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    Peter Sellars Is Still Living His Life Through Art

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    The director, one of the most influential in opera, is staging new productions in New York, France and Austria this summer.Peter Sellars watched the rehearsal and wept in the dark.It was a recent afternoon at Purchase College, north of New York City, and an ensemble was going over a soft yet cataclysmic passage in Matthew Aucoin’s “Music for New Bodies.”A group of singers was almost wailing the word “down,” over and over, as an instrumental undertow seemed to stretch time into a yawning void. The music made plain the terror in the text — Jorie Graham’s poetry of cancer treatments and climate change — and the cheeks of Sellars, the production’s director and one of the most revered figures in the performing arts, grew wet with tears.Among his collaborators, Sellars is cherished for this openness with his feelings. He wraps anyone and everyone in a bear hug. He releases sudden honks of laughter. He cries.“He allows himself to be impacted,” said the soprano Julia Bullock, “and releases his emotions very easily.”“Music for New Bodies” arrives at David Geffen Hall on Thursday as part of the American Modern Opera Company’s summer residency at Lincoln Center. Sellars’s production is in the pared-down, nearly ritualistic style for which he’s become known. With barely any set or props, the singers and instrumentalists are the focus, onstage together under moody lighting, in shifting formations that have the charged drama of Baroque paintings.“I made the staging, but staging is too fancy a word,” he said in an interview. “It’s just — you can see the music.”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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      A Retelling of the Mahabharata, Set to Modern-Day Struggles

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      At Lincoln Center, the Toronto-based theater company Why Not strives to balance the old and new in its production of the Sanskrit epic.The Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata has been adapted many times over in oral retellings, plays, movies, comic books and more. Consisting of over 100,000 verses, the poem has so many stories that picking which ones to tell is a statement in itself.And making that decision can pose its own challenges as Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, co-artistic directors of the Toronto-based theater company Why Not, learned when they went about adapting it. Now they are bringing their expansive two-part contemporary staging, which premiered in 2023 at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, Canada, to Lincoln Center, where it will run from Tuesday through June 29.Their adaptation is based on the poet Carole Satyamurti’s retelling of the epic, which, at its core, is the story of two warring sets of cousins — the Kauravas and the Pandavas — trying to control a kingdom. The poem is part myth, part guide to upholding moral values and duty — or dharma. Some of the epic incorporates the Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical text on Hindu morality, which is framed as a discussion between Prince Arjuna, a Pandava and a skilled archer, and Lord Krishna, a Hindu God who acts as Arjuna’s teacher.Jain, 45, began developing the piece in 2016 after receiving a $375,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, the country’s public arts funder. Fernandes, 36, joined him on the project two years later after finishing graduate school in France. Jain described an early version of the script in an interview as “feminist” and “self-referential.” But the pandemic made them rethink which stories could best drive home the point of dharma — a central tenet of the text.Meher Pavri as an opera singer in the section drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. In the background, Neil D’Souza as the Hindu god Krishna and Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu as Prince Arjuna, Krishna’s pupil. David Cooper“To build a civilization, those with the most power must take care of those with the least,” Jain said, referring to the epic’s message. “In the animal kingdom, the strong eat the weak. There’s no problem with that. But humans have empathy, and we can build a civilization where we’re not just those who eat and those who are eaten, but rather those who feed and those who are fed.”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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      Review: ‘The Comet/Poppea’ Merges Opera’s Past and Present

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      A Monteverdi masterpiece and a new work by George Lewis are played simultaneously in an American Modern Opera Company production at Lincoln Center.When you enter the David H. Koch Theater for “The Comet/Poppea,” you are directed not into the auditorium but through some passageways and onto the stage. It’s a rare perspective to be facing a hall full of empty seats, with the delightful, rebellious undercurrent of being where you’re not supposed to be.Being where you’re not supposed to be is one of the few threads tying together the two operas that are played more or less simultaneously over the following 90 minutes. Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (1643) charts the improbable climb of Nero’s mistress to the throne of the Roman Empire. George Lewis’s “The Comet” (2024), set about a century ago, imagines a Black man who finds himself in a once segregated, now abandoned space after an apocalyptic event.The idea of intermingling these very different works came from the director Yuval Sharon, who is always cooking up half-mad ideas like this, and the American Modern Opera Company, or AMOC, a collective exploring its capacious vision of the art form over the next month during a residency at Lincoln Center.The audience for “The Comet/Poppea,” which opened on Wednesday and runs through Saturday, sits in two sections facing each other across the stage. Between them is a large circular platform that has been divided in two. One side is the realistic, amber-lit restaurant of “The Comet”; the other, where “Poppea” plays, is a heavenly vision of a pristinely white Roman bath, the walls encrusted with white plaster flowers.This turntable is constantly rotating, in an effort to convey a sense of “a visual and aural spiral,” as Sharon writes in a program note. But while “The Comet/Poppea” tries to conjure a cyclone, whipping together past and present, Black and white, high class and low, naturalism and stylization, it ends up feeling more like a trudge.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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      American Modern Opera Company Arrives at Lincoln Center

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      The stage of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center had been transformed into a split-screen tableau depicting ancient Rome and contemporary New York. A harpsichordist was playing ominous chords at furious speed. Singers, dressed in capes, suspenders and robes, scaled a rotating set.This was the start of the American Modern Opera Company taking over Lincoln Center for a residency from Wednesday through mid-July.“The Comet/Poppea” is a pairing of George Lewis’s opera adaptation of the W.E.B. Du Bois story “The Comet” and Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.”Shuran Huang for The New York TimesThe company, known as AMOC, is an experimental collective of singers, dancers and instrumental players. And the project it was putting together at the Koch Theater is the New York premiere of “The Comet/Poppea,” a work that pairs George Lewis’s adaptation of the W.E.B. Du Bois story “The Comet” and Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.”Directed by Yuval Sharon, “The Comet/Poppea” is classic AMOC fare: an irreverent mash-up of stories that unearths difficult questions about race, society and art. “We’re getting it,” the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, a star and producer of the show, told his fellow cast members while frolicking in a golden cape at the end of a rehearsal on Sunday. “It’s all coming together.”Anthony Roth Costanzo, left, and Tines, two members of the American Modern Opera Company.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWe 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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      Charles Wadsworth, Pianist and Champion of Chamber Music, Dies at 96

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      As the founder, director and genial host of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he helped drive the chamber music boom of the 1970s.Charles Wadsworth, a pianist who parlayed his Southern charm and his passion for chamber music into a career as the founder, director and host of important chamber series — including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York — and whose work helped propel the chamber music boom that began in the 1970s, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 96.His death, at a rehabilitation center, was confirmed by his wife, Susan.During his two decades as director of the Chamber Music Society, Mr. Wadsworth was the face of the organization, likely at any time to stride onto the stage of Alice Tully Hall with a broad grin, tousled blond hair and a boyish gait and offer folksy introductions to the music at hand.“I discovered very early that when people laugh, they relax,” Mr. Wadsworth told an interviewer in 2014. “They may be at a chamber music concert for the first time, or they may be unfamiliar with the repertory, but my feeling was that if I could get them relaxed, they would be open to listening, and to letting the music happen to them, rather than worrying about whether they understand it. And that seemed to work very well.”He also performed with the society, playing the piano, harpsichord or even the organ in staples of its repertory as well as some of the oddities he found while assembling the society’s programs — works like Anton Arensky’s Suite No. 1 for Two Pianos, François Couperin’s “Le Parnasse, ou L’Apothéose de Corelli” or Jan Zelenka’s Trio Sonata for Two Oboes, Bassoon and Continuo. But since the society’s roster included pianists who by Mr. Wadsworth’s own admission were more accomplished, he often deferred to them.His real accomplishments took place behind the scenes. Not least was the creation of the society itself, an organization meant to explore the breadth of the chamber music repertory, regardless of the instrumental (or vocal) combinations required. Mr. Wadsworth assembled a core group of “artist members” — string, wind and keyboard players with active careers, who would commit to performing with the society throughout the season — alongside guest musicians, who would expand the instrumental possibilities and bring an extra measure of star power.Mr. Wadsworth often performed with the Chamber Music Society. He played piano alongside the flutist Paula Robison, the violinist Jaime Laredo and the cellist Fred Sherry at Alice Tully Hall in 2009.JB Reed for The New York TimesWe 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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      Lincoln Center Plans a $335 Million Makeover of Its Western Edge

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      The center in Manhattan aims to attract new audiences, as it takes down a wall on Amsterdam Avenue and revamps Damrosch Park.Lincoln Center in Manhattan detailed plans on Monday for a $335 million makeover of its west edge, a landmark project that it hopes will bring in new audiences and help define the center’s modern legacy.The plan includes tearing down a wall that has divided the campus from its neighbors along Amsterdam Avenue; building a 2,000-seat outdoor stage that faces the avenue; and adding more greenery, gardens and an interactive fountain to Damrosch Park.Mariko Silver, Lincoln Center’s president and chief executive, said the aim of the renovation, which has been in the works since 2023, was to “extend the glorious sense of wonder that inhabits all of Lincoln Center to the west face.” She said the area had “never lived up to its promise,” noting its imposing exterior; its outdated band shell; and its anemic public spaces.“It doesn’t welcome the neighborhood,” she said. “The spirit of the new park is to be welcoming, green and open — really a gift for New York City and for art lovers everywhere.”Lincoln Center said construction would begin next spring and finish by spring 2028. The center said it had already raised about $218 million for the project, including a $75 million gift from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, a charity known for its work in arts, education and public health. The design team includes the firms Hood Design Studio, Weiss/Manfredi and Moody Nolan.Steven R. Swartz, the president and chief executive of Hearst, who serves as chair of Lincoln Center’s board, said he was hopeful the center could get the financial commitments needed for the project by the end of the year, despite recent economic uncertainty.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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      Lincoln Center Summer Festival to Bring Back Some Classical Music

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      Summer for the City will feature a dozen productions by the American Modern Opera Company, a Sanskrit epic, a celebration of Brazil and more.Lincoln Center’s summer festival will highlight the city’s diverse cultural traditions, the center announced on Tuesday, including performances by an experimental collective; a celebration of Brazilian culture; and the staging of a Sanskrit epic.The collective, American Modern Opera Company, which is made up of musicians and dancers, will present a dozen productions, making its Lincoln Center debut. The festival, Summer for the City, will run June 11 through Aug. 9, and it will also include a six-performance engagement by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider to celebrate the group’s 20th anniversary.Since the festival began, in 2022, it has scaled back the classical music and opera programming that used to define summer events like the Lincoln Center Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival. This edition is a restoration of some of those types of offerings.“This is a constantly evolving city and artist community and audience, and it’s our job to be in that conversation,” Shanta Thake, Lincoln Center’s chief artistic officer, said in an interview. “You will never see a summer that looks like the summer before.”Summer for the City is part of the center’s efforts to appeal to new audiences by promoting an array of genres, including classical music, comedy, pop and social dance. Last year, the festival attracted 442,000 people, up from 380,000 in 2023, the center said.In June, members of the American Modern Opera Company will perform the New York premiere of “The Comet/Poppea,” which pairs George Lewis’s adaptation of W.E.B. Du Bois’s story “The Comet” and Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.” Additional programming by the collective includes a staging of Messiaen’s song cycle “Harawi,” sung by the soprano Julia Bullock, and the staged premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “Music for New Bodies,” directed by Peter Sellars. The lineup also features “Rome Is Falling,” written by the bass player Doug Balliett, and described as a “zany lesson on the absurdity of what can happen when influential people lose power.”Lincoln Center said it hoped this year’s festival would help shine a light on the city’s vibrant cultural communities. The lineup includes “Mahabharata,” a large-scale retelling of a Sanskrit epic by Why Not Theater, a Canadian group, and a weeklong celebration of Brazilian culture featuring the singer-songwriter Lenine and the rock band Os Mutantes.The Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, under the baton of its music and artistic director Jonathon Heyward, will perform a mix of new and old. Each of its programs will feature at least one living composer. But the ensemble will also perform Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, Clara Schumann’s Konzertsatz in F minor, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and other classic works.The giant disco ball that has become a staple of the festival will once again hang over a dance floor built on Lincoln Center’s main plaza. Clint Ramos, the Broadway costume and set designer, will return to decorate the center’s outdoor spaces, this year based on the theme of birds. More

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      Louis Ballard, the ‘Father’ of Native American Composers, Hasn’t Gotten His Due

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      More than 50,000 spectators filled Kennedy Stadium in Washington on Nov. 27, 1977, for a football game between two bitter rivals, the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys.There was drama in the game, with both teams in the hunt for a playoff berth, but more unusual was the entertainment before and at halftime: an enormous spectacle of Native American music, dance and history. It was, The Washington Post reported, “part of a new movement to re-establish American Indians as first-class citizens in the United States.”At the center of the event was the National Indian Honor Band — 150 students chosen from 80 tribes in 30 states — which played four pieces by Louis W. Ballard. With tens of thousands of listeners, this was probably the most prominent platform a Native American composer had ever had.The performance was a career highlight for Ballard, a pioneering figure who paved the way for the broad upswing in Native composers over the past few decades. He was among the first to negotiate issues that younger artists still face: melding Native and Western classical traditions; the role of his music in social and political activism; expressing his community’s deep history and culture in a modern way.“Ballard was the grandfather of Native American composers,” Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, one of that next generation of artists, said in an interview. Tim Long, a conductor and teacher, echoed that sentiment: “He is the father of all of us who are Native people in classical music right now.”A composer as well as a pianist, conductor, filmmaker, writer, teacher, compiler of Native songs and national curriculum specialist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ballard had his music performed throughout the United States and Europe. He studied with Darius Milhaud and brought Stravinsky to a ceremonial Deer Dance in New Mexico.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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      A Ravel Work Premieres at the New York Phil After Nearly 125 Years

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      A prelude and dance by the French master recently surfaced in a Paris library. Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic will give the world premiere.The conductor Gustavo Dudamel has premiered dozens of pieces in his career.But the score that he was giddily studying on a recent afternoon at Lincoln Center was different: a nearly 125-year-old piece by the French composer Maurice Ravel that had only recently surfaced in a Paris library.“Imagine more than 100 years later discovering a small, beautiful jewel,” Dudamel, the incoming music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, said in an interview at David Geffen Hall. “It’s precious.”On Thursday, Dudamel and the Philharmonic will give the world premiere of the five-minute piece as part of a program celebrating the 150th birthday of Ravel, one of the leading composers of the 20th century, whose works include “Boléro,” “Le Tombeau de Couperin” and “La Valse.”The newly found piece, “Sémiramis: Prélude et Danse,” was written sometime between 1900 and 1902, when Ravel was in his late 20s and sparring with administrators at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition.The work, from an unfinished cantata about the Babylonian queen Semiramis, reveals a young musician still honing his voice and looking to others, like the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov, for inspiration. “Sémiramis” lacks some of the lush textures and rich harmonies for which Ravel would become known — he was a master of blending French impressionism, Spanish melodies, baroque, jazz and other music — though there are hints of his unconventional style.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