Nezet-Seguin, Yannick

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      Carnegie Hall Counts Down to Its Reopening

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      “The biggest variables — box office sales and venue rentals — are moving in a good direction,” says the director of the hall, which opens its season Oct. 6.The pianos have been tuned. The crimson carpets have been cleaned. The crystal chandeliers have been dusted.After nearly 19 months without concerts, Carnegie Hall, the nation’s pre-eminent concert space, plans to reopen its doors to the public on Oct. 6.With the coronavirus still omnipresent, the reopening is a logistical feat, involving questions about air-ventilation systems, crowd control and hand-sanitizing stations.It’s also an emotional moment for Carnegie, which lost millions of dollars in ticket sales during the pandemic and at one point was forced to reduce its staff by nearly half. The hall is grappling with an anticipated budget deficit of up to $10 million and is planning a lighter-than-usual season of about 100 concerts (versus the usual 150) as it tries to gauge demand.Clive Gillinson, Carnegie’s executive and artistic director, inside hall’s archives.Michael George for The New York TimesClive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director since 2005, says Carnegie is ready for the challenge. The hall has added entrances, upgraded ventilation systems and increased the frequency of bathroom cleaning.“We have to keep adapting to whatever the situation is, not only to look after people as best we can, but also for people to feel as safe as they can,” Gillinson said. “It’s reality as well as perception. Both are equally important.”In an interview, Gillinson discussed the new season, which begins with the Philadelphia Orchestra and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the virtuoso Yuja Wang alongside works by Valerie Coleman, Iman Habibi, Bernstein and Beethoven.Gillinson also spoke about the lack of racial diversity in classical music and the return of the arts amid the pandemic. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Carnegie has been closed for the longest stretch in its history. Are you confident audiences will come back, especially given the continuing spread of the virus and the need for added safety protocols?Without doubt some people will be concerned. All I can say is the reaction we’ve had has been the opposite. It’s been that everybody is so thrilled that things are coming back to life again. When we opened the box office, beginning to start on the road back, we had people in tears because they were so excited about actually being able to buy tickets again. But at the same time, we feel we’ve got to look after the people who have still got concerns.During the height of the pandemic Carnegie was forced to make substantial cuts, including reducing its staff to 190, from 350. How are you planning the new season amid all the uncertainty?The biggest variables — box office sales and venue rentals — are moving in a good direction at the moment. But that doesn’t mean we count anything as done until we’ve completed the season. You have to be working incredibly hard all the time. You have to be responding to everything that’s happening every day because life just does change every day during Covid.What are you seeing so far in terms of ticket sales?The opening concerts look really strong and very positive. The others will continue to sell as we go along.We deliberately didn’t over-pack the fall. It’s much busier from the new year onward because we just wanted to make sure audiences had time to build up their confidence, and time to really get re-engaged with going out again. So it’s a very deliberate strategy.Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra will reopen the hall in the first of their seven Carnegie concerts this season.Chris LeeSince announcing the season earlier this year you’ve added a few concerts to the schedule, including a complete cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra that was supposed to happen last year. How did you decide what to revive?When we had to cancel because of Covid, I spoke to Yannick and said, “Look, I promise that we will bring this back in the future.” It was something that meant a huge amount to him. The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned some contemporary works to go alongside the cycle that would actually have some sort of reflection on the world we live in today and look at Beethoven through that light.The minute we were able to open and the governor gave everybody permission to open with full seating, the first thing I did was phone Yannick to say: “This is it, if there’s any way you can do it. I promised you we would bring this back. How about now?” They jumped at it.At the same time there are many artists whose concerts were canceled who you haven’t been able to reschedule. How are you dealing with that?We do feel an obligation to try and bring people back who we haven’t been able to bring back so far. So that’s going to take some time, because if you lose a year and a half of concerts, there’s a lot of concerts. Sometimes the world can move on as well and they’ll be doing other things and there’ll be other repertoire. But we are looking to do the best we can in terms of looking after the people we had to cancel.The Sphinx Virtuosi perform at Carnegie on Oct. 15.Stephanie BergerDo you worry the pandemic has hurt the careers of rising artists whose engagements at Carnegie or elsewhere were canceled?One of the things I’ve always felt about what we do is that the great artists will always come through and they’ll always succeed. They’ve got something to say that is really important to people. Something like this clearly will have changed plans and will have delayed very early-days careers. But the reality is, I think talent and great artistry are never lost. That never, ever goes away.What about smaller venues and less established artists, who suffered a great deal during the pandemic. Do you think they will make a comeback? Has the pandemic fundamentally changed which kinds of artists and groups can survive?Some of the most innovative, interesting, imaginative work that’s ever happened is going on in New York. It’s the most dynamic scene we’ve ever seen.They’re very entrepreneurial people. They’re very creative people. And they’ll find a way to survive. It’s not like all us large organizations where we have massive overhead, much of which we can’t change.The pandemic has made it very difficult for many ensembles to go on extensive global tours, with stops at Carnegie and other venues. How do you think the pandemic will change touring?You’ve got all the issues like climate change and so on. I think there are going to be a lot more question marks about orchestras at least asking themselves how much touring they should be doing. And I think what they do, they will want it to have greater significance than it had before.It’s not just a question of touring and saying, “I’ve appeared in this city and that city.” It’s: “What have I left behind? Is there is there a legacy or is this something important that came out of my having been there?”This season Carnegie will prominently feature Valery Gergiev, the Russian conductor and friend of Vladimir Putin, who will perform a series of concerts with both the Vienna Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Orchestra. How do you respond to those who think he shouldn’t be given such an opportunity, given his silence on abuses in Russia?Why should artists be the only people in the world who are not allowed to have political opinions? My view is you only judge people on their artistry. If somebody was a racist or somebody said things that were clearly abusive of other races or other people in certain ways, that is completely different and that is unacceptable. But in terms of them being entitled to an opinion which happens to be a political opinion, they have every right as every other single member of society has.What do you make of the current debate around the idea that classical music, which has long been dominated by white, male composers, is racist, and that it has not adequately grappled with questions about representation and diversity?If you think of Western culture, literature, painting, music, the bulk of it was done by people who were white in one form or another. And it’s not invalidated. I always worry when people try and apply today’s values to the world of 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago, because the fact is, what people were trying to do at that time was completely different and it was relevant for its time. We’ve got to be relevant for our time. Diversity is unbelievably important. That is central to the sort of society we must live in now. And that doesn’t invalidate the fact that there was great art created, and OK, a lot of it was created by white people, and some of it was created by people who were racists.Carnegie was one of the first institutions to impose a vaccine mandate for audiences. Did you meet any resistance?I’ve had a very, very small number of emails from people saying: “This is ridiculous. You’re being paranoid. It’s completely unnecessary.” But we know the world we live in has very, very different views on this. We can only have one view, which is, how do we look after people?How do you see the future of the arts in light of the pandemic?How people are likely to feel, nobody can judge that. We can’t tell. But I do think the arts will come roaring back.Why do people live in New York City? Why do the big companies want to be here? Why do the headquarters want to be here? Why is there all this tourism? Culture is the magnet that actually makes New York New York. More

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      Review: The Met Opera Reunites, With Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’

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      After a year and a half, the company’s forces came together for an outdoor performance of the sprawling, ecstatic symphony.The Metropolitan Opera hardly ever plays concerts at home at Lincoln Center. But before Saturday evening, the company had opened its season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection,” once before.In 1980, a bitter labor battle kept the Met closed more than two months into the fall. When peace was re-established, Mahler’s sprawling journey of a soul, ending in ecstatic renewal, seemed just the thing — and the symphony, with its enormous orchestral and choral forces working in intricate lock step, is nothing if not a paean to cohesion.“The ‘Resurrection’ Symphony almost chose itself,” James Levine, then the Met’s music director, said at the time. It was, he added, “a way for the company to get in touch with itself again.”If there has ever been another time this company needed to get in touch with itself, it is now. That two-month hiatus four decades ago seems like child’s play compared with the situation today.Twenty twenty-one has, like 1980, brought contentious labor struggles — on top of a pandemic that has threatened the core conditions of live performance and kept the Met closed for an almost unthinkable 18 months. Its orchestra and chorus, as good as any in the world, were furloughed in March 2020 and went unpaid for nearly a year as the financially wounded company and its unions warred over how deep and lasting any pay cuts should be.The “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesInstituting a vaccine mandate and gradually coming to terms with the unions, the Met inched closer to reopening as the summer dragged on. And on Aug. 24, it removed the final barrier by striking a deal with the orchestra, paving the way for a resurrection — and a “Resurrection.”The company scheduled a pair of free Mahler performances outdoors at Damrosch Park, in the shadow of its theater, on Labor Day weekend, at the start of what has become an opening month. On Saturday, the Met will return indoors for Verdi’s Requiem, in honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And on Sept. 27 the opera season begins in earnest with the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first work by a Black composer, and, the following evening, a revival of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.”Led by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park, as well as hundreds more listening from the street. The mood was a blend of parks concert — one woman tried to muffle the crinkling of her bag of potato chips — and serious focus; a man sitting on the aisle followed along with the score, brightly lit on his tablet.With so much to celebrate, this was indeed a celebratory, smiling reading: Punchy and taut at the start, yes, but without the neurotic, feverish quality that some conductors sustain throughout. There was an overall sense of gentleness and soft-grained textures. The second movement was more sly than sardonic; the climactic burst of dissonance in the third movement was beautiful, not brutal. The chorus, facing the audience in front of the stage and getting its cues from screens, sang with mellow sweetness.It goes without saying that outdoor classical performance is never ideal. (Speaking from the stage, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, claimed, tongue perhaps in cheek, that Lincoln Center’s president had promised no helicopters in the area for the duration of the symphony. Well. …)Ying Fang, the soprano soloist, is a symbol of the company’s present and future.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAmplified violin sections are inevitably harsh; woodwinds tend to get swamped by the strings and brasses, even more than usual in Mahler’s dense orchestration. And so much of this and every symphony’s power depends on musicians massed in a room together with their audience. Under the open sky, even on a gorgeous, mild evening like Saturday, the visceral and emotional impact of the music is diffused.But the offstage percussion and brasses finally sounded like they were coming from a real distance, as they rarely do in a concert hall. And there is special resonance in a great opera company performing this score, so redolent of the music-theater repertory, especially Mahler’s beloved Wagner. The stormy start of “Die Walküre”; the motif of the sleeping Brünnhilde from the end of that work; the mystically stentorian choruses of “Parsifal”; the sighing winds as Verdi’s Otello dies — all echo through the visionary excess of the “Resurrection.”It was moving to see Denyce Graves, a classic Carmen and Dalila at the Met 20 or 25 years ago, onstage and dignified in the great alto solos, even if her voice is a shadow of its former plush velvet. The soprano soloist, Ying Fang, a radiant Mozartian, was a symbol of the company’s present and future.While no one is ever hoping for distractions during Mahler, there was something heartwarming about the siren wailing down 62nd Street and tearing into the symphony’s majestic final minutes. What would a New York homecoming be without noise, and more noise? More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ and ‘Yannick’

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      “What We Do in the Shadows” returns for a third season on FX. And PBS airs a documentary about the orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 30-Sept. 5. Details and times are subject to change.Monday8:46 FILMS (2021) 8 p.m. on BET. This program — named for the amount of time that the former Minneapolis police officer, and now convicted murderer, Derek Chauvin was originally reported to have knelt on the neck of George Floyd — collects four short films that explore Black love and joy. The films, directed by Camrus Johnson, Marshall Tyler, Zoey Martinson and Gibrey Allen, include a comedy about three children who play matchmaker for their school bus driver and an animated piece about an older woman who escapes to a dream world. The running time of each film is 8 minutes and 46 seconds.TuesdayFUTURE OF WORK 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This new documentary series looks at the ways American jobs are changing as a result of cultural and technological shifts (including the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and digital nomads), as well as how the pandemic has accelerated such workplace trends. The three episodes are built around case studies of several individuals whose careers have been affected by these larger shifts, and include interviews with experts who talk about them.WednesdayWHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. “Humans are so [expletive] stupid and boring and lazy,” the filmmaker Taika Waititi told The New York Times in 2019, “that given the gift of immortality, you’d never get around to doing anything.” He was talking about the logic that drives this proudly silly TV series, which was born of his and Jemaine Clement’s 2015 mockumentary movie of the same name. The show’s plot centers on a group of vampire roommates living on modern-day Staten Island. Its third season, which debuts Wednesday night, picks up where the second season left off: with members of the group facing the realization that one of their own is actually a vampire hunter.ThursdayCMA SUMMER JAM 8 p.m. on ABC. Over two nights in July, several country music stars — including Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton — performed at a large outdoor theater in Nashville. This special combines footage of those large-scale performances with recordings of more intimate ones shot at other Nashville locales, including a nightclub and a pedestrian bridge.FridayYannick Nézet-Séguin, the subject of “Great Performances: Yannick – An Artist’s Journey,” conducting the Metropolitan Opera.Metropolitan OperaGREAT PERFORMANCES: YANNICK — AN ARTIST’S JOURNEY 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Audiences in the Northeast are expected to have many chances to see the star orchestra conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin in person this fall, in performances with the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra; he is the music director of both organizations. So now is a good time for PBS to air this documentary about him, which charts his background and rise through interviews, home movies and behind-the-scenes moments, like Nézet-Séguin coaching younger artists including the soprano Gabriella Reyes. Given Nézet-Séguin’s astounding number of commitments (he’s also the artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal), there should be no shortage of backstage footage. “I am very busy and high energy, but I am not hyperactive,” Nézet-Séguin told The Times in 2019. “The loneliness of studying a score is one of the things that attracted me to becoming a conductor.”SaturdayTahar Rahim and Jodie Foster in “The Mauritanian.”Graham Bartholomew/STXfilmsTHE MAURITANIAN (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. In his 2015 memoir, “Guantánamo Diary,” Mohamedou Ould Slahi wrote about American national security operatives ripping him from his life as an electrical engineer and telecommunications specialist in Nouakchott, Mauritania, torturing him and eventually imprisoning him at Guantánamo Bay, where he remained for over a dozen years — even as the charges against him fell away. (He’d come under suspicion for having connections to Al Qaeda.) This adaptation of the memoir casts Tahar Rahim as Slahi. It focuses on a period in which a defense attorney (Jodie Foster) is working to get a hearing for Slahi.HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (2004) 10:30 p.m. on E!. Twenty years ago this summer, Alfonso Cuarón released “Y Tu Mamá También,” his film about a love triangle that forms between two teenage boys and a somewhat older woman during a road trip in Mexico. It was a landmark film for Cuarón and his stars, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and Maribel Verdú — and a box-office smash with a sexual openness that generated both controversy and praise. Cuarón’s next move was surprising: The boundary-pushing director helmed this third installment of the “Harry Potter” series. It was a departure, though it could be argued that the dynamic between the emotionally mature woman and two comparatively juvenile young men in “Y Tu Mamá También” also applies to Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, whose complicated friendship is as much a focus of this movie as the fight against evil wizards.Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in a scene from “News of the World.”Bruce W. Talamon/Universal PicturesNEWS OF THE WORLD (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. With their 2013 action movie, “Captain Phillips,” Tom Hanks and the director Paul Greengrass pulled thrills out of an actual 21st-century event: the famous 2009 hijacking of a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean. Seven years later, Hanks and Greengrass turned to a historical setting — and a fictional story — with this spare western. Based on a novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, “News of the World” casts Hanks as a former Confederate captain who, five years after the end of the Civil War, takes it upon himself to escort a young, orphaned girl (Helena Zengel) to a faraway aunt and uncle. It’s a treacherous trip and a classic western setup. Greengrass, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “honors the genre tradition rather than trying to reinvent it.”SundaySINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952) 6 p.m. on TCM. When this MGM musical about late-1920s Hollywood debuted in New York in March of 1952, the Times critic Bosley Crowther praised the “music, dance, color, spectacle and a riotous abundance,” which have since helped make it a classic. “All elements in this rainbow program,” Crowther wrote, “are carefully contrived and guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood.” It’s still summer right now — but many of us could probably use something to put us in a “buttercup mood,” so in that sense, the timing of this broadcast is quite good. More

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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 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

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      Met Opera’s Music Director Decries Musicians’ Unpaid Furlough

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s letter to the company’s leaders urges them to “find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately.”Urging the Metropolitan Opera to compensate its artists “appropriately,” the company’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, sent a letter to leaders at the Met on Thursday saying that the many months its orchestra and chorus had gone without pay during the pandemic had become “increasingly unacceptable.”He sent the letter as the Met’s musicians were scheduled to receive their first partial paychecks since they were furloughed in April. Before this week, they had been the last major ensemble in the country without a deal for at least some pay during the pandemic. In addressing the players’ nearly yearlong furlough — and hinting at the tough negotiations ahead, in which the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts from its unionized employees — Nézet-Séguin was doing something rare for a music director: weighing in on labor matters.“Of course, I understand this is a complex situation,” Nézet-Séguin wrote, “but as the public face of the Met on a musical level, I am finding it increasingly hard to justify what has happened.”The letter was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by its recipients, which included Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager; the leaders of the negotiating committees representing the chorus and orchestra; and members of the opera’s board of directors.“We risk losing talent permanently,” Nézet-Séguin warned in the letter. “The orchestra and chorus are our crown jewels, and they must be protected. Their talent is the Met. The artists of the Met are the institution.”The orchestra committee has said that 10 out of 97 members have retired during the pandemic as the ensemble has gone unpaid, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year.“Protecting the long-term future of the Met is inextricably linked with retaining these musicians, and with respecting their livelihoods, their income and their well-being,” Nézet-Séguin wrote.The Met said in a statement that “we share Yannick’s frustration over the lengthy closure and the impact it has had on our employees,” and added that the company was pleased that its orchestra and chorus and others were now receiving bridge pay. The Met said all involved were “working together for new agreements that will ensure the sustainability of the Met into the future.”The Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, has said that since the pandemic forced it to shut its doors it has lost an estimated $150 million in earned revenue, and that it was seeking pay cuts from its workers, as many arts institutions have. The Met has been trying to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent — the change in take-home pay would be more like 20 percent, it has said — and has offered to restore half the cuts when ticket revenue and core donations return to prepandemic levels.Months into the furlough, the Met offered partial paychecks to its workers if they agreed to those cuts, but the unions resisted. At the end of the year, the Met offered partial paychecks on a temporary basis for simply returning to the bargaining table. Members of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents chorus members, dancers and others, accepted at the end of January and have been receiving paychecks for more than a month. The orchestra musicians voted to accept the offer this week. (The Met has locked out its stagehands, whose contract expired last year.)Nézet-Séguin wrote in his letter that he was relieved that both the musicians and the chorus members are now being paid, but added that “this is just a start.” The deal allows for temporary payments of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what the musicians are typically paid.Nézet-Séguin was named the Met’s music director in 2016, when he was tapped to succeed James Levine, who led the company for four decades (Mr. Levine, who stepped down to an emeritus position because of health problems and was then fired two years later after an investigation into sexual abuse allegations, died earlier this month.)“I implore the fiduciaries of this incredible house to urgently help to find a solution to compensate our artists appropriately,” Nézet-Séguin wrote. “We all realize the challenges, economic and otherwise, that the Met is facing, and therefore I ask for empathy, honesty and open communication throughout this process.” More