisible,” Hale said. “It reminds you not to get lost in prison.”Not everyone at Sing Sing, a maximum-security prison about 30 miles north of New York City, was enamored. Some prisoners declined to take part in the opera because of concerns about its dark themes, including the portrayal of a prisoner’s death by lethal injection. Carnegie Hall, which helped to bring the opera to Sing Sing through the education initiative Musical Connections, said that about half of the 30 inmates in the program did not participate. (Musical Connections, which has offered instruction in performance, music theory and composition to inmates since 2009, is among similar projects nationwide that aim to help prisoners connect with society through culture.)In the prison chapel, Wendy Bryn Harmer (at the keyboard) warms up the inmate participants, including Bartholomew Crawford, front. Crawford said the opera offered hope: “It shows you’re not alone in this world.”James Estrin/The New York TimesBartholomew Crawford, 54, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for burglary, said he understood the concerns of his fellow inmates, but that, for him, the opera offered hope.“It shows you’re not alone in this world,” he said. “It shows you that in the darkest hour there’s light somewhere.”The idea for bringing “Dead Man Walking” to Sing Sing emerged several years ago when an inmate promised the renowned singer Joyce DiDonato, who plays Sister Helen in the Met’s production, that the men could sing the chorus parts.“This is not just theater,” said DiDonato, who has been visiting Sing Sing since 2015. “This is a story that has real consequences.”An inmate in the choir at Sing Sing. Some prisoners in the Musical Connections program declined to take part in the opera because of concerns about its dark themes, including the portrayal of a prisoner’s death by lethal injectionJames Estrin/The New York TimesFor months, the men at Sing Sing worked on an abridged version of “Dead Man Walking.” Bryan Wagorn, a Met pianist, coached them via video chat and recorded individual chorus parts for them to study. (It took several weeks for the files to clear security.) He joined Manuel Bagorro, who manages Carnegie’s program, on visits to the prison.Paul Cortez, 43, who is serving a sentence of 25 years to life for murder, worked with Wagorn to learn the score and held Saturday night rehearsals with small groups of prisoners at Sing Sing. Some were initially hesitant, unsure if the opera advanced prisoners’ rights and fearing they “might be exploited,” he said, but eventually more people started showing up.“It was daunting at first,” said Cortez, who majored in theater in college. “I did not know how I was going to get the guys in shape. But they were so diligent. They took it seriously.”From left, Sister Helen; Wilson Chimborazo, an inmate who sings in the chorus; McKinny; Joseph Striplin, another inmate singing in the production; and DiDonato.James Estrin/The New York TimesLast month, DiDonato, joined by Sister Helen, 84, visited the prison to work through the music and to get to know the participants. They discussed life in prison, morality, shame and stigma, as well as Sister Helen’s efforts to abolish the death penalty. Some inmates, saying they were still consumed by guilt about their crimes, asked about seeking forgiveness.DiDonato and Sister Helen returned last week, two days after opening night at the Met, joined by singers and staff from the Met and Carnegie Hall, and by Heggie, who offered guidance on adapting the opera for a smaller stage and reviewed some of the inmates’ Musical Connections compositions.“We’ve got each other’s backs,” DiDonato said to everyone as rehearsal got underway. “This, now, is our circle.”DiDonato, who has been visiting Sing Sing since 2015, rehearsing in the chapel with inmates. “This is not just theater,” she said. “This is a story that has real consequences.”James Estrin/The New York TimesThe Met singers introduced themselves, taking pains to remind the inmates that they were only pretending to be prison guards and police officers. (“Clemency!” a prisoner shouted, after the bass Raymond Aceto announced he was playing the role of a warden.)Sister Helen, standing among the inmates, said that there was love and trust in the room.“This is a sacred gathering,” she added. “There is no place on earth at this time that I’d rather be. We’re going to create beauty today, and you’re going to feel it.”For more than five hours, the men worked with the Met artists, under the conductor Steven Osgood, practicing rhythm, diction and dynamics in three sections that feature the chorus.They stomped their feet and clapped their hands in “He Will Gather Us Around,” a spiritual that opens the opera, which is typically performed by women and children. And they sang with fiery intensity as De Rocher confesses his murder, shortly before his execution.The Met singers and Sister Helen after the performance. Susan Graham, third from left, told the inmates that she had not fully understood the meaning of the opera until that day.James Estrin/The New York TimesThe bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who sings the role of De Rocher, offered encouragement, telling the inmates, “This is your moment to shine.” The soprano Latonia Moore, who performs as Sister Rose, complimented the speed with which they had learned a contemporary opera. “Bravo to you,” she said.And Susan Graham, the mezzo-soprano who plays De Rocher’s mother at the Met and originated the role of Sister Helen at the premiere of “Dead Man Walking” in 2000, told the inmates that she had not fully understood the meaning of the opera until that day.Then, around 6:30 p.m., an audience of inmates and corrections officials took their seats in the auditorium, adjacent to the chapel.“The most beautiful thing in the world is a human being that does something and is transformed,” Sister Helen said in introducing the opera. “Everybody’s worth more than the worst thing they ever did.”“How you lifted your voices tonight — that spirits stays here,” DiDonato told the inmates after the performance. “It is embedded in my heart.”James Estrin/The New York TimesThe prisoners watched intensely, tapping their toes on the concrete floor and gasping when an irate De Rocher tells Sister Helen: “You’re not a nun. You’re the angel of death.” One man stood up to applaud a scene near the end when De Rocher and Sister Helen tell each other, “I love you,” shortly before he is killed. After the final rendition of “He Will Gather Us Around,” the audience offered a standing ovation.Chorus members were moved too, including Hale, who said that De Rocher’s confession “blew me away.” He hoped that the opera would inspire inmates to take responsibility for their crimes.“We have to deal with the life we have left and move forward,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here. You have murderers singing this piece at Sing Sing.”A guard watches over the production. “You have murderers singing this piece at Sing Sing,” said the inmate Michael Shane Hale.James Estrin/The New York TimesDiDonato told the chorus members that they had created something indelible.“How you lifted your voices tonight — that spirits stays here,” she said. “It is embedded in my heart.”In their few remaining minutes together in the chapel, the prisoners and artists embraced and signed programs. Security officers wandered the pews, reminding the inmates that it was time to go back to their cells.As a guard motioned toward an exit, Cortez thanked DiDonato and the other artists, telling them, “I will never forget this moment.”Then he headed for the door. “Now,” he said, “back to reality.” More

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      ‘Dead Man Walking’ Makes Its Way to the Met Opera

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      When the composer Jake Heggie wrote his first opera, “Dead Man Walking,” in the late 1990s, he never thought it would appear onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.“The Met was not doing new opera, particularly; it was not featuring or focusing them,” he said. “It just seemed a distant dream.”But next week, 23 years after its premiere at San Francisco Opera, “Dead Man Walking,” with a score by Heggie and a libretto by Terrence McNally, will finally come to the Met — opening a season in which contemporary works are front and center as the company tries to attract new audiences.Ryan McKinny, center, as Joseph De Rocher.Lila Barth for The New York TimesThe Met, which is grappling with weak ticket revenues and other financial problems, is placing a big bet on modern opera: Works by living composers, which recently have outsold the classics, make up about a third of the coming season. And although it’s still early, ticket sales for the first three weeks of the season are so far about 12 percent higher compared with the same period last year, the company said.DiDonato, center, will be singing the role of Sister Helen Prejean for the fourth time.Lila Barth for The New York TimesPeter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said he was drawn to “Dead Man Walking,” one of the few contemporary operas to have found a place in the repertory worldwide, in part because of its record of success.“Bringing it to the Met was overdue,” Gelb said. “It symbolizes the efforts that we’re making to really transform the art form and to appeal to a much broader audience base that we have to appeal to for opera to succeed and ultimately survive.”The opera — based on the 1993 memoir by Sister Helen Prejean, which was also adapted into the 1995 movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn — portrays Sister Helen’s struggle to save the soul of a convicted murderer.Van Hove, second from right, rehearsing his production, which features a spare set by Jan Versweyveld.Lila Barth for The New York TimesIvo van Hove’s austere staging for the Met opens with a short film depicting the attack by Joseph De Rocher and his brother on a teenage boy and girl in Louisiana. The focus shifts to Sister Helen, who has been corresponding with De Rocher, now a death-row inmate, and sets out to meet him at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.The Met has assembled a starry cast, including the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is singing the role of Sister Helen for the fourth time, and the bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, who performed the role of De Rocher at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2019. The mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who originated the role of Sister Helen in the premiere, makes a cameo as De Rocher’s mother, and the soprano Latonia Moore plays Sister Rose, while the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conducts.Van Hove’s production includes live video projected on a large screen above the stage.Lila Barth for The New York TimesDiDonato said that the opera resonated not because of its discussion of the death penalty but because it was a “love story.”“It’s an opera about looking at the dark side of who we are, or who others are, and asking, ‘And now how do we relate?’” she said. “Now how do we connect with each other? Do I dismiss you outright because of who you are or what you did or what you stand for? Or is there a way I can still open my heart and connect to you?”“It becomes,” she added, “a question of ultimately who is worthy of love and redemption.”McKinny, right, described the production as “a more emotional and psychological space” than previous ones he has performed in.Lila Barth for The New York TimesVan Hove, who made his Met debut last season with Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” said he was drawn to direct “Dead Man Walking” because it was a “very American story,” combining individual struggles with broader societal questions. In preparation for the opera, which was originally scheduled for the 2020-21 season but was delayed by the pandemic, he said he had read Sister Helen’s book but did not watch the movie.He stripped “Dead Man Walking” of many of its traditional elements, including partitions, steel bars and shackles. In his production, Sister Helen and De Rocher sometimes roam freely around the set, designed by Jan Versweyveld, with no barriers between them. Live video, a van Hove hallmark, is widely used, with onstage cameramen following around singers, whose faces are projected onto a large screen.That approach, van Hove said, is meant to highlight the story’s emotion. “A lot of the opera is situated in the minds of the people,” he added. “This mental space became, for us, like a prison.”Some of the singers initially struggled with the minimalist style, including McKinny, who had been accustomed to wearing shackles throughout the opera.“In the beginning it was like, wow, it’s hard for me to understand the isolation of death row if we don’t have death-row elements,” he said. “But actually, this stage is so open and so nothing, that it feels isolating on its own, in a more emotional and psychological space.”DiDonato said that this opera is “about looking at the dark side of who we are, or who others are, and asking, ‘And now how do we relate?’”Lila Barth for The New York TimesVan Hove has reworked other elements of the opera, including a scene in which fighting erupts as Sister Helen enters the prison. That moment is typically portrayed as a scuffle, but in this production, it unfolds as part of a basketball game, with cameramen moving among the inmates.On a recent morning, male members of the Met chorus took their places onstage and prepared to rehearse at half-speed — stretching, doing squats and jumping up and down. In performance, the scene lasts only 50 seconds but is pivotal, van Hove said.“For Helen, when she enters that prison, she enters hell,” he said. “We feel in the audience the visceral aggressiveness and the visceral violence that is in the prison there all the time.”Graham, who plays De Rocher’s mother, singing an emotional plea before the pardon board, said that the opera “really got into my DNA” after she sang the role of Sister Helen in 2000. She avoided the work in the years that followed because she found it too painful; her father died during the original run. But more recently, she has taken up the role of the mother, seeing it is a way for her to reconnect with the piece.“Dead Man Walking” is among the contemporary works that make up about a third of the Met’s season.Lila Barth for The New York Times“Getting into it from this role is almost like the other side of the coin,” she said. “Sister Helen has to keep it together and be strong for everybody. But Mama gets to wail and cry and holler. She gets to let it all hang out. In that way, it’s very cathartic.”Even though the opera, with more than 75 productions, has been performed in many of the world’s leading opera houses, Heggie said he still got emotional going to the Met for rehearsals.“I couldn’t have imagined when we wrote the piece that it would have this kind of life or power,” he said. “And so to be in the room with these literally genius creators was a real jolt. I just felt electricity in the room. I felt nervousness. I felt great power and I felt a lot of ideas vibrating.” More