Metropolitan Opera

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      Lucine Amara, 99, Dies; Familiar Soprano at the Met Saw Bias There

      by

      She sang with the Metropolitan Opera for decades, often on short notice, including after lodging a successful age discrimination complaint against the company.Lucine Amara, an American singer who continued a decades-long career at the Metropolitan Opera after she successfully brought the company up on age-discrimination charges in a widely publicized case, died on Sept. 6 at her home in Queens. She was 99. Her daughter, Evelyn La Quaif, a soprano and stage director, who had shared an apartment with her mother in recent weeks, said that the cause was respiratory illness and heart failure and that Ms. Amara also had dementia. She had lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for decades.A lyric soprano known for her clear, supple voice, Ms. Amara sang 748 performances with the Met between 1950 and 1991, an impressively long tenure.Her dozens of roles there included Mimì in Puccini’s “La Bohème,” Nedda in Leoncavallo’s “I Pagliacci,” the title part in Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos,” and Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Pamina in his “Magic Flute.”Appearing in a 1964 Met production of Gounod’s “Faust,” Ms. Amara was described by Theodore Strongin in The New York Times as “a first-rank Marguerite in all respects.”If Ms. Amara was not as well known to the general public as other singers in her cohort — among them Roberta Peters and Victoria de los Angeles — it was partly, her admirers say, because she was damned by her own competence and by her matter-of-fact approach to her craft.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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Creators of ‘Grounded’ Discuss Writing for the Met Opera

      by

      Allow the creators of opera some grace.Composers, librettists and their colleagues put years of work into something that, if they are lucky, gets a workshop performance or two before arriving onstage. If there is a revival — never a given in opera — they have an opportunity to make revisions.This process can be brutal for artists. And it’s not the usual one for the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright George Brant, the creators of “Grounded,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Sept. 23.Tesori was written operas before, but she and Brant are more often animals of the traditional theater and the Broadway musical, environments where constant revisions responding to workshops, rehearsals and preview performances are the norm. Operas are also revised until the last possible moment, but they are never given the luxurious feedback that creators get in theater.“In the theatrical space, the audience is part of the process,” said Tesori, the Tony Award-winning composer of the shows “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change.” She learned from George C. Wolfe, the decorated playwright and director, “that the audience is your final scene partner.”“I wish I were one of those artists who really knows what they have, but I just don’t,” she said. “So, I feel like I’m still getting to know what ‘Grounded’ is.”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

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Opera Doesn’t Have to Be for Elites. Here’s Why.

      by

      If opera at its best aspires to a different world, then we need to cultivate an anti-elite approach to how it is created and performed.Is opera a standard-bearer or a pallbearer of the status quo?It’s easy to assume the former: From its less-than-humble origins as a private event in Italian courts over 400 years ago, opera boasted a spare-no-expense theatricality that projected the power and wealth of the work’s supporting patrons. Spectacle was a form of political justification, and extravagance became self-serving. Before long, the equating of display and dominance seeped into opera’s DNA.Today, opera still seems to many a reflection of a hierarchical and exclusionary society.Thinking about opera as burying or at least challenging the status quo may seem antithetical to its nature. Yet opera always fares best when it goes against the grain: flaunting resistance to the beauty standards erected by mass media; fitting uneasily, if at all, with the rapid demands of the attention economy; feeling completely out of place with how we consume other art.For every composer affirming authority in their work, opera’s history offers counterexamples: creators so committed to establishing a new world order in sound that they resisted all conventions and invented their own instruments, their own ensembles or their own theaters. Opera often appears to ratify the reigning ideology, but the art form is most exciting and viable when it is a subversive act.The status quo in opera is elitism, and the art form’s elitist tendencies (viewing audiences in large swaths differentiated by class) all too easily eclipse its aspirational potential (the art form’s ability to speak to a single spectator and support their process of individuation). To nourish opera’s aspirational quality, its ability to serve as a mechanism for imagining a different world, we need to cultivate an anti-elite approach in the spaces where opera is performed and in the way the artists create the work.Opera was not always perceived as elitist in the United States: It wasn’t so long ago that opera singers were featured on mainstream television, like on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or “The Muppet Show.” The “Looney Tunes” sendup of Wagner remains for many as much opera as they’ve ever experienced. The director Peter Sellars once shared with me a childhood memory of a handyman pulling up to his home in a pickup truck with the Met Opera broadcast playing on his radio.It’s easy to view this situation cynically, as though the bejeweled televised appearances of beloved sopranos like Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price represented a mainstream co-opting of opera to sell an image of upward mobility after World War II. But when Leonard Bernstein and Maria Callas appeared on prime-time television, they did not reduce classical music to a mere signifier of economic advancement.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

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Met Opera’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yuval Sharon Will Team Up for ‘Ring’

      by

      Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, will extend his contract and lead Wagner’s four-opera epic, in a production staged by Yuval Sharon.Wagner’s “Ring” cycle is a mammoth undertaking for any opera company: a four-opera, 15-hour epic that features a cast of warriors, gods, giants and dwarves and some of the most daunting music in the repertoire.The Metropolitan Opera said on Tuesday that it would again stage opera’s most ambitious work, starting in the 2027-28 season, the company’s first new production of the “Ring” cycle in nearly two decades. And a familiar face will be on the podium: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director since 2018, who is extending his contract through 2030.The production, which will be staged by the visionary theater director Yuval Sharon, is to feature the soprano Lise Davidsen, one of opera’s brightest stars, as Brünnhilde.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the company had decided to stage a new “Ring” in part for Nézet-Séguin.“Every music director of a major opera company expects and deserves to have a ‘Ring’ cycle,” he said. “It’s the crowning achievement, the biggest thing you can do in opera.”Nézet-Séguin, 49, whose new contract covers a six-year term, said he was looking forward to the “Ring,” calling it an “extremely intimate affair.”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

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Anna Netrebko, Shunned in U.S. Over Putin Support, to Sing in Palm Beach

      by

      The star soprano, who lost work at American opera companies after Russia invaded Ukraine, will sing at a gala for Palm Beach Opera, her first American engagement since 2019.Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the superstar soprano Anna Netrebko has been persona non grata at cultural institutions in the United States, shunned for her past support of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.But in February, Ms. Netrebko will make her first appearance in the United States since 2019: She will perform in Florida at a gala concert at the Breakers Palm Beach hotel to benefit Palm Beach Opera, the company announced on Wednesday.Ms. Netrebko, one of the biggest stars in classical music, has in recent months returned to many top concert halls and opera houses in Paris, Milan, Berlin and elsewhere in Europe, prompting some protests but also winning ovations and strong reviews.But most American institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, where she reigned as a prima donna for two decades, have continued to refuse to engage her because of her past support for Mr. Putin and her unwillingness to criticize him now. Her last performance in the United States was before the pandemic, when she headlined a gala New Year’s Eve performance at the Met Opera.In a statement, Ms. Netrebko said she was looking forward to singing in Florida.“I am honored to be lending my voice to the Palm Beach Opera’s annual gala,” she said. “I am excited to spend time in this beautiful community.”James Barbato, who leads the Palm Beach Opera, said in a statement that Ms. Netrebko was “more than a great artist with a magnetic stage presence and a voice of breathtaking beauty and power.”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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      A Met Orchestra of Mixed Quality Returns to Carnegie Hall

      by

      The tenure of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, can be difficult to assess. That much was evident over two concerts.So far, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s tenure as the Metropolitan Opera’s music director has been mixed. That much was evident over two Met Orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall last week that were by turns excellent and mystifying.This group’s specialties can seem indistinct; its quality, inconsistent. And, in general, it has been difficult to assess these players under Nézet-Séguin, who took over in 2018. A music director needs to be present to shape the sound of an ensemble, and he has been chronically overscheduled, juggling the Met with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal, not to mention his post as the head of conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music.On a practical level, a music director also needs to build an orchestra, and the Met’s is still regrouping from a wave of retirements during the pandemic. For reasons perhaps beyond his control, though, Nézet-Séguin has hired a mere 13 instrumentalists since he started.He has exuded contemporary cool, proudly displaying his painted fingernails on Met posters; yet he has also, in a reinforcement of maestro mythology, referred to himself as the “father” of the company. In 2021, he broke convention by speaking out in favor of the orchestra’s musicians during a labor dispute, but only when it mattered least: nearly a year after they had been furloughed during the pandemic, and after they had already reached a deal for partial pay.Last September, he conducted the season-opening production, “Dead Man Walking.” That would seem like a given for a music director, but he was absent for “Medea,” the opener in 2022. “Dead Man,” at least, represents Nézet-Séguin’s admirable attempt to modernize the Met’s repertoire. But after that show, he conducted just two of the six contemporary works on offer this season. You could say he was focusing on the classics instead, but he led only four of the 18 total operas programmed.When he does conduct at the Met, he has a penchant for extremes, either colossal or exquisite. At the delicate end, he can be brilliant, with detail-oriented transparency and prayerful serenity. But when he evokes immensity, it is often crude and unbalanced.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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Four Takeaways From the Metropolitan Opera’s Risky Season

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Audiences Are Returning to the Met Opera, but Not for Everything

      by

      The Met is approaching prepandemic levels of attendance. But its strategy of staging more modern operas to lure new audiences is having mixed success.Four years after the coronavirus brought the curtain down on the Metropolitan Opera, audiences are nearly back, the company announced on Thursday. But the company’s big bet on contemporary opera this season had mixed results.The Met, which has been facing serious fiscal challenges, said that the 2023-24 season ended this month with 72 percent paid attendance overall, approaching the 75 percent it had in the last full season before the pandemic.About a third of this season was devoted to contemporary operas, and those by living composers, as it works to connect with younger and more diverse audiences. Some were hits: Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” drew 78 percent attendance, behind only Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” Bizet’s “Carmen” and Puccini’s “Turandot.”But two recent operas that had drawn sold-out crowds in previous seasons fared less well when they were revived: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” drew 65 percent attendance, and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which reunited the stars Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato, drew 61 percent.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the mix of old and new operas was helping drive a recovery at the box office by bringing new people into the opera house. But the company still faces significant obstacles. The Met, whose credit rating was downgraded in February by Moody’s Investors Service, has withdrawn about $70 million in emergency funds from its endowment over the past two seasons to help cover costs.“We believe we’re on the right path artistically,” he said. “But we’re still climbing out of the hole that the pandemic left us in.”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