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    Luigi Alva, Elegant Tenor With a Lighthearted Touch, Dies at 98

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    A Peruvian-born international star, he made a specialty of roles in operas by Donizetti, Rossini and Mozart, becoming one of their pre-eminent interpreters.Luigi Alva, the Peruvian tenor who was a pre-eminent interpreter of Mozart and Rossini roles that highlighted his light-lyric voice, elegant phrasing and subtle acting during a three-decade career on the world’s opera stages, died on Thursday at his home in Barlassina, Italy, north of Milan. He was 98. His death was confirmed by the Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio, a close friend and the intendant of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy.Mr. Alva did not have the booming, resonant voice needed for dramatic tenor performances in the biggest opera houses. But he triumphed in opera buffa roles — such as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” and the lovesick Ernesto in Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” — which demanded fine comedic timing and an appreciation for absurd situations without resorting to slapstick or mugging.In more serious roles, such as Don Ottavio in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” Mr. Alva displayed a warm timbre and gracious line that gained him an enthusiastic following. Few tenors could match his ability to deliver long coloratura passages with a single breath, as Mr. Alva did time and again in “Il mio tesoro,” the famous aria from “Don Giovanni.”“The real trick is not merely to sing the passage, but to make it sound easy,” the critic Alan Rich of The New York Times wrote on the occasion of Mr. Alva’s New York recital debut at Judson Hall in 1961. “And this was the way he sang throughout the evening — beautifully, and with an assurance that was literally breathtaking.”In more serious roles, such as Don Ottavio in “Don Giovanni,” Mr. Alva displayed a warm timbre and gracious line that gained him an enthusiastic following. Here he performed the role in 1963 at La Scala.Erio Piccagliani/Teatro alla ScalaWe 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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      Seven Takes on the Lurid Dance of the Seven Veils in Strauss’s ‘Salome’

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      “I’m ready,” Salome sings. And then she dances.Her predatory stepfather has promised her anything she wants if she performs for him. She obliges with the alternately wild and delicate Dance of the Seven Veils, one of the most famous numbers in all opera.The Dance of the Seven VeilsChicago Symphony Orchestra; Fritz Reiner, conductor (Sony)A highlight of Strauss’s “Salome,” which the Metropolitan Opera will broadcast live to movie theaters on Saturday, it is also one of the art form’s greatest challenges. Few sopranos capable of singing the daunting role have much experience with dance, let alone with carrying a sensual nine-minute solo.Is it a seduction? A striptease? A cry for help? Performers have taken this intense, lurid scene in many different directions, bringing out undercurrents of sexual awakening and violence. The Met’s new production inverts the traditional portrayal, uncovering the wounded girl beneath the stereotypical femme fatale.Here are (yes) seven memorable versions from the long history of opera’s boldest dance.Silent SalomeAlla Nazimova.Nazimova ProductionsNot quite 20 years after the opera’s 1905 premiere, a silent film version of “Salome” — really an adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play on which the opera is based — embraced the material’s perfumed, verging-on-surreal Orientalism. The actress Alla Nazimova’s Salome is a spoiled, petulant teenager.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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      John Adams’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ Sags at the Metropolitan Opera

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      John Adams’s Shakespeare adaptation has been trimmed since its premiere, but still struggles with setting a flood of dense Elizabethan verse.“Antony and Cleopatra” played a crucial role in the history of the Metropolitan Opera. In 1966, Samuel Barber’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy opened the company’s Lincoln Center home — back when the Met barely did anything from the 20th century, let alone world premieres.Things could hardly be more different now. John Adams’s version of “Antony and Cleopatra” arrived at the Met on Monday at a time when new and recent pieces are frequently on offer, a shock for an art form in which the standard repertory pretty much ended with Puccini. This is the fifth Adams title the company has presented, the kind of sustained commitment to a living composer that would have once been unthinkable.Barber’s “Antony” was a notorious fiasco. Even with Leontyne Price as Cleopatra, the opera was buried beneath a lavish staging, designed to give the theater’s new machinery a workout. Deeply wounded by the blowback, Barber eventually revised the work.Adams, too, has futzed with his “Antony” since its premiere in San Francisco in 2022 and a later production in Barcelona. By now, some 20 minutes have been trimmed from a score that ran nearly three hours at the premiere.But the opera still slumps and sags, for all of the music’s nervously chugging energy and despite an excellent cast led by the eloquently weary Gerald Finley and a bristling Julia Bullock.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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      The Inspirations Behind the Met Opera’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’

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      On the page, John Adams’s opera “Antony and Cleopatra” is a pretty straightforward adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. But on the stage, it is something else entirely.The production of “Antony and Cleopatra” that opens at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday is by Elkhanah Pulitzer, who turns Shakespeare’s play of torn allegiances, thwarted love and ascendant authoritarianism into a study of how people’s public images are constructed. She imagines a world in which celebrities can be tantamount to gods, the way they long have been treated in Hollywood.With all that in mind, Pulitzer developed an aesthetic universe for her production, with the help of the scenic designer Mimi Lien and the costume designer Constance Hoffman, made of three principal elements: Egypt in 30 B.C., Hollywood in the 1930s and celebrity media culture.Bullock, center, in the Met’s production.Karen AlmondYou can see each of those references in the third scene of the opera. Cleopatra has been left behind by Antony after he returned to Rome, and she is lounging by her pool in Alexandria, described by Pulitzer as “a deco gold world with palm leaves and her in a lovely robe drinking martinis.” Then Cleopatra receives the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia, which throws her into a rage.Take a closer look at how this moment comes to life through the layers of Pulitzer’s staging.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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      Strauss’s ‘Salome’ Gets a New Staging at the Metropolitan Opera

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      In his company debut, the director Claus Guth takes a psychological approach, surrounding the title character with six versions of her younger self.The first sound in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Salome” isn’t the wriggle of clarinet that begins Strauss’s score. It’s the tinkle of a music box, while a little girl plays with a doll at the lip of the stage. Projected on the curtain behind her is a giant image of herself, slowly twirling.She suddenly gets angry at the toy and begins beating it against the ground. Even before the orchestra squirms in, Claus Guth’s grimly effective staging has made clear its preoccupations: childhood, dancing, violence.Guth, one of Europe’s busiest directors and making his Met debut with this production, is also fascinated by multiple versions of the self. Starring the soprano Elza van den Heever — simultaneously innocent and hardened, sounding silvery yet secure — this “Salome,” which opened on Tuesday, gives its title character not one youthful double, but six.The group of Salomes, progressing in age from perhaps a kindergartner to the 16-year-old played by van den Heever, is dressed in matching dark frocks, giving hints of “The Shining” and Diane Arbus photographs.Guth, placing the action in a dour black mansion around the turn of the 20th century, has shifted from ancient to modern times Strauss’s 100-minute, one-act adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s scandalous play. “Salome” depicts, in decadent music inspired by the flowery language of the Symbolists, the biblical princess who was drawn to and rejected by John the Baptist and who demanded that he be decapitated by her depraved stepfather, King Herod.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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      For His Met Opera Debut, a Director Takes On ‘Salome’

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      The director Claus Guth, wearing a scarf and coat, was pacing the frigid auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera during a recent rehearsal of Strauss’s “Salome,” going over lighting and visual cues. It was only a few days before opening night, and he was optimistic.“New York can carry you on an enormous, beautiful energy,” he said. “It’s an adrenaline — not a stressful feeling, but a sensation of being alive.”Guth, 61, who was born in Germany and has spent most of his career in Europe, has won acclaim for his experimental, exacting approach to operas new and old. Now, he is bringing those sensibilities to his Met debut, directing a new production of “Salome” that opens on Tuesday.Elza van den Heever, in black, and Peter Mattei in “Salome,” an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s decadent play in which the title character demands the head of John the Baptist.Scott Rossi for The New York TimesInspired partly by Stanley Kubrick’s film “Eyes Wide Shut,” Guth has infused the opera, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s decadent retelling of the biblical story, with elements of a psychological thriller. Menacing figures walk around in ram masks on a black-and-white stage. A naked woman appears and disappears. A girl strokes a doll’s hair before pulling out its arms and hitting it violently against the ground.Guth said he wanted to highlight the suffocating rules of the Victorian society portrayed in Wilde’s play. He focuses on telling the back story of Salome, the 16-year-old princess and stepdaughter of King Herod, portraying her as a victim of abuse and trauma who becomes obsessed with John the Baptist, eventually demanding his head.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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      Mozart’s ‘Figaro’ and ‘Magic Flute’ at the Metropolitan Opera

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      Joana Mallwitz is in calm, stylish command making her debut with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” running in repertory with “The Magic Flute.”The size of the Metropolitan Opera can daunt even experienced artists. From the podium to the stage feels like a mile, and the proscenium is of yawning width and height. No opera benefits from chaos, but some pieces need especially precise discipline to make their impact — so they need conductors who can corral big forces across those sprawling distances.It’s impressive when a veteran baton makes it all work. More so when it’s a newcomer like Joana Mallwitz, who made her Met debut this month leading Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” the kind of farcical comedy that quickly goes off the rails without a firm hand on the reins.On Friday, midway through this season’s long run — lasting, with cast changes, through May 17 — Mallwitz was in calm, stylish command from the brisk overture on. Throughout the evening, she kept the orchestra sounding light and silky, allowing it to blend (instead of compete) with the charming singers.The yearning winds that play during Cherubino’s aria “Non so più” are the echo of the character’s teenage longing, and Mallwitz guided those winds to soar more than usual, bringing out true sweetness and a hint of ache. Cherubino’s second big number, “Voi che sapete,” was accompanied with elegant clarity, each plucked pizzicato note in the strings present and unified without being overemphasized.There was spirit and forward motion in this “Figaro.” But Mallwitz didn’t fall into the classic young conductor trap of shoving the performance toward extremes of tempo and dynamics (loud and fast, mostly) to convey intensity. In the long, zany, ebbing-and-flowing finale of the second act, she patiently paced the action, releasing tension then building it again, for an overall effect far zestier than if she’d merely kept her foot on the gas.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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      Singer Sues Met Opera Over Firing for Post-Pregnancy Vocal Problems

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      The mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who suffered vocal problems during and after pregnancy, is suing the opera company — and the union that represented her — after she lost work.The Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was once one of opera’s most sought-after stars, renowned for stirring, powerful performances in works like Bizet’s “Carmen” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.”But after she began experiencing vocal problems during pregnancy in 2021, her career suffered. When she returned to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, company officials later said, she did not sing up to her standard. The Met canceled her upcoming engagements, and she lost work at other opera companies.Now Rachvelishvili, 40, is suing both the Met and the union representing her, seeking more than $400,000 in compensation for lost work. In a complaint filed in late March, she accused the Met of breaching its contracts with her, and she said that her union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, had failed to properly represent her.Rachvelishvili’s lawsuit claimed that the Met had been aware that she had “suffered complications from her pregnancy and birth affecting her voice and vocal range.” The suit described her as being “disabled due to her pregnancy” and accused the opera company of discriminating against her.“I was shocked that I was not given a chance to recover and all of my contracts for the next two years were immediately canceled without pay,” she said in a statement.The Met said it could not comment on pending litigation.Her complaint argues that the Met should compensate her because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay contracted performers even if they later decide not to engage them.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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      The Conductor Joana Mallwitz Mixes Intensity With Approachability

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      Joana Mallwitz, one of Germany’s fastest rising stars, makes her Metropolitan Opera debut in “The Marriage of Figaro” on Monday.The conductor Joana Mallwitz rehearsing at the Met.The conductor Joana Mallwitz apologized for arriving late for her interview at the Metropolitan Opera House last week, but she had needed to catch her breath after rehearsal. “Conducting is sweaty business,” she said, as she settled into a straight-backed posture on a sofa in the press lounge, her striking hands with long fingers elegantly crossed at the wrists.On Monday, Mallwitz, 39 — the music director of the Konzerthaus Berlin and one of the fastest rising classical stars in her native Germany — makes her Met debut with Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” She has been in close relationship with that opera since her first job, at 19, at Theater Heidelberg, a small house where her duties included “everything that one does as Kapellmeister,” she said: rehearsing singers, playing the continuo part on the harpsichord and, when needed, jumping in at short notice to conduct a performance.“You develop a relationship with such a work,” she said of “Figaro.” “You get to know each other.”“You develop a relationship with such a work,” Mallwitz said of “The Marriage of Figaro.” “You get to know each other.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt the end of that afternoon’s rehearsal she had worked with the orchestra on minute details in the overture, finessing dynamic contrasts and highlighting the shock value — “like rock music,” she told the musicians — of the loud outbursts that interrupt the garrulous bubbling fast notes. The key, she said afterward, was to “bring a certain energy into the sound that doesn’t become hard when the playing gets louder.”Working with the Met musicians, she said, was a joy because after fine-tuning a small section, “they are able to feel what my style is and transfer it” to the rest of the piece. “They’re able to pick it up because mentally, too, they are virtuosos,” she said. “It’s incredible what this orchestra is able to deliver in terms of tempo and transparency and diversity of effects. You want to draw on all of that but also achieve a combination of lightness and drama.”Lightness and drama, approachability and uncompromising seriousness in her approach to a score — these are at the heart of Mallwitz’s striking rise to prominence in a profession long dominated by men. In 2014, at 28 she became the music director of Theater Erfurt, the youngest conductor to hold such a position in Europe. In 2018, she took over the leadership of the Nuremberg State Theater, an institution that had also served as a springboard for the conductor Christian Thielemann when he was 23. In her second season there she was voted best conductor of the year by a jury of German critics. A celebrated run of Mozart’s “Cosí Fan Tutte” at Salzburg in 2020 catapulted her to international attention.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