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

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

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      A Met Orchestra of Mixed Quality Returns to Carnegie Hall

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

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      Four Takeaways From the Metropolitan Opera’s Risky Season

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      The company has bet that new operas will attract new, more diverse audiences and revitalize a stale repertory. Is the gamble paying off?For years, the Metropolitan Opera — the nation’s largest performing arts institution, with a $300 million budget and 4,000-seat theater — was like an ocean liner, changing course slowly, if at all.But now it is trying to be more like a speedboat. Since the pandemic, with costs up and ticket sales down, the Met’s programming has taken a sharp swerve toward contemporary works, which used to come along once in a blue moon. In recent seasons, the Met has done fewer productions than it used to, but about a third of its operas now come from our times.Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager, has staked a large part of his legacy on the bet that these new operas will attract new and more diverse audiences, revitalizing a house repertory better known for presenting “Tosca” and “La Traviata,” year after year. With the Met entering its summer break this week, is that bet paying off, artistically and financially?The experiment is, at best, a work in progress.The Met put on 18 operas during this so-so season, and if you line them up in order of paid attendance, only one of the six contemporary pieces, Anthony Davis’s “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” is in the top half. Modern opera is not selling well, at least not better than classics like “The Magic Flute,” “Carmen” and “Turandot.”The Met’s economic model revolves around being able to efficiently bring back most pieces and have them find an audience. But this season raised alarms about how newer titles will do when revived. Gelb’s gamble on swiftly restaging two top sellers of recent seasons — Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and Kevin Puts’s “The Hours” — fizzled, with the theater over a third empty for both. (The average performance across the season was 72 percent full.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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

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

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      Review: A Delightful ‘Orfeo’ Returns to the Met Opera

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      The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo stars in a revival of Mark Morris’s witty, sensitively choreographed production.Gluck’s opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” is a funny thing: a timeless Greek myth of separation and loss, twisted into a Viennese cream puff.Both that darkness and light are embraced in the choreographer Mark Morris’s 2007 production, which is being revived at the Metropolitan Opera starring the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. A firmly established star of the house, and a budding opera impresario, he owns the stage as Orfeo.Gluck’s version of the Orpheus story was commissioned for a celebration of the Hapsburg emperor Francis I in 1762. The tale’s traditional tragic ending was deemed not suitable for the crown, so Gluck tacked on a joyful conclusion. (Spoiler alert: Rather than being cleaved for eternity, the lovers are happily reunited.)Operas from around Gluck’s time were often little more than vehicles for vocal pyrotechnics. “Orfeo ed Euridice,” instead, is a character study of the grieving Orfeo, desperate to do anything to be reunited with his deceased Euridice. Costanzo is a bewitching performer who knows how to move his voice through many shades of tone and meaning — qualities on ample display in the aching Act III aria “Che puro ciel” and, in Act IV, “Che farò senza Euridice,” in which Orpheus realizes that he may have lost his beloved forever.Seen on Thursday, Costanzo was this opera’s melancholic heart and soul. The soprano Ying Fang proved a worthy complement as Euridice. She brought a pearly tone and an equally rich characterization to her role, particularly in the sublime Act IV duet, which curdles into a pained quarrel as she realizes that her husband refuses to look at her.Another soprano, Elena Villalón, sang the impish god Amore, who charges Orpheus with his task of rescuing Euridice from the underworld without gazing upon her. Villalón allowed her witty costume and impressive entrance — clad in preppy khakis, a Pepto Bismol-pink polo shirt and some slightly scruffy wings, she descends from the rafters on wires — to do much of the acting for her. I wished for a bit more pep and bite in her phrasing to match the staging’s zing. By contrast, the conductor J. David Jackson led the orchestra with vigor and snap.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      He Made the Met Opera’s Chorus the Best in the World

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      During the second intermission of the Metropolitan Opera’s gilded, gargantuan production of “Turandot” one Friday last month, Donald Palumbo raced up to a tiny broadcast studio on the top floor for an interview.Then he raced downstairs again. There was something he needed to do backstage before the curtain rose.Palumbo, 75, who is retiring this spring after 17 years as the company’s chorus master, wanted to run through the start of Act III with the quartet of heralds, drawn from the chorus, who hauntingly call out a warning from Princess Turandot.It was 13 performances into the season’s “Turandot” run, at 10 o’clock at night. But Palumbo, one of opera’s most mild-mannered yet most unrelenting perfectionists, was still making sure that the singers’ intonation was flawless, still fine-tuning the placement of the first note in a certain phrase.Palumbo conducting from the wings during a performance of “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera in April. Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York Times“You have to be very specific,” he had said earlier about the way he coaches his choristers, “but you can’t micromanage.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘The Hours’ Returns to the Met Opera With Its Stars

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      Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato reprised their roles in Kevin Puts’s adaptation of the award-winning novel and film.Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which had its stage premiere at the Metropolitan Opera last season and returned for its first revival on Sunday, is even prettier than I remember.In the often exquisite score, the strings throb and the woodwinds flutter. When Puts reaches for percussion instruments, he chooses the sweeter ones — glockenspiel, crotales, chimes, vibraphone — and combines them luxuriously. Woodwinds at the top of Act II are practically Wagnerian in their extravagant stateliness. Tender piano chords toll lonesomely. Musical surges are thick with nostalgia. The luscious vocal lines revel in love, and understanding, of the human voice.But it’s easy to miss the score’s manifold beauties when the stage is full of distractions. Extraneous dancers and supernumeraries flood Phelim McDermott’s production at the Met. In one moment, the choreographer Annie-B Parson has them twirl around holding pillows while a character considers killing herself in a hotel room. Adding to the busyness, Puts heavily features the chorus as a collective, omniscient narrator and the characters’ inner voices. As a device, it doesn’t work; while the story intimately intertwines the emotional lives of three women, the chorus infringes upon their connection with the audience.It’s almost as though Puts and McDermott are afraid to take a sustained look at their heroines, or that they don’t trust the audience’s attention span. This is especially perplexing considering they have three leads on the order of Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato, who reprised their roles on Sunday. When the stage was free of clutter, their star wattage was dazzling.As Virginia Woolf, DiDonato was a haunted, magisterial presence. Her voice, dark, fulsome and cutting, communicated Woolf’s intellectual depth and her personal demons; there was the insight and occlusion of a novelist at the height of her powers hiding her suicidal ideations from others. As Laura, O’Hara sang with a voice of fine crystal, and while her timbre was a little cloudier than it used to be, she embodied Laura’s fragile nerves and anxious self-loathing. The overall shape of Fleming’s voice remained improbably youthful in its creamy roundness. Her Clarissa was patrician yet superficial, though partial blame rests with the libretto, in which every other word of hers is “flowers” or “party.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Marin Alsop Shatter Another Glass Ceiling?

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      Alsop has had enviable success, and was the first female conductor to lead a top American orchestra. She wants to take another step up.Marin Alsop’s conducting students were taking turns on the podium recently in a rehearsal room at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. They waved their batons in front of an imaginary orchestra, practicing Stravinsky’s notoriously complex “The Rite of Spring.”Some conductors teach in poetry: what a piece means, how a certain sound should feel. Alsop, who spent untold hours at Meyerhoff Hall during her 14 years as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a tenure that ended in 2021, teaches in technical, tangible details.In a measure with 11 beats, she suggested using the last as a pickup to the following bar, to give the players an extra bit of clarity. She flagged trouble spots: a transition that was “usually too loud, too fast, too soon,” and a moment when the winds tend to come in just after the strings, rather than in unison.“You’re not accompanying,” she told a rising maestro who seemed to be giving an invisible musician too much leeway. “You’re in charge.”At 67, Alsop is, in many ways, in charge. Last month, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, conducting a new production of John Adams’s “El Niño.” Next season, she will lead the Berlin Philharmonic, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent orchestra, for the first time.She recently recorded Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with her ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the storied Musikverein, an experience that brought Leonard Bernstein, one of her mentors, to mind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More