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    A Soprano Who Despises Encores Interrupts Her Co-Star’s

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    Angela Gheorghiu drew criticism after she stormed onstage to stop a tenor’s encore during a performance of “Tosca” in Seoul.It was the third act of Puccini’s “Tosca” at a theater in Seoul, and the South Korean tenor Alfred Kim, responding to enthusiastic applause, was singing a rare encore of “E lucevan le stelle,” one of the opera’s most beloved arias.Then the unexpected happened: The celebrated soprano Angela Gheorghiu, who was singing the title role in a performance on Sunday, stormed onstage and demanded that he stop, according to local media reports and accounts by audience members.“Excuse me,” she said, signaling to the orchestra to pause.When the orchestra continued playing, she also refused to stop. “It’s a performance; it’s not a recital,” Gheorghiu said. “Respect the audience. Respect me.”Gheorghiu, 59, a diva of the old school known for her preternatural voice and strong-willed demeanor, faced an immediate backlash.She initially did not appear for a curtain call. But when she eventually emerged, she was booed, blowing a kiss as she exited the stage after only a few seconds. She was widely denounced by commentators and fans in South Korea. And the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, where the performance took place, demanded an apology.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Creators of ‘Grounded’ Discuss Writing for the Met Opera

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      Allow the creators of opera some grace.Composers, librettists and their colleagues put years of work into something that, if they are lucky, gets a workshop performance or two before arriving onstage. If there is a revival — never a given in opera — they have an opportunity to make revisions.This process can be brutal for artists. And it’s not the usual one for the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright George Brant, the creators of “Grounded,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Sept. 23.Tesori was written operas before, but she and Brant are more often animals of the traditional theater and the Broadway musical, environments where constant revisions responding to workshops, rehearsals and preview performances are the norm. Operas are also revised until the last possible moment, but they are never given the luxurious feedback that creators get in theater.“In the theatrical space, the audience is part of the process,” said Tesori, the Tony Award-winning composer of the shows “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change.” She learned from George C. Wolfe, the decorated playwright and director, “that the audience is your final scene partner.”“I wish I were one of those artists who really knows what they have, but I just don’t,” she said. “So, I feel like I’m still getting to know what ‘Grounded’ is.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: This ‘Figaro’ Puts All Mozart’s Characters in One Voice

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      By singing men and women, nobles and servants, the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo takes the opera’s theme of human mutability to a chaotic extreme.Charles Dickens was celebrated for solo public readings in which he would give voice to a novel’s full cast of characters. I’ve watched the great actor David Greenspan take all the roles in Eugene O’Neill’s sprawling play “Strange Interlude” and, earlier this year, saw Eddie Izzard do the same in “Hamlet.”But when the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo has a go at a similar feat — performing Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” as a one-man show at Little Island — it is an altogether different ambition.An opera singer’s repertoire is usually firmly circumscribed. Sure, transposition can nudge unfriendly music into a more comfortable key. And sure, some mezzo-sopranos can sing some soprano parts, and vice versa. But while Dickens, in a reading, could shift from Scrooge to Tiny Tim simply by adjusting an accent or affecting a growl, it’s another story for one person to hit the notes of both Susanna and the Count in “The Marriage of Figaro,” let alone invest both with beauty and power.A vocal range can be wide, but it’s not infinite; a singer’s identity tends to be pretty fixed.It’s that fixity that Costanzo, who has recently been named the general director of Opera Philadelphia, means to have some fun with. Mozart and his “Figaro” librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, might well nod along: The opera is full of characters pretending to be other people, even other genders. Human mutability is one of the main themes.Costanzo — with his director, Dustin Wills, and his arranger and conductor, Dan Schlosberg — takes this to a challenging, chaotic extreme. In this much-trimmed 100-minute “Figaro,” Costanzo sings all the parts, or enthusiastically tries to: men and women, nobles and servants, high notes and low.I was misleading earlier, however: This isn’t precisely a one-man “Figaro.” It’s more of a one-voice version, with a handful of actors joining Costanzo onstage for much of the relentlessly high-spirited performance, playing main roles, some cast across gender, and impressively lip-syncing along with Costanzo’s sung Italian. (Toward the end, there are also sweet — and audible — contributions from a few child members of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Classical Music and Opera This Fall: Programs, Premieres and More

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      Osvaldo Golijov’s Lorca-inspired opera comes to New York, and the pianist Igor Levit plays with the Cleveland Orchestra, among other highlights.The Metropolitan Opera’s gamble on contemporary work continues. Celebrations of big anniversaries for two musical innovators, Charles Ives and Pierre Boulez, are worth seeking out. And Carnegie Hall will host world-class orchestras. But don’t expect Gustavo Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s next music director, to be a fixture yet; until 2026, he is dedicated to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which opens Carnegie’s season with a three-night residency. Here are highlights from this fall’s performance calendar. (Locations are in Manhattan unless otherwise specified; dates are subject to change.)SeptemberATLANTA OPERA Not quite 50 years old, this company is bucking the belt-tightening, season-shrinking trend in American opera. It is presenting “La Bohème” (updated to the Covid-19 pandemic) and “Rent,” the Broadway musical that transplanted Puccini’s classic to the AIDS era, both staged by Tomer Zvulun, its artistic director, and Vita Tzykun. (Sept. 18-Oct. 6; Pullman Yards, Atlanta)‘INDRA’S NET’ How about a hopeful perspective on our divided times? The invaluable Meredith Monk created and will perform in “Indra’s Net,” the conclusion to a trilogy of works about our relationship with the natural world and inspired by Buddhist and Hindu legends. (Sept. 23-Oct. 6; Park Avenue Armory)Meredith Monk’s “Indra’s Net,” performed here at the Holland Festival, is coming to the Park Avenue Armory in September.Ada Nieuwendijk‘THE LISTENERS’ Missy Mazzoli, who is working on an operatic adaptation of George Saunders’s “Lincoln in the Bardo,” first brings another work with literary inspiration to Opera Philadelphia: “The Listeners,” with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, based on Jordan Tannahill’s unsettling novel about the search for meaning and a cultish leader who claims to have answers. (Sept. 25-29; Academy of Music, Philadelphia)OctoberLOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC Gustavo Dudamel will be at the podium for three nights to start Carnegie Hall’s season: with Lang Lang in Rachmaninoff’s Second piano concerto; with Alisa Weilerstein in a new cello concerto by Gabriela Ortiz; and with the Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade. (Oct. 8-10; Carnegie Hall)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With ‘Maria’ Biopic, Angelina Jolie Could Make Her Oscar Comeback

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      “Maria,” about the opera diva Maria Callas, plays to the star’s strengths. Its Venice Film Festival debut was timed so the actress could avoid Brad Pitt.She’s one of the most famous actresses to have ever lived, but how formidable is Angelina Jolie’s filmography?After winning the supporting-actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted” (1999), Jolie made a few big hits like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” as well as a string of movies that remained steadfastly so-so. (Who remembers “Taking Lives,” “Come Away” or “Life or Something Like It”?) Jolie’s most recent movies, the mildly received “Those Who Wish Me Dead” and “Eternals,” were released back in 2021, and her only other Oscar nomination happened ages ago, for Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Changeling.”Jolie has said that she takes frequent breaks from acting to spending time with her family, but it’s still been awhile since a movie really leveraged all she has to offer. Perhaps that’s why journalists at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday were quick to herald a career comeback in “Maria,” which stars Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas: Here, at last, is a project that knows how to take full advantage of her star persona.Directed by Pablo Larraín, “Maria” follows the soprano near the end of her life as she reflects on the pressures of fame, her tortured romance with the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and a singing career that began to falter as Callas lost confidence in her voice. It’s a meaty role that lets Jolie switch between strength and tremulous vulnerability with a couple of operatic set pieces that have her singing directly to the camera, all but asking the viewer to marvel at that movie-star face.Musical biopics tend to be catnip for Oscar voters, and at Thursday’s news conference for “Maria,” the first question was whether Jolie suspected she might have a shot at gold when taking on this role. The actress demurred, saying the people she was most eager to please were the opera fans familiar with Callas.“My fear would be to disappoint them,” Jolie said. “Of course, if in my own business there’s response to the work, I’m grateful.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Bargain at the Opera: Philadelphia Offers All Seats for as Low as $11

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      Seeking new audiences, Opera Philadelphia is putting in place a pay-what-you-can model, one of the first of its kind by a major opera company.In Philadelphia, a night at the opera may now be cheaper than going to the movies.Opera Philadelphia, a company with a reputation for innovation and ambition, announced on Tuesday that it was putting in place a pay-what-you-can model for the 2024-25 season, with all tickets for all performances starting at $11. The initiative, which the company calls Pick Your Price, is aimed at attracting new audiences.“People want to go to the opera, but it’s expensive,” said Anthony Roth Costanzo, the celebrated American countertenor who became the company’s general director and president in June. “Our goal is to bring opera to more people and bring more people to the opera.”It immediately proved popular. On Tuesday, the day the initiative was announced, Opera Philadelphia said it sold more than 2,200 tickets for the coming season, compared with about 20 the day before. The tickets were originally priced at $26 to $300.High ticket prices have long been a barrier to audiences, and especially to newcomers. In recent years a number of performing arts groups, including Lincoln Center, the Chicago Sinfonietta and Ars Nova, the Off Broadway incubator, have experimented with pay-what-you-can approaches. Other opera companies have experimented with discounts, including rush tickets and deals offered to young people. But Opera Philadelphia’s approach was one of the boldest yet.Its website explains that all tickets start at $11 but that people will be given the option of choosing to pay much more, including the standard price.Like many nonprofit performing arts organizations, Opera Philadelphia gets much more of its revenue from philanthropy than through ticket sales. Radically lowering the prices could encourage more donations, which will no longer risk being seen as subsidizing an expensive art form that is out of reach for many people. And Costanzo said that the new model would allow the company to concentrate more on staging interesting works, and less on worrying about ticket sales.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Opera Doesn’t Have to Be for Elites. Here’s Why.

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      If opera at its best aspires to a different world, then we need to cultivate an anti-elite approach to how it is created and performed.Is opera a standard-bearer or a pallbearer of the status quo?It’s easy to assume the former: From its less-than-humble origins as a private event in Italian courts over 400 years ago, opera boasted a spare-no-expense theatricality that projected the power and wealth of the work’s supporting patrons. Spectacle was a form of political justification, and extravagance became self-serving. Before long, the equating of display and dominance seeped into opera’s DNA.Today, opera still seems to many a reflection of a hierarchical and exclusionary society.Thinking about opera as burying or at least challenging the status quo may seem antithetical to its nature. Yet opera always fares best when it goes against the grain: flaunting resistance to the beauty standards erected by mass media; fitting uneasily, if at all, with the rapid demands of the attention economy; feeling completely out of place with how we consume other art.For every composer affirming authority in their work, opera’s history offers counterexamples: creators so committed to establishing a new world order in sound that they resisted all conventions and invented their own instruments, their own ensembles or their own theaters. Opera often appears to ratify the reigning ideology, but the art form is most exciting and viable when it is a subversive act.The status quo in opera is elitism, and the art form’s elitist tendencies (viewing audiences in large swaths differentiated by class) all too easily eclipse its aspirational potential (the art form’s ability to speak to a single spectator and support their process of individuation). To nourish opera’s aspirational quality, its ability to serve as a mechanism for imagining a different world, we need to cultivate an anti-elite approach in the spaces where opera is performed and in the way the artists create the work.Opera was not always perceived as elitist in the United States: It wasn’t so long ago that opera singers were featured on mainstream television, like on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or “The Muppet Show.” The “Looney Tunes” sendup of Wagner remains for many as much opera as they’ve ever experienced. The director Peter Sellars once shared with me a childhood memory of a handyman pulling up to his home in a pickup truck with the Met Opera broadcast playing on his radio.It’s easy to view this situation cynically, as though the bejeweled televised appearances of beloved sopranos like Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price represented a mainstream co-opting of opera to sell an image of upward mobility after World War II. But when Leonard Bernstein and Maria Callas appeared on prime-time television, they did not reduce classical music to a mere signifier of economic advancement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Breakout Artists at the Salzburg Festival

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      The Salzburg Festival is synonymous with excellence and fame. But it’s also a place where artists on the cusp of stardom can shine.The Salzburg Festival has, since its founding more than 100 years ago, been known as a gathering place for the world’s finest musicians.That’s still true: During a visit there earlier this month, I heard Grigory Sokolov play Bach with unfussy authority; Jordi Savall lead his period orchestra in magisterial accounts of Beethoven’s final two symphonies; Igor Levit muscle through another Beethoven symphony, the bacchic Seventh, with just a piano.But Salzburg is also a proving ground for artists on the cusp on stardom. The soprano Asmik Grigorian, for example, was busy but hardly world famous until she gave a career-making performance as Salome there in 2018.This year, there were breakthroughs to be found throughout Salzburg’s theaters. If you looked past the top billing, past the Cecilia Bartolis and Teodor Currentzises, they were even at some of the most high-profile events this summer. Here are five of them.Lukas SternathThe pianist Lukas Sternath performing with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, under the conductor Adam Fischer.Marco Borrelli/Salzburg FestivalIn a bit of scheduling serendipity, Levit’s recital took place during the same weekend that the Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath, his former student, was debuting with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. It was touching to see Levit in the balcony of the Mozarteum’s ornate Grosser Saal, looking down as Sternath eloquently performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466) under the baton of Adam Fischer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This Is My Voice One Year on T

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      A transgender music critic explores the change in their singing voice after taking testosterone.When I started taking testosterone last year, I was eager for the effects it would have on my speaking voice. I imagined talking in a voice that was low, smooth, soothing. But my high singing voice felt somehow sacrosanct. I didn’t really want it to change.Maybe that’s because growing up listening to opera I was always drawn to the sound of countertenors — the highest of male voice types — like Anthony Roth Costanzo and Klaus Nomi. In that ethereal, almost genderless sound, I recognized myself.What is it about the voice that carries such emotional weight? Such potential for self-recognition? The word “voice” is so tied up with identity as to be nearly synonymous with it. My writing has a voice. The cello, my primary instrument, is sometimes described as closest to the human voice.All voices evolve over the course of a lifetime. Boys’ voices drop during puberty. Opera singers have noticed how their voices change during and after pregnancy. And menopause brings hormonal changes that can lower voices. Our voices can even fluctuate in pitch over the course of a day, depending on whom we’re speaking to, whether that’s a child or a friend.When I started taking testosterone as part of my transition, I wondered not just how my voice would change, but also what that shift would mean. Would I be the same person with a different voice?I’m a cellist-turned-critic but I’ve always sung for pleasure. It wasn’t until two years ago, though, at 26, that I started voice lessons with a countertenor. I was already thinking about taking testosterone, but before that I wanted to experience my voice, as it was, at its full potential.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More