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      Mixing Healing and Strife, the Met Opera Sings Again

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      The company’s continuing labor tensions hovered over two consoling concerts featuring its orchestra and chorus.On Sunday evening, 430 days after the coronavirus pandemic closed the Metropolitan Opera, the company returned.Members of the Met’s orchestra and chorus, conducted by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and joined by four soloists, twice presented a 45-minute program for an audience of 150.The location wasn’t the company’s home at Lincoln Center; instead, the concerts were held at the Knockdown Center, a door factory turned rough-hewed art and performance space in Queens. But these were truly, finally Met forces, brought together amid the contentious labor disputes that still threaten the company’s official reopening, planned for September.“What a privilege it is to say good evening to you, to welcome you here,” Nézet-Séguin told the audience before beginning the concert. The purpose, he added, was primarily to “resume what we do” — that is, to make music. But the performances were also intended as an expression of gratitude to essential workers; some tickets were set aside for emergency medical staff affiliated with Mount Sinai’s hospital in Queens.Owens sang an aria from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesNézet-Séguin, left, conducted as Costello sang.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesHovering over the concerts were the Met’s continuing labor tensions. The company’s closure has cost it some $150 million in revenue, and its many union workers were furloughed early in the pandemic. Peter Gelb, the general manager, has, like administrators at performing arts institutions everywhere, been trying to exact long-term concessions from the Met’s labor force, which the unions are strongly resisting.Just days ago, the Met reached a deal with the union representing its chorus, dancers and some others. But talks with the orchestra musicians, who agreed in March to begin accepting some payments in exchange for returning to the bargaining table, are ongoing. And on Thursday, the union representing the stage hands, who have been locked out since December, held a boisterous rally outside Lincoln Center.Without glossing over the strife, the Queens concerts (I attended the second) came across as a genuine gesture of good will and shared artistic commitment. Nézet-Séguin told the crowd that he and the artists had tried to devise a program that reflected the hardships we’ve all endured, but also offered comfort and hope.The program also made it clear that the Met is attempting to address longstanding issues of inequity brought to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness in months of demonstrations against racial injustice last year. Three of the four superb solo singers were Black, and the offerings included an aria from Terence Blanchard’s opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which is planned to open the Met’s season in September — the first work by a Black composer ever presented by the company.Blue sang the tender “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s “Otello.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAustin sang an aria from “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” the Terence Blanchard opera planned to reopen the Met in September.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOn Sunday the young baritone Justin Austin sang “Peculiar Grace,” in which Charles, the main character in the opera — which is based on a memoir by Charles M. Blow, an opinion columnist for The New York Times — thinks back to his troubled youth, growing up poor in Louisiana, “a Black boy from a lawless town,” he sings in the words of Kasi Lemmons’s libretto.“Where everyone carries a gun,” Austin sang with burnished sound and vulnerability,” “I carried shame in a holster ’round my waist.”The concert opened with the 12 choristers and 20 orchestra players giving a soft-spoken account of the poignant “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem. Then the soprano Angel Blue brought radiant sound and aching sensitivity to the “Ave Maria” from Verdi’s “Otello.”Next came several excerpts from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte,” starting with the overture, which here sounded less an introduction to a comedic romp than a sublime prelude to a tale of a quest for wisdom, purpose and love. The young quester, Prince Tamino, sings an aria of smitten devotion to an image of the lovely Pamina, touching music sung ardently here by the tenor Stephen Costello. And when the stentorian bass-baritone Eric Owens sang Sarastro’s “In diesen heil’gen Hallen,” whose German words translate to “Within these sacred portals revenge is unknown,” seemed fitting for the Knockdown Center, which felt like a spacious yet intimate community sanctuary.An audience of about 150, included some tickets reserved for emergency workers from Mount Sinai’s hospital in Queens, was allowed into the concerts.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe program continued with Blue and the choristers giving a serene account of “Placido è il mar” from Mozart’s “Idomeneo”; Blue and Costello in a duet from Verdi’s “La Traviata”; Blue and the chorus in the consoling “Laudate dominum” from Mozart’s “Vesperae Solennes de Confessore”; and, to end, Owens and the chorus in the affirming final scene of “Die Zauberflöte.”The Queens concerts were not the only demonstration on Sunday of the Met trying, in the face of continuing hardships from the pandemic, to keep its mission going. Typically, the finals of the company’s National Council Auditions attract a large, enthusiastic audience to the opera house, where 10 or so young finalists in this prestigious competition perform two arias each onstage, with the orchestra in the pit.This year the entire competition, which has been renamed for the Met donors Eric and Dominique Laffont, took place online. On Sunday, 10 impressive finalists performed live from various locations across the United States — as well as two from Seoul, where it was early in the morning. Rather than a full orchestra, each singer was accompanied by a pianist; not surprisingly, the quality of the transmissions varied, and assessing these young voices remotely hardly compared with hearing them at the house. I did not envy the judges.Raven McMillon, a soprano from Baltimore, was among the five winners of the Met’s annual young artists competition.via Metropolitan OperaStill, the five winners all came across as gifted singers with great potential: Emily Sierra, a mezzo-soprano from Chicago, who brought a rich, secure voice to arias from “Die Fledermaus” and “La Clemenza di Tito”; Raven McMillon, a soprano from Baltimore, who sang radiantly in selections from “Cendrillon” and “Der Rosenkavalier”; Duke Kim, a tenor from Seoul, who was excellent in Tamino’s aria from “Die Zauberflöte” and gleefully tossed off the nine high C’s of “Ah! mes ami” from “La Fille du Régiment”; Emily Treigle, a mezzo-soprano from New Orleans, who gave assured accounts of arias from “Orfeo ed Euridice” and “La Clemenza di Tito”; and Hyoyoung Kim, a coloratura soprano from Seoul, who seemed set for a big career singing from “Lakmé” and “Rigoletto.”The other, also worthy finalists were Brittany Olivia Logan (soprano), Erica Petrocelli (soprano), Timothy Murray (baritone), Murrella Parton (soprano) and Jongwon Han (bass-baritone).You couldn’t help but think that several of them will end up singing someday with the company at the Met’s theater. It was a prospect that made reopening the house an even more exciting and urgent matter. More

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      Met Opera Protest: Union Rallies Against Proposed Pay Cuts

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      The Metropolitan Opera hopes to reopen in September after its long pandemic closure, but simmering labor tensions have called that date into question.As New York prepares for the long-awaited reopening of its performing arts sector, with several Broadway shows putting tickets on sale for the fall, it is still unclear whether the Metropolitan Opera will be able to reach the labor agreements it needs to bring up its heavy golden curtain for the gala opening night it hopes to hold in September.There have been contrasting scenes playing out at the opera house in recent days.On the hopeful side, the Met is preparing for two concerts in Queens on Sunday — the company’s first live, in-person performances featuring members of its orchestra and chorus and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, since the start of the pandemic. And it recently reached a deal on a new contract with the union that represents its chorus, soloists, dancers and stage managers, among others.But the serious tensions that remain with the company’s other unions were put on vivid display outside Lincoln Center on Thursday, as hundreds of union members rallied in opposition to the Met’s lockout of its stagehands and management’s demands for deep and lasting pay cuts it says are needed to survive the pandemic. The workers’ message was clear: their labor makes the Met what it is, and without them, the opera can’t reopen.The Met’s stagehands have been locked out since December. James J. Claffey Jr., president of their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said that the season cannot open without them.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“That’s not the Met Opera,” said James J. Claffey Jr., president of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents Met stagehands, pointing over to the opera house. “The greatest stage, the largest stage — it’s empty. It’s nothing without the people that are right in front of me right now.”Masked stagehands, musicians, ticket sellers, wardrobe workers and scenic artists packed the designated rally space, greeting each other with elbow bumps after more than a year of separation. They wore union T-shirts and carried signs with messages like, “We Paint the Met” and “We Dress the Met.” The same chant — “We are the Met!” — was repeated over and over throughout the rally.The protest made clear the significant labor challenges that the Met must overcome to successfully return in the fall.Although the opera season is not scheduled to begin until September, the company will need to reach agreements with Local One, which represents its stagehands, much sooner to load in sets and hold technical rehearsals over the summer. The Met has been hoping to bring a significant number of stagehands back to work beginning in June, but Claffey said union members were holding out for a labor agreement.The Met locked out its stagehands in December after contract negotiations stalled. The union has been fiercely opposed to the Met’s assertion that it needs to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, with an intention to restore half of those cuts when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels (the Met has said the plan would cut the take-home pay of those workers by about 20 percent).“Regardless of the Met’s plans, Local One is not going to work without a contract,” Claffey said in an interview. “There’s a lockout when you didn’t need us, but when you really need us, it’s going to transition from a lockout to a strike.”Although the Met recently struck a deal with the union representing its chorus, tensions remain high with the unions representing its orchestra and stagehands.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met said in a statement on Thursday that it had “no desire to undermine” the unions it works with but that it had lost more than $150 million in earned revenues since the pandemic forced it to close, and that it needs to cut costs to survive. The statement said the Met had “repeatedly” invited the stagehands’ union to return to the bargaining table.“In order for the Met to reopen in the fall, as scheduled,” the statement said, “the stagehands and the other highest paid Met union members need to accept the reality of these extraordinarily challenging times.”The rally was organized by Local One, which represents the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands. Speaking outside the David H. Koch Theater because metal barriers blocked the path to the Metropolitan Opera House, union leaders railed against the monthslong lockout that has prevented its workers from returning to the Met in full force.“A lot of us stagehands have had to pivot or leave the industry entirely,” said Gillian Koch, a Local One member at the rally. “And we are showing up to say that is not OK, and we all deserve to have our careers after this pandemic.”Tensions rose even higher when the stagehands learned that the Met had outsourced some of its set construction to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stagehands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)The stagehand lockout has not been absolute. Claffey said that at the Met’s request, he has allowed several Local One members to work at the Met under the terms of the previous contract, particularly to help the union wardrobe staff who are on duty.But although the Met has now reached a deal with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents its chorus, it has yet to reach one with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra. Both groups were furloughed without pay for nearly a year after the opera house closed before they were brought back to the bargaining table with the promise of partial pay of up to $1,543 per week.Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802, pointed out that because of the Met’s labor divisions, other performing arts institutions were ahead of the Met in reopening.“Broadway is selling tickets; the Philharmonic is doing performances; they’re building stages right before our eyes,” Krauthamer said in a speech at the rally. “The Met is the only place that continues to try to destroy its workers’ contracts.”The rally had the backing of several local politicians who spoke, including Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, and the New York State Senators Jessica Ramos and Brad Hoylman, who had a message for the Met’s general manager: “Mr. Gelb, could you leave the drama on the stage, please?” More

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      Met Opera Announces Its First Live Concerts Since Shutdown

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      Despite ongoing labor tensions, members of the company’s orchestra and chorus will perform with soloists and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.The Metropolitan Opera will perform again for a live audience, 430 days after the coronavirus shut down its theater.Members of the company’s orchestra and chorus, joined by prominent soloists and led by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will give two concerts at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Sunday, the Met announced on Wednesday. The concerts will go on despite continuing labor tensions at the Met, which have threatened the intended reopening of its Lincoln Center home in September.Scheduled for 6 and 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, the program, called “A Concert for New York,” includes selections by Mozart, Verdi and Terence Blanchard, whose “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” is planned to reopen the Met on Sept. 27 and will be the company’s first opera by a Black composer. The soloists for the Queens performances will be Angel Blue, Stephen Costello, Justin Austin and Eric Owens; 12 Met choristers and 20 orchestra musicians will take part.Whether the Met will be able to reopen in September is not yet clear. While New York officials have announced plans to loosen pandemic restrictions around the performing arts — prompting major sectors, like Broadway, to lay out their plans for a fall return — the Met, which says that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues since it was forced to close, has been seeking pay cuts from its workers, like other arts organizations. Many of its unions are resisting, and the company has locked out Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents its stagehands.The union representing the Met’s chorus members, soloists and some other workers recently struck a deal on a new contract, though the details will not be made public until the union members vote on ratifying it later this month. The orchestra players’ union, Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, is still in negotiations with management over how deep and lasting pay cuts will be.In March, after nearly a year of unpaid furlough, the musicians and chorus members agreed to begin receiving up to $1,543 per week in exchange for returning to the table to negotiate longer-term contracts. For the concerts on Sunday, each union performer will be paid an additional $1,000.Since last summer, the Met has livestreamed pay-per-view recitals featuring soloists and musicians from outside its orchestra, drawing criticism from furloughed orchestra members. The orchestra began staging its own virtual concerts and collecting donations to distribute to musicians in need. The concerts on Sunday will be the first in-person performances under the Met’s brand since March 11, 2020.“As the city’s largest performing arts company, we are determined to participate in New York’s reopening,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in a statement, “even though there is much still to be settled with our unions and in preparing the opera house for next season.”In keeping with the state’s current rules, Sunday’s 45-minute concerts will each have an audience of 150 people, who must provide proof of vaccination, a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of the show or a negative antigen test within six hours of the start time. Tickets will be distributed by a lottery system, including a portion set aside for emergency medical workers with Mount Sinai’s hospital in Queens.Because the concerts are taking place in Queens, Local One does not have jurisdiction over the stagehand work. That work instead goes to Local Four of the union, though Local One has agreed to make a limited number of its workers available to load large instruments, music stands and chairs at the Met.While the concerts promise a display of unity amid labor tensions, union members are planning a rally on Thursday in front of Lincoln Center, where they are expected to voice opposition to the Local One lockout and the Met’s proposed pay cuts, which the company says are necessary for it to survive the pandemic and beyond. More

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      Metropolitan Opera Reaches Deal With Union Representing Chorus

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      Labor troubles have cast the company’s planned reopening in September in doubt; two other major unions have yet to reach deals.The Metropolitan Opera, whose efforts to cut the pay of its workers to help it survive the pandemic had left it locked in a bitter dispute with its unions, threatening to derail its planned September reopening, announced Tuesday that it had reached a deal with the union representing its chorus and other workers.The union, the American Guild of Musical Artists — which also represents soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers — is the first of the three largest Met unions to reach such a deal after months of sometimes-bitter division between labor and management over how deep and lasting the pandemic pay cuts should be. The Met had been seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, which it said would cut the take-home pay of those workers by around 20 percent.The terms of the deal — the culmination of 14 weeks of negotiations — were not immediately disclosed; the company said they would remain confidential until the union held a vote to ratify the agreement on May 24.In recent weeks, New York officials have taken steps to loosen the restrictions around live performance, and in recent days several major Broadway shows have announced their intention to resume performances in September and October. But whether the Met can reopen in September, after the pandemic forced the opera house to remain closed for more than a year, depends on how quickly it can resolve its remaining labor problems.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in a statement that he was grateful to the guild for “recognizing the extraordinary economic challenges the Met faces in the coming seasons.”Leonard Egert, the executive director of the guild, said in a statement that the new contract would “ensure the Met becomes a more equitable and better workplace.”“We are pleased to arrive at a new deal during the most trying time in performing arts’ history,” he said.The Met’s deal with the guild is just one step toward reopening. The union that represents its stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has been locked out since December, after the two sides failed to reach an agreement on pay cuts. Without its union stagehands, starting performances will likely be impossible. And the union representing the Met’s orchestra is still negotiating its contract.The opera company, the largest performing arts organization in the nation, says that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues — including ticket sales to the opera house and to its cinema simulcasts, as well as its shop and dining revenues — since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to close its doors more than a year ago. If the Met reopens in September, it will have gone 18 months without live performances in its opera house.The Met’s management has argued that such a long period of closure — and the uncertainty over the return of its audiences in an era where it could take years for New York City tourism to rebound to prepandemic levels — requires it to seek financial sacrifices from its employees. It has said that half of its proposed pay cuts would be restored once ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels. A number of major American orchestras and opera companies have already negotiated pay cuts with their workers to help them survive the pandemic.After the opera house was closed, the members of its orchestra and chorus went unpaid for nearly a year. Then the company brought them to the bargaining table with the offer of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what they are typically paid.On Thursday, union members are planning to rally in front of Lincoln Center as a display of solidarity during tense negotiations with management. Union leaders have accused the Met’s management of using the pandemic as a reason to force concessions from labor.If approved, the agreement with the guild will take effect on Aug. 1; for now, unions members will continue to receive partial payments. More

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      A Jaw-Dropping Philip Glass Opera Is Finally on Video

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      “Satyagraha,” one of the Metropolitan Opera’s greatest stagings of the 21st century, has been released on DVD and CD.For decades, Philip Glass fans have internalized a lesson: If you want to see his operas, plan to buy tickets and attend in person. Don’t expect the stagings to show up on DVD in a year or two, as most prominent productions do these days.Glass has long carefully husbanded the rights to his work. And since founding his own record label, Orange Mountain Music, in 2001, he has been selective regarding releases of some of his operas.This has been particularly glaring when it comes to his trilogy of what became known as “portrait” operas, the stage works of the 1970s and ’80s which made his reputation in the genre. Each is focused on the life of a consequential man of history: “Einstein on the Beach” is an abstract account of that scientist and the development of nuclear technology; “Satyagraha” dramatizes Gandhi’s early activism in South Africa; “Akhnaten” contemplates the Egyptian pharaoh who pioneered monotheism.Glass in 1984, the year “Akhnaten,” the follow-up to “Satyagraha” in his trilogy of “portrait” operas, premiered in Germany.Beatriz Schiller/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty ImagesA globe-trotting revival of Robert Wilson’s definitive original production of “Einstein” was released on video in 2016, a full 40 years after the work’s premiere. But while “Satyagraha” and “Akhnaten” have received acclaimed recent productions at the Metropolitan Opera, and have been transmitted to movie theaters worldwide through the Met’s Live in HD series, they have been missing on DVD.That is now changing, thanks to a deal struck between the Met, Orange Mountain Music and Dunvagen, Glass’s publishing company. Late in April, the Met released, for the first time, its 2011 “Satyagraha” staging, directed by Phelim McDermott, designed by Julian Crouch, first seen in New York in 2008 and quickly assessed to be one of the Met’s triumphs of the past 25 years.Scenes from the Metropolitan Opera’s production, which is newly available on video.“Satyagraha” is available on DVD and is also downloadable on Apple TV. The audio is available on CD, as well as through streaming services and digital-purchase storefronts. The Met and Dunvagen confirmed in emails that the deal also includes the release of “Akhnaten” across a similar range of formats next month.“Satyagraha,” which premiered in 1980 and was the middle child of Glass’s portrait trilogy, is where the composer began to write for more traditional operatic orchestral forces, and for unamplified voices. He left behind the fully non-narrative approach of “Einstein on the Beach” (1976), while maintaining that work’s stylized pageantry.The scenes of “Satyagraha” depict recognizable events in Gandhi’s life, but instead of a biopic-style libretto, the Sanskrit text is made up of selections from the Bhagavad Gita, which Glass said he imagined Gandhi pondering during his time in South Africa. In the first scene, for example, the text’s discourse on the morality of conflict is reflected, dreamscape-like, in the opera’s action, as Gandhi confronts his fears regarding direct political action. The use of the Bhagavad Gita throughout keeps the opera enigmatic and poetic, endowing Gandhi’s evolution from lawyer to activist with epic grandeur.“Satyagraha,” which premiered in 1980, is where its composer began to write for more traditional operatic orchestral forces, and for unamplified voices.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met’s “Satyagraha” realizes the work in a way that Achim Freyer’s 1981 staging in Stuttgart, Germany — long out of print on DVD — never really did. (Among other things, Freyer’s punk couture designs were never quite right for this opera, and have aged poorly.)In McDermott’s production for the Met, the images are dazzling throughout, with surreal, giant figures conjured out of newsprint in a gesture at Indian Opinion, the newspaper Gandhi founded. At the opera’s climax, the influence of Gandhi’s nonviolent protest on the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is rendered explicit with slow-motion, hushed profundity.Given the work’s stylization and the many repetitions of the text, the Sanskrit doesn’t need to be followed word by word to understand its implications. McDermott’s production selectively projected English translations onto the set, and the new DVD captures those projections well enough to do without full subtitling.Until now, the only available audio release of “Satyagraha” was a CBS Masterworks recording from 1985, which features synthesizers very prominently in the mix alongside the New York City Opera’s orchestra and chorus.That energetic recording and others from Glass’s CBS years did a lot to popularize his music. But is the nervy, aggressive, computer-age precision of the synthesizer on the CBS recording the best way to evoke Gandhi’s gradual organization of mass protests at the end of the second act? If you’re playing the music as background, perhaps it doesn’t matter. But if you’re tuned into the drama, the autopilot momentum of synths seems out of place in a story about such concerted effort and up-and-down struggle. The conductor Dante Anzolini, along with the Met’s orchestra and chorus and the tenor Richard Croft as Gandhi, create a more affecting groundswell (including a subtler use of synthesizer) over the same minutes.Through his career, Glass has emphasized adaptation — and the validity of multiple perspectives on his catalog. Creating a one-and-only approach has rarely been the goal. In his 2015 memoir, “Words Without Music,” he wrote, “This is what I know about new operas: The only safeguard for the composer is to have several productions.”If a work can survive its first decade, he adds, “we might begin to form an idea of the quality and stature of the work in its third or fourth production.” This was and remains a sadly rare phenomenon. The opera world loves its premieres; less so, its third or fourth productions of a contemporary piece.But Glass’s fame, and the quality of both “Satyagraha” and “Akhnaten,” have allowed them to be explored again and again over the past four decades. This means that there will, inevitably, be interpretations that are stronger than others. This newly released “Satyagraha” is not just one of the best Met productions of the 21st century. It also immediately takes its place among the essential releases in the storied career of an instantly recognizable voice in contemporary music. More

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      Christa Ludwig, Mezzo-Soprano of Velvety Hues, Is Dead at 93

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      She was a beloved interpreter of Strauss, Mozart and Wagner roles, but equally admired for her rendition of art songs.Christa Ludwig, who poured a lustrous voice into dramatically taut performances of opera roles — especially those of Mozart, Strauss and Wagner — and intimately rendered art songs as one of the premier mezzo-sopranos of the second half of the 20th century, died on Saturday at her home in Klosterneuburg, Austria. She was 93.Her death was confirmed by her son, Wolfgang Berry.Ms. Ludwig commanded a broad range of the great mezzo-soprano parts, including Dorabella in Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” Cherubino in his “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Octavian in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” Bizet’s Carmen and numerous Wagner roles. Often, critics were reduced to calling her the greatest mezzo-soprano of her time.But like many mezzos, Ms. Ludwig strove to lay claim to higher-voiced — and higher-profile — soprano roles. So she took on, most successfully in that category, characters including the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier,” the Dyer’s Wife in “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” and Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio.”She was an equal master of the intimate song — especially the works of Brahms, Mahler and Schubert. Her artistry put her in the pantheon of postwar lieder singers that included Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elly Ameling and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.Ms. Ludwig made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cherubino (a trouser role, a type she said was not her favorite) in 1959, took on Octavian and Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida” at the house that year as well and sang regularly at the Met until the end of her career.Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, left, and Ms.  Ludwig in a recording studio in 1962. Both were renowned lieder singers.Erich Auerbach/Hulton Archive/Getty Images,She was associated for decades with the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, and worked especially closely with the conductors Karl Böhm, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan.Ms. Ludwig rose from straitened origins in a shattered wartime Germany to the height of the singing world, aided by a sense of discipline instilled by her strong-willed mother — her only real teacher and a constant presence throughout her career.She also displayed traits of the pampered diva, with a preference for elegant gowns and opulent hotel suites (partly inspired by the hardships of her youth), fanatical attention to any hint of illness and the state of her vocal cords, and reverential fans who followed her from house to house. On performance days, she would communicate with whistles or by writing on a pad.But onstage, Ms. Ludwig brought a striking combination of acting ability, charisma and vocal beauty. Her voice had range and power, a security through all the registers and a broad array of colors.“Her unmistakable, deep-purple timbre envelops the listener in a velvet cloak,” Roger Pines wrote in Opera News in 2018, reviewing her collected recordings. “She excelled equally in intimate, legato-oriented lieder and the largest-scale operatic repertoire, where her sound expanded with glorious brilliance.”Critics often took note of her wit and comic deftness, and a personality that could fill a hall even when she sang softly. “Her presence on the Met stage was a synthesis of the dramatic arts all by itself — her voice, her wonderfully natural diction and her shadings of facial expression and gesture all conspiring to express with great emotional breadth the singular message of this singular music,” The New York Times critic Bernard Holland wrote of a “Winterreise” performance in 1983. Ms. Ludwig sang that searing Schubert song cycle some 72 times, even though it was composed for a male voice.Ms. Ludwig in 1963. She favored elegant gowns and opulent hotel suites and paid fanatical attention to the state of her vocal cords.Harry Croner/ullstein bild via Getty ImagesMs. Ludwig was born on March 16, 1928, in Berlin. Her parents lived in Aachen in western Germany, but her mother, Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig, wanted the child to be born in her family home in the capital.In Aachen, Christa’s Viennese father, Anton Ludwig, a former tenor who had sung with Enrico Caruso at the old Met, was the opera house stage director and manager; her mother sang in the company, and performed several roles under an up-and-coming conductor named Herbert von Karajan. Christa saw those performances and many others. “I practically lived in the theater,” she said in her 1993 memoir, later published in English under the title “In My Own Words.”Her mother gave her singing lessons as a girl and remained her lifelong coach, going to her rehearsals and performances and living most of her life with Ms. Ludwig. “I really owe everything to her,” she said. But Ms. Ludwig also described her mother as an inflexible and sometimes suffocating presence who dominated her life before she felt able to cut ties only at age 60.During the war, a half brother was killed on the Eastern front. Food was rationed and Christa was sent to work on a farm. The family’s home and belongings in Giessen, where Mr. Ludwig had become director of the municipal theater, were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid, leaving them homeless. With the arrival of American troops, Ms. Ludwig recounted in her memoir, she and her parents were assigned an abandoned apartment with a piano that had been used as a toilet.Christa’s mother gave voice lessons. “Studying singing was a wonderful way to forget the wretched way we lived, the ruins, the still-smoldering coal cellars, and the stink of ashes,” Ms. Ludwig wrote.The young singer soon found work singing popular tunes at the American officers club, wearing a dress she had made from a Nazi flag. She was paid in cigarettes and stole whatever food she could. Once her father, who had been a member of the Nazi party, was denazified, he was given back his job and organized variety shows around town in which his daughter was featured.Ms. Ludwig received her first major contract in 1946, at the Frankfurt Opera, and made her stage debut as Prince Orlofsky in “Die Fledermaus.” Her mother, recently divorced from her father, moved in with her in the city in an unheated room, and they began daily lessons.Along with her opera work, she sang many concerts of contemporary music amid a wave of creative freedom unleashed by the fall of the Reich. “I was cheap,” she told The Guardian in 2004. “I learned things easily and I had a good voice.” It was a shrewd move: Critics got to know her before she became famous.Ms. Ludwig as Fidelio (Leonore) in the first act of the Beethoven opera “Fidelio” at the Salzburg Festival in August 1968.Gerhard Rauchwetter/picture alliance via Getty ImagesStints in the opera houses of Darmstadt and Hanover followed, until she was summoned to audition for Mr. Böhm, the director of the Vienna State Opera. He took her on in 1955, and she quickly became a mainstay. Engagements at the world’s major opera houses followed. She met the bass-baritone Walter Berry at the Vienna opera in 1957 when they were cast in “Le Nozze di Figaro.” They married three months later and had a son, Wolfgang, who survives her, along with a grandson and a stepson, Philippe Deiber. The couple frequently appeared together in operas and joint recitals. In interviews, Ms. Ludwig said they felt occasional rivalry and were at odds in preparing for performances (she needed quiet, he less so; he liked small hotel rooms and she liked large suites).The couple divorced in 1970, though they continued to perform together. (Mr. Berry died in 2000.)Soon after her divorce, Ms. Ludwig met the actor and stage director Paul-Emile Deiber while he was preparing a production of Massenet’s “Werther” at the Met, and they married in 1972. He died in 2011.Ms. Ludwig came of age at the dawn of the postwar golden era of recordings, and her LP legacy is vast, from a 1961 “Norma” with Maria Callas to a 1962 “St. Matthew Passion” conducted by Otto Klemperer, to two complete and classic Wagner “Ring” cycles. She appears on five “Rosenkavalier” recordings, including a beloved rendition with Ms. Schwarzkopf, conducted by Mr. von Karajan.In the realm of song, critics took note of her sensitivity, smooth lines, intimacy, control and mastery of the text. “She is perhaps the reigning feminine expert at making us feel good about lonely teardrops and thwarted bliss,” The Times critic Donal Henahan wrote in 1979.Despite the care that she took with her voice, Ms. Ludwig suffered damage to her vocal cords in the early 1970s that forced her to cancel numerous performances, and even parts of whole seasons. She recovered but cut back on opera appearances. She gave a series of farewell performances in the 1993-1994 season before retiring.A few years after her vocal crisis, Ms. Ludwig made clear the pragmatic view she had about a singer’s voice.“It’s like a raw egg,” she once said. “Once it’s kaputt, it’s kaputt.” More

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      Met Opera Players to Meet an Old Friend for a Gig, and Aid

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      The musicians, who went unpaid for nearly a year, have been invited to join Fabio Luisi, their former principal conductor, and his Dallas Symphony for two benefit concerts.The musicians of the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra, who went unpaid for nearly a year, are getting a hand from one of their old maestros, Fabio Luisi.Luisi — who was the Met’s principal conductor for more than five years, and was seen as a candidate to succeed James Levine as its music director before the post went to Yannick Nézet-Séguin — has invited the musicians to Texas at the end of the month to join the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which he now leads, for two benefit concerts.The Dallas Symphony announced on Monday that the Met musicians would join its players for performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on April 30 and May 1. The orchestra noted in a news release that the concerts would present the first opportunity in over a year for many of the Met’s musicians — who recently began receiving partial pay as they negotiate a new contract — to perform together for a live audience.A spokesman for the Dallas Symphony said that roughly 40 to 50 Met musicians were expected to travel to Dallas for the concerts, and added that they would be paid for the performances. The joint concerts will act as fund-raisers for the Met Orchestra Musicians’ Fund and the Dallas players’ union’s DFW Musicians Covid-19 Relief Fund; a filmed recording will be released.“As one of the few orchestras fortunate to be able to perform all season to live audiences, we are painfully aware that many of our colleagues around the country were not able to play concerts due to restrictions in their cities or the financial situation of their organization,” Kim Noltemy, the president and chief executive of the Dallas Symphony, said in a statement.Luisi said in a statement that he sought to “gather musicians together to make music” as a “symbol of solidarity.”“During my time with the Met,” he added, “I became close to many of the members of the orchestra. It is devastating that these incredible musicians have not had an opportunity to perform together in over a year.”Brad Gemeinhardt, a Met Orchestra hornist who is the chair of the committee which represents the musicians in negotiations with management, offered thanks to the Dallas orchestra. “We cannot overstate the impact this unprecedented collaboration will have on our members, both financially and artistically, after this long year of cultural famine,” Gemeinhardt said in a statement.After going without paychecks for nearly a year, members of the Met Orchestra voted last month to return to the bargaining table in exchange for temporary pay of up to $1,543 a week. The Met, which has said that the pandemic has cost $150 million in lost revenue, and its general director, Peter Gelb, are insisting on long-term pay cuts to offset those losses — cuts a number of other leading orchestras have agreed to.In January, Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, agreed to give up to $50,000 in matching donations to the orchestra and chorus. After the musicians and the company reached their deal on temporary pay, he sent a letter to the Met’s leaders urging them to “find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately.”“I am finding it increasingly hard to justify what has happened,” he wrote.The Met said at the time that it shared his frustration and that all parties had been “working together for new agreements that will ensure the sustainability of the Met into the future.” On Monday afternoon, the company added in a statement that it hoped the musicians would “have an increasing number of performance opportunities between now and the fall, when we will once again be able to come together at the Met.” More