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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

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      Vienna Bids Farewell to Magnate Who Brought Stars to Its Opera Ball

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      Sophia Loren, Kim Kardashian, Priscilla Presley and Jane Fonda were among the stars Richard Lugner enticed, and often paid, to appear at the Vienna Opera Ball.The Vienna Opera Ball, a glittering, glamorous affair, always attracts politicians, business executives, artists and socialites. But in a high-profile crowd, none reigned quite like Richard Lugner, a billionaire Austrian construction magnate who died this week at 91.Lugner was famous for showing up at the ball each year with megawatt Hollywood stars, whom he often paid to appear with him. His guests over the years included Sophia Loren, Goldie Hawn, Brooke Shields and Kim Kardashian. They were usually, but not always, women: He brought Harry Belafonte one year, and Roger Moore another. When Jane Fonda went in 2023, she was quoted as explaining that he had offered to pay her “quite a bit of money” to appear as his guest. At this year’s ball in February, Lugner appeared with Priscilla Presley, the former wife of Elvis Presley.Karl Nehammer, the chancellor of Austria, wrote on X that Lugner, who also tried his hand at politics, was “an Austrian original.” In a statement, the Vienna State Opera expressed its “sincere condolences to Richard Lugner’s family.”Here’s a look at Lugner’s appearances at the Vienna Opera Ball over the years.Faye Dunaway and Lugner in 1999.Herwig Prammer/ReutersKim Kardashian, Lugner and Kris Jenner in 2014.Gisela Schober/Getty ImagesPriscilla Presley danced with Lugner at this year’s ball.Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockLugner, in 2000, flanked by the actress Jacqueline Bisset, center, and the television presenter Nadja Abd el Farrag. His fourth wife, Christina, is on the left.Pool photo by ReutersAndie MacDowell and Lugner in 2004.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesFarrah Fawcett, center, drinking wine with the Lugners in 2001.Miro Kuzmanovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLugner and Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls arriving at their opera box in 2005.Leonhard Foeger/ReutersRaquel Welch and her husband Richard Palmer joined the Lugners in 1998.Herbert Pfarrhofer/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesElle Macpherson, left, accompanied Lugner and his companion to the Vienna Opera Ball in 2019.Florian Wieser/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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      Has the Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Time Finally Come?

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      With an opera at the Salzburg Festival and recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg may be taking root.It’s difficult to define a comeback in classical music. A neglected composer may be championed by the artists of one generation only to be ignored by the next, or resurface during an anniversary only to return underground.Take the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-96), a Polish-born composer who found refuge in Soviet Russia, but whose reputation in the West is largely overshadowed by that of his good friend Dmitri Shostakovich. There has been increasing interest in Weinberg this century, and there are signs that his music is finally taking root in the repertoire.The latest milestone is an excellent revival of his opera “The Idiot” at the high-profile Salzburg Festival in Austria under the baton of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a conductor with a Deutsche Grammophon contract who has, with scholarly authority, brought Weinberg’s works to something like the mainstream.Still, as a figure in music history he remains mostly unknown to modern listeners: a Jewish composer who wrote with unwavering beauty and peace in the face of some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities; whose identity and experiences suffused more than 150 works, as well as dozens of soundtracks that await attention and interpretation; who, under no outside pressure, according to his family, converted to Christianity at the end of his life.Weinberg was born in Warsaw but fled in 1939, after hearing on the radio that a German invasion of the city was imminent. (He traveled alone; it wasn’t until the 1960s that he learned his family had been murdered in a concentration camp.) He went to the Soviet border, and settled in Minsk. Nearly two years later, he left there as the Nazis pushed eastward, joining the wartime refugee community in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.He ultimately made it to Moscow, with the help of composers including Shostakovich, who had secured an invitation for Weinberg from the State Committee on the Arts. He enjoyed some modest prosperity and rising prominence, but a Stalinist crackdown on music, combined with institutionalized antisemitism, led to his arrest in early 1953.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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      As Ukraine War Goes On, Where Is Teodor Currentzis’s Red Line?

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      Teodor Currentzis, whose MusicAeterna receives funding from a Russian state bank, has eluded censure at the prestigious Salzburg Festival.When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the classical music world’s reaction was swift. Artists with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin, or those who had publicly supported his war efforts, were dropped by orchestras and opera houses across the West.One person who seemed to elude such punishment, though, was Teodor Currentzis, who is leading concerts and a production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria. More than two years into the war, his continued presence there is frustrating to many, raising uncomfortable questions about what is acceptable in service of music.Currentzis, who was born in Greece, was given Russian citizenship by Putin’s government in 2014, the year Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula. Two decades ago, he founded MusicAeterna, a small musical empire that started as an orchestra and now includes a choir and dance company in St. Petersburg.MusicAeterna doesn’t have any direct affiliation with Putin, but it came under scrutiny after the 2022 invasion because of support from the state-controlled VTB Bank (which has been penalized by the United States), as well as other government-related donors. Currentzis has been silent about the war, neither denouncing Russia nor supporting Ukraine.And he has lost some work as a result. Earlier this year, the Wiener Festwochen in Austria canceled an appearance by him and the German SWR Symphony Orchestra after fierce criticism from the Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv, who appeared at the same festival with Ukrainian musicians.Salzburg has stood by Currentzis but not by his Russian musicians. The “Don Giovanni” here is a revival of a production that originated in 2021, with him conducting. Then, the pit ensemble was MusicAeterna. Now it’s Utopia, the all-star group, in the spirit of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, that he started in 2022; pointedly, it is based in Western Europe.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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      Met Opera’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Yuval Sharon Will Team Up for ‘Ring’

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      Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, will extend his contract and lead Wagner’s four-opera epic, in a production staged by Yuval Sharon.Wagner’s “Ring” cycle is a mammoth undertaking for any opera company: a four-opera, 15-hour epic that features a cast of warriors, gods, giants and dwarves and some of the most daunting music in the repertoire.The Metropolitan Opera said on Tuesday that it would again stage opera’s most ambitious work, starting in the 2027-28 season, the company’s first new production of the “Ring” cycle in nearly two decades. And a familiar face will be on the podium: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director since 2018, who is extending his contract through 2030.The production, which will be staged by the visionary theater director Yuval Sharon, is to feature the soprano Lise Davidsen, one of opera’s brightest stars, as Brünnhilde.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the company had decided to stage a new “Ring” in part for Nézet-Séguin.“Every music director of a major opera company expects and deserves to have a ‘Ring’ cycle,” he said. “It’s the crowning achievement, the biggest thing you can do in opera.”Nézet-Séguin, 49, whose new contract covers a six-year term, said he was looking forward to the “Ring,” calling it an “extremely intimate affair.”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 World Is Still Catching Up to the Music of Hector Berlioz

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      Hector Berlioz did not have the twilight of a great composer.In his memoirs, he described himself in his 60s as “past hopes, past illusions, past high thoughts and lofty conceptions.” His extraordinary but unusual music was unloved and unplayed; a widower two times over, he was lonely, and hated people more than ever. He wrote, with a shake of his fist at the sky: “I say hourly to Death, ‘When you will.’ Why does he delay?”He felt wronged by the public and his fellow composers, who even when they admired him didn’t know what to do with his music, or his personality. Wagner wrote that Berlioz didn’t trust anyone’s opinion, and seemed to enjoy isolation, dooming him to “remain forever incomplete and perhaps really shine only as a transient, marvelous exception.”Berlioz had faith that his time would come, though. By his estimate, things would pick up for him if he could just live to 140. He made it to 65.But he wasn’t wrong. After his death, in 1869, some of his works, like the “Symphonie Fantastique,” became firmly entrenched in the canon, and he is the subject of this year’s Bard Music Festival, which begins on Aug. 9. Still, two weeks’ worth of concerts and panel discussions, as well as a companion collection of essays, can only begin to capture the breadth of Berlioz’s artistry.There is Berlioz the composer, of course, but also Berlioz the critic, the conductor, the impresario, the philosopher and the literary author. A focus on his music alone is just as dizzying: Nearly every work defies conventional analysis and taxonomy, and must be approached on its own terms.His idiosyncratic music didn’t truly catch on until the mid-20th century, and even then fitfully. His operas remain too difficult to stage regularly, and many of his concert works are too strange to program or market to audiences. It feels as though we are still catching up to Berlioz’s pipe-dream visions of musical possibility.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 Death-Driven ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Bayreuth Festival

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      Thorleifur Orn Arnarsson’s production of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany is an excellently conducted puzzle of grim symbols.Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” is not a love story. It’s a death story.It’s an opera in which the central duet is an ecstatic, philosophical declaration of love through a pledge of mutual death. Tristan, his name itself rooted in sadness, welcomes his end as a release; the greatest act of devotion, for Isolde, would be to join him in a state of love transfigured.OK, maybe “Tristan” is both a love story and a death story.Thorleifur Orn Arnarsson’s new production, at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, emphasizes the death part more. (People in the country can stream it on BR Klassik.) He sets the opera in a purgatorial space and, instead of spiritual transformation, portrays a scarcely transcendent suicide, an act of self-destruction in service of love.It’s a bleak but still Romantic outlook, conveyed with stubborn opacity and a loose grip of the dramaturgy. A director’s vision, though, is just one reason to visit Bayreuth, the pilgrimage-like festival that Wagner founded nearly 150 years ago.This “Tristan” belongs, above all, to the conductor Semyon Bychkov. He previously led “Parsifal” at Bayreuth with shocking speed, but he did something like the opposite here: not necessarily stretching the score, but relishing key moments to guide the audience’s emotions as commandingly as Wagner intended. At times, the passion was tidal; at others, teeming with anticipation.(Bychkov is in good company. The festival has had its share of conductor missteps in recent years, but the evening before I saw “Tristan,” Simone Young led a masterly “Götterdämmerung”; elsewhere at Bayreuth, Pablo Heras-Casado is returning for “Parsifal”; Nathalie Stutzmann is picking up a “Tannhäuser” once botched by Valery Gergiev; and Oksana Lyniv continues her fiery “Der Fliegende Holländer.” With three female conductors out of five total, Bayreuth’s gender distribution is applaudably better than many in classical music and opera.)Thorleifur Orn Arnarsson’s production abstracts parts of a ruined ship that, by the third act, is broken up and scattered around the stage.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleWe 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