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      Review: In Berlin, Opera Scales Up to Fill an Airport Hangar

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      With its home theater under renovation, the Komische Oper branches out, beginning with Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa” at Tempelhof Airport.The 1816 wreck of the French frigate Medusa, from which just a handful of passengers survived after nearly two weeks on a makeshift raft, was still very recent history when Théodore Géricault painted the scene.Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1819, “The Raft of the Medusa” divided those who saw it, especially because the tragedy had stirred anger at the restored Bourbon monarchy.In 1968, when Hans Werner Henze premiered his oratorio of the same title, it was polarizing too: The performance was canceled when the police intervened after fights broke out among audience and artists over leftist posters and banners hoisted in the concert hall in Hamburg, Germany.On Saturday, though, when the Komische Oper of Berlin staged the work in and around an enormous pool built by the company in a hangar at the disused Tempelhof Airport, “The Raft of the Medusa” seduced more than it polarized. It is an ambitiously scaled, superbly performed, conceptually clever, politically adroit yet emotionally cool spectacle.Directed by Tobias Kratzer and conducted by Titus Engel, the show, which runs through Oct. 3, is most notable as the rare venture outside a home theater for a major opera house.It comes at a period of transition for Berlin’s three important companies. (Yes, three — a legacy of the city’s divided era and of Germany’s commitment to culture.) The Deutsche Oper and Berlin State Opera both face changes of artistic director and chief conductor. And the Komische Oper is beginning a multiyear renovation of its base in the center of town.While the Komische Oper will be largely spending this time at the Schiller Theater — as the State Opera did during its renovations some years ago — the company is also taking the opportunity to put on productions in less traditional spaces. Each nomadic season will open at the Tempelhof hangar, which is part of a complex built by the Nazis in the 1930s; most of the old airport is now a park and, more recently, an emergency refugee camp.“The Raft of the Medusa,” with its sprawling orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic battery of percussion and a boys’ choir, doesn’t feel lost in the huge space, even if — with just three soloists — its storytelling is essentially intimate.Henze dedicated the piece to Che Guevara, who had died the previous fall, and the final line, spoken to a rhythm drawn from the protest chant “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh,” foretells revolution: “But the survivors returned to the world, instructed by reality, feverish to overthrow it.” Ernst Schnabel’s text toggles between poetic and starkly journalistic.A character named Charon, after Greek mythology’s ferryman of the underworld, narrates the wreck of the ship and the horrifying days that followed. Death is a dreamily alluring soprano; Jean-Charles, an agonized representative of those aboard the raft.The chorus of the living, dying and dead solemnly intones and angrily cries out. Henze’s orchestra, too, is capable of explosive power, but mostly the score restrains these grand forces to a stunned, wary quiet, played by the Komische Oper’s orchestra under Engel with remarkable sensuality and subtlety given the necessity of amplification.At Tempelhof, members of the chorus are unidentified at the start as they sit among the audience of 1,600, which is arranged in two blocks facing each other across the pool, with the orchestra on a third side of the quadrangle. The choristers, wearing black and white clothes, begin singing from their seats and eventually walk down to the pool.On Rainer Sellmaier’s pool set, performers splash violently, and powerfully, in the water.Jaro SuffnerAs the Medusa’s voyage begins, Kratzer has the performers frolic in the calf-high water as they play with inflatable rings. (The simple, effective pool set is by Rainer Sellmaier, with Olaf Freese’s lighting conveying the harshness of both night and day.)Rather than early-19th-century sailors, these people suggest contemporary bourgeois beachgoers, much like the oblivious leisure-seekers of the recent opera-installation “Sun & Sea,” too focused on tanning to perceive rising seas or the migrants lost in them. Jean-Charles (the forthright baritone Günter Papendell) here might be an accountant or lawyer.Benches come together to form the raft and are occasionally detached to use as platforms around the pool. Death (the soprano Gloria Rehm, her voice never too harsh or hard) is here a glamorous diva in a sparkling, skintight black gown. As they expire, the choristers trudge out of the water and back to their seats, so we in the audience end up eerily immersed in the ghostly sound of the afterlife.In both Gericault’s painting and Kratzer’s production, a lone Black figure is a focal point. Unlike the painting’s heroic savior, waving red fabric to get the attention of a ship on the horizon, the staging’s Charon, a Black woman (the resonant mezzo-soprano Idunnu Münch), is a pained, helpless witness: an aid worker in a rowboat too small to save anyone.With the production already depicting the bourgeoisie transformed into desperate refugees, forced to undergo agonies they usually ignore, this casting decision furthers the sense of a reversal of the standard order of things, in which whites look on (or not) as people of color suffer.It’s an intriguing decision. But in attempting to mix realism and stylization, Kratzer tends too naturalistic. As the shipwrecked passengers first scramble en masse toward the raft, splashing violently in the water, the sight is powerful. Later on, though, the survivors’ reaching, grasping hands and twitching bodies come off as strenuous cliché, lessening rather than increasing the intensity and depth of feeling. It’s not necessary to see an actor dressed as the Jesus that some of the poor souls hallucinate in their hunger, thirst and fear.But near the end, the hangar’s tremendous door, near the side of the pool opposite the orchestra, slowly slides open. The temperature drops as the fresh night air pours in, and you get a tiny, terrifying glimpse of the relief that people in such a situation might find in death. The survivors emerge from the pool and walk out toward the dark, vast expanse of Tempelhof Field, led by an emergency van.It would have been obvious, even without the van, that this forlorn procession was meant to evoke the path taken by the migrants who have been housed at Tempelhof over the past decade. But the opening of the door was a true, visceral dramatic coup, a fitting climax for a staging with the heft to feel worthy of a remarkable space.The Raft of the MedusaThrough Oct. 3 at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

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      Russian Soprano Anna Netrebko Sings in Berlin, Amid Protests

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      The Russian star soprano appeared in her first staged opera in Germany since the Ukraine invasion, still under fire for her past support for President Vladimir V. Putin.The Berlin State Opera’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” begins with the madly ambitious Lady Macbeth slowly walking over a burning battlefield, carrying a sword as she negotiates a stage littered with corpses.As the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who sang that role at the State Opera on Friday, crossed from left to right, the scene was a hallucinatory version of real life: a powerful woman attempting to make her way through a world aflame with war.Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, has been under fire in the West since the Russian invasion of Ukraine for her long history of support for President Vladimir V. Putin. But on Friday, she was appearing in a staged opera in Germany for the first time since the war broke out, the latest milestone in her return to major cultural institutions.She received a warm ovation at her curtain call, even as she performed in the face of opposition from political leaders and robust, angry protests outside the opera house that continued through the end of the show, including rounds of chants that her appearance was “Schande,” a disgrace.Inside, isolated but loud, sustained boos were mixed with the applause after both parts of her opening aria. She responded by standing center stage with arms folded and lips pursed, breaking character to blow kisses to the conductor and orchestra.After the Russian invasion, in February 2022, Netrebko’s performances were called off for a time as she gave confused signals about her position. That March, the Metropolitan Opera canceled her contracts, and did not change course after she announced she opposed the war but refused to denounce Putin. (Last month, Netrebko sued the Met for discrimination, defamation and breach of contract.)But over the past year and a half, she has gradually returned to stages in South America and Europe, including the Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The response has been a mix of protests (usually outside) and cheers (in).Berlin, though, is a hotbed of pro-Ukraine sentiment. So her appearance at the State Opera — she was engaged for four performances of “Macbeth” that continue through Saturday — has been the object of intense scrutiny.Netrebko bowing on the stage of the State Opera after performing in Verdi’s “Macbeth.”Annette Riedl/DPA, via Associated Press“It’s a difficult decision, of course,” Matthias Schulz, the company’s general director, said in an interview. But, he added, “I’m still absolutely behind that decision.”He and Netrebko’s other defenders argue that her statement was sufficiently clear — “She used the word ‘war,’” Schulz said, “and she used the words ‘against Ukraine’” — and that she distanced herself from Putin, even if she stopped well short of criticizing him.Such direct criticism, they add, is nearly impossible when dealing with an authoritarian government, as it might expose Netrebko, her family and friends, especially those still living in Russia, to security risks. (Netrebko, a citizen of Russia and Austria, lives in Vienna.)Schulz emphasized that her behavior since the war began has not further compromised her. Unlike some Russian artists — including her mentor, the conductor Valery Gergiev — she did not remain in the country, nor has she returned to perform there. The Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis has drawn criticism for the support he received from a sanctioned Russian bank, but has continued to be engaged in the West, though he has made no public statement about the war.It is crucial, Netrebko’s supporters say, not to tar all Russian artists with the same brush and thus play into the hands of Putin, who claims that the West is implacably Russophobic.Yet agreeing that all Russian artists shouldn’t be condemned isn’t the same as saying that none should. Given Netrebko’s stardom, and her documented history praising and receiving recognition from Putin, her case is different from that of less prominent Russian musicians who have condemned the war. Nevertheless, her posture has been that of victim.“She just doesn’t understand why she’s been made responsible for this,” Schulz said.Netrebko seems to believe that she is being held responsible for actions in which she’s had no part, and that she has been blamed for her behavior before the war more than, say, political leaders in Germany and elsewhere who did business with Putin. The Met and other companies were protested for years for engaging her and Gergiev as Russia passed anti-gay laws and annexed Crimea.But many of those people and institutions have admitted that they were wrong. Netrebko’s statements have expressed no remorse for her support of Putin, nor for an incident in 2014 in which she gave a donation to an opera house in Donetsk, a Ukrainian city controlled by Russian separatists, and was photographed holding a separatist flag.And on social media, Netrebko has kept up her prewar parade of lavish dinners, designer fashion and family vacations — a spectacle that was amusing enough before the invasion but feels dishearteningly tone-deaf now.“Yes, I think she was politically naïve or stupid in the past,” Schulz said. “But is this enough to say you cannot sing any more on any stage?”Netrebko, though, doesn’t have any inherent right to be onstage. And yet her artistry is still formidable. For a listener who had not heard her live since well before the pandemic, she has maintained her immediately recognizable, seductively dark and heavy sound, with its slightly, excitingly breathless quality.There were protests outside the opera house that continued through the end of the show, including rounds of chants that Netrebko’s appearance was “Schande,” a disgrace.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesLady Macbeth has been one of her greatest triumphs, and she still clearly relishes the character’s machinations and chesty exclamations, even if the top of her range is now more effortful and less powerful. Her soft singing doesn’t quite have its old floating presence, making the final sleepwalking scene impressive rather than unforgettable.Her future is not entirely clear. Some of her performances, including a concert in Prague next month, continue to be canceled under pressure. Serge Dorny, of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, which canceled her engagements early in the war, wrote in a text message that there were no current plans for her to appear there, declining to comment further.But she is scheduled to return to Vienna, Milan and Paris in the coming months. At the Salzburg Easter Festival early next spring, she will sing the title role in Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda,” directed by Oliver Mears, the artistic leader of the Royal Opera in London.“At the beginning of the war, things were very raw,” Mears said in an interview about the possibility of her return to London, adding: “Never say never.”Nikolaus Bachler, the Easter Festival’s director, said, “The passage of time always has a big meaning.”Things inevitably take on a Rorschach quality in these polarized situations. If you’re for her, the fact that Netrebko is appearing at the plainly pro-Ukraine Berlin State Opera, and that “Macbeth” depicts the devastation wrought by war, is a kind of covert admission of feelings she cannot openly express. If you’re against her, she is merely using the company’s — and Verdi’s — ethical bona fides without earning them.As with so much else in our politics, the battle lines have been drawn, and are wearily unmoving. What has happened, as Macbeth puts it in the opera, has happened.This is all really between Netrebko, her conscience and what she hopes will be written in the obituaries when she’s gone. “She did the bare minimum” is hardly the noblest epitaph, and even her defenders can’t argue that she’s shown courage.“She is no Marlene Dietrich,” Schulz said, referring to the German film star who renounced her citizenship in 1939 and spent World War II rallying American troops through the U.S.O., earning a Medal of Freedom. “And she will not be rewarded as such.” More

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      Komische Oper Gets Nomadic, in a Pool and an Airport Hangar

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      It was high noon in a disused hangar at Tempelhof airport, near the center of Berlin, and the Komische Oper was troubleshooting its new swimming pool.The director Tobias Kratzer, speaking into a microphone, stopped a group of extras and chorus members during a rehearsal of Hans Werner Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” which will open the Komische Oper’s season on Saturday. And the raft, made up of benches designed to look like they’re floating in the water, was refusing to close on cue.This hangar, part of a complex built by Hitler’s regime in the 1930s, has been used for art installations and sports since the airport closed nearly 16 years ago. Now, it has been outfitted with 1,600 seats and a 15-inch-deep swimming pool stage.Gloria Rehm and Günter Papendell rehearsing the opera.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesThe stage has been outfitted with a 15-inch-deep swimming pool.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesAnd while the Komische Oper, one of Berlin’s three major opera companies, embarks on a multiyear renovation of its theater, the hangar is the first of many sites — including a temporary base at the disused Schiller Theater, a former brewery and a tent outside the city hall — where it will mount performances.“The Raft of the Medusa,” an oratorio, was inspired by the 1819 painting of the same name by Théodore Géricault, which was itself based on the 1816 wreck of the French naval ship Medusa. Lifeboats were used by officers and priests, and the roughly 150 enlisted men were left on a hastily built raft made from what could be salvaged of the ship. After a few miles of being towed by the lifeboats, the raft was cut loose by officers looking to save themselves. For 13 days, the survivors floated adrift with little food and water, eventually resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. Only 15 were eventually rescued, and by accident. The events became a symbol of the recently restored French monarchy’s indifference to the masses.The hangar, which has been used for art installations and sports in recent years, has 1,600 seats for the “Medusa” performances.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesHenze, who chose the subject matter for the oratorio in the heated political year of 1968, subtitled the piece “Requiem for Che Guevara” and scored its ending with the rhythm of the protest chant “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh.” At its premiere, students hung Che Guevara banners from the conductor’s podium; communist and anarchist groups raised red and black flags, and fought both bourgeois audience members and one another; a choir from West Berlin refused to sing under the red banner; and police violence led to the performance being canceled before it began.For Kratzer, the piece has political and artistic importance well beyond the 1960s. “It gets more universal year by year,” he said. “From a distance from the politics of the day, it can be read as being about the crisis of refugees.”At Tempelhof, the hangars next to the one where the Komische will perform, as well as parts of the airport’s tarmac, have been used for refugee housing since 2015.“The raft can be read as a metaphor for every country which will remain inhabitable after the climate crisis,” Kratzer added. “And then it’s also a metaphor for man in space, for being on a finite planet in the eternal universe. The further you are away from the concrete scandal of ’68, the more all those elements open up.”Rehm, foreground, in rehearsal. She will portray Death, tempting the lost sailors to give up.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesThe mezzo-soprano Idunnu Münch plays Charon, based on the boatman from Greek mythology.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesStarting with “The Raft of the Medusa,” each of the next five Komische Oper seasons will open with a large-scale performance in the hangar. That is how long the renovation of the company’s house, in the center of Berlin, is expected to take. The building’s backstage and many technical systems date from the 1960s; the goal is to renovate and preserve the atmosphere of the 1892 operetta theater while adding modern stage technology and a new wing with accessible lobbies, new rehearsal rooms and dressing rooms.“The current house is not up to today’s standards,” Susanne Moser, the company’s co-director, said in a German-language interview with her leadership partner, Philipp Bröking. “Thankfully the Berlin Senate has agreed to make a major investment in the Komische Oper, Berlin and the art of opera. And what luck that Berlin has an empty theater, the Schiller Theater, that can be a base for us.” (Most performances will take place there.)Disruptions like this are always expensive, as well as risky. The company — whose repertory is broad, including musicals, operettas and operas — sold 90 percent of available tickets last season, and has spent recent years saving money to pay for site-specific performances and a reduction in seats per season during the renovation. And although “The Raft of the Medusa” is hardly standard-issue fare, its six-show run is sold out.“The Raft of the Medusa” was created amid the political upheaval of 1968, but the director of the current production feels that it has grown more universal, and today can be read as a commentary on refugees.Andreas Meichsner for The New York Times“Our public loves the quality of productions,” Moser said, in noting that even revivals get a minimum of four weeks of rehearsals. “They love difference. They want to be surprised.” Komische Oper attendees, she added, are likelier to be regulars at a variety of cultural events rather than only opera fans.Kratzer said in an interview that the scale of the Tempelhof hangar makes it possible to stage the Henze in a representational way. “You can have this image of 154 people on this tiny raft in the water,” he said. “On a stage it would always look too big. Here, you can see the scale.”Each singer will be equipped with a microphone. The baritone Günter Papendell, a Komische Oper stalwart who will portray the Everyman sailor Jean-Charles, described in an interview the challenges of swimming, fighting and dancing in the shallow water while keeping a microphone dry.“If the microphone gets wet, then the tone will cut out, and no one will hear me,” Papendell said in a German-language interview. “So I have to be up to my neck in water, do some water acrobatics, and keep everything from here up dry.”Titus Engel conducting the orchestra during a rehearsal.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesThe score, however, is gentler to sing than some contemporary music, said the soprano Gloria Rehm, who will portray the mythic character of Death, a siren who tempts the lost sailors to give up and stop fighting to survive. In a German-language interview, she laughed and let loose some spiky coloratura. “It’s not like that, but almost bel canto in how it sits in the voice,” she added.Bringing Henze’s oratorio into the present involved rethinking the role of the narrator, named Charon, after the Greek demigod who brings souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Usually cast with a patrician (and white) actor, here it is played by Idunnu Münch, a mezzo-soprano of color; the audience will see something of a reversal of the typical sight of a white narrator describing people of color in crisis.In a German-language interview, Münch said that her reading of her part would emphasize its musical qualities. “There are many places in the score where speech is rhythmic, and many places where specific pitches are marked,” she added, “and I’ve never heard them on recordings.”Starting with “The Raft of the Medusa,” each of the next five Komische Oper seasons will open with a large-scale performance in the hangar.Andreas Meichsner for The New York TimesKratzer has directed the character to be less of a passive observer. “Less Brechtian,” he said. “As soon as you do it scenically, she can’t be neutral.” Singing much of the time from a small lifeboat rowing around the wrecked raft, the character will be in the familiar position of witnessing disaster and feeling unable to help.“Empathy alone is not enough,” Kratzer said. “She would love to help, but there are more than a hundred on the raft and even five would sink her lifeboat. This is the tragic dilemma.”Despite the risk of a wet microphone, Papendell described his hopes for “The Raft of the Medusa” and the Komische Oper’s coming nomadic period with a laugh and one word: “Revolution!”“It’s good to leave our home behind for a while and play in some other places. In a place like this,” he added, gesturing around the hangar, “to be able to make music theater — I feel unbelievably happy.” More

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      The Belarus Free Theater Is Also a Support Network for Exiles

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      The leaders of the Belarus Free Theater, who fled the country more than a decade ago, are helping more recent refugees to rebuild their lives while putting on a new show.When the two founders of the renowned Belarus Free Theater claimed political asylum in Britain in 2011, they found themselves homeless, with few possessions and facing a bureaucratic labyrinth before they could work.It was only with help from British theater makers that the pair found places to stay and were able to restart their company from exile, using Skype to conduct rehearsals with actors in Minsk, Belarus’s capital.Twelve years later, the company’s founders, Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, are using that experience to help other artists fleeing political repression.Belarus — an East European country of about nine million people that borders both Russia and Ukraine — has been ruled since 1994 by President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a dictator and ally to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The Belarus Free Theater’s political productions have often criticized Lukashenko’s authoritarian leadership and its troupe was long at risk of arrest. But as repression increased, the company decided it was no longer feasible for its other members to remain in Minsk. In 2021, they also fled to avoid long jail terms. Since then, Kaliada said, she and Khalezin had been helping the actors to find housing, therapy and visas.The company was also running acting classes for other Belarusian and Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw, Kaliada said, that had led to full-scale shows, and was providing help to some Ukrainians singers, too, who could no longer perform full time in their homeland because of the war.“The only thing we wanted was for people to not go through our experiences,” Kaliada said.Nicolai Khalezin and Natalia Kaliada run the Belarus Free Theater. After their country’s 2020 election, they moved their entire troupe out of the country. Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Warsaw this summer, Kaliada and Khalezin started rehearsals for their latest project, “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera singers and video projections that will premiere at the Barbican Center, in London, on Thursday, running through Sep. 16.In interviews with eight actors, musicians and production staff at those rehearsals, four said they were struggling to adjust to life in Warsaw. The composer Olga Podgaiskaya said it was only with a therapist’s help that she’d come to accept that she wouldn’t be returning to Minsk anytime soon. In Belarus, she said, she had been a fixture on the classical music scene: “Here, I’m a nobody. I need to prove from scratch who I am.”Raman Shytsko, an actor, said he still felt like a guest in Poland — and sometimes an unwelcome one. Once in the city of Wroclaw, he said, he was sworn at in the street for speaking Russian. “A lot of people here hate Belarusians now,” he added, because of the regime’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The conductor Vitali Alekseenok and the composer Olga Podgaiskaya rehearsing with musicians from the Five-Storey Ensemble, in preparation for “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt.”Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesMany of the exiled artists said that simply working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” had given them a much-needed sense of purpose.In the rehearsals, which took place at Warsaw’s main opera house, the cast helped each other learn lines and dance moves, and larked about between scenes. Yuliya Shauchuk, an actor, said that the studio was the one place where she always felt joyful.This show’s plot, which is drawn from a popular Belarusian novel and involves a group of ghostly huntsmen who terrorize a rural community, also felt analogous to what was happening now in Belarus, Shauchuk said, where every day the police track down and arrest people who have protested the president’s rule.Several Ukrainian opera singers involved in the production said the rehearsals were benefiting them, too. Mykola Hubchuk had driven overnight from Kolomyya, Ukraine, to take part. “This project is very important for me,” he said. “I need emotion and singing in my life.”Sveta Sugako, the Belarus Free Theater’s production manager, said that the company had renewed its sense of purpose in exile. Its members used to mainly “shout about Belarus,” she said. Now, the company was trying to raise awareness about the war in Ukraine, too, and about the political situation in Russia. It had become, she said, “about the whole region.”The troupe’s journey to exile began in 2020 with an election. That year, Belarus looked set for change, after Lukashenko’s landslide victory was widely dismissed as fraudulent. Members of the company took part in the subsequent mass street protests, hoping Lukashenko would be forced to step aside.Instead, he violently cracked down on opposition and in October 2021, Kaliada and Khalezin pulled the remaining members out. They first headed to Ukraine, with some members wading through swamps to cross the border, before some continued to Poland, and others to Britain.Ever since, Kaliada said, the situation in Belarus had gotten worse. Last year, Putin used the country as a staging ground for his invasion of Ukraine, then said he would move Russian nuclear weapons across the border into Belarus.Helping the troupe members who reached London had proved easier than those in Warsaw, Kaliada said, because of the company’s established connections in London’s theater world. Cate Blanchett and Juliet Stevenson had both provided accommodation for some members in London, Kaliada said.Shauchuk, left, and Kaliada outside the Polish National Opera. The entire company is now in exile, split between Warsaw and London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York TimesIn Poland, the company had few relationships with similarly generous individuals, Kaliada said, but it had secured cheap rates for some actors at a hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. The Polish government also helped, letting the troupe rehearse for free at the state-run opera house.The company has been trying to deepen its ties in Warsaw. Whenever it stages a show in the city, including recent productions featuring refugee teenagers, it invites local dignitaries, and adds Polish subtitles.With the company approaching the end of its second year in exile, Kaliada said its members would soon have to do more to support themselves. Around 100 people were working on “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” she said, and the Belarus Free Thater didn’t have the resources to support them all.Many of the actors in Warsaw said they were already making efforts to find their own work. One said he’d taken on dubbing. Another said they were teaching and another was working as a coder.Shauchuk said she knew she needed “to build a life” in Warsaw and was looking to improve her Polish. But, she said, she would not give up hope of returning home. “Even if I build up a family outside Belarus,” she said, “I want the right to go back.”The company will perform “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt,” a piece of experimental theater including opera and video projections, at the Barbican Center in London.Anna Liminowicz for The New York Times More

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      Review: This London ‘Ring’ Is on the Met Opera’s Radar

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      It’s not stage-filling spectacle, but Barrie Kosky’s version of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” the start of a four-opera epic, is eerie, vivid and intense.Two years ago, the Metropolitan Opera went shopping for a new “Ring” in London and came home empty-handed.English National Opera’s first installment of Wagner’s four-part epic of gods and humans, lust and power, was judged a bit too scrappy and bare to transfer to the grand Met. And anyway, the English company was soon reeling from cuts to its government funding, putting the completion of the cycle in jeopardy.The Met would like to bring a “Ring” to New York in four seasons — a blink of an eye given opera’s glacial planning cycles and Wagner’s technical and casting complexities. So its leadership has another London option under consideration: a production directed by Barrie Kosky that opened on Monday at the Royal Opera, the city’s bigger and older company.Eerie, vivid and intense, Kosky’s version of “Das Rheingold,” the first “Ring” opera, is a show that an opera house on either side of the Atlantic could be proud of, accessible and stimulating for Wagner newcomers and connoisseurs alike. The story is crystal clear, and its emotional and political stakes are taken seriously, without oversimplification or overstatement.It would also finally bring to the Met one of opera’s finest, most rangy and resourceful directors. (A collaboration on Prokofiev’s “Fiery Angel” was spiked during the pandemic.) Kosky, who was born in Australia, was celebrated during his recently ended tenure at the helm of the Komische Oper in Berlin, for his revivals of long-forgotten operettas and his giddy disregard for distinctions between high and low art, between “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Moses und Aron.”His signature style is zany, high-spirited and high-kicking, but he can do sober and austere when the piece calls for it, like a starkly savage “Kat’a Kabanova” at the Salzburg Festival last year. His Royal Opera “Rheingold,” though not without shots of bitter humor, is in this vein.The work’s single, two-and-a-half hour act is all played atop, around and inside a huge hollow tree trunk, collapsed on its side. This is a dying world, Kosky suggests — and to that end he puts Erda, the earth goddess who intones a climactic warning, onstage almost throughout, in the form of a silent actress: elderly, naked, frail, vulnerable. (For that climactic monologue, the singer is hidden from the audience.)Katharina Konradi with the magic gold, whose theft from the Rhine sets the “Ring” in motion.Monika RittershausThe gold whose theft from the Rhine sets the “Ring” in motion, and from which the central ring of power is forged, is here a shiny, syrupy fluid that flows from the tree. It evokes, appropriately, a union of metal and river, as well as the fossil fuels on which the global economy is disastrously based. Its associations range bodily and geologic — lava, milk, semen, blood, honey — and characters lick it greedily from their hands.Kosky and his set designer, Rufus Didwiszus, have imagined Nibelheim, the inferno in which the stolen gold is worked on, as a steampunkish industrial monstrosity, with clamps gripping the tree. Erda, her torso popping out of a knot in the trunk, is connected to tubes that pump the iridescent batter from her body and drain it into pails. This society is built from — and rotted by — the devaluation of women (particularly the old) and environmental exploitation.Victoria Behr’s costumes are contemporary, and there are hints of British flavor: These wealthy, self-serving gods have a taste for nostalgic old-money activities like polo. But this is a basically placeless, timeless production; its primary location, the theater. Kosky emphasizes this by having the audience enter, curtain up, to see the unadorned expanses around the stage. Stagehands do their work visibly, and Alessandro Carletti’s lighting draws attention to its equipment.Kosky uses steam, lights, loudspeakers and knobby holes in the tree to conjure, in charmingly old-fashioned ways, the magic effects and transformations of Wagner’s libretto. But this staging mostly lacks proscenium-filling spectacle — and it was a similar lack that made English National Opera’s “Ring” a no-go for the Met.The transitions between the scenes in “Das Rheingold,” from the heights of mountains to the bowels of the earth and back again, are played at the Royal Opera with the curtain closed, as if Kosky is thumbing his nose at expectations that he is supposed to provide more of a scenic extravaganza. Instead, those interludes are simply showcases for Antonio Pappano, starting his swan-song season as the company’s music director, and the orchestra.You could call this meager. But on Monday, it felt more like focused modesty.Christopher Purves, center, as Alberich transforms the tree into an industrial monstrosity pumping golden fluid from Rose Knox-Peebles, left, as Erda.Monika RittershausWork that’s powerful in the 2,200-seat Royal Opera House won’t necessarily make the same impact in the Met, nearly double that size. But the last New York production of the cycle, directed by Robert Lepage on a preposterously expensive, 45-ton high-tech set, was, when it opened in 2010, an artistic embarrassment for the company as well as a depressing example of empty-headed excess at a time of financial crisis.The “Ring,” given its size and prominence, is a symbol of an opera house’s values, and the lean vitality of Kosky’s vision, which will unfold in London over the coming years, seems right for an era of budget and programming cuts.At the Royal Opera, Pappano and the orchestra match Kosky with fiery but never overblown playing, especially from the lush yet biting strings, their intimacy startling. This is a “Rheingold” that, first and foremost, supports its singers.Wotan, the king of the gods, and Alberich, the dwarf who steals the gold from the Rhine, are here almost brotherly figures, both with bald heads and sturdy bodies, and they share certain qualities, too. Christopher Purves’s Alberich has aristocratic reserve, while Christopher Maltman’s booming, tight-smiling Wotan is capable of feverish aggression; it is shocking but not surprising when he cuts off Alberich’s finger to take the ring.Yet the tenderness with which Maltman embraces the fragile Erda, as the voice of the goddess is heard warning him to give up the ring, is just as indelible, and feels just as true. As Fricka, Wotan’s wife, Marina Prudenskaya sings with slicing anxiety; Sean Panikkar is a charismatically grinning, cackling playboy as Loge, the anarchic fire god; Insung Sim is unusually agonized as the giant Fasolt.This is not an ostentatious production. But the finale, which shouldn’t be given away, is proscenium-filling spectacle, and vintage Kosky, in that it uses one of theater’s simplest, most traditional devices with unforgettable showman flair, conveying all the glittering glamour and fundamental emptiness of the gods’ ascent to their new home — a triumph as hollow as the giant tree.Das RheingoldThrough Sept. 29 at the Royal Opera House, London; roh.co.uk. More

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      The Met Commissions an Opera About Abducted Ukrainian Children

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      The work, by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets and the American playwright George Brant, is inspired by the accounts of mothers whose children were taken during the war.The Metropolitan Opera announced Monday that it had commissioned a new opera about Russia’s abduction and deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children, the latest action by the company to show support for war-torn Ukraine.The work, which will be written by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, with a libretto by the American playwright George Brant, tells the story of a mother who makes a long and perilous trip to rescue her daughter, who is being held at a camp inside Crimea.While the characters in the opera are fictional, the story is based on real-life accounts by Ukrainian mothers who have described making the harrowing 3,000-mile journey from Ukraine into Russian-occupied territory, and back again, to recover their children from the custody of the Russian authorities.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said the aim was to “support Ukraine culturally in its fight for freedom.”“I can’t think of a better way of doing that,” he said, “than having an opera that actually documents an aspect of the war that underscores the individual heroism of the Ukrainian people in the face of the most dire and horrible atrocities and circumstances.”Kolomiiets, 42, a composer and oboist who has written two operas and an array of orchestral, chamber and solo works, said that he felt “a responsibility to create something great and to show something very dignified about my country.”Brant has been conducting research that will help him write the libretto.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York Times“The objective is not only to draw attention to Ukraine but also to shed light on similar situations around the world where mothers endure immense suffering while trying to protect their children,” he said. “I want people to empathize with this pain and use any opportunity they have, at various levels, to prevent this kind of pain from happening.”Brant, who is known for “Grounded,” an acclaimed Off Broadway play that the Met is also turning into an opera, said that he hoped to “contribute in a small way to Ukraine’s cause as it faces this staggering challenge to its existence.”Writing and staging new operas takes time. The Ukrainian opera, which the Met hopes will come to its stage by 2027 or 2028, is the latest display of the company’s support for Kyiv. The Met was one of the first cultural organizations to announce after Russia’s invasion that it would not engage performers or institutions that supported President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and it cut ties with one of its biggest stars, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.Since then, the Met has helped create the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, an ensemble of refugees who fled the war and artists who stayed behind, which has led two international tours. The company has also staged concerts in support of Ukraine and hung banners forming the Ukrainian flag across the exterior of the theater.The opera is being developed as part of a joint commissioning program by the Met and Lincoln Center Theater, which began in 2006.The idea for commissioning an opera by a Ukrainian composer came during a meeting last year between Gelb and Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. The Canadian Ukrainian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, who is married to Gelb and leads the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, was also present. Ukrainian cultural officials spread word of the opportunity and received 72 applications from composers, which were vetted by the Met.The Met draped the opera house in the Ukrainian flag in February when it held a benefit concert for Ukraine.James Estrin/The New York TimesGelb said that the Met had selected Kolomiiets because of his experience in opera as well as his deep understanding of Ukrainian musical traditions. Zelenska praised the project, saying in a statement that “the pain of Ukrainian mothers that the world should hear will be heard.”Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children has received wide attention, especially after the International Criminal Court earlier this year issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes, saying he bore criminal responsibility for the children’s treatment. The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who has been the public face of a Kremlin-sponsored program in which Ukrainian children and teenagers have been taken to Russia.Brant said he had been moved after reading news reports about Ukrainian mothers. The opera will feature workers from Save Ukraine, one of several charity groups helping mothers make the trek to find their children.“I feel like there’s thousands of stories that could be told and should be told about this conflict, but this one seemed to convey both the scale of the horror that the Ukrainians face and the courage and resilience of its people,” Brant said.Kolomiiets, who has been living in Germany since last year, said he expected his score would be “gentle, naïve, emotional and even dramatic.” He said that he tries to envision a peaceful and thriving Ukraine.“The story has a happy ending,” he said of the opera. “And it’s really important for us to have a happy ending right now.”Anna Tsybko contributed research. More

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      New Recordings Revive James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams Rarities

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      A pair of new recordings bring holy grail artifacts by the composer-pianists James P. Johnson and Mary Lou Williams into the light.This September, audiences will at last possess a more dynamic, more elegant — and just plain improved — sense of how New York City’s jazz and classical scenes converged in the 1940s.Was eight decades a galling length of time to have waited? Naturally. But better late than never.The belated occasion is because of a pair of new recordings. Each one has located and dusted off a holy grail artifact, dating from an era when Black composers with sway in jazz circles dared to pursue hybrid musical styles, all while meeting various forms of resistance or disrespect. Their classical works were discussed as they premiered, yet were rarely programmed twice. Nor were they properly documented on recordings.That last bit of the story is what’s changing, starting this week. One CD, out Friday from the Naxos label, brings the world premiere recording of “De Organizer”: a one-act opera on labor politics jointly conceived by the composer-pianist James P. Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.James P. Johnson, shown, jointly conceived the one-act opera “De Organizer” with Langston Hughes.Gilles Petard/Redferns, via Getty ImagesMary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, but its chamber orchestra version had never been properly documented on a studio recording.Graphic House/Archive Photos, via Getty ImagesOne week after that, the chamber orchestra version of Mary Lou Williams’s “Zodiac Suite” will enjoy its first-ever studio recording on the Mack Avenue label.When news releases for both albums hit my inbox nearly simultaneously, toward the end of the summer, my mouth hung open. Both Johnson and Williams were era-defining composers and improvising pianists: Johnson was an exemplar of Harlem stride and the author of the “Charleston”; Williams matured as a composer and player in the crucible of Kansas City’s boogie-woogie style, before arranging for Ellington and tutoring lions of bebop in New York. Why shouldn’t we have access to their ambitious classical works?Johnson and Hughes’s “De Organizer” had its lone stretch onstage in 1940, at a convention hosted by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. And then Johnson’s score promptly disappeared from public view until it was (mostly) recovered, and a restoration by the scholar-pianist James Dapogny premiered in 2002.After discovering a copy of every sung note in the opera, Dapogny was also given details on the original orchestration by Johnson’s foundation. The new Naxos CD documents the scholar’s edition, recorded by the conductor Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Opera Theater and Symphony Orchestra in a 2006 performance. (It also offers excerpts from another Johnson opera, “The Dreamy Kid,” based on the Eugene O’Neill play.)In “Organizer,” the result is a chameleonic work that melds the vibrato of operatic singing with select stylistic attributes of Black spirituals and the blues; its orchestral heft also has a place for touches of the Harlem stride style that Johnson pioneered. (Dapogny is the pianist in this performance.)The libretto — previously published in Susan Duffy’s book “The Political Plays of Langston Hughes” — can seem sleek to a point of slightness, on the page. But Hughes’s narrative and rhetorical designs hit in a new way when heard in tandem with Johnson’s ebullient, inventive music; his plot feeds Johnson’s capaciousness as a composer, making space for choral meditations and grand solo entrances, even as it presses forward with clear narrative drive and a sense of high spirits.When a local overseer crashes a meeting of Black sharecroppers to discourage their unionizing, Hughes’s text indicates that the rhythm involved should evoke the song “Mamma Don’t ’Low No Piano Playin’ Here” (a folk tune that has enjoyed a great number of variations over the decades) — signaling that one authority’s wishes will not present a major obstacle for the community that can sing out together.The new “Zodiac Suite,” on LP. Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor for his ability to “translate” the piece’s jazz-ensemble aspects to the full chamber orchestra.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWith an all-Black creative team pushing for a progressive vision of labor solidarity, perhaps it’s no great mystery as to why the classical industry of the time did not promote the opera (or invest in its preservation). However the erasure of “Organizer” came about, Dapogny’s devotion to his restoration of the score, right up until his death in 2019, amounts to its own kind of artistic activism.A similar interventionist spirit was required when producing a new take of Williams’s “Zodiac Suite.” With its 12 movements — one for each astrological sign — the composer created affectionate portraits of admired artists and friends. While that composition has long been popular in its jazz-trio form, Williams was eager to adapt it for both chamber orchestra and a full orchestra. A document exists of the chamber version, capturing a live 1945 performance at Town Hall in New York, though that take’s lack of proper rehearsal time is audible in the final, muddled result.So her chamber version was also in need of a contemporary champion. It has found one in Aaron Diehl — a pianist widely admired in both jazz and classical circles.During the lockdown portion of the pandemic, he was joined by the New York Philharmonic as he played excerpts from the chamber “Zodiac” for the orchestra’s streaming channel. Yet on the new Mack Avenue recording, he’s joined not by the Philharmonic, but by the adventurous chamber orchestra the Knights, which is staffed by some of the brightest younger players on the classical scene. And they’ve clearly invested time in all 12 parts of Williams’s suite.The Knights as a whole balance lightness of touch with a forward sense of swing in the opening “Aries,” and in the regal flourishes that Williams deployed in movements like “Taurus” and “Leo.” Strings in particular seem to revel in the bluesy sliding tones of “Cancer,” which also includes the guest tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover’s elegant soloing (in a spot originally conceived by Williams for Ben Webster).The Knights flutist Alex Sopp emerges as a key figure as the suite progresses — including when she soars dreamily atop the rhythmic patterns of “Scorpio” for significant, exposed stretches. Diehl, the bassist David Wong and the drummer Aaron Kimmel are a consistent delight — as when providing authoritative piano-trio swing during “Virgo.”In an interview, Diehl lavished praise on the chamber orchestra. “It’s hard enough — even in a small jazz ensemble, five or six people — to agree on the eighth-note triplet,” he said. “When you have multiples of that — 25 or 30 people — that always makes it more difficult. It’s always about negotiating how you’re going to play, how you’re going to phrase.”Diehl credited the Knights’ artistic director and conductor, Eric Jacobsen, for his ability to “translate” the jazz-ensemble aspects of the “Zodiac Suite” to his full chamber orchestra.In a separate interview, Kiesler, the conductor of “De Organizer,” described how the Michigan performance of Johnson’s operatic music required a similar sense of open investigation regarding orchestral swing. He said he learned from Dapogny that, when it comes to swing, “the style is not always about the rhythm, but the weight — it’s about emphasis in places that we might not have it in so-called ‘classical’ music.”The interpretive insights on both new recordings are so strong, they stand alongside other recent triumphs in the American repertoire. The just-right balance of orchestral weight and lithe swing is also in evidence in a recent recording of Wynton Marsalis’s Symphony No. 4. And the engaged political elements of Johnson and Hughes’s one-act opera have a connection with the contemporary operas of the saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton, whose “Trillium X” premiered in Prague this summer.So: More evidence of the true breadth and nature of the American repertoire is steadily coming into view. What major orchestras and opera companies do with that information may be up to their donor bases. But in the meantime, both of these new recordings are capable of dishing out American art music ambrosia — and to a broad community of listeners. More

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      The Soprano Ailyn Pérez Doesn’t Feel Like a Beginner Anymore

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      Ailyn Pérez didn’t get a chance to see the billboards in New York: the Metropolitan Opera’s advertisements for its coming season, featuring a portrait of her in spectral whites, her eyes closed as she comes face to face with a butterfly.She had been too busy appearing at San Francisco Opera’s centennial concert, rushing to Munich to sing Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” and flying to Santa Fe to star in Dvorak’s “Rusalka.” On the outdoor stage in New Mexico, she didn’t encounter any butterflies, but she did swallow an insect.“I started coughing,” Pérez, 44, said with a laugh during an interview last month on the grounds of Santa Fe Opera. “But this is my third opera here, and I’ve learned that you deal with the elements.”Friends have sent her photos of the New York billboards, which are a first for her. She has been performing at the Met since 2015 — blossoming into a soprano of lush vocal beauty, dramatic acuity and commanding presence — but there hasn’t been a new production built around her until this season, when Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas” receives its company premiere.“I haven’t posted any of the photos, because I don’t want to post something and then it’s gone,” Pérez said. “But I see it, and I just think, Wow, I’ve always wanted this, and I didn’t know it would be this role. It blows my mind.”She is excited not only by the career milestone, but also by what “Florencia” means for the Met. Catán’s 1996 opera — a Gabriel García Márquez-inspired story of a diva’s homecoming, opening Nov. 16 — is part of a wave of contemporary works joining the repertory there. More remarkably, it is the house’s first Spanish-language show. And at its heart is Pérez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants.Ushering in this era of the Met’s history is, she said, “such an honor.” To her colleagues, though, especially Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, who is conducting “Florencia,” this moment is well-deserved for one of the house’s leading sopranos.“We go back to the Salzburg Festival over a decade ago,” Nézet-Séguin said of his relationship with Pérez. “And we’ve been regularly making music together. The generosity of the person comes through in every vocal performance that she gives. The refinement, the quality of the voice, the generosity of the heart — it’s what makes her exceptional.”Pérez, whose repertoire includes both lyric and dramatic roles, starred in “Rusalka” at the Santa Fe Opera this summer. Curtis BrownPérez grew up in Chicago, where her parents, both from towns near Guadalajara, Mexico, met. She started school on the South Side, but at 6 moved to the suburb of Elk Grove Village. There, she made a point of speaking English in the classroom despite Spanish being the default language at home.“It was a time where, if you spoke Spanish, you had E.S.L. classes, which I’m sure was the system’s way of caring,” Pérez said, “but it also hindered a group of students from learning with everyone else.”Making friends was difficult. Her homemade ham sandwiches came with avocado and jalapeño, which she said wasn’t good for trading at lunch. There was also the fact that she looked different from other children.But her Elk Grove elementary school was where she first took music classes. The instructor was playful, teaching rhythm and tempo with a wink and farting noises. “This is meant to be fun,” Pérez remembered thinking. She rented a recorder, then took up the cello to join the orchestra and flute to be in the band.In high school, she started voice lessons because they were required for her to take part in the musical. At her first session, the teacher handed her some sheet music and asked her to sing. She felt confident about breathing because of her experience on flute, and was able to sight-read the score. “He looked at me like, ‘Who are you?’” Pérez recalled. She knew virtually nothing about opera but was breezing through the famous Puccini aria “O mio babbino caro.”In the end, she got to perform in musicals — as Sarah in “Guys and Dolls,” and as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes” — but her interest was quickly overtaken by opera. Pérez checked out CDs from the library and made her way through the classic recordings of Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Mirella Freni and Montserrat Caballé. She brought a recording of “La Traviata” to her teacher and asked why the music made her cry.She adored Renée Fleming, whom she got to meet after a recital in Chicago. The great soprano told her that she had “nice cheekbones,” to which she replied, “Oh my God, thank you.” But, more important, that concert was the moment, Pérez said, that she “saw someone do the thing” of singing.Pérez had still not been to an opera. That wouldn’t happen until she saw Gounod’s “Faust” — starring a student Lawrence Brownlee — at Indiana University Bloomington. She studied there because, she was told, Met singers were on the faculty. Her teachers included the sopranos Martina Arroyo and Virginia Zeani, who originated the role of Blanche in Poulenc’s “Dialogues des Carmélites,” which Pérez would go on to perform at the Met.She continued her studies at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, finishing there in 2006. Two years later, she was onstage in Salzburg, performing alongside the tenor Rolando Villazón, under Nézet-Séguin’s baton, in Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.” After that prestigious debut, her arrival at the Met didn’t come until 2015, when she sang Micaëla in a revival of “Carmen.”“A confident, forthright presence in a role that can fade into merely demure, Ms. Pérez has a penetrating, settled voice,” Zachary Woolfe wrote of that night in The New York Times. “Her tone may not be sumptuous, but it’s clear and articulate, and she uses it with intelligence and a sense of purpose.”Pérez as Micaëla in “Carmen” at the Met: “A confident, forthright presence in a role that can fade into merely demure,” the Times critic wrote.Marty Sohl/Met OperaPérez could hardly be accused of not having a sumptuous voice today. Her sound has become richer, while remaining nimble enough for a spinto repertoire encompassing both lyric and dramatic roles; she can inspire awe as the Contessa in “Le Nozze di Figaro” one night and as the doomed nymph of “Rusalka” the next.Her career at the Met has been representative of that range, in part because she is a favorite of Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “Each season, she has grown and developed, and quite frankly gotten better and better,” he said. “She very convincingly becomes the characters whom she’s portraying, but above all her voice is absolutely beautiful.”In spring 2020, Pérez was set to sing in “Simon Boccanegra” at the Met, but the season was cut short by the pandemic. “The closure really knocked me out,” she said. It helped — a lot — that by then she had met Soloman Howard.They had been introduced in Santa Fe. In 2016, Pérez starred as Juliette in “Roméo,” and her colleagues included Howard, a bass-baritone, as the duke. “He took my breath away,” she said. “He’s such a brilliant artist and connector. Whether speaking or singing, the presence brings something that draws people in but also delivers this power. I knew that his calling in life would be big.”It wasn’t until 2019, though, that they began dating. They attended the Vienna Opera Ball together, and traveled to see each other perform. Once the pandemic hit, they sheltered together in Chicago. Where she was despondent, he was resourceful. He rounded up equipment for them to start recording music at home.At one point, Santa Fe Opera asked Pérez to tape herself singing “Song to the Moon” from “Rusalka,” and Howard said, “‘We are going to make a video,’” she recalled. “He cut stars out of foil and pinned them on the drapes. He got a boulder from a local Home Goods store. I was like the Little Mermaid on the rock, and that was all him.”When live opera resumed, Pérez reopened the Met’s auditorium as the soprano soloist in Verdi’s Requiem, to observe the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. She doesn’t really remember that night — “I was out of my body” — but others do. Gelb, who said, “You can’t fake Verdi,” remembered her sounding “absolutely magnificent.” Nézet-Séguin, called it “a performance for the ages.”Howard, Pérez said, gave her something to hope for in the months leading up to that Requiem. She referred to him as “mi vida” — “my life.” Out and about in the opera world, they are something of a power couple, beloved and difficult to miss in their red-carpet-ready style. (“That’s all Soloman.”) Days after the opening night of “Rusalka” in Santa Fe, they got married.The ceremony was small and private. A larger celebration will come, to be planned in the spaces between two peripatetic careers — which will soon bring Pérez back to the Met for “Florencia” rehearsals.It’s an opera that Gelb has long wanted to bring to the house; he was just waiting, he said, for the right star. And he knew that his hope for Pérez had paid off last season when, during the run of “Carmélites,” he asked her to sing Florencia’s final aria for the Met board on only a day’s notice. She delivered it, he added, “with so much beauty and conviction, she had the board sort of swooning along with her.”In Santa Fe, Pérez spoke about the role with the depth of a literary thinker, but acknowledged that she will have to see what the director, Mary Zimmerman, comes up with for the production. She is certain, at least, of the confidence she is bringing to “Florencia,” a product of the years leading up to this moment.“I don’t feel like a beginner anymore,” Pérez said. “I’m not wondering what happens next. Now, I can really look back and see it all.” More