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      Peter Eotvos, Evocative Modernist Composer and Conductor, Dies at 80

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      A tireless Hungarian advocate of contemporary music, he adapted literary sources both modern and classic, instilling his work with “inimitable character and pathos.”Peter Eotvos, a towering Hungarian composer and conductor who linked modernist traditions in 20th-century European music and whose multifaceted work was singularly evocative, died on Sunday at his home in Budapest. He was 80.His wife, the librettist Maria Eotvosne Mezei, announced his death.Mr. Eotvos (pronounced OAT-voesh) was a tireless advocate of contemporary music and composed in almost every conceivable genre. At the dawn of the 21st century, he found widespread acclaim as an opera composer. His final work in that genre, “Valuska,” premiered at the Hungarian State Opera in December 2023. Based on the novel “The Melancholy of Resistance,” by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, it was his first opera written to a Hungarian libretto. (Others are in a number of languages, including German, French and English.)Like his German opera-composing contemporary Aribert Reimann, who also died this month, Mr. Eotvos was drawn to literary works both modern and classic. He adapted novels and plays by Anton Chekhov, Jean Genet, Gabriel García Márquez, Tony Kushner and Jon Fosse, the Norwegian author who was awarded last year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.“His music may be rigorous, but his gentle, soft-spoken spirit gives his work its inimitable character and pathos,” the American opera director Yuval Sharon, who directed a 2016 production of Mr. Eotvos’s 1998 opera, “Tri Sestri,” in Vienna, said in a statement. Calling the work, which is based on Chekhov’s play “Three Sisters,” “unquestionably one of the great operas of our time,” Mr. Sharon said that it was only while working with Mr. Eotvos that he “realized how much of his emotional life is invested in the work.”For the otherwise reserved Mr. Eotvos, music was his vehicle to express that inner life. “In everyday life I’m not a dramatic person at all,” he said in a 2020 documentary about him. “Perhaps this veiled dramatic trait can only come to the surface if it has a job to do.”In the interview, he described how the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s flight into outer space in 1961 — the first for a human and “the first major event of my life” — inspired him to write the piano work “Kosmos” when he was 17. He would revisit the work at various stages in his life, including in the 2017 concert piece “Multiversum.”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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      Patrick Carfizzi Is ‘the Heart and Soul’ of the Met Opera

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      Patrick Carfizzi, a vibrant performer in supporting roles, has grabbed attention in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino.”Many boxes of pizza had been delivered to the Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon, and were stacked on a table in the hallway between some dressing rooms and the stage.They were a gift from one of the singers appearing in the matinee performance that day: the bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi, who is having attention-grabbing success in the modest but meaty role of Fra Melitone in a new production of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” which concludes its run on Friday.That performance, remarkably, will be Carfizzi’s 459th with the Met. “It’s a huge gift to be here as often as I’ve been here,” he said on Sunday as he put on his makeup and costume, and warmed up. “You just keep working. It’s step by step by step.”Melitone doesn’t appear until the second act. So, as the opera began, Carfizzi was getting ready in a dressing room next to the one he lovingly calls the Charlie Anthony Suite, after its longtime inhabitant, the tenor Charles Anthony, a Met lifer who sang mostly supporting roles in 2,928 performances from 1954 to 2010.Heath Bryant-Huppert applying Carfizzi’s makeup before a performance of “Forza.”Ali Cherkis for The New York TimesCarfizzi, who turns 50 next month and is celebrating his 25th anniversary with the company later this year, has, in the skill and relish he brings to smaller parts, become something of a latter-day Anthony — or Paul Plishka, Bernard Fitch, James Courtney or John Del Carlo. (It was from this group that Carfizzi inherited the morale-building tradition of ordering pizza for the cast and crew.)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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      Ukrainian Conductor Oksana Lyniv Arrives at the Met Opera

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      Oksana Lyniv, who is leading “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, has used her platform to criticize Russia and promote Ukrainian culture.The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was preparing for a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera this month when she saw the news: A Russian drone had hit a building in Odesa, not far from the home of her parents-in-law.She called her family to ensure they were safe. But images of the attack, whose victims included a young mother and children, lingered in her mind. When she conducted that night, she felt the pain of war more acutely, she said, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies in the opera’s final act and the chorus turns hushed.“In that moment, I saw all the suffering of the war,” she said. “How do you explain such sadness? How do you explain who gets to be alive and who has to die?”Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the first Ukrainian conductor to perform at the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s government. She has also set out to promote Ukrainian culture, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she founded in 2016.The war has raised difficult questions for artists and cultural institutions. Russian performers have come under pressure to speak out against President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have faced questions too, including whether to perform Russian works or appear alongside Russian artists.Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has sometimes felt caught in the middle. She protested last month when a festival in Vienna announced plans to pair her appearance with a concert led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come under scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The festival canceled his appearance.)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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      At the Met Opera, the Show Goes On After a Technical Mishap

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      The company put on a semi-staged version of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the last minute, after a backstage lift got jammed.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is one of the most lavish and intricate in the company’s repertoire, a spectacle that includes an imperial palace, a glittering throne room and expansive gardens.But on Wednesday evening, audience members had to make do without the opera’s usual visual delights. A jam in the Met’s main lift backstage forced the company to put on a semi-staged version at the last minute, with the cast and chorus singing from an improvised set instead.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, walked onstage before the show to explain the situation.“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to be a normal night at the opera,” he said. “Although our scenery will not be working, the show will go on.”Audience members were offered a refund if they wished to leave, and about 150 people did, the Met said. But most stayed, offering a hearty applause when the conductor, Oksana Lyniv, entered the pit. (The Met, which has about 3,800 seats, said that the performance’s paid attendance was about 80 percent of capacity before the problem was announced.)Gelb said in an interview that the machinery jammed around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, while the Met was changing sets for “Turandot” after a rehearsal for Puccini’s “La Rondine,” which opens next week. Crew members tried using saws to cut through steel bars to free the lift, but their efforts were unsuccessful.By about 6:30 p.m., one hour before the show was to begin, Gelb had to make a decision: cancel the show, or move forward with a pared-down version. He said he was reluctant to turn audiences away.“Everybody rallied together,” he said.The Met used a piece of scenery from the second act of “Turandot” — a wall in the imperial palace — as a backdrop, to provide some color. The action was confined to roughly the first 20 feet of the stage.Gelb tried to encourage the singers by telling them that their music would be more powerful, telling the tenor SeokJong Baek that when he sang the famous aria “Nessun dorma,” “you’ll be that much closer the audience.”Technical mishaps have rarely stopped productions at the Met. In 1966, when the Lincoln Center house was opened, a turntable malfunctioned at a dress rehearsal for Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” The soprano Leontyne Price narrowly escaped being trapped inside the pyramid on top of it. And in 2011, a performance of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” was delayed for 45 minutes because of a technical problem with the 45-ton set.Gelb said that he expected things to be back to normal in time for a performance of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” on Thursday.“Tonight as soon as show ends,” he said, “it will be all hands on deck to free this lift.” More

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      Aribert Reimann, Masterful German Opera Composer, Is Dead at 88

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      His works, which were radically individual, were among the most celebrated of the late 20th and early 21st century.Aribert Reimann, whose powerful operas based on works by Shakespeare, Kafka, Lorca and others made him one of the most significant opera composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, died on Wednesday in Berlin. He was 88.His publisher, Schott Music, announced the death.A prolific composer with widely performed works, particularly his operas and songs, Mr. Reimann (pronounced RYE-mahn) was revered for his ability to fuse complex and often challenging modern music with lyrical texts. His works were frequently devastating in their emotional impact, sounding like organic expressions of the human voice.“Like few other composers of his generation, Reimann knew how to tell stories in his operas which directly affected us humans living in the 21st century,” Dietmar Schwarz, the manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, said in a statement.Mr. Reimann enjoyed a close relationship with the opera house. Five of his stage works were performed there, most recently his ninth and final completed opera, “L’Invisible,” which was based on texts by the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and premiered in 2017.Another stage work, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was planned for 2025 but was unfinished.A performance of Mr. Reimann’s ninth and final opera, “L’Invisible,” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2017. Five of his works were performed at the theater.Lieberenz/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      How Did Wagner Want His ‘Ring’ Cycle to Sound?

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      With a team of researchers and dedicated musicians, the conductor Kent Nagano is taking a historically informed performance approach to Wagner’s epic.What began as a flippantly offered pipe dream, on second thought sounded too good to resist.Kent Nagano was leading the period-instrument ensemble Concerto Köln in concert performances of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” in 2016 when one musician suggested he come back for more, and with new repertoire. Because Nagano was conducting the “Ring” at the time, he lightheartedly said, “How about Wagner?”They laughed at the idea of taking on Wagner’s four-opera, 15-hour epic, Nagano recalled in a recent interview. Not just playing it, but devoting years of research and practice to a historically informed performance of it. Then they realized that this was rich terrain; installments of the “Ring” had been given this treatment before, but they didn’t know of any complete cycle. Now, after years of study and partnerships across universities, orchestras and cities in Germany, Nagano and his collaborators are in the middle of presenting their findings.Nagano’s work on this “Ring” has included creating Wagner-Lesarten, or Wagner Readings, a research organization devoted to the project.Simon van Boxtel PhotographyAnd just in time: In 2026, it will be 150 years since Wagner premiered the full “Ring” at his festival in Bayreuth, Germany. Each year until then, Nagano and the Concerto Köln — with the addition of Dresdner Festspielorchester for “Die Walküre” — are touring installments of their historically informed “Ring” operas: last year, “Das Rheingold,” and now “Die Walküre.”Heard in the acoustically generous Concertgebouw in Amsterdam on March 16 as part of the NTR ZaterdagMatinee series, “Die Walküre” took on such clarity that no supertitles were necessary to understand the singers. And, yes, the score sounded different from a typical modern performance.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 American Tenor Jonathan Tetelman, a Puccini Specialist, Arrives at the Met

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      Jonathan Tetelman will sing in “La Rondine” and “Madama Butterfly” in New York. He trained as a baritone and worked as a D.J. before finding his “authentic voice” as a tenor.In the middle of last summer’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Salzburg Festival, the American tenor Jonathan Tetelman brought down the house. As Macduff, Tetelman gave a searing rendition of “Ah, la paterna mano,” the heartbreaking aria after his character learns that the bloodthirsty monarch has slaughtered his wife and children.Tetelman’s performance in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s monumentally gloomy production was one of the festival’s highlights. Later this month, the 35-year-old tenor will make his Metropolitan Opera debut in Puccini’s “La Rondine.” He’ll also be heard at the Met as Pinkerton in a revival of the composer’s better-known “Madama Butterfly” that reunites him with his “Macbeth” co-star, the soprano Asmik Grigorian, in April and May. (There are planned Met Live in HD broadcasts of both productions.)In an email, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, wrote that Tetelman had a “beautiful and big voice that is perfectly suited to the generous size of the Met’s auditorium, which is much larger than most European opera houses, and to these soaring Puccini roles.”Tetelman has swiftly risen to become one of his generation’s most in-demand lyric tenors and is particularly sought after for his Puccini. After singing Rodolfo in “La Bohème” for the first time in 2017 in Fujian, China, he reprised the role a year later at Tanglewood (replacing the Polish star tenor Piotr Beczala) and then on opening night of Barrie Kosky’s production at the Komische Oper Berlin in January 2019.Tetelman played Macduff in a performance of “Macbeth” at the 2023 Salzburg Festival.Bernd Uhlig/SFBut Tetelman’s path to the Met’s stage was anything but typical. Born in Chile, Tetelman was adopted by an American couple when he was 6 months old and grew up in Princeton, N.J. As an undergraduate at the Manhattan School of Music, he trained as a baritone but felt frustrated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘The Shell Trial’ Seeks a Guilty Party in Climate Change

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      Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s new opera, about events still in progress, finds fault and complicity in every player of a global blame game.The climate activist was tired. Protests at the house of Shell’s chief executive had led to little more than free cookies and the police being called to break things up. The same thing had happened the week before. And the week before that. And the week before that.“I don’t wanna be perfect,” they screamed into a loudspeaker in Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins’s “The Shell Trial.” “I just don’t wanna die,” the activist added, with an expletive for emphasis.It was a moment of one person speaking for many, and for “The Shell Trial” itself, which premiered at the Dutch National Opera on Saturday. (Among the commissioners is Opera Philadelphia, where it will travel in a future season.) A Brechtian cri de coeur about climate change and complicity, this is an ambitious, passionate show that seems more interested in being heard — in truly reaching its audience — than in being an impeccably crafted work of art.Finding new ways to make old points, and powerfully laying out a vision for a future in which the world changes but we do not, “The Shell Trial” has much to admire. Remarkable, too, is the effort of the Dutch National Opera, which has taken a major step toward operating as a carbon-neutral house with this staging and its Green Deal, an initiative to weave sustainability into its productions, limit travel and calculate ways to offset its carbon footprint.Opera in the past century has become globalized in a way that, unsurprisingly, has made it a target of activists. The Dutch National Opera, like the creators of “The Shell Trial,” views climate change as an ethical issue as well as a political one. And as the company does its part to help, the wider industry should take note.The chorus of children was made up of performers from local schools and community programs.Marco Borggreve/Dutch National OperaWe 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