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      A New Opera Mashes Up Monteverdi and W.E.B. Du Bois

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      “The Comet/Poppea” radically pares down a classic and blends it with a premiere by George E. Lewis for an original show that will travel widely.Morality takes a hike in Claudio Monteverdi’s final opera, “L’Incoronazione di Poppea.” Bold in its satire and explicit in its sensuality, even more than 350 years after its creation, the work gives its ruthless lovers, Nero and Poppea, everything they desire.A decadent exploration of Nero’s Rome, “Poppea” might seem to share little with “The Comet,” a W.E.B. Du Bois short story from 1920. Using tropes of sci-fi catastrophe, Du Bois, the famous Black sociologist, asks what it would take for a racially equitable civilization to emerge. But, like Monteverdi’s opera, it has an amoral, ice-cold finish: After the merest possibility of interracial love, the status quo of segregation returns.On Friday, both the opera and the story will be brought together, united by their common denominator of jaundiced cynicism, in “The Comet/Poppea,” which is premiering at Geffen Contemporary, a warehouse-style space at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. (There are already plans for it to travel to Philadelphia this fall, to New York next year and to the Schwarzman Center at Yale University in 2026.)Yuval Sharon, center, the director, with the singers Joelle Lamarre, left and Davóne Tines.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAmanda Lynn Bottoms, seated, and Nardus Williams, lying on the floor, during a rehearsal for the show, which adapts a W.E.B. Du Bois story from 1920.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesePresented in Los Angeles by MOCA and the director Yuval Sharon’s company of operatic experimenters, the Industry, “The Comet/Poppea” was commissioned by the American Modern Opera Company. Over a 90-minute run time, it alternates between a radically pared-down “Poppea” and an adaptation of Du Bois’s story by the librettist Douglas Kearney and the composer George E. Lewis, for a mash-up featuring stark transitions — and superimpositions — between Monteverdi’s Baroque style and Lewis’s high-modernist states of frenzy.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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      When Vienna’s Opera Tradition Got Too Traditional, They Stepped In

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      Bogdan Roscic and Lotte de Beer are shaking the dust off Vienna’s two biggest repertory companies.In a rehearsal studio built on the grounds of old military barracks outside Vienna’s city center one recent morning, the director Barrie Kosky was asking for a touch of vaudeville.He was working on his new production of Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” which opens at the Vienna State Opera on June 16, and was running through a scene with Kate Lindsey and Christopher Maltman, the singers playing the scheming Despina and Don Alfonso.While Kosky demonstrated a bit of physical comedy, Bogdan Roscic, the general director of the State Opera, walked into the room, and read Mozart’s score over the shoulder of the rehearsal pianist. Once they were finished, he walked over to Kosky.“Your fabulousness,” Roscic said, addressing him. “Are the taxpayers getting their money’s worth?”Roscic was joking, of course; his job is to hire directors for their value as artists, not as public utilities. But his question wasn’t crazy. In Vienna, as in much of Europe, opera receives substantial government support, and the leaders of houses are chosen by politicians. If, in the United States, arts administrators like to talk about their work as a civic duty, in Vienna, it absolutely is.And Vienna is one of the busiest opera destinations in the world. Tourists plan entire trips around the storied, immense State Opera. Not far away, the Volksoper has long offered more varied fare, including musicals and operettas.Such a rich history, though, can be double-edged. In recent decades, the State Opera and the Volksoper, both repertory houses that present a head-spinning number of titles per season, developed reputations as stagnating under the weight of their traditions. At the State Opera this century, the average age of viewers began to increase by one year each year, suggesting that the audience wasn’t changing. It was just getting terminally older.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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      Royal Opera House’s Music Director Leaves His Mark

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      Antonio Pappano says the London house, where he is wrapping up 22 years as music director, “will always be my home.”After 22 years as the music director at the Royal Opera House in London, Antonio Pappano has a tried-and-true recipe for creating traction around the art form.“The choices you make and the energy which you share with audiences will keep them coming,” he said.The British-born conductor, 64, has left his mark on the house through a strong work ethic and an in-depth understanding of the voice. His final production is a David McVicar staging of Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” starring Jonas Kaufmann, that is onstage through Tuesday. He then leads the company on tour to Japan, from June 22 to July 2, with productions of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Puccini’s “Turandot.”Pappano, whose parents were Italian immigrants, gravitates naturally toward the works of that tradition. But he has also championed everyone including contemporary British composers, Russian repertoire and Wagner. Through 2027, he will return at intervals to the Royal Opera to conduct all four installments of a “Ring” cycle staged by Barrie Kosky.Parallel to the Royal Opera, Pappano served as the music director of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, a position that he relinquished last year. The next phase of his career will be dedicated to the London Symphony Orchestra, where he will officially take over as the chief conductor in the 2024-25 season.Pappano’s final production is a David McVicar staging of Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” starring Jonas Kaufmann, that is onstage through Tuesday. Isabel Infantes/ReutersWe 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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      In a Handel Opera, a Rare Type of Voice Gets a New Audience

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      A revival of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” this summer at Glyndebourne, an English opera festival, features three countertenors with three different sounds.It’s a good time to be a countertenor. Over the last 25 years or so, 18th-century operas, most notably those by Handel, have enjoyed a rebirth in houses around the world, which has allowed the high-register countertenor male voice to sing male roles once reserved mostly for female mezzo-sopranos.This practice will be on full display this summer in a revival of “Giulio Cesare,” which will run for 15 performances from June 23 to Aug. 23 at Glyndebourne, the summer opera festival in the rolling hills of southern England. Three countertenors have been cast, including as Julius Caesar, a vocally demanding role often given to a mezzo-soprano.In their heyday, Handel’s operas almost always involved castrati, singers who were castrated as boys to preserve their higher voices but still gained the full lung capacity and overall stamina of grown men. (The practice largely died out in the early 19th century.) Today, however, male countertenors are being cast in roles that were once mostly written for the male voice.Among singers, casting directors and music experts, countertenors seem to be having a moment.Cameron Shahbazi.Kirini KopckeAt Glyndebourne, in this “Giulio Cesare” — a smorgasbord of arias, love stories, historical figures and palace intrigue that goes on for three and a half hours — the three countertenors distinguish themselves not only in character but also in voice. For Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who is singing the title role for the first time in a full production (he sang it in concert in Moscow in 2021) it’s a phenomenon that many opera fans might not think about for what is considered the rarest voice type.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 Opera Singer Aigul Akhmetshina on Her Career, ‘Carmen’ and More

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      During a break at the Royal Opera House, Aigul Akhmetshina discussed her action-packed career, “Carmen” and her mission to spread her love of opera.The Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina only just turned 28. Yet she already has a couple of operatic records under her belt: She’s the youngest artist ever to have sung “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Royal Opera House in London.Her trajectory began about 2,700 miles east of London.Akhmetshina was born in the village of Kirgiz-Miyaki in the Republic of Bashkortostan region of western Russia, closer to Kazakhstan than Moscow. She is one of three children of a single mother who worked in the passport office at the police station, whose own mother was a police officer in Soviet times.She was 3 years old when she first sang onstage, and 14 when she decamped to the nearest city, Ufa, to study music. Scouted in her teens at a voice competition in Moscow, she was invited to try out for the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker program for young artists in London — and got the gig. By 22, she was stepping in as an understudy to sing “Carmen” on the main stage, and delivering a career-shifting performance in the title role.Akhmetshina was in London after singing in “Carmen,” one of eight productions of the Bizet opera that she is performing in this season at major opera houses. In an interview during a break from rehearsals for a gala at the Royal Opera House, she discussed her action-packed career and her mission to spread her love of opera.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What were you like as a little girl?Everyone knew me as Aigul, the singer in the village. I was free-spirited, and an old soul. I would give advice to anyone who came to me with a question. I was into psychology and philosophy from an early age.For me, the village was too small. I was always saying: “Why can’t I just be free to go everywhere? I want to see the world, I want to explore, I want to learn.”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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      Florentina Holzinger Brings Roller-Skating Nuns to the Opera House

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      The choreographer Florentina Holzinger’s shows feature circus performers and abundant nudity. Now, she’s bringing her experimental approach to opera.In a rehearsal last week at the Mecklenburg State Theater in Schwerin, northeastern Germany, Fleshpiece, a shirtless performer with tattoos and purple hair, strode to the front of the main stage and delivered an impassioned monologue.“This opera house, this is our church,” Fleshpiece intoned. “We continue to nail you to the present, just as Jesus was nailed to the cross.”Supervising the scene was the experimental choreographer Florentina Holzinger, wearing a black baseball cap and a T-shirt printed with a picture of two nuns engaged in B.D.S.M. play.Her previous works, including “Ophelia’s Got Talent” at the Volksbühne in Berlin and “A Divine Comedy” for the Rührtriennale festival, were boundary-pushing, peripatetic shows in which nudity, profanity, onstage helicopters, onstage ejaculation and performers hanging from their teeth have shocked and awed audiences. “Ophelia’s Got Talent” jointly won Germany’s Faust prize for best dance production last year, cementing Holzinger’s status as one of Europe’s rising theater stars.In the German-speaking world, that kind of profile brings invitations to direct opera — and Holzinger’s work, which matches music with powerful, stage-filling spectacle, certainly has operatic qualities. Yet a gilded opera theater still seems an unlikely home for Holzinger, 38, whose anarchic works are collaged from new and old text and music, often with sharply contrasting styles.Holzinger is known for her boundary-pushing experimental shows.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesWe 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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      Memo to Orchestras: Do More Opera

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      The Cleveland Orchestra’s staging of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” was a reminder that ensembles can help fill the gap as opera grows harder to find.It was that rarest of sights when I walked into the Cleveland Orchestra’s hall on Sunday afternoon: a dark curtain drawn across the stage.Rare, that is, in a concert hall. Orchestras don’t tend to have dramatic unveilings before they start to play. And while Cleveland has done near-annual opera presentations over the past two decades, the ensemble has almost always been onstage alongside the singers, as the stagings have worked around (and sometimes incorporated) the presence of dozens of players.But for Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which ended a sold-out four-performance run at Severance Music Center on Sunday, the orchestra was lowered into an honest-to-goodness pit, and the curtain was closed at the start, just as it would have been in an opera house.It was a reminder that opera — expensive to put on and not to everyone’s taste, though with a passionate fan base — has been ever harder to find in American cities. And a reminder that orchestras can — and should! — summon the resources to fill even a bit of that gap.As the Cleveland Orchestra’s president and chief executive, André Gremillet, said in an interview, “This city doesn’t otherwise have world-class opera.” Cleveland Opera, a company that did present world-class offerings for several decades, faded away about 15 years ago, and a couple of companies left in its wake offer just a smattering of smaller-scale performances.And yet there is a hunger for the art form, and an opportunity for orchestras around the country to expand their audiences. “There are people who are not here every week,” Gremillet said, “who will come to the opera — and more than once.”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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      He Made the Met Opera’s Chorus the Best in the World

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      During the second intermission of the Metropolitan Opera’s gilded, gargantuan production of “Turandot” one Friday last month, Donald Palumbo raced up to a tiny broadcast studio on the top floor for an interview.Then he raced downstairs again. There was something he needed to do backstage before the curtain rose.Palumbo, 75, who is retiring this spring after 17 years as the company’s chorus master, wanted to run through the start of Act III with the quartet of heralds, drawn from the chorus, who hauntingly call out a warning from Princess Turandot.It was 13 performances into the season’s “Turandot” run, at 10 o’clock at night. But Palumbo, one of opera’s most mild-mannered yet most unrelenting perfectionists, was still making sure that the singers’ intonation was flawless, still fine-tuning the placement of the first note in a certain phrase.Palumbo conducting from the wings during a performance of “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera in April. Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York Times“You have to be very specific,” he had said earlier about the way he coaches his choristers, “but you can’t micromanage.”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