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      Maria Ewing, Dramatically Daring Opera Star, Dies at 71

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      She sought to incorporate acting techniques in her singing rather than settle for predictable staging. Uncertainty about her heritage inspired her daughter, the actress Rebecca Hall, to make the film “Passing.”Maria Ewing, who sang notable soprano and mezzo-soprano roles at leading houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, beginning in the mid-1970s and whose ambiguity about her racial heritage helped drive her daughter, the actress and director Rebecca Hall, to make the recent movie “Passing,” died on Sunday at her home near Detroit. She was 71.A family spokeswoman said the cause was cancer.Ms. Ewing was a striking presence on opera stages, where she strove to bring an actor’s skills and sensibilities to her roles rather than simply stand and sing.“I’ve watched how actors work and work at it,” Ms. Ewing, who was once married to the director Peter Hall, told The Orange County Register of California in 1997, when she was appearing in L.A. Opera’s production of Umberto Giordano’s “Fedora.”“I don’t mean to criticize or underestimate the importance of beautiful vocalism, which alone can move people,” she added. “But why is it that opera so often becomes predictable in terms of staging?”There was certainly nothing staid about her performance, under the direction of Mr. Hall, in the title role of “Salome,” first seen in Los Angeles in 1986 and restaged in other cities, included London. In the initial production she ended the Dance of the Seven Veils wearing only a G-string; in later ones she dispensed with even that. (She is not the only Salome to have ended the dance in the all-together; Karita Mattila did so at the Met this century.)“Sometimes you have to put yourself on the edge,” she told The Register. “You go to the precipice and lean over it. You have to. A role like Salome, you are completely on the edge. You’re over it, in fact.”Though critics had sometimes frowned on her leading roles — her attempt at the title role in “Carmen,” also under Mr. Hall, at about the same time drew some harsh notices — her “Salome” was generally acclaimed. John Rockwell, reviewing a return engagement in Los Angeles in 1989 for The New York Times, called it “the most arresting, convincing overall account of this impossible part that I have ever encountered.”Ms. Ewing as Poppea in Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1984. The production was by the noted director Peter Hall, Ms. Ewing’s husband. Dennis Bailey performed the part of Nerone.Guy Cravett/ThornEMIWhenever Ms. Ewing performed, critics almost invariably commented on her exotic looks. Those were in part a product of a mixed racial heritage that Ms. Ewing tended not to dwell on, even with her daughter, who was raised in England.“When I was growing up, my mother would say things to me like, ‘Well, you know we’re Black,’ and then another day she’d say, ‘I don’t really know that,’” Ms. Hall recounted in an episode of “Finding Your Roots,” the PBS genealogy program, filmed last year and broadcast just last week.“She was always extraordinarily beautiful,” Ms. Hall told Henry Louis Gates Jr., the host of the program, “but she didn’t look like everyone else’s mother in the English countryside.”Her mother identified as white, she told Professor Gates, but in interviews over the years Ms. Ewing also alluded to possible Black and American Indian ancestry. Ms. Ewing’s father, Norman, for years presented himself as an American Indian, but the researchers on “Finding Your Roots” determined that this was a fabrication; a DNA test of Ms. Hall done for the program showed that she had no Indian background. Her grandfather had in fact been Black.“You, my dear, are indeed a person of African descent,” Professor Gates told Ms. Hall.This was more than a curiosity for Ms. Hall. She had for some time been developing a film based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, “Passing,” about two light-skinned Black women, one of whom passes as white. Part of what interested her about the novel, she said in interviews, was the nagging suspicion that the story was relevant to her own family.“When I asked questions to my mother about her background in Detroit and her family,” Ms. Hall told The New York Times last year, “she left it with an, ‘I don’t want to dwell on the past.’”The film, Ms. Hall’s first feature as a director, premiered in November and has been widely praised as one of the year’s best.Maria Louise Ewing was born on March 27, 1950, in Detroit. Her father was an engineer at a steel company and her mother, Hermina Maria (Veraar) Ewing, was a homemaker.Ms. Ewing studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music. About 1975 she made her debut at the Cologne Opera, and in October 1976 she made her Met debut as Cherubino in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.”“At the moment some combination of nerves and artistic immaturity holds her Cherubino short of the very best,” Mr. Rockwell wrote in his review. “But she is a singer of enormous potential.”That same month found her on the Carnegie Hall stage, one of two singers in a Mahler program by the New York Philharmonic conducted by James Levine.“The voice is one with a good deal of color, and of course Miss Ewing will grow into the music,” Harold C. Schonberg wrote in The Times.Among her early Met roles was Blanche in John Dexter’s 1977 staging of Poulenc’s “Dialogues der Carmelites.” She was slated for a road production of that opera in Boston in 1979 when fog grounded the plane that was supposed to deliver her from New York to Boston for an 8 p.m. curtain. At 4:30 p.m. she climbed into a cab, which delivered her to the Hynes Auditorium at 8:55; the curtain went up at 9:05. The fare: $337.50, not including a $47.50 tip.In addition to her dramatic roles, Ms. Ewing stood out in comedies like Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte.”Ms. Ewing’s daughter Rebecca Hall, left, is a noted stage and film actress. They attended the funeral of Ms. Ewing’s former husband, Peter Hall, in 2017. Also pictured is Leslie Caron, who was also married to Mr. Hall.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Give any ‘Così’ Kiri Te Kanawa’s patrician Fiordiligi, Maria Ewing’s lovably dopey Dorabella and Donald Gramm’s subtly understated Don Alfonso and you will have yourself a night at the opera,” Donal Henahan wrote of the Met’s production in 1982.In 1987 a dispute with Mr. Levine over a revival and telecast of “Carmen” led her to withdraw from Met performances.“I cannot work with a man I cannot trust, and I cannot work in a house that he is running in this fashion,” she said at the time.But she would eventually return; her final Met performance was in 1997 as Marie in Berg’s “Wozzeck.”She and Mr. Hall married in 1982 and divorced in 1990. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by three sisters, Norma Koleta, Carol Pancratz and Francis Ewing; and a granddaughter.In 1996, when she was singing a concert with the Philharmonic, The Times asked Ms. Ewing about that famous dance in “Salome.”“It was my own idea to do the dance naked,” she said. “I felt that it was somehow essential to express the truth of that moment — a moment of frustration, longing and self-discovery for Salome. For me, the scene wouldn’t work any other way.” More

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      Love, Trust and Heartbreak on Two Stages

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      The musical “Hadestown” and the opera “Eurydice” aim to offer new twists on a Greek myth. But when it comes to their heroine, they only go so far.When Orpheus turned around to look at Eurydice during the closing performance of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” at the Metropolitan Opera, the audience’s collective gasp seemed to shake the grand theater. I recalled another time I heard such a gasp: from the character of Eurydice near the end of “Doubt Comes In,” a song in the Broadway musical “Hadestown.” Then, too, the audience gasped along with her.A lifelong classics nerd, I was surprised both times by the reaction: Does the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice really require a spoiler alert?The myth has been kicking around for over two millenniums, after all. Orpheus, the greatest musician of all, marries Eurydice, who dies when she’s bitten by a snake on their wedding day. He descends to the underworld, where the god of the dead offers him another chance at love: He can leave with Eurydice, but only if he walks ahead and never turns around. Here’s that spoiler: Orpheus looks, and Eurydice is damned to Hades forever.For such an old — and short — story, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is still frequently told and adapted, much like that of another famous ill-fated couple, Romeo and Juliet. Operatic renditions by Monteverdi and others date back to the early 1600s. Renowned filmmakers like Jean Cocteau created their own narratives in the 20th century.In 1922, Rainer Maria Rilke used the tragic story as a launchpad for his deeply ruminative 55-poem cycle “Sonnets to Orpheus.” Countless other poets have followed suit, many revising the myth to give its sad dead wife a voice — perhaps in a contemporary vernacular, as in Carol Ann Duffy’s “Eurydice,” or in the measured verse and elevated diction of A.E. Stallings’ “Eurydice’s Footnote.”And of course there’s Ruhl herself, who created a revisionist mythology in her 2003 play “Eurydice,” which she adopted into the opera’s libretto.Modern-day adaptations like “Hadestown” and “Eurydice” reveal more than just the imaginations of their creators; they reflect a gender politics that gets to the core of how men and women are mythologized, who has agency and whose stories are most valued.Morley, as Eurydice, surrounded by the dead.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLet’s face it: Orpheus has always been the star of the myth. Eurydice is simply the young bride. She has no background and no future; she only serves as the vehicle of tragedy for Orpheus.Both “Hadestown” and “Eurydice” interrogate that starring role. In both, Orpheus remains a genius musician who, though in love with Eurydice, is preoccupied with his art above all. Her death is a touch of bad luck — you never know when a venomous snake will slither underfoot on your wedding day. But both adaptations draw a line of causality from Orpheus’s behavior to Eurydice’s death.Perhaps, the productions suggest, Orpheus was the original slacker musician boyfriend, so concerned with his next big hit that he neglected the love who inspired his best work. But Eurydice doesn’t merely get dragged down into the underworld; in both versions she’s tempted by the offer of something she wants.In Aucoin and Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” the new bride wanders off from her own wedding party. She’s bored and missing her dead father, who has been secretly trying to write to his beloved daughter from the underworld. In comes Hades, the ruler of that realm, as sleazy as a back-alley hustler, to manipulate her grief; he baits her with one of her father’s letters.In Anais Mitchell’s “Hadestown,” the seduction is twofold: financial and sexual. Orpheus and Eurydice are trapped in some otherworldly version of the Depression era. In the lurid “Hey, Little Songbird,” Hades draws in Eurydice with promises of security and comfort, while undermining Orpheus, mocking him as a starving artist: “He’s some kind of poet and he’s penniless?/Give him your hand, he’ll give you his hand-to-mouth./He’ll write you a poem when the power’s out.”But the pressure goes further; in Patrick Page’s beguiling performance, Hades is explicitly predatory, exploiting Eurydice’s feelings of displacement and neglect in her relationship.That each of the two Eurydices actively makes a choice, as opposed to being passively buffeted by fate, is telling. But the result in both cases is still tragic.Whether it’s via a gradual transformation, as in “Hadestown,” or an abrupt change, as in “Eurydice,” our heroine loses her sense of self. In the underworld of “Hadestown,” Eurydice joins Hades’s army of souls, forgetting her identity like the deceased around her. Her counterpart in “Eurydice” also forgets Orpheus, her own name and even how to read; she meets her dead father but is unable to recognize him at first.Reeve Carney, foreground center, and Eva Noblezada, far right, as Orpheus and Eurydice in the Broadway musical “Hadestown.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI’ve already told you the spoiler, that the myth ends in death. Opera has an easier time going there; it’s difficult for a musical to pull off a somber ending — the upbeat finale that practically demands a standing ovation feels so much more typical for the form.And yet “Hadestown” bravely, if self-consciously, resolves that way, announcing that the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is an “old song” and “a sad song, but we sing it anyway.”“Eurydice” commits more explosively to woe in its stellar third act, after two acts of tedious exposition. Orpheus, Eurydice and Eurydice’s father all end up in the underworld together, but they find no peace. Eurydice’s father, having lost all hope of reuniting with his daughter after her husband arrives to save her, takes another dip into the Styx, causing him to die a final death. Eurydice, having lost both her husband and father twice, follows her father into oblivion.So the grand tragedy of the piece isn’t contingent on Orpheus’s inconvenient rubbernecking and the implications about trust (though that’s in there too); it’s the ways death has riven these relationships. In trying to outmaneuver their mortality and reconnect with one another, Orpheus, Eurydice and Eurydice’s father each arrive at an oblivion more desolate and lonely than what they’d known before.For all I appreciate about the way both productions offer Eurydice more agency, I do think they give her short shrift.“Hadestown” sticks to the plot of the classic, with some twists and embellishments. But in performance, the musical positions her as the more interesting half of the couple. As played by Eva Noblezada, she is a plucky, streetwise heroine — “no stranger to the world,” as one lyric goes. She may love a juvenile dreamer lost in his own head (Reeve Carney, with a beardless falsetto). But she’s practical; she’ll do what it takes to survive in a world of gross inequality, where Hades is an industrial fat cat and artists and workers are largely servile. If her death becomes the focal point over her character, that may be more the myth’s fault than the musical’s.“Eurydice” allows its heroine the power to decide: head back with her husband, or remain in the underworld with her father. She chooses to call to Orpheus — in effect separating from him and reuniting with her father.But even with this often intriguing revision, the opera still defines Eurydice solely by her relationship to men. Take the scene of their marriage proposal: Orpheus slyly ties a red string around Eurydice’s ring finger, and suggests using her to create his art — quite literally, making an instrument from the strands of her hair. She laments her father’s absence at the wedding itself, because, she claims, she was married to her father first. She doesn’t seem to exist outside of these men.When Eurydice dies the second time, vanishing without a trace, it’s as though she’s a figment of Orpheus’s imagination, more an archetype than anything else — the ill-fated lover, the tragic dead wife, another muse.Still gone at the turn of a head. More

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      Scrambling but Undaunted, the Met Opera Sings Through Omicron

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      The variant has upended Broadway, ballet and concerts. But the Met has yet to miss a performance, thanks to strict rules, fill-in artists and luck.The Metropolitan Opera had to scramble to find a replacement for its “Magic Flute” conductor after she tested positive for the coronavirus last month. When a wicked stepsister in “Cinderella” tested positive shortly before a performance in late December, the Met enlisted a soprano from another production to sing the role from the wings while a dancer acted it onstage.And earlier this week, when the star of its new production of “Rigoletto,” the baritone Quinn Kelsey, exhibited cold symptoms, the Met insisted on using an understudy, even though Kelsey had not yet tested positive for the virus and had just received some of the best reviews of his career.The Met’s prudence paid off. Kelsey later tested positive, and the rest of the cast had been spared a close contact.The Omicron variant has toppled a slew of Broadway shows, disrupted dance productions, postponed festivals, forced the cancellation of dozens of concerts, and closed the mighty Vienna State Opera for almost a week. But it has yet to stymie the Metropolitan Opera, the largest American performing arts organization, which has not missed a performance this season.Undaunted by the sharp rise in coronavirus cases, the Met has staged more than three dozen performances since late November, including productions of “Tosca,” “The Magic Flute,” “Cinderella” and “Rigoletto.” More than 3,000 people, who wore masks and showed proof of vaccination, filled the auditorium on New Year’s Eve. Rehearsals are in full swing for another two dozen performances this month, each involving hundreds of people: solo singers, orchestra players, chorus members, dancers, actors, stagehands, follow-spot operators, dressers and makeup artists, among many others.More than 3,000 people, who wore masks and showed proof of vaccination, filled the Met for the premiere of “Rigoletto” on New Year’s Eve.Richard Termine for The New York Times“We’re doing everything we possibly can to keep the Met open,” Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, said in an interview. “I’m determined not to cancel a performance.”The Met’s success so far in managing the surge can be attributed to a number of factors: strict health protocols, a robust system of understudies, the advantages that come from its structure as a large repertory company that mounts a different opera each day — and, to be sure, a dose of luck.“There’s a sense of, ‘We can do this!’” said Sarah Ina Meyers, who directed the revival of “The Magic Flute,” which completed a nine-performance run on Wednesday with the help of far more cover artists than usual. “We’re trying to lift each other up.”Still, Meyers added, after weeks of grappling with last-minute cast changes, drafting and then tearing up plans, “there is profound hope that we can go back to the normal level of crazy.”The Met’s health protocols are among the strictest in the performing arts. The company now gives all employees P.C.R. tests three times a week, recently began having singers wear face masks even at dress rehearsals, and soon will require employees and audiences to have received booster shots to enter its building.The company had a robust system of fallbacks even before the pandemic struck, since its singers must be at their physical best to fill its cavernous opera house without the aid of amplification, and illnesses, whether hay fever or flu, have always required last-minute substitutions. Unlike Broadway, where shows often assign one actor to serve as an understudy for multiple roles, the Met appoints at least one cover for every role, greatly reducing its chances of having to cancel.Being a huge repertory company helps, too. Since it stages a different opera each night, with several titles in rotation onstage and others in rehearsal at any given time, the Met has a large pool of singers and crew members to draw on when a crisis erupts.And since the company performs a great deal of standard repertory, often in productions that remain the same for years, when a singer falls ill it is usually possible to find another who already knows the part (and even the staging) well. There tend to be several days between performances of each title — so a mild illness might only require missing a couple of shows.By pushing forward, the Met’s leaders hope to signal that the opera house can get through the turmoil of the pandemic and beyond. “The fact that we are performing provides a beacon of hope to our audiences and to our donors,” said Gelb, who tested positive for the virus late last month and had to watch live feeds of several key rehearsals from home. “We just have to make sure we survive the pandemic.”Omicron came just as the company was beginning to feel more confident after losing over $150 million in anticipated revenues because of the pandemic. While ticket sales in the fall were overall about 10 to 20 percent below prepandemic levels, there were several successes: a popular new production, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the company’s first work by a Black composer; the staging of a six-hour work, Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,” the longest in the Met’s repertory; and a revival of Puccini’s “La Bohème” that was a hit with audiences and critics.As Omicron began to spread, the Met moved to strengthen its virus-control measures. Since the beginning of the 2021-22 season, it has required employees and audience members to be fully vaccinated and to wear masks inside the opera house.Quinn Kelsey, standing, and Craig Colclough wore masks while rehearsing for “Rigoletto” last month.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThen P.C.R. testing of employees and artists increased to three times a week, from twice. The Met began to more strictly enforce a policy prohibiting employees with cold-like symptoms from entering the opera house, even if they have tested negative for the virus. It has also discouraged its employees from attending indoor social gatherings.The rules have been burdensome, especially for singers, many of whom find wearing masks while rehearsing awkward. But after going without stable work for much of the pandemic, as the Met and other institutions were closed, they have complied.“It’s uncomfortable, it’s something that we wish we didn’t have to do,” Kelsey, the Rigoletto, said of the masking requirement. “But at the end of the day it just means we’re that much closer, we hope, to putting all this mess behind us.”Even with the health protocols, the coronavirus has wrought havoc, sidelining singers, orchestra players, dancers, actors and stage hands. Since Thanksgiving, 124 people have tested positive for the virus among the Met’s stage crew, construction, wardrobe, wig and makeup, and costume departments, though most are now back at work.In the orchestra, eight people have tested positive; they, too, are largely working again. The Met has a pool of extra musicians who play regularly even when there are no illnesses, making substitutions relatively easy. (New York City Ballet, which halted its jam-packed “Nutcracker” schedule on Dec. 21, had instituted a rule that three connected virus cases within the company would spur a shutdown, to prevent further spread.)When Kelsey came down with cold-like symptoms this week, his cover, Michael Chioldi, jumped into action, getting fitted for costumes and going over technical cues just a few hours before the performance.“It’s been very stressful,” Chioldi said in a telephone interview from his dressing room shortly before his debut on Tuesday. “We’re just really, really hoping and praying that the Met stays open and that we can fill in when people go out, because inevitably people are going to get the virus.”Linda Gelinas (right, with Maya Lahyani in green and Stephanie Blythe) jumped in to act one of the stepsisters in “Cinderella” while Vanessa Becerra sang the role from the wings.Met OperaWhen the singer playing the stepsister in “Cinderella” became ill, the Met brought in a soprano, Vanessa Becerra, who happened to be taking part in “The Magic Flute.” She sang the role from the wings while Linda Gelinas, a former Met principal dancer who had not performed with the company in six years, acted it.With only a few hours to prepare, Gelinas studied videos and raced to memorize stage directions.“I thought it was a joke, but then I very soon realized, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re serious,’” Gelinas said. “Once the decision was made, we just went full speed ahead.”With Omicron infections still rising, it is unclear whether the Met can maintain its streak — and whether audiences will continue to turn out in large numbers. Attendance has been uneven in recent weeks. While it was 87 percent at the New Year’s Eve opening of “Rigoletto,” “Tosca” is expected to end its run this month at just 55 percent.But opera fans have celebrated the Met’s ability to remain a bastion of live music even as other venues have taken a pause.JunHyeok Lee, 27, a student at Baruch College from South Korea who attended the “Rigoletto” opening, said he felt privileged to be there at a time of uncertainty about the virus.“It’s a great blessing,” Lee said. “I’ll go every time unless the Met stops.” More

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      ‘Rigoletto’ at the Met Unites a Father and Daughter. Again.

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      Quinn Kelsey and Rosa Feola have earned raves playing a jester and his child in a new production of Verdi’s opera.Quinn Kelsey and Rosa Feola are used to playing father and daughter.It started in 2013, when Kelsey jumped into the title role of the cursed jester in Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” in Zurich; Feola was in that production, too, as Gilda, the daughter Rigoletto has kept secret. Since then, they’ve sung those characters together, Feola recalled in a recent video call, “five, six, maybe seven times.”Now they are doing the parts in Bartlett Sher’s new staging of “Rigoletto” at the Metropolitan Opera, which opened on New Year’s Eve and moves the action to Weimar Germany. It’s a breakthrough for both singers. Feola, a soprano who made her Met debut in a revival of the old production in 2019, is returning to eager anticipation and the spotlight of a premiere. And Kelsey, a Met fixture in baritone parts for over a decade, is finally getting a true starring role — onstage and on Lincoln Center billboards.“Kelsey has always been an arresting artist,” Anthony Tommasini wrote in a review for The New York Times. “But this role shows off his full vocal and dramatic depth.”Tommasini added that Feola followed up her impressive 2019 debut with a performance in which “coloratura runs and trills emerged as integral extensions of the long-spun vocal lines. She captured Gilda’s innocence, but also the sensual stirrings and secret defiance that drive this over-protected young woman’s disastrous decisions.”Lisette Oropesa was originally cast as the production’s Gilda, said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. But when she asked to be released to take on a new role elsewhere, she suggested he hire Feola, who at the time hadn’t yet sung there. Then came her debut.“There are some singers you hear, and you know immediately that they are a major talent,” Gelb said. “We knew that with her.”In future seasons, she will broaden her Met repertory: Gelb hinted at “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “La Traviata” and a new production of Giordano’s “Fedora.”Daniele Rustioni, the “Rigoletto” conductor, has done at least 10 operas with Feola, and said that over the years he has seen her develop to give Gilda “360 degrees.”“She gives the tenderness, the desperation, the courage,” he added. “She’s not the poor Bambi in the forest.”Rustioni was pleasantly surprised by Kelsey, with whom he hadn’t worked before, calling him a great Rigoletto of our time who is “destined for great things.” He is, Gelb added, “one of our first choices when we think of Verdi baritones,” and his coming Met appearances include “Un Ballo in Maschera,” “Aida” and “Macbeth.”“He’s a Rigoletto of enormous cruelty and empathy,” Gelb said. “I think that Bart was really encouraging him to go for things in ways he hadn’t before. And he’s got all the qualities as a performer to deliver it.”Kelsey has been forced to miss at least three performances after testing positive for the coronavirus this week, but is expected to be back onstage on Jan. 15. (Michael Chioldi is singing in his place.) Kelsey and Feola, at their respective homes in New York for the run, spoke in the call about their work together and the new production. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.How have you grown in these roles together over the years?QUINN KELSEY The more these two characters can be comfortable with each other, the easier it is for the two of them to pull off this relationship. “You’re my daughter” and “You’re my father” — that’s easy to say, but it’s important to find the connection and build it right away. For us, it’s become easier and allowed us to explore new facets of our relationship.ROSA FEOLA In the first duet, when I say “Mio padre!” and he says “Figlia!” we just look at each other, and it’s enough. Because in our eyes we’ve already said everything. And at the end, when she dies, she says, “Mio padre, addio!” It’s a kind of “I love you so much, and there’s nothing more to say.” We have many things to say, even if we are not singing or speaking. That, for me, makes it very special.Has this production changed your understanding of the characters?KELSEY The more you perform the role, the more you can’t help but pay attention to what you’re saying, to the things that your colleagues bring to the production, that you weren’t always aware of. For me, it’s just been the idea of being more specific. You have to transition from evil to uneasy to scared to loving tenderness, all within the first 30 minutes, and this production has been about making specific decisions about when it all happens. Gilda is also older than normally portrayed, enough that she has a specific drive and vision.FEOLA She wants to be older. In the second act there is a new scene that Bart puts in: When she’s undressed in the duke’s room, she doesn’t feel something bad. She understands that to be the partner of that guy, she needs to accept it. Gilda is a strong woman. So at the end of the story, she decides the moment to put the knife in the hand of Sparafucile and make him kill her.KELSEY Bart gave us so much opportunity to really expand the structure of these two characters. Instead of Rigoletto being a bad guy and paying for it later, and Gilda being a delicate flower, we have been allowed to take it a few steps further.And with these dramatic challenges, if you don’t have the music underneath you as a perfect cushion, it’s so much harder to pull off. So the amount of detail extends to the orchestra and chorus behaving around us as part of a larger entity, which strengthens our ability to tell the story — more than I feel I ever have been able to.What does this production mean at this stage in your careers?FEOLA My debut at the Met with “Rigoletto” was already a big deal for me, as an Italian singer singing Verdi, one of the most beautiful operas of Verdi. And also this character, which I have sung since 2009 and studied with Renata Scotto. So I feel very comfortable with the timing, and making a new production at the Met of course means a lot.KELSEY I’m proud of the fact that I’ve has as much experience in this role as I have. I covered Rigoletto for the first time 15 years ago; I knew back then that I could sing it, but woof, that was work. It was a really sensitive thing, because Verdi baritones aren’t normally pursuing this role as early as I did, and if it hadn’t worked out I definitely would have put it away.But I’ve always had success, and it’s grown in me. So the fact that I’m in my early 40s and can come to the Met with the amount of experience that I’ve built up, to bring all of my tools and apply it to a new production — it’s like a perfect culture for a seedling. It’s the opportunity for something to germinate and grow as well as it ever could. I’m so pleased, and I know it will just get better. More

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      Review: Amid Omicron, the Met Opera Opens a Weimar ‘Rigoletto’

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      Quinn Kelsey and Rosa Feola lead a superb cast in Bartlett Sher’s new staging of Verdi’s classic drama.While a surge of coronavirus cases, driven by the spread of the Omicron variant, has taken a profound toll on live performance in New York, the Metropolitan Opera has not yet canceled a performance. The company was so determined not to lose the premiere of its new production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” that at the final dress rehearsal, on Tuesday, everyone onstage wore a medical mask.These precautions, and perhaps some luck, paid off: The premiere took place as planned on New Year’s Eve in front of a sizable audience. And this was a compelling new “Rigoletto” — marking Bartlett Sher’s eighth production for the Met since his debut in 2006.The tenor Piotr Beczala, front left, as the lecherous Duke of Mantua in Bartlett Sher’s staging, which moves the setting from Renaissance Italy to Weimar Berlin.Richard Termine for The New York TimesIf shifting the opera’s setting from Renaissance Italy to 1920s Berlin was not entirely convincing, this was still a detailed, dramatic staging, full of insights into the characters. The chorus and orchestra excelled under the conducting of Daniele Rustioni, who led a lean, transparent performance that balanced urgency and lyricism.The baritone Quinn Kelsey, a Met stalwart for over a decade, had a breakthrough as the jester Rigoletto, part of the retinue of the lecherous Duke of Mantua. With his brawny, penetrating voice and imposing presence, Kelsey has always been an arresting artist. But this role shows off his full vocal and dramatic depth.He sang with an elegance and tenderness I had not heard from him before. During scenes at the duke’s palace, Rigoletto’s sneering crudity barely masked his hatred for the court. Yet when alone with Gilda, his beloved daughter, Kelsey’s Rigoletto melted, singing with warmth — yet also a touch of wariness, lest too much vulnerability leave him open to the threatening outside world.The soprano Rosa Feola, who had an outstanding Met debut as Gilda in 2019, was back in the role on Friday, and even better now. Her plush, warm voice carried effortlessly through the theater. Coloratura runs and trills emerged as integral extensions of the long-spun vocal lines. She captured Gilda’s innocence, but also the sensual stirrings and secret defiance that drive this over-protected young woman’s disastrous decisions.The tenor Piotr Beczala sang the duke in the Met’s previous two productions. Once again, he brought clarion sound and pinging top notes, along with cocky swagger to the role. Passing moments of vocal rawness didn’t feel out of place for this rapacious character.When Joshua Barone reviewed this production for The New York Times when it was introduced at the Berlin State Opera in 2019, he wrote that Sher’s treatment of the Weimar Republic came off as “more of a context than a concept.” For the Met, Sher has been able to fully realize his vision, including the introduction of a turntable for Michael Yeargan’s enormous set, which now rotates to allow fluidly cinematic shifts between scenes.Sher told The Times recently that he chose 1920s Berlin as a pre-fascist world of unchecked cruelty and extravagance, enabling an exploration of “how a corrupt leadership infects a culture, infects how wealth and privilege dominate and squish people below it.” Yet while the production did convey this foreboding clash of indulgence and oppression, there were few specific indications of Weimar politics or culture, other than a scene-setting curtain borrowed from the work of the artist George Grosz.Which is not to say that the staging lacks boldness. In the first scene, when the duke boasts to Rigoletto of his latest intrigue — with the alluring wife of Count Ceprano — he complains that her husband is in the way.The willing Rigoletto openly mocks the hapless count. But Kelsey, keeping with the production’s directness, audaciously crosses the line, bullying the count, even slapping him on the back of his head. No wonder Rigoletto becomes the target of vengeful courtiers, who plot to abduct Gilda, whom they assume to be his mistress.Unlike when Sher’s production was first seen, in Berlin in 2019, its set now rotates on a turntable for smooth transitions between scenes.Richard Termine for The New York TimesIn the next scene, walking by a row of gray, forbidding houses and wearing a clownish version of a long black coat and top hat — the vivid costumes are by Catherine Zuber — Rigoletto is visibly shaken by a curse that’s just been leveled on him at the palace. As he trudges home, steadying himself with a walking stick, he happens upon Sparafucile (the chilling bass Andrea Mastroni), an assassin for hire. This moment replicates the opening image of the production, when, through that Grosz curtain, we see the jester treading home as the orchestra plays the ominous prelude. You have the striking realization that Rigoletto takes this isolated walk every night; his life and emotions come into new focus.Rigoletto’s house is here a humble but comfortable three-story dwelling. This performance made abundantly clear how mistaken he has been to restrict Gilda’s freedom and put off her questions about her background — even about her dead mother. His treatment just makes Gilda prey to the advances of the dashing young man who has been following her: the duke, pretending to be a poor student. The smitten Gilda sings the aria “Caro nome” outside her bedroom on the second floor, sometimes leaning over the stair railing — an image at once dramatic and intimate. Feola sang exquisitely.The most disturbing moment comes in Act II. Having been abducted and deposited in the duke’s bedroom, where behind closed doors he forces himself on her, the shaken Gilda emerges wearing only a slip, a white bedsheet draped around her shoulders. As she confesses to her father what has happened, Feola’s ashamed Gilda sang with wrenching poignancy. Yet youthful bloom and even sexuality also radiated through her tone, suggesting how confused her feelings were.During the last act, set at the cheap inn run by Sparafucile and his sister Maddalena, we finally see some trappings of 1920s Berlin. To lure victims for her brother, Maddalena (the mezzo-soprano Varduhi Abrahamyan, in an auspicious Met debut) is styled like Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box.” The famous quartet is vividly staged, as Maddalena romances the lothario duke in an upstairs bedroom, while downstairs at the bar the stunned Gilda listens with Rigoletto.Golden confetti rained down at the Met after the production premiered on New Year’s Eve.Richard Termine for The New York TimesRustioni’s conducting was consistently lucid, colorful and dramatic. There is no need for me to urge the Met to bring him back, since the company has already tapped him to take over from Yannick Nézet-Séguin a run of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” opening this week, alongside his “Rigoletto” duties.During the enthusiastic ovation after Friday’s performance, golden glitter rained down from the Met’s ceiling. The cast and creative team onstage directed their applause to the audience — a fitting tribute to the opera lovers who put their worries about the virus aside in order to be there for this memorable evening.RigolettoContinues through Jan. 29 with this cast and conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      The Met Opera Spirits ‘Rigoletto’ to ‘Babylon Berlin’

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      As the Omicron variant looms, Bartlett Sher’s production of Verdi’s classic is set to open on New Year’s Eve.Bartlett Sher must have logged over a mile inside the Metropolitan Opera as a rehearsal for his staging of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” unfolded in fits and starts on a recent morning.Whenever the singers came to a stop, Sher sprinted. Sometimes up stairs near the orchestra pit, with notes for the cast. Sometimes up the aisle of the auditorium to confer with a team working at consoles and laptops. He had a growing list of things to refine: the set’s paint job, the lighting, the layering of a party scene’s crowded action.“I need another month,” he said, pausing to scrutinize the stage.Instead, Sher had about two weeks. His “Rigoletto” opens Dec. 31, part of the Met’s annual New Year’s Eve gala, with Daniele Rustioni conducting and Quinn Kelsey in the title role. This staging, a coproduction with the Berlin State Opera, premiered in Germany in June 2019. But so much has changed in transit that it’s been virtually rebuilt from scratch — down to the wire and under the threat of the Omicron variant.Bartlett Sher, left, rehearsing his staging with Sylvia D’Eramo and Piotr Beczala.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesThe new “Rigoletto” by Sher — a busy Tony Award-winning director whose work is currently on Broadway (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) and coming soon to Lincoln Center Theater (“Intimate Apparel”) — is the third to be seen at the Met this century. Piotr Beczala, the tenor starring as the predatory Duke of Mantua, jokingly said in an interview that he is “the Duke on duty here”: In 2006, he made his company debut with the role in Otto Schenk’s 1989 production, then originated it in Michael Mayer’s Rat Pack “Rigoletto” in 2013.That’s a lot of turnover for a house where some stagings linger for decades. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said that there is no “standardized thinking” behind replacing productions. Two, Franco Zeffirelli’s lavishly traditional takes on “La Bohème” and “Turandot,” are not going anywhere, Gelb said. But he has noticed that audiences tend to lose interest more quickly in modern updates — such as Mayer’s “Rigoletto,” set in 1960s Las Vegas instead of the libretto’s 16th-century Italy.Waning interest wasn’t the only problem with Mayer’s production. Its muddled dramaturgy baffled critics, and it developed a reputation as a neon-lit spectacle of little substance. Reviewing the premiere, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote that the concept was “hardly audacious” and “not even that original.” When it was notable, it was as a vehicle for guest artists — including the soprano Rosa Feola, who had a sensational Met debut as Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda, in 2019 and is returning to that role now.The costume designer, Catherine Zuber, left, in a fitting with the soprano Rosa Feola, who sings the innocent Gilda.Like Mayer, Sher transposes the action of the opera, but to Weimar-era Berlin — a “prefascist world,” he said, of unchecked cruelty, crime and extravagance. He avoided setting the work under Nazi rule, instead opting for the 1920s, the same milieu as the popular TV series “Babylon Berlin”: a society on the brink of upheaval. The period tracked with the libretto’s dukes and duchesses while allowing Sher to explore “how a corrupt leadership infects a culture, infects how wealth and privilege dominate and squish people below it.”Sher’s ideas hit a roadblock in Berlin. He had planned for the set to rotate on a turntable, for cinematic transitions and fruitful divisions of public and private spaces. It ended up fixed in place, an Art Deco nightclub with murals adapted from works by George Grosz, who caricatured the era’s corruption and complicity.“It was more static,” Sher recalled, “and harder to release what was in the music.”Reviews from the German press were harsh, and several were dismissive of Sher as an American. I had my own problems with the production, writing in The Times that Sher’s treatment of the Weimar Republic came off as “more of a context than a concept.”In its original Berlin incarnation, seen here, Sher’s production was different, with a static view of the set and murals made from George Grosz paintings.Brinkhoff/MogenburgSher admitted that his Berlin staging had room to grow, particularly in how to communicate the work’s psychological complexity. But he was happy with it.“I felt it was honest, and it was clear,” he said. “A good artist should accept the limitations of each iteration of what they’re doing. And this was like the workshop production to fall in love with the work.”He has now had an opportunity to revise his production the way he might during a musical’s preview performances, a luxury almost never afforded to opera. (An exception, as it happens, is “Intimate Apparel.”) His intentions for the Met revival are largely the same, he said, but it will differ from Berlin in crucial ways.At last, he has his turntable, and thus a much different set; indeed, the first view, during the prelude, is of a grungy brick exterior rather than the explosion of color inside. Gone are the Grosz murals, replaced by searing red marble — a problem with the artist’s estate, Sher said, though the scene-setting curtain, taken from a Grosz painting, remains.Costume designs for Sher’s production, which is set in Berlin on the brink of Nazi rule.The cast only recently began to rehearse with the rotating nightclub onstage. Earlier, they prepared in a basement studio with only suggestions of it — a door frame, a pillar — and Sher blocking their movement as he narrated how the set would turn. A copy of “Le Roi S’Amuse” (“The King Amuses Himself”), the Victor Hugo play that inspired the opera, was on hand for reference. Rustioni was perched on a stool, waving his baton and singing along from memory. (During breaks, he swiveled to the left to study Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” which he will lead at the Met beginning Jan. 8.)Beczala, who was days away from opening Massenet’s “Werther” when the Met shut down in March 2020, was back at rehearsals there for the first time since then. And Kelsey, a fixture at the house for over a decade, was bracing for his biggest role yet — “my first proper lead,” he said. Many of the directions Sher gave them during the basement rehearsal were about bringing more transparency to the opera’s complex opening scene.Clarity is a hallmark of Sher’s work, whether the production is “Rigoletto” or “South Pacific.” He said it’s something he strives for “to release the power and truth of the opera, and hopefully add to that some layer of meaning of its resonance today.”After a pause, he added with a laugh, “No big deal.”The conductor Daniele Rustioni led the score from memory in rehearsal, and used breaks to study Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.”That resonance, Kelsey said, is very much present in the production. “It’s so surprising how that really mirrors a lot of what we’re feeling in our country now, regardless of what side you’re on — just the tension itself,” he added. More complicated are the dynamics at play among the principal characters. Rigoletto believes that the tragic events that lead to the death of his daughter are the result of a dishonored nobleman’s curse. But the opera isn’t so simple.“I like to say that the Duke is polyamorous, but he hasn’t worked out his ethical non-monogamy,” Sher said. “He just goes at everything, then drops it in a second, which is really dangerous. Yet Gilda, this poor innocent girl, is already manipulated by the ridiculously overemphatic love of her father, and she’s in a washing machine between him and the Duke. The big journey for me is to figure out how to give her some agency over these men who are dominating her.”Behind all this is the score, which opens with the theme of the curse and never really emerges from that darkness. “Verdi was so proud of the curse,” Rustioni said. “You see it repeated, the dotted rhythm coming back when Rigoletto sings. It’s like an idée fixe.”Among Rustioni’s restorations to the opera — such as an often-cut cadenza in an Act I duet for Gilda and the Duke — is keeping a line of Rigoletto’s as a string of C notes, rather than ending in a higher E flat, to echo the curse motif.Sher said he was aiming for “a mise-en-scène that ripples through the music and text.”“I think the production is very respectful toward Verdi,” Rustioni said. “Everything is built into the music, and this constantly changing, rotating element helps to carry the mood.”Sher said that the “cinematic movement” of his set was his way of achieving “a mise-en-scène that ripples through the music and text.” Ideally, he added, “with enough time you can really get it right. We’ll see.”One obstacle could get in his way. About 10 days before opening night, the Omicron variant was rapidly spreading throughout New York City. Lines snaked around the blocks of testing sites, and panic fueled a run on at-home testing kits. Broadway shows were in a precarious state of anticipation and sudden cancellations, and the storied “Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes” prematurely ended its run because of breakthrough infections in its cast.The Met, which hasn’t yet had to cancel a performance, has taken what safety measures it can — a no-exceptions vaccine mandate, with a booster requirement on the way in January, and twice-weekly testing within the company — and Gelb said that until recently he had been “extremely confident.” Now, he feels a kinship with the hapless Rigoletto.“He has his curse which ruins his life,” Gelb said. “We’re all sort of under a larger curse: We have the curse of Omicron.” More

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      Review: ‘Cinderella’ Adds Stardust to the Met Opera’s Holiday

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      Trimmed and in English for family friendliness, Massenet’s opera arrives in a boldly stylized staging, starring Isabel Leonard.What is the difference between real life and dreams, especially for an insecure young person?That poignant question is at the core of Massenet’s 1899 opera “Cendrillon,” which opened on Friday at the Metropolitan Opera in English translation as “Cinderella” — a holiday offering trimmed to 95 minutes and aimed at families.In Laurent Pelly’s boldly stylized production of this adaptation of Perrault’s fairy tale, when we meet Cinderella (the affecting mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard) she is restless and forlorn. Wearing a raggedy dress and frumpy sweater, she is treated like a lowly servant by her imperious stepmother and snide stepsisters.Left alone to ponder her fate, Cinderella sings a wistful aria, music that suggests an old folk song, and allows herself a moment to dream. There must be someone who can rescue her; somewhere a loving soul mate is waiting. Leonard, who has excelled at the Met as Debussy’s Mélisande and in other major roles, does it meltingly.Cinderella’s rescuer, unfortunately, is not her father, Pandolfe (the bass-baritone Laurent Naouri). As we learn, Pandolfe was a widower living contentedly in the country with his beloved daughter when he foolishly married the energetic Madame de la Haltière, who already had two children. Soon she revealed herself as overbearing and ambitious. Pandolfe proves incapable of standing up to her and protecting his daughter.And who could stand up to this production’s Haltière, the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe? With her powerful, deep-set voice and take-charge presence, Blythe is hilariously withering.The gleeful villains of “Cinderella”: Stephanie Blythe (center) as Madame de la Haltière, the evil stepmother, and her daughters, Maya Lahyani (left) as Dorothy and Jacqueline Echols as Naomie.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the bustling opening scene, she orders her fearful servants and obsequious milliners to create fancy gowns for her daughters to attend a royal ball; the king of the realm (the robust bass-baritone Michael Sumuel, in his Met debut) has decreed that the recalcitrant prince will finally choose a wife. Massenet’s music teems with rustling flourishes and pomp, vibrantly led by the conductor Emmanuel Villaume. Left behind, poor Cinderella curls up on the floor and falls asleep.But her longing to attend the ball has been heard by the Fairy Godmother (the bright-voiced coloratura soprano Jessica Pratt), who arrives with spirit-helpers — a dancing chorus of women dressed eerily like Cinderella, who wakes up draped in silver-cream and is taken to the palace in a horse-drawn carriage. Is it all a dream?What comes through in Massenet’s telling, elegantly rendered in this performance, is that Prince Charming (Emily D’Angelo, a rich-voiced mezzo) is also a dreamer. We first see him looking miserable in his red pajamas, dreading the ball and his responsibilities.From left: Jessica Pratt as the Fairy Godmother, Leonard as Cinderella and Emily D’Angelo as Prince Charming in “Cinderella.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDuring a faux-courtly, tartly comic choral scene, a parade of eligible women in outrageous outfits — Pelly also designed the costumes — appear before the sullen prince, who can barely respond. Then, in a vision, Cinderella arrives. As their silent glances turn into lyrical exchanges, beautifully sung by Leonard and D’Angelo, these young people truly seem like the answers to one another’s dreams.And so the familiar tale unfolds: the glass slipper that falls off Cinderella’s foot as she rushes away at midnight; the prince’s relentless search to find its owner; and the joyous outcome when their dream of love becomes reality.The production is a delight, with lines from Perrault’s fairy tale written all over Barbara de Limburg’s set and Laura Scozzi’s choreography a deft blend of sleek moves and silliness. The cast (including Jacqueline Echols and Maya Lahyani as the stepsisters) could hardly be better. It is an apt companion for the Met’s other family fare for the holidays: Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” which opened last week.CinderellaThrough Jan. 3 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

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      American Ballet Theater Plans a Return to Met Opera Stage

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      After repeated delays caused by the pandemic, the company plans to perform at the opera house next summer for the first time in three years.After repeated delays brought by the pandemic, American Ballet Theater plans to return to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House next summer for the first time in three years, the company announced on Thursday.Ballet Theater will present a five-week season starting in June that features staples of the repertoire, like “Don Quixote” and “Swan Lake,” as well as new works, including Alexei Ratmansky’s “Of Love and Rage” and a new ballet by Alonzo King, his first for the company.The company’s leaders hope the return to the Met will mark a return to normalcy after the coronavirus forced the cancellation of two seasons and cost Ballet Theater millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees.“We need really to be the antidote to the craziness out there,” Kevin McKenzie, the company’s artistic director, said in an interview. “We represent human excellence — what the human being can achieve as a creative being. The world needs that.”McKenzie said that the recent spread of new variants of the virus was worrisome, but that the company had shown it could safely host performances by maintaining strict rules, including a vaccine mandate for audience members and performers.“What we’re getting to realizing is that we just have to plan for these protocols for the rest of our lives and don’t even think it’s going to get better,” McKenzie said. “And then it will be a wonderful surprise when it does.”The season opens June 13 with a gala performance of “Don Quixote,” featuring a different lead cast in each act. Two other full-length ballets will be presented: the Tchaikovsky classic “Swan Lake,” a staging by McKenzie after Petipa; and Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set to Prokofiev.The season also includes the New York premiere of “Of Love and Rage,” a new evening-length ballet, which was originally set to debut in 2020. The new dance by King is set to music by the jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran.Also on the calendar are George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” and Jessica Lang’s “ZigZag,” set to songs recorded by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, which Ballet Theater featured at its fall gala.The coming year will be one of transition for Ballet Theater. In January, Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s entertainment firm, will assume the role of chief executive and executive director.McKenzie will step down at the end of next year after three decades as artistic director. He said he hoped a successor would be named before the summer season. More