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      Reawakening the Antichrist (and Other Lost Opera Gems)

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      It can be challenging to revive forgotten works like “Antikrist.” But the absence of entrenched traditions can be liberating.BERLIN — The Whore of Babylon, in a grotesque fat suit, belts out a hymn to hedonism midway through the Deutsche Oper’s new production of “Antikrist” here.Ersan Mondtag’s riotously colorful, boldly stylized staging of what this work’s Danish composer, Rued Langgaard, called a “church opera” is a near-breathless swirl. Nodding to various early-20th-century art movements, including Symbolism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus, it is only the third full staging of the work, which was written and revised between 1921 and 1930, but which remained unperformed at the time of Langgaard’s death, in 1952.Inspired by the Book of Revelation, “Antikrist” premieres Jan. 30 and runs through Feb. 11. It is the latest in a series of operatic rediscoveries at the Deutsche Oper, which, in recent decades, has made a point of highlighting works from outside the canon. In recent seasons, it has lavished attention on Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète” as part of a series devoted to that once-renowned 19th-century composer, as well as two early-20th-century titles, Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane” and Zemlinsky’s “Der Zwerg.”A scene from “Der Zwerg,” another rarely performed work that was revived at the Deutsche Oper.Monika RittershausAlong with the Deutsche Oper’s commitment to commissioning new operas, these rediscoveries are a way of refreshing and enlarging opera’s notoriously narrow repertoire. An essentially unknown work like “Antikrist” presents a host of logistical challenges, from training singers to attracting audiences, but it can provide its director with rare creative license. The absence of entrenched performing traditions can be artistically liberating.“It’s totally crazy,” Mondtag, who also designed the sets and helped design the costumes, said of the piece. “It’s something between Schoenberg and Wagner, and like a sacred opera without linear narration. So you have the freedom to do whatever you want.”Mondtag, one of Germany’s leading young avant-garde directors, was putting the finishing touches on “Antikrist” when the pandemic locked the country down for the first time, in March 2020. Since then, he’s staged two other rarely performed 20th-century works, Schreker’s “Der Schmied von Gent” and Weill’s “Silbersee,” both for Vlaamse Opera in Belgium. A relative newcomer to opera, Mondtag said it was hardly surprising that he’s been getting assignments like these, rather than war horses like “Tosca.”Mondtag onstage at the Deutsche Oper. He says he didn’t set out to become a specialist in unknown operas: “It just happened that way.”Gordon Welters for The New York Times“It’s considered more experimental to do unknown things,” Mondtag said. In his short time working in opera, he added, he has acquired something of a reputation as an “expert of unstageable or unknown operas. I didn’t choose that; it just happened that way.”When the Deutsche Oper returned to live performance in the summer of 2020, it concentrated on a new production of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring.” All four titles premiered at the house during the pandemic, but after the “Ring” played its last performances earlier this month, the company turned its attention to the delayed “Antikrist” premiere.“It’s such impressive music that I think it’s necessary to do it,” said Dietmar Schwarz, the Deutsche Oper’s general director. He added that while he would love it if Mondtag’s production inspired new interest in “Antikrist,” he was mostly focused on finding a curious and open audience in Berlin.“We’re not necessarily doing it for the survival of this old opera,” he said.Isolated productions of rediscoveries rarely catch fire. One exception was David Pountney’s acclaimed staging of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s punishing 1965 work “Die Soldaten,” which was first seen in 2006 at the Ruhrtriennale festival in Germany and traveled to the Park Avenue Armory in New York two years later. A spate of productions followed in Berlin; Munich; Salzburg, Austria; and elsewhere.A scene from a 2008 performance of “Die Soldaten” at the Park Avenue Armory. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera had been revived at the Ruhrtrienniale festival in Germany two years before.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYet even if rediscoveries are confined to a single production, German opera administrators have increasingly made them a priority. This contrasts with the United States: These days, it is more common for the Metropolitan Opera or the Lyric Opera of Chicago to present an attention-generating world premiere than to dust off a forgotten work. (Leon Botstein’s full-production revivals at Bard College in New York are a notable exception.)“There is a treasure trove of stuff out there,” said Barrie Kosky, who leads the Komische Oper in Berlin. Since arriving at that company in 2012, he has scored some of his greatest hits with productions of long overlooked works, including operettas by German-speaking Jewish composers like Paul Abraham and Oscar Straus.“Let’s face it, we can’t survive on just a diet of the 20 most famous titles,” Kosky said.“Of course, it’s always a risk because sometimes you bring back a piece and it doesn’t work,” he said. Or, he added: “You say: ‘Look, we’re bringing this back. It’s not a perfect piece, but this score is still worth hearing.’ I think that’s also very legitimate and valid; I don’t think everything has to be a masterpiece.”Kosky pointed to his own eclectic programming at the Komische Oper — where, before the pandemic, the house was selling 90 percent of its seats — as evidence that theaters can be filled with works by composers other than Mozart and Puccini.“All of that’s been blown out of the water when I see that we can sell out ‘The Bassarids’ completely,” he said, referring to Hans Werner Henze’s 1965 opera, which Kosky staged in 2019. “Or we can have incredible advance sales for an operetta where people don’t even know the title or the music.”Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, center, in “The Bassarids,” a sold-out production at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2019.Monika RittershausWhen Matthias Schulz, the general director of the Staatsoper in Berlin, programmed a Baroque festival in his first season leading the company, he didn’t go for the usual suspects.“I wanted to do everything except Handel,” he said.The centerpiece of the festival’s first edition, in 2018, was Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie.” Since then, two rarities have followed: Scarlatti’s “Il Primo Omicidio” and, this past fall, Campra’s “Idoménée,” far more obscure than Mozart’s later “Idomeneo.”Hidden in the corners of opera history, Schulz said, “there are real masterworks and we have a responsibility to find them. We need to convince the audience that what we do is interesting, and to challenge them.”A scene from a 2021 production of Campra’s “Idomenée” at the Staatsoper in Berlin.Bernd UhligThat process looks different in Berlin, with a rich opera landscape thanks to three full-time companies, than it does in smaller cities. Laura Berman, the artistic director of the Staatsoper in Hanover, in northern Germany, said that drawing an audience with obscure titles can be a challenge. But, she added, the right work and the right production can also put a smaller house on the map.In her first season in Hanover, Berman scored a hit with Halévy’s religious potboiler “La Juive” — which, like Meyerbeer’s grand operas, faded from the repertory by the early 20th century. Lydia Steier’s production conjured a historical survey of antisemitism, starting in post-World War II America and working back to 15th-century Konstanz, Germany, the setting specified by the libretto. The 2019 staging was acclaimed, and helped the company earn the title of Opera House of the Year from Oper Magazine.Berman said she wasn’t surprised that a production about the need for tolerance had resonated in Hanover, a religiously and ethnically mixed city she that called “extremely diverse.”“People have always talked in the theater about ‘hooks’: how to get the audience hooked into going to see something,” she added. “I truly feel today that the topic is major, especially for younger audiences, more than the title.”A scene from the Staatsoper in Hanover’s 2019 production of Halévy’s “La Juive.”Sandra ThenShe added that works like “La Juive” were excellent for convincing people “that an opera house is a forum for social and political discussion — which, in the end, it always has been, for at least several hundred years.”The Staatsoper’s next big premiere in Hanover will be Marschner’s “Der Vampyr” in late March — directed by Mondtag. “His visual world is really special,” Berman said. “But for me, the main factor is being able to think through works and being able to bust them open.”That is less “terrifying,” she added, “if you do a work where there are no preconceived notions.” More

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      Don Wilson, Who Gave the Ventures Their Distinctive Rhythm, Dies at 88

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      He was a founder, with Bob Bogle, of what has been called the best-selling and most influential instrumental band in rock ’n’ roll history.Don Wilson, co-founder of the instrumental rock group the Ventures, whose twanging, hard-driving sound, propelled by his dynamic rhythm guitar, led to hits like “Walk — Don’t Run” and helped shape the surf music of the early 1960s as well as influencing generations of guitarists, died on Saturday in Tacoma, Wash. He was 88.His daughter Staci Layne Wilson confirmed the death, at a hospital.Mr. Wilson and Bob Bogle formed the group that became the Ventures in the late 1950s and had been having modest success performing in the Seattle area when, with Nokie Edwards on bass and Skip Moore playing drums, they recorded “Walk — Don’t Run” in March 1960. It was their version of a song by the jazz guitarist Johnny Smith that had previously been recorded by Chet Atkins.The group had already released one 45 r.p.m. record, having formed their own label, Blue Horizon, with the help of Mr. Wilson’s mother, to do it. But that first record didn’t generate interest, and neither did “Walk — Don’t Run,” until they played it for Pat O’Day, who had the afternoon show on the Seattle radio station KJR. He smelled a hit.The station always played an instrumental leading into its newscast at the top of the hour, but without introducing it, Mr. O’Day said in an interview for “Sonic Boom! The History of Northwest Rock, From ‘Louie, Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’” a 2009 book by Peter Blecha. “So we put it on every hour as that filler there,” he said, “and of course you know what happened after that.”What happened was, callers flooded the station wanting to know what that catchy record was. One of the callers was from Dolton Records, which had earlier turned away the fledgling Ventures. Dolton signed them, and soon the record reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It stayed on that chart for months and became one of the most recognizable songs of the era.Mr. Wilson spoke when the Ventures were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. With him were, from left, John Durrill, Fiona Taylor (the band’s manager), Bob Spalding, Nokie Edwards and Leon Taylor.Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage The group went on to have a number of other successful singles, most notably its version of the theme from the television series “Hawaii Five-0,” which made the Top 10 in 1969. The lineup shuffled a bit — Mr. Bogle, who died in 2009, switched to bass; Mr. Edwards, who died in 2018, was the better player and became lead guitarist; and Mel Taylor, who died in 1996, settled in as drummer. Mr. Wilson pounded out his rhythm accompaniments for 55 years, turning over the job to Ian Spalding, son of another current member, Bob Spalding, during a show in Tokyo in 2015.In 2019 the Grammy Museum mounted an exhibition in honor of the group, calling the Ventures “the most influential, best-selling instrumental band in rock and roll history.” The group, the exhibition said, has recorded more than 250 albums, including a series of instructional records aimed at novice guitar players.Leon Taylor, Mel’s son, is the Ventures’ current drummer and had a close-up view of Mr. Wilson’s impact.“Don has been a part of my life since I was a little kid,” he said by email. “Don was a unique talent that influenced thousands of guitar players all over the world.”Mr. Blecha, too, cited the group’s influence on would-be guitar players, as well as its chutzpah in putting out its first records on its own label when no one else would, something rare for the time.The Ventures in 1999, from left: Gerry McGee, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Bogle and Mr. Wilson.Richard E. Aaron/Redferns via Getty Images“But beyond all that,” he said by email of Mr. Wilson in particular, “you just gotta admire a musician who carved out such a lucrative and impactful career playing mainly rhythm guitar. Guys who have accomplished that comprise a rather short list.”Donald Lee Wilson was born on Feb. 10, 1933, in Tacoma to Woodrow and Josie Wilson. His father was a car salesman, and his mother became a record producer and was key to the band’s early success.“When I was younger I wanted to learn how to play the trombone,” Don Wilson said in an interview for “The Ventures: Stars on Guitars,” a 2019 documentary film directed by his daughter Staci. “I thought the trombone had such a mellow sound. It was Tommy Dorsey that I really liked.”He played trombone in an Army band, where a bandmate taught him chords on the guitar, adding to the few he had already been shown by his mother. After mustering out, he was working at his father’s used-car lot in Seattle when Mr. Bogle came in, looking to buy a car. They started talking and hit it off.Mr. Bogle got Mr. Wilson a job working with him as a bricklayer. They soon realized that, with all the rain in the Pacific Northwest, they had a lot of down time, since many of their jobs were outside. And both of them had rudimentary guitar skills.“We bought two guitars in a pawnshop in Tacoma, Washington, and we probably paid 10 or 15 dollars apiece for them,” Mr. Wilson said in the film.The group was just the two of them at first, Mr. Bogle playing lead and Mr. Wilson rhythm. That, of necessity, led them to develop a unique sound, underpinned by Mr. Wilson’s driving approach.“In the early days Don had to play very rhythmic and strong because they didn’t have a drummer,” Bob Spalding, who first played with the group in 1981 and joined for good after Mr. Bogle’s death, said by email. “Later, when they became a quartet with a drummer, his style never changed, and that unique rhythm guitar drive became a prominent characteristic of the band’s music.”In addition to their success in the United States (where their other hits included “Walk — Don’t Run, ’64,” a remake of their own hit that also made Billboard’s Top 10), the Ventures became wildly popular in Japan — so much so, Mr. Wilson said, that numerous bands there took to imitating them. That led to an uncomfortable surprise when the band made its second trip there, its first as headliners, in 1965.“We had an opening group,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984, “and they played all of our songs before we went on.”At his death, Mr. Wilson lived in Covington, Wash. In addition to his daughter Staci, his survivors include three other children, Jill Fairbanks, Tim Wilson and Cyd Wilson; and two grandchildren.In 2008 John Fogerty inducted the Ventures into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In his induction remarks, he marveled that the group had recorded more than 250 albums.“Good Lord, think about that,” Mr. Fogerty said. “Nowadays, some of us would be happy to sell 250 albums.” More

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      5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

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      Recordings of Brahms, Haydn, Grieg, Nikolai Kapustin and George Walker are among recent highlights.‘Blueprint’: Piano Music by Nikolai Kapustin for Jazz TrioFrank Dupree, piano; Jakob Krupp, bass; Obi Jenne, drums (Capriccio)When I reported last year on the pianist Frank Dupree’s first album of works by Nikolai Kapustin, Dupree previewed things to come. For his follow-up engagement with Kapustin, a swing-influenced Russian composer, Dupree said he would release a series of solo piano works played by a traditional jazz trio.Now that the results are out, the wisdom of the idea is evident. Dupree could have recorded an enjoyable solo set, as his feel for Kapustin is as fluid as ever. But we currently have no lack of one-player recitals of this music — including from Marc-André Hamelin, Steven Osborne and Kapustin himself.The improvised element on “Blueprint” is subtle. Dupree plays the piano solos as they were notated, and the bassist Jakob Krupp follows his left hand. The album’s distinguishing element of improvisation is left to the percussionist Obi Jenne. And it’s his interventions that truly elevate this set. In a piece like the Op. 41 Variations, Kapustin moves briskly between different syncopated styles; Jenne’s mutable beat-juggling highlights each change. Perhaps not every item here needed the jazz combo treatment. But when the arrangements work — as on selections from the Eight Concert Études — this trio adds to the material a new jolt. SETH COLTER WALLSBrahms: Late Piano WorksPaul Lewis, piano (Harmonia Mundi)To listen to the pianist Paul Lewis’s new album of late Brahms, you would think these pieces had been written just after the last sonatas of Schubert, which Lewis has recorded with wrenching restraint. Splicing the gap between 1828 and the early 1890s, Lewis’s is a vision of Brahms as fully Classicist; these final four sets of solos are rendered with judicious tempos and a clean, calm touch — intelligent, sensitive readings.The pearly moderation that makes Lewis’s Schubert so movingly humble sometimes keeps his Brahms shy of grandeur and especially mystery. These are tender, affecting interpretations more than pensive, let alone unsettling, ones; Lewis sometimes stints the softest dynamics, giving a slight sense of straightforwardness when you want intimations (at least) of the epic. The Intermezzo in E flat (Op. 117, No. 1) doesn’t seem to lose itself in the middle section — as it does in Radu Lupu’s benchmark 1987 recording — so the return to the theme is less than overwhelming.But a cleareyed Intermezzo in A (Op. 118, No. 2) is deeply satisfying; the Intermezzo in E Minor (Op. 119, No. 2) leavens lucidity with dreaminess. And Lewis’s sparkle in the middle of the Romanze in F (Op. 118, No. 5) gives the shift back to sober feeling at the end quietly immense power. ZACHARY WOOLFEGrieg: SongsLise Davidsen, soprano; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano (Decca)The recording industry has finally found a way to capture Lise Davidsen. A luminous soprano of remarkable range, equally capable of floodlight power and the piercing smallness of a laser pointer, she wasn’t well represented on her first two albums for Decca, which were documents of sensitive and intelligent interpretation more than versatility or resounding might.Now, after programs of Wagner, Strauss, Beethoven and Verdi, comes a much more intimate album of Grieg songs performed with the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes — a pairing of two excellent Norwegian musicians in works by their country’s most treasured composer. The scale of this program is better suited than Davidsen’s earlier albums at conveying the dexterity of her voice, and her gift for endearing levity; there are playful turns of phrase here that you just don’t get in “Tannhäuser.”Throughout the album — which begins with the eight-song cycle “The Mountain Maid” and continues with excerpts from other collections — Andsnes is an evocative tone painter, with dreamy glissandos in “Singing,” galloping festivity in “Midsummer Eve” and flowing momentum in “A Boat on the Waves Is Rocking.” And Davidsen is a nimble raconteur, lovingly warm in the opening cycle’s “Meeting,” then shattering in its Schubertian finale, “At the Gjaetle Brook,” and later bringing both folk lightness and Wagnerian heft to the six songs of Op. 48. To the credit of Grieg and these artists, you’ll never be so moved by a song called “Snail, Snail!” JOSHUA BARONEHaydn: SymphoniesAcademy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor (Eloquence)It’s easy now to be a little sniffy about Neville Marriner’s achievements with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a partnership renowned as the most recorded in history. With the success of the period-instrument movement, their hundreds of recordings on modern instruments have gained the reputation of being a bit staid — practical and reliable, to be sure, but nevertheless dusty relics of an era best forgotten.But this thoroughly enjoyable 15-disc set — which for the first time brings together 33 Haydn symphonies set down between 1970 and 1990 — is ample reminder that there were perfectly good artistic reasons Marriner and his chamber-orchestra forces were such a roaring commercial success.Conceiving their work initially as a crisp, stylish rejoinder to an older, stouter approach to the Baroque and Classical repertoire, they played this music with insatiable collective commitment — the slow movements singing gracefully, the outer movements sparkling in their drive and invention. If there is a little more zest in their accounts of Haydn’s earlier symphonies than his later ones, they are all brilliantly well judged, and full of life. DAVID ALLENGeorge Walker: Piano SonatasSteven Beck, piano (Bridge)In 2018, when the composer and pianist George Walker died at 96, there were plenty of accomplishments to memorialize, including his Pulitzer Prize — the first awarded to a Black composer. But there was also a dispiriting acknowledgment of a missed opportunity, given that so few elite classical institutions had seriously engaged with Walker’s work while he was alive.The inattention extended to recordings; there remains a notable dearth of sets devoted exclusively to Walker. Very partial redress comes in the form of this new album, in which Steven Beck takes on all five of Walker’s piano sonatas, written between 1953 and 2003.The first sonata, revised in 1991, offers some of the galloping energy seemingly required when suggesting Americana, but it also includes a rambunctious harmonic edge that bristles with maverick spirit. By the time of the Third Sonata, written in 1975 and revised in 1996, atonality had taken center stage. But Walker’s signature feel for contrast — including alternations between motifs that ring out and peremptory chordal bursts — is still evident. With playing that’s slashing and sensitive by turns, Beck’s recital accentuates the through lines in a protean artistic life. SETH COLTER WALLS More

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      Sweden’s Songwriters Look to K-Pop

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      When the Swedish songwriter Ellen Berg first heard a K-pop track, in 2013, her reaction was typical of many Western listeners: “What the hell is this?” she recalled thinking.Berg, 31, was studying at Musikmakarna — a songwriting academy about 330 miles north of Stockholm — and her class had been asked to write a Korean hit.To get the aspiring songwriters in the mood, the students listened to “I Got a Boy” by Girls’ Generation, a wildly popular K-pop girl group. “It’s one of the craziest K-pop songs ever,” Berg said recently by phone. The track includes raps, bursts of high-speed dance music and even a verse in the style of a rock ballad. “It’s really five different songs in one,” Berg said.The class was given a week to write something like it. “It didn’t go very well,” Berg said, with a laugh.BTS performing during the American Music Awards in November in Los Angeles.Kevin Winter/Getty Images For MrcEight years later, Berg has certainly improved her K-pop songwriting abilities: She is now one of dozens of Swedish musicians who make a living exclusively from writing tracks for the genre. She has contributed to a hit for the pop juggernaut BTS, as well as to wildly successful tracks by groups like Red Velvet and Itzy.While Swedes have long been go-to figures for American pop stars — with songwriters like Max Martin and Shellback producing or co-writing tracks for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, the Weeknd and others — Swedish musicians are now becoming a force in K-pop, too.Berg is signed to EKKO, a Korea-based music publisher with studios in Stockholm, where Berg works alongside Moa Carlebecker, a sought-after K-pop songwriter better known by her stage name, Cazzi Opeia. The two musicians (who collaborate under the name Sunshine) also regularly write with another duo — Ludvig Evers and Jonatan Gusmark, who call themselves Moonshine — based in a studio next door. Seven other Swedish songwriters who work on K-pop tracks have studios in the same building.Berg, Carlebecker, Evers and Gusmark first worked together in 2017 on “Peek-a-Boo,” a Red Velvet track that Berg likened to an old “Scooby-Doo” episode or a trip to a haunted house. “Peek-a-Boo” has since been streamed more than 217 million times on YouTube.EKKO is not the only company pumping out K-pop in Stockholm. Cosmos, a publisher, has seven songwriters working full time on K-pop tracks, Peo Nylen, its creative director, said in an email. The Kennel, another songwriting company, employs 14 K-pop writers, said Iggy Strange-Dahl, one of its founders.K-pop may seem like a recent phenomenon to Western music fans who caught on with the rise of BTS, but Korean record labels have been seeking out European songwriters since the late 1990s in a bid for global success, said Michael Fuhr, a German academic who wrote a book about K-pop. “They had Max Martin productions in mind,” he said, adding that the first successful European K-pop writers were actually Finnish and Norwegian, not Swedish.Today, songwriters of many nationalities are trying to make K-pop hits, Fuhr said, attracted, in part, by the fact that Koreans still buy CDs, so there is a lot of money to be made. SM Entertainment, a Korean entertainment conglomerate, says on its website that it works with 864 songwriters worldwide, including 451 across Europe and 210 in North America.Fuhr said that many K-pop hits were written at songwriting “camps” organized by record labels or publishers who invite musicians from across the world. Over multiple days, songwriters work in teams to create new songs. (American pop songs are also commonly written this way.)Gusmark, left, and Evers working in the studio. They perform together as Moonshine.Felix Odell for The New York TimesCarlebecker said in a video interview that she became hooked on K-pop when she first heard it, in 2016. As a child, she loved the Spice Girls, she said — “I had all the posters, I had all the CDs” — so K-pop instantly felt familiar, with its multitude of girl and boy groups in which each member has a uniquely defined personality.She immediately grasped that K-pop tracks must have multiple sections so each group member has a chance to shine, she said, whether they want to rap, sing softly or belt out a chorus. Having so many sections provides a lot more opportunities to be creative than on a typical Western pop song, she added.“There are no rules in K-pop — you can have three hooks, one after each other, if you feel like it,” Carlebecker said. “You can be crazy and colorful, and that’s what appealed the most.”Carlebecker, who is covered neck-to-toe in tattoos — a look that would be unlikely on an actual K-pop star — said she knew only two words of Korean: “annyeonghaseyo” (hello) and “gamsahabnida” (thank you).But that didn’t get in the way of her songwriting, she said: Carlebecker writes in English, and then Korean songwriters add new lyrics to her melodies, often keeping in a few random English words to help the track stand out.In interviews, Berg and Carlebecker offered multiple theories to explain why Swedes produce such good K-pop tracks, including the country’s strong songwriting tradition and comprehensive music education system. Sweden is cold, Berg noted, which meant that there was often “nothing better to do” than stay in and work on music.For some Koreans, the reason is actually quite simple: Swedes write melodies that are so catchy, fans want to sing them at packed stadium shows and at their local karaoke bars.“Swedes seem to have an emotional understanding of us Koreans,” Michelle Cho, a Korean songwriter who also scouts foreign songwriters for Korean record labels, said in a telephone interview. “They write melodies that seem to really hit our emotions.”Whatever the reason, as K-pop booms, competition among songwriters around the world is becoming fierce. Evers, of Moonshine, said that a few years ago, some songwriters in Sweden used to look down on his work as “a bit lame,” as though he’d failed to land gigs with American or European musicians and now had to ply his trade in Asia. Now, Evers said, those same people were coming up to him in bars saying, “We should write K-pop sometime!”Thanks to his success, he added, he was starting to get a tiny insight into the life of a K-pop idol. K-pop fans regularly contacted Moonshine on social media to praise the duo for its work, Evers said, and a popular K-pop YouTube channel has interviewed him.Swedish K-pop writers are getting noticed in Sweden, too. In November, Carlebecker was named “international success of the year” at Sweden’s annual songwriting awards, beating Max Martin (and Moonshine). Articles about the songwriters have appeared in the country’s major newspapers, and Berg and Carlebecker have been interviewed for TV news.Still, Evers said, not everyone has grasped just how significant K-pop is becoming for Sweden’s music industry.“My grandma still doesn’t understand what I do for a living,” Evers said. “She doesn’t think it’s real.” More

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      In 'Black No More,' the Evolution of Black Music, and a Man’s Soul

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      The new show “Black No More,” inspired by a 1931 satirical novel about race relations, has “the point of view of people who are very much products of now.”A Black man in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, is hoping for a life without bigotry. This is Harlem after all, a Black enclave, the epicenter of culture and creativity. Here, he’d have an easier time in getting along.Or so he thought. He soon learns that utopia is an illusion, that racism prevails no matter the location. In the North, he discovers, the racism is subtle: He’s somehow not the right fit for his job, though his supervisor, a white man, says he’s doing well. Others think he’s too uppity, so he is let go.Distraught, he undergoes a procedure to turn himself white and retreats to Atlanta. There he sees how prejudiced whites speak of Black people when they aren’t in the room: The “n” word is tossed around with the hard “-er.” He soon realizes that his new skin tone can’t save him, either. The life he wants means nothing if he loses his soul along the way.This is the plot of “Black No More,” a new musical presented by the New Group and inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name. The show, an expansive, Afrofuturistic take on race relations in America now in previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, is set against an equally vast arrangement of jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop and reggae meant to connect the past and present. By using older and newer styles of music, coupled with the protagonist’s struggles to rise above the same discrimination endured today, the show explores how little race relations have progressed.Jones, far right, working on the show’s choreography with cast members, including Lillias White, center.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesAnd it almost didn’t see the light of day.The screenwriter John Ridley, who wrote the show’s book, was inspired to adapt the story after reading Schuyler’s novel over a decade ago, before he’d written his Oscar-winning adaptation of “12 Years a Slave.” “I read it and was really taken with the wit and unbridled satire,” he said. “So much of the writing was timely and timeless and painful and painless.”He initially wrote it as a screenplay in 2013, but couldn’t get financing for a sci-fi-inspired film about Black existence. Someone suggested trying to have it produced as a play, but that also proved to be a tough road. Of the stage directors he reached out to, Ridley said that Scott Elliott, the artistic director of the New Group, was the only one who expressed interest. He read the novel and thought it would work best as a musical. “It had the possibility to be an amazing theatrical satire, but with humanity in it, with real people, not like ‘wink-wink satire,’” Elliott said.There was just one problem: Ridley didn’t like musicals. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, but that’s OK,” Elliott said. “Let’s go on this journey together and see what happens.” Ridley’s view on musicals changed after meeting with Tariq Trotter, better known as Black Thought of the Roots, and seeing “Hamilton.” He said that show convinced him that musicals can be vehicles for sending a strong message.They enlisted Trotter, who wrote the lyrics and developed the music with Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters, and the Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones. Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton,” owns the commercial rights. And with all the star power (Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Lillias White and Ephraim Sykes), it seems “Black No More” could very well be destined for Broadway.John Ridley with the show’s associate director Monet during a recent rehearsal. Marc. J. FranklinAmong other themes, the show holds up a mirror to those in the Black community who aspire to whiteness. The protagonist, Max Disher (played by Dixon), decides to lighten his skin after meeting a white woman, Helen Givens (Jennifer Damiano), in the Savoy Ballroom during a night out. That he’d be willing to sacrifice his identity after a chance encounter with the woman is a longstanding critique of some Black men: No matter how much they’re supported by Black women, they still see dating white women as the ultimate societal prize.The musical also delves into the internal baggage that comes with Blackness, the weight of external pressure applied by those who look like you but don’t know your circumstances. How do you stay true to yourself without disappointing your peers? And what does it mean to be real Black anyway?“For me, the lesson to be learned is that there is a cost,” Dixon said. “There is a cost to the choices we force each other to make to become happy, accepted members of society. It’s time for us to re-examine those costs. Is this the construct in which we can really rise and grow and evolve as a human population?”“Black No More” begins amicably, with a flurry of Black and white ensemble dancers gliding in unison across the stage, surrounding a barber’s chair used for the skin-altering experiment. Out walks Trotter, who plays Junius Crookman, the doctor performing the procedure. He paints Harlem as a deceptive place where dreams don’t always come true. “You’ll find all things … both high and low,” he says in his opening monologue. “Here where every Black baby must try to grow.”The music of “Black No More” largely fits this era, smoothly transitioning from swing jazz to big band to soul. Some of the verses have a rap lilt to them — Trotter, after all, is the lead vocalist of the Roots — but his writing here explores a broad range of musical textures, conjuring old Harlem while conveying music’s full spectrum. After Max becomes white, the music becomes softer and more delicate, sounding almost like bluegrass or folkish in a way. Near the end of the show, two white women sing over what sounds like an R&B track, a genre typically associated with Black women. “Black No More” is full of this sort of cross-pollination.“I’ve always been very big on allowing the universe to sort of write the songs, allowing the material to work itself out,” Trotter said. “These songs represent the different elements of Black music. What we arrived at is something that feels like an education in the evolution of Black music, which, at its core, would be the evolution of American music.”Tamika Lawrence and Brandon Victor Dixon during a dress rehearsal.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesThe Harlem Renaissance is widely seen as an artistic movement in which Black creators like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Duke Ellington made landmark work. Indeed, the Renaissance helped change how Black people were viewed culturally; from it came a new, fearless creative generation. Yet the Renaissance had its detractors. Some said the literature only catered to whites and the Black middle-class. Even one of Harlem’s most famous establishments — the Cotton Club — was only for whites. “Black No More” demystifies Harlem as a mecca by wrapping its arms around it, wiping off the glitter while celebrating its charm.“The show, in my mind, is a critique of a critique,” said Jones, who is also choreographing the new Broadway musical “Paradise Square.” “We’re trying to make a musical about a historical novel, but with the point of view of people who are very much products of now. For God’s sake, we are post-George Floyd.”“Black No More” was originally slated to premiere in October 2020. But then the pandemic shut down theaters, forcing shows to postpone or cancel their runs. And in May 2020, Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by the police officer Derek Chauvin. Protests ensued. Coupled with outcries over the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, these rebellions felt different. The precinct in which Chauvin worked was burned. In New York City, protesters and law enforcement regularly clashed, intensifying the already-strained relationship between certain residents and the police.Near the end of “Black No More,” over an aggressive rap beat, a white antagonist asserts that Black lives don’t matter, a perceived reference to the modern-day Black Lives Matter movement. Within the context of the musical, he’s upset that his sister got involved with a Black man. Yet the subtle nod acknowledges the cloud of George Floyd hanging over this musical.“We just happen to be in a space where certain audiences are ready to receive what we’re trying to say, as opposed to pre-2020,” said Tamika Lawrence, who plays Buni Brown, Max Disher’s best friend. “There are certain cultures in America — white cultures, specifically — that I think are now ready to have tough conversations and ready to see this kind of art.”Trotter concurred. “I think some people may take offense,” he said. “Some people may be appalled, some may take it as a challenge to widen their scope, to tear some of the bandages off these bullet wounds that we deal with as a society.”“Black No More” is presented with the hope that Black and white people can find common ground somewhere. That we can at least see one another’s differences and be respectful of them.Just don’t do something drastic like change your skin color. As the musical teaches us, the grass isn’t greener.“What it says is, ‘Look at yourself, take a look at where we are, take a look at where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” Trotter said of the show. “It speaks to a commonality that we all share as humans, as people, as inhabitants of this planet. I don’t think we’re ever going to exist in perfect harmony, but I think there’s a possibility for us to coexist in peace.” More

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      Elton John Shows Postponed After He Tests Positive for the Coronavirus

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      The American Airlines Center in Dallas announced Tuesday afternoon that a pair of Elton John concerts at the venue have been postponed because the singer recently tested positive for the coronavirus.The announcement came just hours before the planned start of a show, which was to begin at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The second concert had been scheduled for Wednesday.In a brief statement on its website, the American Airlines Center said, “Elton is fully vaccinated and boosted, and is experiencing only mild symptoms.”The shows are part of his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. The American Airlines Center did not give new dates for the concerts. More

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      James Maraniss, Librettist of Long-Silent Opera, Dies at 76

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      A Spanish scholar who taught for more than four decades at Amherst College, he waited, along with the composer, 32 years for “Life Is a Dream” to be staged.James Maraniss, a Spanish scholar who wrote the libretto for an opera that was finished in 1978, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 but was not fully staged for another decade, died on Jan. 9 at his home in Chesterfield, Mass. He was 76.The cause was a heart attack, his brother, David, said.Mr. Maraniss, a professor of Spanish and European studies at Amherst College, had never written a libretto when the composer Lewis Spratlan, a faculty colleague, approached him in 1975 to collaborate on an opera based on Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s early 17th-century drama “La Vida es sueño” (“Life Is a Dream”). The piece had been commissioned by the New Haven Opera Theater in Connecticut.Excited at how Calderon’s vivid writing quickly conjured musical images in his mind, Mr. Spratlan told Mr. Maraniss the news about the commission — not knowing that Mr. Maraniss was an expert on Calderon’s work.“It was a wonderful happenstance that this was the case,” Mr. Spratlan, now retired from Amherst’s music department, recalled in a phone interview. The two men, friends and neighbors in adjoining apartments in a campus house, soon started working together and completed the three-act opera in 1978. That year, Mr. Maraniss also published “On Calderon,” a study of the writer’s plays, including “La Vida es sueño,” which is about a prince in conflict with his father, the king.Mr. Maraniss’s familiarity with Calderon’s rhythms and language animated the libretto.“Jim managed to take extremely elaborate 17th-century Spanish, the equivalent of Elizabethan English, with very exalted levels of diction, and rendered it into modern English that preserved all the grandeur of Golden Age Spanish,” Mr. Spratlan said.By the time they were finished, though, the New Haven Opera Theater had gone out of business, and no other opera company would produce it. Frustrated for many years, Mr. Spratlan finally raised money for concert performances of the second act in early 2000, first at Amherst, then at Harvard. Mr. Spratlan nominated himself for the Pulitzer for music and won.Still, “Life Is A Dream” did not receive a full production until 2010, at the Santa Fe Opera.In his review in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini described the libretto as “elegantly poetic,” and said that Mr. Maraniss and Mr. Spratlan “honor Calderón by adhering closely to the philosophically ambiguous play, considered the ‘Hamlet’ of Spanish drama. Sometimes too closely.”A scene from the Santa Fe Opera’s production of “Life Is a Dream,” by the composer Lewis Spratlan and Mr. Marannis, colleagues at Amherst.Ken HowardDavid Maraniss said that his brother didn’t complain about the long wait for a full production.“But that libretto meant as much to Jim as anything he had done in his life,” Mr. Maraniss, a journalist and biographer who won a Pulitzer in 1993 for his coverage of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign for The Washington Post, said in a phone interview. “I can’t say the waiting was as torturous for Jim as it was for Lew, but it was a great feeling of relief when it was finally produced.”James Maraniss and Mr. Spratlan won the 2016 Charles Ives Opera Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.James Elliott Maraniss was born on March 22, 1945, in Ann Arbor, Mich. He moved several times with his family before settling in 1957 in Madison, Wis., where his father, Elliott, a journalist who had been fired from his job as rewrite man at The Detroit Times after an informant identified him as a Communist, found work at The Capital Times. His mother, Mary (Cummins) Maraniss, was an editor at the University of Wisconsin Press.After graduating from Harvard in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish literature, Mr. Maraniss earned a master’s there in the same subject. He then began work on his Ph.D in Romance languages and literature at Princeton University. It was granted in 1975.Following several months working for Wisconsin Gov. Patrick Lucey on Native American and migrant worker issues, Mr. Maraniss was hired at Amherst in early 1972 where he remained until he retired in 2015. He taught Spanish culture and literature in Spanish.Until recently, he had been working on a translation of “Don Quixote.”In addition to his brother, Mr. Maraniss is survived by his wife, Gigi Kaeser; his daughter, Lucia Maraniss; his sons, Ben and Elliott; his stepson, Michael Kelly; and his sister Jean Alexander. Another sister, Wendy, died in 1997.Mr. Maraniss in 2015, the year he retired from Amherst College after teaching there since 1972. Amherst CollegeAfter his work on “Life Is a Dream,” Mr. Maraniss wrote the Portuguese lyrics to James Taylor’s 1985 song “Only a Dream in Rio” and translated fiction and essays in the 1990s by Antonio Benitez-Rojo, a Cuban émigré and a major voice in Caribbean literature who was a professor of Spanish at Amherst.“I was bored with being an academic until I began a new life as his translator,” Mr. Maraniss said in an obituary of Mr. Benitez-Rojo, “and in a sense his presenter to the English-speaking world, to share that degree of his power, which was that of a great art.” More

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      A Day of Divas

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      Two star sopranos, Renée Fleming and Sonya Yoncheva, held court in two of New York’s grandest venues on Sunday.A little imperiousness? A lot of extravagance? A touch of the supernatural?You could try to come up with the recipe for a diva, but you just know one when you see it. Or hear it: In an appraisal of André Leon Talley this weekend, the New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman described his words as those “of a diva, uttered at a time when divas were going out of style.”Out of style, perhaps, but not out of existence. In fact, I read that appraisal on Sunday as I was getting ready for a day of rare diva alignment, with two star sopranos holding court in two of New York’s grandest venues: Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall in the afternoon, and Sonya Yoncheva at the Metropolitan Opera in the evening.If you were looking for evidence of the demise of the diva — at least of the stereotypical variety — it’s true, neither of these seemingly genial, generous women came across as imperious. And clutch your pearls: Fleming didn’t even change gowns at intermission.But divadom still shows signs of life. It’s in tiny things, like this sentence in the program at Carnegie: “Ms. Fleming’s jewelry is by Ann Ziff for Tamsen Z.” And at the Met, when Yoncheva sang the phrase “ta première larme” (“your first tear”) in a Chausson song, she slowly raised her hand to her face, as if she really believed she was wiping that larme away. Sometimes, even in opera, it’s the gesture that makes the diva.In a gesture of becoming modesty, Fleming shared a reasonably crowded stage for the most prominent part of her concert: the New York premiere of “Penelope,” an account of the wife who waits very, very patiently for Homer’s Odysseus to return from the Trojan War.The soprano Renée Fleming, center, was joined on Sunday at Carnegie Hall for the New York premiere of André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s “Penelope” by (from left) the pianist Simone Dinnerstein, the Emerson String Quartet and the actress Uma Thurman.Chris LeeLeft unfinished at the death of its composer, André Previn, in 2019, the piece was stitched together from manuscript sketches and drafts of Tom Stoppard’s text. The 40-minute result is as talky as a Stoppard play but far less sparkling or affecting. Its tone mostly pseudo-archaic, this is pretty much just an “Odyssey” in extreme digest, lightly backed by the Emerson String Quartet and the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.There are so many words that many of them were assigned to be spoken, to shorten the running time. Thus the title role was split between a singer and an actress (at the premiere three years ago and here, the movie star Uma Thurman).Thurman is a natural at intoning amid the wispy thatches of underscoring, and she sometimes tries to inject some attitude into the dry libretto. But it’s never quite clear why the role has been divided. Couldn’t a single performer just shift between speaking and singing? The bifurcation works only to dilute interest in both parties.Fleming is game, even if she doesn’t get to take lyrical flight: The soprano part is almost entirely recitative — sung narration — and never blossoms into aria or gives us any real sense of Penelope’s character or emotions. There are reminders of Previn’s stylish facility, as when a quietly swirling little quartet interlude slips into a minor-key whisper of “Here Comes the Bride” before modulating, almost quicker than you can hear it, into gentle satisfaction. But mostly the music seems scant and exhausted trying to keep up with Stoppard.It followed intermission; earlier, the Emerson played Barber’s 1936 Quartet, dedicating it from the stage to Roger Tapping, the superb Juilliard Quartet violist, who died last week. Dinnerstein rolled out the deliberate arpeggios and rushing surges of Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush,” and accompanied Fleming in a set of five songs altogether more memorable than “Penelope.” The first, Grieg’s lively “Lauf der Welt,” didn’t play to this singer’s mellow strengths, but his “Zur Rosenzeit” very much did.Fleming is 62, but there is still considerable richness in the middle of her voice, and her dips into low notes were done cleanly, without the syrupy scooping for which she was once often criticized. In the wistful quiet of “Zur Rosenzeit” she was moving, almost vaporizing the second syllable in “meinem Garten” (“my garden”) for the touching effect of the past vanishing as she remembered it. Fauré’s “Les Berceaux” had discreet, dusky power.And she was earnestly impassioned in “Evening,” Kevin Puts’s new setting of a Dorianne Laux poem, most charming in a middle section with a Joni Mitchell vibe: a deliberate, repetitive piano riff anchoring a free and easy vocal line. (Fleming takes the Meryl Streep role in Puts’s coming operatic adaptation of “The Hours.”)Yoncheva’s solo recital on the Met stage was a sign that she had swiftly risen to become one of the company’s core artists.Ken Howard/Met OperaAt the Met, Yoncheva was given one of the dearest gifts the company can bestow on a valued artist: a solo recital on its stage. And at 40, she has become valued with dizzying swiftness. Though she jumped into a few memorable revivals starting in 2013, it was only when she opened the 2015-16 season, in Verdi’s “Otello,” that she cemented her place in this house; at the end of February, she will star in a new production of “Don Carlos.”On Sunday she displayed the ease with which she can fill even the vast Met with an encompassing mood: darkly nostalgic and death-haunted, as you’d expect from her melancholy repertory. Even her sensuality brooded, compellingly joyless; Malcolm Martineau’s relative effervescence at the piano placed her gifts in high relief.Her voice is supple but lean. It feels like an instrument, in the most literal sense: a vehicle of expression rather than a remarkable sound in its own right. It has a low center of gravity and a quality of intimacy; Yoncheva gives the sense of singing to herself even when she’s not being soft.As she began with a set of French songs by Duparc, Viardot, Chausson, Donizetti and Delibes, her high notes were thin and stiff. Indeed, throughout the evening those notes above the staff were a problem, mostly when she had to rise to them through a long musical line. Stabbed out of the air, loud ones had startling fullness and clarity.But from the first number — Duparc’s “L’Invitation au voyage” — her interpretive intentions were intriguing, as she stretched the poem’s vision of “luxury, calm and delight” into a clear, forbidding premonition of the afterlife. With Yoncheva, details are everything: In Duparc’s “Au pays où se fait la guerre,” the repetitions of “son retour” (“his return”) at the end of each verse had a different gauzy texture, subtly increasing the complexity and tension of the illusion that a lover will come back.A silvery sheen to “printemps” in Chausson’s “Le temps des lilas” gave a brief impression of dewy spring; there was grandeur in Donizetti’s “Depuis qu’une autre a su te plaire” without overkill. The Spanish-style ornaments in Delibes’s “Les filles de Cadix” weren’t dashed off for smiles, but were sung with intensity, turning what could be a throwaway number into an unlikely burning drama.In a second half of Italian songs, Yoncheva was dreamy in Puccini, though her voice wanted greater size and juiciness to fill out her epic conception of “Canto d’anime.” In works by Martucci, Tosti and Verdi, her phrasing had confidence and style, a carefully constructed but persuasive evocation of naturalness; though she had a music stand in front of her throughout the evening, she sang with focus and commitment.Tosti’s “Ideale” was particularly striking, its finale building from faintness to climax. Warmly received, she moved to classic arias for encores: a refreshingly unsappy “Donde lieta uscì” from “La Bohème”; a genuinely sexy, insinuating “Carmen” Habanera; and “Adieu, notre petite table” from “Manon,” tenderly mused.Oh, and she spent the first half in a black gown, billowing above the bodice, and the second in white — shiny satin throughout, a dream of a diva. More