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      Lise Davidsen and Nina Stemme Star in ‘Elektra’ at the Met

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      At the Metropolitan Opera, Nina Stemme and Lise Davidsen are a blazing pair as sisters in a revival of Strauss’s work.Behind the glorious excess of Strauss’s “Elektra” — the libretto’s mythic setting, the score’s unsparing terror — is something smaller: a starkly framed family portrait, albeit one knocked off the wall and scratched up by shards of shattered glass.That has always been at the core of Patrice Chéreau’s production, which returned to the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night. But in this revival, you could home in even closer to just its two sisters, antipodal soprano roles sung by Nina Stemme and Lise Davidsen with floodlight luminosity and painfully human sensitivity.Chéreau’s staging, which premiered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2013 before coming to the Met six years ago, doesn’t seem to have aged a day. And it’s difficult to imagine that happening soon with a placeless production that suits the timelessness Sophocles’ classic tragedy — which Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted into a play for the age of Freud, then into a libretto for Strauss’s opera.The set, by Richard Peduzzi, is the grand and severe courtyard of the vaguely Mediterranean home of a vaguely elite family in vaguely contemporary dress (designed by Caroline de Vivaise). Where the production gets more specific is in its departures from the libretto: its absence of caricature and villainy, its climactic dance of death instead a scene of stillness and life continuing in agony. Mostly bloodless where it could be a massacre, it is a study of a family irreparably fractured by trauma.This concept demands singers who can truly act. And Stemme rises to meet it, if not always in voice then in dramatic intensity, which has only grown since she sang the title role in the Chéreau production’s first outing at the Met. She is never at rest: rocking as she stares straight ahead, her eyes wide open with laser focus on avenging her father, Agamemnon.When Stemme sang of his death — a murder committed by Elektra’s mother, Klytämnestra, and her lover, Aegisth — her voice didn’t always cooperate, especially at the low end of her range. At times she visibly braced herself for the role’s most punishing outbursts. Yet she delivered them as if with dragon’s breath, matched only by passages of aching delicacy.Davidsen, as Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis, gave her best performance at the Met this season — able to show a fuller range than in Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” last fall, and more in control of her immense instrument than during a recent run of Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” and a benefit concert for Ukraine, in which she sang that composer’s “Four Last Songs.” Typically a better actor through her voice than her physicality, here she carried as much character on her sorrowful face as Stemme did in her eyes.Relaying the news that her brother, Orest, had died, “thrown and trampled by his own horses,” Davidsen let out a chilling wail — not for the last time in the evening. Originally trained as a mezzo-soprano, she has a full-bodied lower range that is just as thrilling to witness as her candescent high notes, and a commanding softness in more conversational moments.She and Stemme were supported throughout by a Met Orchestra in excellent form under the baton of Donald Runnicles, whose reading of the score was sensitively aligned with that of Chéreau. The opera has sounded scarier and more chaotic — its blood bath met with bombast in many interpretations — but Runnicles insisted on the possibility of dramatic momentum at a more restrained scale. And the evening was no less exciting for it; if anything, it was riveting in its revelatory transparency, the layers of expressionistic color, sweetness and Wagnerian abundance stacking in counterpoint or weaving in and out of one another with grace.There were standouts elsewhere — Hei-Kyung Hong as an authoritative and rending Fifth Maid — but also lapses among the principals. Michaela Schuster’s Klytämnestra was one of obvious gestures and a strained voice, which she occasionally sought to salvage with near-Sprechstimme declamation. Chéreau’s production hinges on a sympathetic Klytämnestra; she didn’t quite achieve that. And men were shadows of their past appearances. Greer Grimsley’s resonant bass-baritone was here faded and effortful, and not always easy to follow. As Aegisth, Stefan Vinke was barely audible — an upsetting turn for a tenor who has sung roles like Siegfried, perhaps barking but at least with penetrating power.You couldn’t help but feel bad whenever they sang alongside one of the starring sisters. Which is always: Stemme never leaves the stage. It is, after all, her show — and, for this run, Davidsen’s, too.ElektraThrough April 20 at the Metropolitan Opera; metopera.org. More

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      Review: ‘The Hours’ Will Bring Renée Fleming Back to the Met

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      Kevin Puts’s new opera had its premiere in a Philadelphia Orchestra concert presentation before coming to New York this fall.PHILADELPHIA — Three women are left alone onstage.The orchestra is low as they begin to sing. Their voices (two soprano, one mezzo-soprano) gradually swell and intertwine in a radiant, aching trio about all that separates them from one another — and their essential union.This is, famously, the ending of Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” which five years ago was the last work the superstar soprano Renée Fleming sang at the Metropolitan Opera. But her performance, a farewell to the canonical repertory, did not mark a full retirement. Fleming said she would continue to concertize, and left open the possibility of returning to staged opera for new pieces written with her in mind.So on Friday here in Philadelphia, it felt like a moving nod to her distinguished career that a radiant, aching trio of women (two sopranos, one mezzo) left alone onstage — a trio about all that separates them from one another, and their essential union — is also the coda to “The Hours,” which will bring Fleming, for whom it was composed, back to the Met this fall.There the work, Kevin Puts’s new adaptation of the 1998 novel and 2002 film about the reverberations of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” in the lives of three characters in different places and eras, will be conducted by the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. And on Friday, at the Kimmel Center, Nézet-Séguin led its world premiere in a concert presentation with another ensemble he leads, the Philadelphia Orchestra.With a libretto by Greg Pierce, “The Hours” is even prettier and more sumptuous than “Silent Night,” a grandly scored yet sweetly humble opera about a cease-fire over Christmas during World War I, for which Puts won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. The new work is, like “Silent Night,” direct, effective theater, with a cinematic quality in its plush, propulsive underscoring, its instinctive sense for using music to move things along. For all its shifts and overlaps of time and place, it’s an entirely clear piece, its sound world never too busy or difficult — never too interesting, perhaps — to muddy the waters.The opera’s composer, Kevin Puts, grips Nézet-Séguin’s hands after the performance, with Greg Pierce, who wrote the libretto, behind him.Jessica GriffinFleming has the role Meryl Streep played in Stephen Daldry’s film: Clarissa Vaughan, a prosperous book editor in late 1990s New York City who is preparing a party for her friend, a famous poet dying of AIDS. She suffers regrets and despair, as do other two women: Laura Brown (the acclaimed Broadway soprano Kelli O’Hara), a Los Angeles housewife in 1949; and Woolf herself (the mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano on Friday, but Joyce DiDonato at the Met) in a London suburb, trying to surmount her depression long enough to write “Mrs. Dalloway” in the early 1920s.In Michael Cunningham’s delicate novel, these three are linked in a carefully wrought knit of Woolfian prose and coincidences, among them that Clarissa Vaughan shares a first name with the title character of “Mrs. Dalloway,” who in Woolf’s novel — which Laura Brown is reading as she fights anomie and the urge toward suicide — is also making a party.The film version is far more lugubrious, not least in Philip Glass’s melodramatically undulating score, which so defines the movie’s mood — its dusky, urgent strings inseparable from Nicole Kidman’s Woolf and her puttied aquiline nose striding off to drown themselves — that there is something brave in another composer taking on this material.Puts has gotten from Glass’s Minimalism a taste for using repeated figurations as a kind of sonic carpeting, but his repetitions are much less insistent. The opera begins in a watery blur, with a choir, sounding simultaneously floating and precise, chanting fragments of Woolf’s classic opening line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”The events of the opera, as in the book and film, are studiedly modest, taking place in a single day. Clarissa goes to the florist, visits her dying friend, and muses on what her life would have been like had she not, years ago, broken off a budding romance with him. Woolf chats with her husband about page proofs, forms phrases and greets her sister’s family. Laura attempts to bake a cake for her husband’s birthday before escaping to a hotel to read alone.With each of the two acts unfolding in an unbroken stream, Puts moves smoothly between parlando sung conversation and glowing lyrical flights. The stylization of opera allows him to bring his characters together in the same musical space, even if they are otherwise unaware of one another. So there are, for example, ravishing duets for Woolf and Laura, one in which they sing lines from “Mrs. Dalloway” in close harmony over trembling strings. Puts is acute in using the chorus, which will presumably be offstage in a full production, to convey further shadows of these women’s interior lives.Prepared with remarkably limited rehearsal time for a two-hour work with a substantial cast, this was a lush yet transparent account of the score, performed with polish and commitment. The opera leans heavily on this orchestra’s storied opulent strings, as well as on its characterful winds and brasses, and precision at a large battery of percussion instruments (including a celesta, used frequently, in a cliché of dreaminess).Puts’s work is attractive and skillful. Yet much of it, despite lots of activity and ostensible variety in the orchestra and among the singers, gives a sense of engulfing sameness of musical texture and vocal approach. The arias, if you set the words aside, are more or less interchangeable: pristinely soaring. The saturated orchestral colors recall Nelson Riddle’s symphonic pop arrangements and Samuel Barber’s gently reflective soprano monologue “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” But Riddle songs are just a couple of minutes long; “Knoxville,” about 15. Over a couple of hours, it’s lovely but wearying.The ’50s style for Laura’s world — mild Lawrence Welk-type swing, choral writing like TV jingles — feels obvious. And some moments of highest drama smack of the overkill that mars the film, as when the threat of Woolf’s devastating headaches is marked by pummeling darkness, yawning brasses and instrumental screams.New fantasy sequences, demarcated in concert with sudden shifts of lighting, telegraph a bit too crudely how much these women want to run from their lives. Woolf’s imaginary interaction with a contemporary male novelist who speaks about how much she’s meant to him — an invention of the libretto — is cloying and overwrought, drenched in bells.The more intimate and understated, the better for Puts’s music, and the cast embodies both those qualities. Cano sings with mellow sobriety — and, in Woolf’s darkest moments, stricken intensity. O’Hara’s voice is silvery at the top and full in the middle, her pain registering gracefully.As Clarissa’s poet friend, Richard, the baritone Brett Polegato sang with lightly sardonic airiness. The tenor William Burden sounded shining and eager as his old lover, Louis. The tenor Jamez McCorkle, the mezzo Deborah Nansteel and the bass-baritone Brandon Cedel were steady, sonorous presences as the main characters’ much put-upon romantic partners.Fleming began with some paleness of tone, but grew in command through the evening, past her characteristic propriety to a kind of somber nobility. Clarissa dominates the opera’s final scenes, when “The Hours” is at its finest: the emotions sincere and persuasive, the music fervent.And at the end, the three women come together, perceiving one another in a way they cannot in the novel or film and arriving at a simple moral: “Here is the world and you live in it, and you try.” There was poignancy in having a great diva, now 63, singing the nostalgic leading role, a woman taking in all she has done — and realizing she still has more to give.The HoursPerformed at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia. More

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      Metropolitan Opera’s Concert Honors Ukraine

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      A concert to benefit relief efforts featured a young Ukrainian singer, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and the Met’s prima donna of the moment.Vladyslav Buialskyi stood center stage at the Metropolitan Opera, his hand on his heart, and sang the national anthem of his country, Ukraine.That was on Feb. 28, when the house reopened after a month off from performing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine was just a few days old. The company’s chorus and orchestra joined Buialskyi, a member of the Met’s young artists program, in a message of solidarity with him and his suffering people.Exactly two weeks later, on Monday, Buialskyi, a 24-year-old bass-baritone from the besieged port city of Berdyansk, stood center stage once more, his hand again on his heart, and sang the anthem with the orchestra and chorus.This time it wasn’t a prelude to Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” but the start of “A Concert for Ukraine,” an event hastily organized by the Met to benefit relief efforts in that country and broadcast there and around the world.Banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched across the travertine exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights. Another flag hung above the stage; a few in the audience brought their own to unfurl from the balconies. Seated in the guest of honor position in the center of the parterre, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, responded to an ovation at the start by raising his arms and making resolute V-for-victory signs.The Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, a member of the Met’s young artists program, was featured in a performance of Ukraine’s national anthem.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesThe Ukrainian flag hung above the Met’s chorus and its orchestra, led by the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesIt has been a trying time for the Met, which broke with Anna Netrebko, its reigning diva, over her unwillingness to speak against the war and distance herself from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.But the conflict has also given the company — still bruised by labor battles despite remarkable success staying open during the Omicron wave — a sense of unity and moral purpose. Who would have predicted a few months ago that the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, broadly reviled within the ranks for imposing a long unpaid furlough on many employees during the pandemic, would get applause from some in the orchestra as he declared from the stage that they were “soldiers of music”?His remarks had a martial tinge, saying that the Met’s work could be “weaponized against oppression.” But much of the concert, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, was consoling, with favorites like Barber’s Adagio for Strings, here fevered and unsentimental, and “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s “Nabucco,” with its chorus of exiles longing for their homeland, “so beautiful and lost.” Most powerful was Valentin Silvestrov’s delicate, modest a cappella “Prayer for the Ukraine,” written in 2014 amid the Maidan protests against Russian influence.The soprano Lise Davidsen, the company’s prima donna of the moment, sang Strauss’s “Four Last Songs.”Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesRichard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs” wasn’t quite on message, with its autumnal vision of accepting death’s imminence. But it provided a vehicle for the Met’s prima donna of the moment: the young soprano Lise Davidsen, currently starring in Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos.”At opening night of “Ariadne” two weeks ago, Davidsen kept inundating the theater, seeming intent on proving just how much vibrating sound can flow out of her. It was thrilling, and a little much. At the performance of the opera on Saturday afternoon, she seemed consciously trying to restrain herself — even a bit tentative, fumbling a phrase in her opening aria and only gradually building to a true compromise of power and nuance.On Monday, Davidsen again seemed to be finding her way. Her high notes in the first of the “Four Last Songs,” “Frühling,” had a steely edge rather than soaring freedom; in “September,” she sounded muted in lower registers; and in “Beim Schlafengehen,” her phrasing was stiff. But she began “Im Abendrot” with a soft cloud of tone and proceeded with unforced radiance to an ending that felt light and hopeful.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 7Olga Smirnova. More

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      On a Stage 5,000 Miles Away, He Sings for His Family in Ukraine

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      At the Metropolitan Opera, the bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi has become a symbol of his country’s struggles.Sometimes lately, when he hasn’t been rehearsing Verdi or Tchaikovsky at the Metropolitan Opera, or practicing Italian with a diction coach on Zoom, the bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi takes out his phone and sends a one-word text message: “Mama.”The message is meant for Buialskyi’s mother, who is more than 5,000 miles away in his hometown, Berdyansk, a small port city in Ukraine that has been under siege since the Russian invasion began last month. His mother has been unable to flee because she is caring for his grandmother, who is 88 and has difficulty walking. Anxious about his mother’s safety, Buialskyi sends her messages around the clock, awaiting the replies that confirm she remains safe and reachable.“It’s a huge nightmare,” said Buialskyi, 24, who is enrolled in the Met’s prestigious young artists program. “You wake up each day hoping it’s not real, but it’s still happening.”Since the start of the invasion, Buialskyi has become a symbol at the Met of his country’s struggles. On Monday, when the Met hosts a concert in support of Ukraine, he will be featured in a rendition of its national anthem. He played a similar role last month, at the outset of the invasion, when the chorus and orchestra performed the anthem before a performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlos.” Buialskyi — who was making his debut with the company in a small role that evening — stood center stage, his hand over his heart. Ukrainian news outlets later aired clips of the performance.Buialskyi, center, singing the Ukrainian national anthem with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and chorus on Feb. 28.Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera, via Associated Press“It was incredibly moving, because you could see how much it meant to him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “The fact that it was such an emotional experience for him made it even more emotional for me and the other members of the company.”Gelb said he hoped the performance of the anthem on Monday would “show the world and our audiences that we are in solidarity with Ukraine.”Buialskyi said he was uneasy about the attention. But he said he wants to use his platform to help his friends and family back home.“I hope it inspires people not to give up,” he said. “Even though I’m far away, I want to be doing what I can.”Buialskyi grew up in eastern Ukraine, along the Sea of Azov, in a city known for its beaches and its port, a hub for coal and grain exports. The only child of an accountant and a driver, he showed an early interest in singing. As a two-year-old, he mimicked jingles on television and sang Ukrainian folk songs.His mother initially had visions of sending him to a college specializing in automotive studies, worried about the career prospects for an artist. But she soon recognized his gift, and at 17 he began conservatory studies, practicing standards of the repertoire like “Largo al factotum,” from Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” His idol was Muslim Magomayev, a pop and classical singer from Azerbaijan.He came to the Met in 2020 as part of its Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. The program’s participants take up tiny parts in Met productions, and this season Buialskyi is playing the role of a Flemish deputy in “Don Carlos” and a captain in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.”Buialskyi rehearsing “Eugene Onegin” at the Metropolitan Opera.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesOne evening last month, on his way back to his apartment in Washington Heights after finishing up meetings at the Met, he got a call from his mother, who said she was hearing explosions. He checked news sites and soon realized that Moscow had begun invading Ukraine. Berdyansk is near the Russian border and was one of the first cities to be seized by Russian forces. Some citizens tried to resist the invasion by singing the Ukrainian national anthem, according to news reports.“I was just so scared,” Buialskyi said. “People who are not there right now still can’t believe that war is actually happening in our day and age.”His Met colleagues have rallied behind him, asking for updates on his family and donating to a crowdfunding effort he started to support Ukrainian families and soldiers. Russian artists at the Met have also reached out, he said, checking on his family’s safety.Melissa Wegner, the executive director of the Lindemann program, said she had been impressed with Buialskyi’s resolve in the face of trying circumstances.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 5Anna Netrebko. More

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      Cities and States Are Easing Covid Restrictions. Are Theaters and the Arts Next?

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      Cultural institutions face tough decisions: Is it safe to drop mask and vaccine requirements, and would doing so be more likely to lure audiences back or keep them away?When music fans walked beneath the familiar piano-shaped awning and into the dark embrace of the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village this week, a late-pandemic fixture was missing: No one was checking proof of vaccination and photo IDs.A special guest visited to herald the change. “Good to be back out,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York told the overwhelmingly maskless audience Monday, the day the city stopped requiring proof of vaccination at restaurants and entertainment venues. “I consider myself the nightlife mayor, so I’m going to assess the product every night.”It is a different story uptown, where Carnegie Hall continues to require masks and vaccines and the Metropolitan Opera goes even further, requiring that all eligible people show proof that they have received their booster shots — safety measures that always went beyond what the city required but which reassured many music lovers. “We want the audience to feel comfortable and safe,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.With cities and states across the country moving to scale back mask and vaccine requirements as coronavirus cases fall, leaders of cultural institutions find themselves confronted once again with difficult decisions: Is it safe to ease virus safety measures, and would doing so be more likely to lure audiences back or keep them away?Their responses have varied widely. Broadway will continue to require masks and proof of vaccination through at least the end of April. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington announced that it would drop its mask requirement for visitors to its museums and the National Zoo on Friday, following moves by major art museums in places like Chicago and Houston. Some comedy clubs in New York that ditched masking mandates months ago are weighing whether to continue to require proof of vaccination.“At the beginning of this, many arts organizations were having to develop their own policies before there were clear government guidelines,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. “As we come out of this, again, you’re finding arts companies having to find their own way.”The Metropolitan Opera continues to require masks and proof of vaccination and booster shots, and to limit food and drink consumption to one part of the opera house.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIn interviews, leaders of almost a dozen cultural groups across the country emphasized the need for caution and carefulness. But they noted that each of their situations are distinct. In museums, patrons can roam large galleries and opt for social distance as they please. In theaters and concert halls, audience members are seated close together, immobile for the duration of a performance. Opera houses and symphony orchestras tend to draw an older and more vulnerable audience than night clubs and comedy clubs.The feedback arts leaders say they are getting from visitors has differed: Some said that they had felt increasing pressure to ease their rules in recent weeks, while others said the vast majority of their audience members have told them that they were more likely to visit venues that continue to maintain strict health and safety requirements.“For every one person who complains about the mask requirement, we have probably about 10 people who express unsolicited gratitude for the fact we are choosing to still have masks in place,” said Meghan Pressman, the managing director and chief executive of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. She said she would be “surprised” if her organization changed its masking rules before Broadway does.On Broadway, which was shut down by the pandemic for more than a year, officials have said that theater operators would continue to require masks and proof of vaccination through at least April. “We do look forward to welcoming our theatergoers without masks one day soon, and in the meantime, want to ensure that we keep our cast, crew and theatergoers safe so that we can continue to bring the magic of Broadway to our audiences without interruption,” Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said in a statement.The Metropolitan Opera, which was the first major arts institution to require people entering their opera house to be both vaccinated and boosted, never missed a performance during the height of the recent Omicron surge, and is in no rush to ease its safety measures. “For us, safety comes before Covid fatigue,” said Gelb, the general manager. “So we’re going to err on the side of caution.”But the company has eased some of its backstage protocols: Soloists were not required to wear masks during recent stage rehearsals of Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” which helped some work on their diction as the company sang it in the original French for the first time.Like the Met, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center are also maintaining their mask and vaccine mandates for the moment. Carnegie Hall continues to require masks and proof of vaccination, but recently dropped its policy of briefly requiring booster shots. Masking and vaccine rules also remain in place at the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Opera and Center Theater Group.Two of New York’s premier art-house cinemas are taking different approaches — at least for now. Film Forum’s website says that proof of vaccination is no longer required and that masks are encouraged but not required. Film at Lincoln Center will continue to require proof of vaccination and masks through Sunday, but plans to relax its policy next week.The Metropolitan Museum of Art has stopped checking vaccine cards but is still requiring masks indoors.Seth Wenig/Associated PressA recent poll conducted by The Associated Press found that half of Americans approve of mask mandates, down from 55 percent who supported the mandates six months ago and 75 percent who supported them in December 2020.Choosing what to do is not easy.Christopher Koelsch, the president of the Los Angeles Opera, said that the surveys he has reviewed suggest that roughly a third of audience members would only come to performances if a mask mandate was in place — but that roughly a third would refuse to come if masks are required.“No matter what decision you make,” he said, “there are people who are going to be upset with you and believe that you are making the wrong decision.”Some museums are in an in-between moment. The Metropolitan Museum of Art stopped checking vaccine cards as of Monday but still requires masks. And the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City is likely to lift its mask mandate this month, said Julián Zugazagoitia, the museum’s director.As mask mandates fall in schools, restaurants and other settings, he said, he felt “almost forced” to follow suit. “What I’d like to see us do is keep this as a suggestion,” he said of wearing masks indoors.Other art venues have already changed their rules. Officials at the Art Institute of Chicago said the museum eliminated its requirements for masks and vaccines on Feb. 28 in line with new governmental policies. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — one of the first major American museums to reopen after the country went into lockdown in March 2020 — also relaxed its most recent mask mandate last week. As it did previously in the fall, the museum is now recommending — but not requiring — masks for visitors and staff.“We’ve had an increasing number of visitors and staff inquire about why we haven’t — or when are we going to — relax the mandatory mask requirement,” said Gary Tinterow, the museum’s director.At the Broadway Comedy Club in New York, patrons have been allowed inside maskless for some time. But Al Martin, the club’s president, said he has been debating whether to stop requiring that his guests be vaccinated.On one hand, he said, checking people at the door required him to add staff members, which costs money. And he estimated that he has lost roughly 30 percent of his audience because of the mandate. On the other, he said, he liked having a city vaccine mandate to fall back on. “It gave a degree of safety and assurance to people,” he said.He ultimately decided to do away with the vaccine mandate at his club as of Monday despite his personal concern that the city “might have been slightly premature” in rolling back the rules.He reserves the right to change his mind about his club’s policy, he said.“If I see my business drop 40 percent because people are not feeling safe in my venue,” he said, “we’re going back to the vaccine passport.” More

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      Metropolitan Opera Will Host Concert in Support of Ukraine

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      “We want Putin to know he is the enemy of artists and that we are united against his horrific actions,” the company’s general manager said.The Metropolitan Opera said Monday that it would stage a concert in support of Ukraine next week in an effort to show solidarity with Ukrainians under attack, raise relief funds and express opposition to the invasion ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.The concert — which will take place March 14 and be broadcast on radio stations around the world — will open with the Ukrainian national anthem and feature “Prayer for the Ukraine,” by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, the Met said.“We want the people in Ukraine to know that the Metropolitan Opera and the artistic community are rallying together to support them,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in an interview. “We want Putin to know he is the enemy of artists and that we are united against his horrific actions.”Other organizations are also planning events in the coming days in support of Ukraine. City Winery plans to host a benefit concert on Thursday. The American composer John Zorn and the New School’s College of Performing Arts will hold a concert on Friday, featuring the artist Laurie Anderson and the composer and pianist Philip Glass.The Met has repeatedly voiced opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since it began last month. The company announced it would no longer engage with performers or institutions that supported Putin. It parted ways last week with its reigning prima donna, the superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, who has ties to Mr. Putin, and said it would end its collaboration on an upcoming production with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.The 70-minute program, “A Concert for Ukraine,” will include a performance of “Four Last Songs” by Richard Strauss, sung by the soprano Lise Davidsen; “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber; and the “Va, pensiero” chorus from Verdi’s “Nabucco,” which is about a love of homeland. The concert will conclude with the rousing final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, featuring the soprano Elza van den Heever, the mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, the tenor Piotr Beczała and the bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green.The Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will lead the concert. He said in a statement that he hoped it would “demonstrate our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine.”“In times of crisis,” he said, “it is so important that artists unite and provide consolation and inspiration through our work.”The Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who stood center stage with his hand on his heart last month when the company sang the Ukrainian anthem before a performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” will once again be featured during the anthem, this time singing a solo part.Tickets are $50 and go on sale on Wednesday. The Met said proceeds would go to charity groups supporting relief efforts in Ukraine. More

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      After a Punishing Sprint, Yannick Nézet-Séguin Can Celebrate

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      The Met Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra conductor recently took a break because of exhaustion. Then he found himself in the middle of a performance marathon.However busy your past two weeks were, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s were probably busier.On Feb. 21, he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in the conclusion of its Beethoven cycle at Carnegie Hall, and was planning, in the days ahead, to lead the opening of a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at the Metropolitan Opera, followed soon after by a revival of Puccini’s “Tosca.”Nothing out of the ordinary for him, as the music director of both institutions. But that Thursday — as the Vienna Philharmonic dropped Valery Gergiev from its three-day stint at Carnegie over his ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — Nézet-Séguin got a call asking if he could step in. He said yes.“I said the only condition is, I need to tell the orchestra, ‘You won’t be able to rehearse with me a lot, because it’s just not possible,’” Nézet-Séguin recalled in a recent interview.He wasn’t lying. On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 25, he was at the Met to lead the final dress rehearsal for “Don Carlos” — which, with intermissions, runs nearly five hours. Then, after a short break, he was able to meet with the Vienna Philharmonic for just 75 minutes to prepare Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and Second Symphony, which together run longer than 90 minutes.At 8 p.m., the concert began. The resulting performance would have been a triumph even under normal circumstances. But Nézet-Séguin didn’t have long to celebrate: “Tosca” had to be rehearsed on Saturday, not to mention that night’s Vienna program.Nézet-Séguin ended up on the podium every day for a weeklong marathon, including an overnight trip to Florida to lead the Vienna Philharmonic in Naples. On Friday, his day off, he taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and was back in New York the next day for “Tosca,” then “Don Carlos” on Sunday — his 47th birthday.Nézet-Séguin leading the Vienna Philharmonic, with the pianist Seong-Jin Cho, in the first of its three concerts at Carnegie Hall.Chris LeeIt’s a maddening schedule, reminiscent of Nézet-Séguin’s early career of perpetual overbooking and occasional cancellations. Last fall, signs of that lifestyle began to creep back: two contemporary operas at the Met, along with revivals and concerts there before opening night and a Beethoven cycle (part of what has ballooned into a staggering 14 appearances for him at Carnegie Hall this season). Facing exhaustion, he took a three-week break starting in mid-December, withdrawing from a run of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the Met and two performances in Philadelphia.“Maybe the fact that my energies were recharged recently meant that I could be up for this,” he said.During a phone call while en route to New York on Saturday, Nézet-Séguin reflected on that much-needed hiatus, and how he got through his recent grind. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What made you want to say yes to Vienna?My first instinct as a conductor is that I want to help.I have been making some hard decisions in the past decade, about certain opportunities in Europe with orchestras that I have developed relationships with, like Vienna. But my first responsibility is to the institutions that I am the leader of: It’s the Met, it’s Philadelphia, it’s Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal.So I end up having to say no very often. And now here they are, and Carnegie — which has been such a great partner of mine at the Philadelphia Orchestra — needs my help. It didn’t take much time for me to say yes.How did you use that 75-minute rehearsal?When I said yes, I knew that if I took a two- or three-hour rehearsal in the morning, the energy needed would be too much. So the orchestra told me what they needed most from me, and we fixed two or three obvious spots in the Rachmaninoff symphony. But this appeals to what a conductor should be doing. You just make things work. The Rachmaninoff thrives on being free and beautiful. Some things need to be clear, but some things just need to be in the moment. I could never be stressed, because if I start to be stressed, then everyone is, and the result is bad for the audience.Because of the Vienna concerts, you were suddenly holding seven additional works in your head. How did you manage that, on top of “Don Carlos” and “Tosca”?It takes a lot of discipline, because I have music constantly in my head, but rarely the piece that I’m about to do. When I’m juggling a lot of pieces like this, I have to almost press play on a recording, a mental recording. So the day of the Rachmaninoff, I had to force myself to open up the score to get in the right mode. I had a bit more time on Saturday to recuperate and study, but I purposefully decided to not prepare for Sunday. If you take it one day at a time, it really helps.Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to make a habit of these things. Someone from the Met Orchestra asked me, “Have you ever been more busy?” My answer was: I think yes, in my early years as a conductor. I had two different choirs and I was still doing recitals and chamber music, and I was already conducting my Baroque ensemble. I feel like what I’ve been doing this week is rooted in years of experience juggling different repertoire.“I feel like what I’ve been doing this week,” Nézet-Séguin said, “is rooted in years of experience juggling different repertoire.”Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesPhysically and mentally, how did you prepare and unwind?I needed to study a lot, so I really couldn’t think about rest or anything like that. I usually work out very regularly, and that helps for these moments. But now I could not work out simply because one, I didn’t have time, and two, I thought this was also physically demanding.The morning I got the call from Carnegie, I was actually working out with my personal trainer from Montreal, a virtual workout, and I told her, “I would like to focus on shoulders and back because I just feel like it’s been a while.” At that point I thought, Oh, I’m just doing the dress rehearsal of “Don Carlos.” Then two hours later I got this call.Part of my ritual after performances is to go a restaurant or cafe for a quiet meal, whether with my husband, Pierre, or with close friends. In this case, I needed to keep it much more quiet and just go home. Usually my go-to is HGTV; my favorite is “House Hunters” or anything about the Caribbean or island life. But now I tried to unwind with chamomile tea, and with some smooth R&B and a bath. Last night, I realized that I did not watch TV for the past week.In December, you withdrew from performances in New York and Philadelphia.I want to stress that what I did was a three-week break that’s kind of a normal three weeks that people take around the holiday. I don’t want to underestimate what it’s like to cancel those, but I want to put it back in perspective. The fall had been especially intense.The summer, even. You conducted Mahler’s Second Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem at the Met before the season began.Absolutely. For me, it’s a question of being aware of your limitations. What people don’t see is what it needs to put on a concert or an opera. It’s not just rehearsals and studying. It’s a lot of discussions, emails, meetings, conversations, Zoom calls. That’s part of my job, but it can — especially as we re-emerge from the pandemic — be really taxing.It really was the mind: I didn’t want to push my mind to the extent that maybe at some point my body would react in the way of becoming sick. Because that’s a big catastrophe, if I have to drop out of several performances the day before. I thought it was better to plan something before that happened. It was really three weeks without even opening a score. It cleared the mind, in the best way.What did that teach you, then, about planning for the future?This scramble at the beginning of the season was something that I wanted to do. But I eventually managed, by doing little adjustments here and there in my schedule, to plan the next seasons with a certain percentage of less work, less commitment — and better balance of weeks and days here and there where I can just regroup and breathe. I didn’t need to go into that recent break to know that, and this fall was just this exceptional moment. But in the future, my life will be better.Are you at least able to do anything for your birthday, since you have “Don Carlos”?My parents are coming to New York. I’m going to have some kind of family celebration after. I let them organize it; it’s a surprise.And then you’ll have plenty of time for HGTV.I promise you, I will. More

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      Too Close to Putin? Institutions Vet Artists, Uncomfortably.

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      Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led arts organizations to reconsider who performs, forcing them to confront questions about free speech and policing political views.In Canada, an acclaimed 20-year-old Russian pianist’s concert was canceled amid concerns about his silence on the invasion of Ukraine. The music director of an orchestra in Toulouse, France — who is also the chief conductor at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow — was instructed to clarify his position on the war before his next appearance. In New York, Anna Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, saw her reign at the Metropolitan Opera end after she declined to denounce President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.As global condemnation of Russia’s attack on Ukraine grows, cultural institutions have moved with surprising speed to put pressure on Russian artists to distance themselves from Mr. Putin, a collision of art and politics that is forcing organizations to confront questions about free speech and whether they should be policing artists’ views.Institutions are demanding that artists who have supported Mr. Putin in the past issue clear condemnations of the Russian president and his invasion as a prerequisite for performing. Others are checking their rosters and poring over social media posts to ensure Russian performers have not made contentious statements about the war. The Polish National Opera has gone so far as to drop a production of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” one of the greatest Russian operas, to express “solidarity with the people of Ukraine.”The tensions pose a dilemma for cultural institutions and those who support them. Many have long tried to stay above the fray of current events, and have a deep belief in the role the arts can play in bridging divides. Now arts administrators, who have scant geopolitical expertise, find themselves in the midst of one of the most politically charged issues in recent decades, with little in the way of experience to draw on.“We’re facing a totally new situation,” Andreas Homoki, the artistic director of the Zurich Opera, said. “Politics was never on our mind like this before.”The new scrutiny of Russian artists threatens to upend decades of cultural exchange that endured even during the depths of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the West sent artists back and forth amid fears of nuclear war. The Russian maestro Valery Gergiev, who has long been close to Mr. Putin, was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and saw his international engagements dry up. The Hermitage Amsterdam, an art museum, broke ties with the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. The Bolshoi Ballet lost engagements in London and Madrid.Citing that Cold War tradition, the Cliburn — a foundation in Fort Worth named for the American pianist Van Cliburn, whose victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 was seen as a sign that art could transcend political differences — announced that it would welcome 15 Russian-born pianists to audition next week for the 2022 Cliburn Competition, noting that they are not officials of their government.Jacques Marquis, the president and chief executive of the Cliburn, said the organization felt it was important to speak out as it watched Russian artists come under scrutiny. “We can help the world by standing our ground and focusing on the music and on the artists,” he said.The American pianist Van Cliburn’s victory at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 was seen as a sign, at the height of the Cold War, that art could transcend political differences.The Van Cliburn FoundationEven as many institutions are eager to show support for Ukraine, and to distance themselves from artists who embrace Mr. Putin, they are uncomfortable with trying to vet the views of performers — and worry that Russian artists, who must often rely on the support of the state for their careers to thrive at home, could face reprisals if forced to publicly disavow the Kremlin.“You can’t just put everybody under general suspicion now,” said Alexander Neef, the director of the Paris Opera. “You can’t demand declarations of allegiance or condemnations of what’s going on.”The situation is tense and fast moving. Leaders of organizations are facing pressure from donors, board members and audiences, not to mention waves of anger on social media, where campaigns to cancel several Russian artists have rapidly gained traction.Institutions are also grappling with what to do about the Russians who are among their most important donors. On Wednesday the Guggenheim Museum announced that Vladimir O. Potanin, one of Russia’s richest men and a major benefactor, was stepping down as one of its trustees.Leila Getz, the founder and artistic director of a recital series in Vancouver, Canada, canceled an appearance by the Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev planned for August. Mr. Malofeev, 20, had not made any statements on the war, nor did he have any known ties to Mr. Putin. But Ms. Getz issued a statement saying she could not “in good conscience present a concert by any Russian artist at this moment in time unless they are prepared to speak out publicly against this war.”Soon she received dozens of messages. Some accused her of overstepping and demanded that Mr. Malofeev be allowed to perform.In an interview, Ms. Getz defended her decision, saying she was worried about the potential for protests. She said she had not asked Mr. Malofeev to condemn the war and that she was concerned for his safety.“The first things that came to my mind were, why would I want to bring a 20-year-old Russian pianist to Vancouver and have him faced with protests and people misbehaving inside the concert hall and hooting and screaming and hollering?” she said.Mr. Malofeev declined to comment. In a statement posted on Facebook, he said, “The truth is that every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict.”On Friday the Annapolis Symphony in Maryland announced that it would replace the Russian violinist Vadim Repin, who had been scheduled to play a Shostakovich concerto in upcoming concerts, “out of respect to Repin’s apolitical stance and concerns for the safety of himself and his family.”“We don’t want to put him in an uncomfortable, even impossible position,” the orchestra’s executive director, Edgar Herrera, said in a statement. In an interview, Mr. Herrera said that there had been threats to disrupt Mr. Repin’s performances and that the symphony was concerned that hosting a Russian artist could hurt its image and alienate donors.Deciding which artists are too close to Mr. Putin is not easy. Mr. Gergiev, the longtime general and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, has a relationship with Mr. Putin that goes back decades, and he has often supported the government’s policies. Mr. Gergiev led concerts in 2008 in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia that was aided by Russian troops, and at the Syrian site of Palmyra in 2016 after it was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces.Ms. Netrebko, the star soprano, issued a statement opposing the war in Ukraine but withdrew from performing after declining to distance herself from Mr. Putin, whom she has expressed support for in the past. The war brought renewed attention to a photograph from 2014 of her holding a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine.The pianist Evgeny Kissin, who was born in Moscow, said he believed that “supporters of a criminal war waged by a dictator and a mass murderer should have no place on the concert stages of the civilized world.”Milan Bures for The New York TimesThe eminent pianist Evgeny Kissin, who was born in Moscow and is now based in Prague, said that while many artists in Russia needed to support Mr. Putin to some degree because their institutions relied on state aid, others went too far. He said he believed that “supporters of a criminal war waged by a dictator and a mass murderer should have no place on the concert stages of the civilized world.”He added that while he thought it was natural for Western institutions to ask Mr. Putin’s most prominent supporters to speak out against the war, he did not think it should be required of artists who had not been particularly political in the past.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 5Anna Netrebko. More