Opera

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Rolando Villazón Returns to the Met Opera in Mozart's “Magic Flute”

      by

      Rolando Villazón, a onetime star plagued by vocal issues, is returning to the house after eight years for “The Magic Flute.”It was deep into Julie Taymor’s playful production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost.“Papageno,” Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly “Flute” that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. “Are you still with me?”As he rotated past on a set piece, the tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papageno’s lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, “I’m right here.”Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Met’s mighty stage. Though he was once one of the company’s brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight years. Many — him included — assumed he would never appear at the Met again.Villazón, 49, in rehearsal for “The Magic Flute.” In the mid-2000s he was one of the Met’s brightest rising stars.Jonathan Tichler/Met Opera“We can call it a roller coaster,” Villazón, 49, said in an interview. “A very bumpy career.”Plagued for much of the past 15 years by vocal problems and mental fears, Villazón lost his consistency and his nerve. “Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “At least at the Met. He had some vocal setbacks and disappeared from our radar.”Villazón had reconciled himself to the end of his career, but during the pandemic he stumbled across a new approach to singing — and now believes he isn’t yet finished. Returning to the Met as Papageno, a role almost always sung by a lower voice, might still appear to be an admission of weakness: a tenor losing his high notes and scrambling to the safety of baritone territory.Not so fast.“I’m not a baritone,” Villazón said, noting that Mozart wrote the part for Emanuel Schikaneder, the “Flute” librettist, who was a famed actor and impresario but far from a traditional opera singer. “There are some low notes that aren’t really for a tenor, like B flat. But they’re mostly in the harmony. The lowest when he sings alone is a C, which is very central.”“Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “At least at the Met.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesIt’s true, though: When Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, asked him to sing Papageno for a recording in 2018, Villazón at first demurred. “I mean, in terms of the character, I love the character,” he said, “But, of course, baritone role, ta ta ta. …”In other words, people might take his casting as an admission that the voice that had brought him celebrity was in permanent retreat. It was a fear he soon got over.“To be honest,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I am worried about what people think.”This is still a course few would have predicted when he rose, in the early 2000s, as a lyric tenor, boyish and ardent in “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” — even if there was always a duskiness to his tone, allowing him to be convincing in, for example, the heavier title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” A 2005 profile in The New York Times observed that Villazón was being compared to Plácido Domingo, at whose Operalia competition Villazón got his big break in 1999.“The voice, at this early stage,” the Times profile said, “weighs in on the light side but is tinged like Mr. Domingo’s with the dark shading of a baritone.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That summer, Villazón and Anna Netrebko, also fast-rising at the time, created a sensation in Willy Decker’s spare, vivid staging of “La Traviata” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, and were swiftly anointed opera’s next onstage power couple.“He seemed,” Gelb said, “to be the most exciting tenor in 2005, ’06.” In 2007, Villazón and Netrebko were the stars of a gala celebration of the Met’s 40th anniversary at Lincoln Center.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesBut while Netrebko’s career continued to skyrocket, calamity struck Villazón: He began to crack on some high notes, a tenor’s lifeblood. Cancellations piled up, including a Live in HD broadcast of “Lucia di Lammermoor” from the Met alongside Netrebko.A cyst was eventually discovered inside his vocal cords; after a delicate operation in 2009, he couldn’t speak for some time, let alone sing. He gingerly re-emerged on opera and concert stages, including a Met run of “Eugene Onegin” in 2013. (“Despite some initial cautiousness in the first act, in which he sometimes sounded underpowered,” the Times review said, “he sang with confidence and poise.”)“It was for me very important to reestablish myself, to reposition as a tenor,” Villazón said. But the long period of uncertainty and tweaks to his technique had left their mark, and he began to lose confidence in himself and his instrument.“Around 2015, 2016, that’s when I started to develop stage fright, because I was afraid of getting something else,” he said. “I was hitting nine out of 10 high notes. When you are in this business, and at this level, you hit 10 out of 10. They might not be all beautiful, but you hit all of them. If you’re not hitting one of those 10, you start thinking, Is this the one? And then you start hitting eight out of 10, and seven out of 10.”He worked with sports coaches, and tried taking a small amount of anti-anxiety medication before performances. That helped with his fear, but took away the internal fire that he felt fueled his best work.“How do I stop it being hell to go on and perform?” he recalled thinking. He re-embraced the Baroque repertory that he had done earlier in his career under the conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, moving away from the high notes that had turned perilously unreliable. Then he developed what he called “uncomfortable sensations,” even in the middle of his voice.With a breakthrough during the pandemic, Villazón believes he has mastered some of the vocal problems that have plagued him.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn 2017, 10 years after headlining the Met’s 40th-anniversary gala, Villazón dropped out a few days before his appearance at its 50th. He felt basically done: “I thought, Let me reach 50 and I can call it quits as a singer.”It helped that singing wasn’t all he was doing by that point. He had some success as a television personality, was directing productions and had been named the artistic leader of the Mozartwoche festival in Salzburg. He had even started writing novels.But he wasn’t yet ready to give up performing entirely, and discovered that acid reflux was causing his new round of problems. He had another operation, at the end of 2018, and slowly his vocal steadiness, though not his high notes, came back.Then, practicing during the pandemic, he hit a note — an F — and immediately knew something had shifted in the way he produced sound. Working with coaches, he revised his approach to his voice; even some of his older, higher-flying roles felt possible again.“The way it feels, I’m entering the greatest moment of my career,” he said. “I have no ambitions. I don’t need to achieve, professionally, anything else. It’s all artistic achievements.”So his coming seasons will include Mozart’s Tito and Idomeneo; Edgardo in “Lucia”; even Loge, the trickster fire god in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” which Villazón was working on when he had his pandemic breakthrough.“I certainly plan to sit with him and discuss other roles with him,” Gelb said. “I don’t want this to be a drive-by appearance. But it’s up to him, and what he feels comfortable with.”Papageno, then, is hopefully not the beginning of the end for Villazón, but a delightful lark — a part for which he doesn’t feel the need to apologize, and on which he can lavish his fascination with the figure of the clown.“They never lose, they never die, and they never quit,” he said. “The clown goes on.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      ‘The Snowy Day,’ a Children’s Classic, Becomes an Opera

      by

      Based on the popular 1962 children’s book, the show aims to celebrate Blackness and attract new audiences to the art form.In the first scene of “The Snowy Day,” a new opera based on the popular 1962 children’s book, a Black mother sings an aria as her young son, Peter, prepares to go outdoors alone to explore the snow.“Oh, how Mama’s eyes are watching this world,” she says.The moment conveys the anxiety that every parent feels sending a child into the unfamiliar. But in our times, the scene takes on a more painful specificity, speaking to the fear and trauma experienced by many Black families, in particular.“He’s a Black boy in a red hoodie going out into the snow alone,” said Joel Thompson, the composer of the work, which premieres at Houston Grand Opera on Thursday. “That’s Tamir Rice; that’s Trayvon Martin. And we wanted to focus on Peter’s humanity and his childlike wonder.”“The Snowy Day,” by Ezra Jack Keats, has long been a favorite, celebrated as one of the first mainstream children’s books to prominently feature a Black protagonist. It is the most checked-out book in the history of the New York Public Library.“The Snowy Day” (with McMillon, left, and Karen Slack as Peter’s mother) shows a Black family that is happy and intact, to counter stereotypes of dysfunction and despair in Black communities.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesThis adaptation aims to help change perceptions about Black identity and attract new audiences to opera at a time when the art form faces serious financial pressures and questions about its future.“We are waking up to the idea that opera is for everyone,” said Andrea Davis Pinkney, a children’s book author who wrote the libretto. “We are waking up to the fact that, yes, this is your story, and your story, and my story, and our story.”Since their first meeting about four years ago at a deli near Carnegie Hall, Thompson and Pinkney have been working to recreate the book’s sense of enchantment and its nuanced portrayal of race.The opera, like the book, tells the story of Peter, who awakens one day to see the world outside his window covered in a fresh blanket of snow. He ventures into the cold, making snow angels, watching a snowball fight, meeting a friend and sliding down a hill.McMillon, left, with Andrea Davis Pinkney, the children’s book author who wrote the libretto.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesJoel Thompson, center, the opera’s composer, conferring with Jeremy Johnson, Houston Grand Opera’s dramaturg.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesWhile Thompson and Pinkney tried to stay true to the spirit of Keats’s work, they also took liberties. Several new characters are introduced, including Amy, a Latina friend of Peter’s who teaches him some words in Spanish.The creators wanted the work to show a Black family that was happy and intact to counter stereotypes in popular culture of dysfunction and despair in Black communities. They added a father, who is featured in later books by Keats but not in “The Snowy Day,” to avoid any suggestion that Peter was being raised by a single mother. They reworked the libretto several times, choosing to describe Peter as a “beautiful boy” rather than to explicitly mention his race. (An early draft described him as a “brown sugar boy.”)“It’s about a loving family who happens to be a family of color,” Pinkney said. “That is the universal nature of ‘The Snowy Day.’”Thompson has long had an interest in connecting music to social issues. He is best known for “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” which premiered in 2015. That choral piece sets to music the final words of seven Black men killed during encounters with the police..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The Snowy Day” was a different kind of challenge, giving Thompson a chance to focus on a world of wonder and whimsy. But he also sees parallels to his previous work.The creators added a father (played by Nicholas Newton), who is featured in later books by Keats but not in “The Snowy Day,” to avoid any suggestion that Peter was being raised by a single mother.Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“It has the same mission of centering Black humanity and the complex interiority of Blackness in America,” he said. “I had to let go of all of the lenses of fear that I had sort of put over my eyes as just being a Black man in this world, and really look at the world through Peter’s eyes.”He chose to ground the score in a four-note motif that appears throughout the opera, which lasts about an hour. Some passages evoke hymns; others, like the snowball fight, take a jazzy, irreverent turn.Because there is no dialogue in the book, much of the libretto is invented. When Peter sees the snow outside his window at the start of the opera, he sings:Morning promise, rising.Surprising me with its splendoron the sidewalks and streets.Omer Ben Seadia, the director of the production, said she hoped the work would resonate with people, even if they had never read “The Snowy Day” or seen an opera before.“There are a lot of people who are stepping in for the first time,” she said. “Our challenge is to make the opera as magical as possible.”She added: “If you don’t know the book; if you, like me, didn’t grow up with snow; if you’ve never seen an opera, there are so many things that make this opera so accessible and familiar.”The production is notable for its efforts to showcase Black and Latino artists — especially women — who historically have been severely underrepresented in classical music. The idea to adapt the book originally came from the soprano Julia Bullock, who was set to play the role of Peter but withdrew because of travel restrictions related to the pandemic, which also forced the cancellation of the scheduled premiere last year.Peter is now played by Raven McMillon, and the cast also includes the soprano Karen Slack as Mama, the bass-baritone Nicholas Newton (Daddy) and the soprano Elena Villalón (Amy). Patrick Summers, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, conducts.The effort to bring more diversity to opera has grown increasingly urgent in recent years as companies across the country have seen declining attendance and an aging subscriber base.Omer Ben Seadia, the production’s director, gives notes to the cast.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesKevin Miller, an assistant conductor on the production, leads an ensemble backstage.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesSome institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, have found success with productions like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which debuted at the Met this fall, the first work by a Black composer in the company’s 138-year history. (Following the success of “Fire,” the company said on Tuesday it would stage Blanchard’s earlier opera, “Champion,” next season.)Khori Dastoor, who starts next month as Houston Grand Opera’s general director and chief executive, said that presenting works that reflect a broad range of experiences and perspectives was essential to the future.“Our mission centers on advancing opera as an art form and building the diverse audiences of tomorrow,” Dastoor said.Members of the cast said they were pleased to be part of a work that is challenging stereotypes.“It’s important for Black people to not always have to watch something that is filled with trauma in order to see themselves onstage,” McMillon said. Annie Mulligan for The New York Times“People can see themselves in it,” McMillon said. “It’s important for Black people to not always have to watch something that is filled with trauma in order to see themselves onstage.”Thompson said he has been inspired by Peter’s ability to see the world through a prism of wonder rather than fear.“Fear and wonder are two sides of the same coin,” he said. “If I can stop for a moment and breathe and choose to look with wonder instead of fear, it’s healing for me.” More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Genre-Blurring, Politically Charged Opera Wins Top Music Prize

      by

      Olga Neuwirth’s “Orlando,” an adaptation of Virginia Woolf that jolted a conservative opera house, received the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award.“Orlando,” the Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth’s unruly and brazenly political opera adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel, which made history as the first work by a woman to be presented by the Vienna State Opera, has won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.When she learned the news — announced on Monday by the University of Louisville, which administers the award — Neuwirth, 53, was on the phone with someone else and didn’t know how to respond to a mysterious call. “I don’t know anyone from Louisville,” she said in a video interview. “I didn’t expect this at all.”It was truly a surprise in part because the award — which comes with $100,000 and a place alongside luminaries including Kaija Saariaho, Pierre Boulez and Gyorgy Kurtag — is for 2022, and “Orlando” premiered two years ago. Despite a DVD release of the production coming out this month, it was, Neuwirth said, “not on my brain anymore.”The work — a subversive blurring of genre, time and politics reflecting on how little has changed over the centuries, yet how much change is possible — jolted the generally conservative Vienna State Opera. It is also something of a milestone for the Grawemeyer, which since its inaugural award in 1985 has been given to only three other women before Neuwirth (an issue Andrew Norman called attention to when he won the 2017 prize).“‘Orlando’ is an enormous, supremely ambitious work,” Marc Satterwhite, the award’s director, said in a statement. “The libretto and multifaceted score challenge our preconceptions of gender and sexual roles and test our ideas of what opera is and is not.”Woolf’s novel, a fantastical parody of biographies, follows its forever-young protagonist through the centuries: from Orlando’s years as a favorite of Elizabeth I to the book’s publication in 1928. Appearing first as a titled man, the character suddenly becomes a woman — who later faces a comparatively frustrating life on the other side of gender politics. Sally Potter adapted the story into a wry and dreamy 1992 film, starring Tilda Swinton, that carried Orlando’s story into the late 20th century.Neuwirth’s opera goes another step further, taking the plot to the present — a world facing climate crisis, the rise of nationalism and the persistence of the patriarchy — and looking toward a better future. “It’s not kitschy, but in a way it’s hopeful,” she said in the interview. “And we need to keep that in our hearts. Otherwise hate will fill it up more and more. We are all different, but just by listening to each other we can try to create a different world.”Her “Orlando” covers several hundred years over three hours, with a score of smoothly fleeting stylistic shifts and disorientingly fuzzy instrumental distinctions — what Neuwirth has described as a kind of androgyny in sound. “I think it’s really my grand piece,” she said. “I’m in this business now for 35 years, and this brought everything together.”Neuwirth studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, then at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Art Institute. She described her time in the United States as formative; amid open-minded artistic friends and casual acquaintance with the chess legend Bobby Fischer, she thought about music in a more inclusive, genre-embracing way.“Orlando” followed other stage works, including a harrowing 2003 adaptation of David Lynch’s film “Lost Highway.” It starred the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey and featured artists from outside opera — among them the cabaret legend Justin Vivian Bond as Orlando’s child and the fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, who did the costumes.Yet in bringing the production to life at the Vienna State Opera, Neuwirth said, “I had a lot of fights.” The company gave it a run of only five performances, and a revival is currently not expected. “Orlando” may have been a breakthrough for the house, but the fact that it came and went, she added, “is a sign that the system has not changed.”Neuwirth has recently faced other setbacks. Her next opera, “Manga for Lovers” — whose team includes the “Lost Highway” screenwriter Barry Gifford, the innovative director Yuval Sharon and the soprano Julia Bullock — had been planned for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris next fall, but was canceled, with no new opening in sight. “Keyframes for a Hippogriff,” her commission for the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19 series to commemorate the 19th Amendment, was meant to premiere in June 2020 but remains delayed by the pandemic because the piece calls for a children’s choir. (It was instead first presented by the Berlin Philharmonic in September.)“I still think there are so many gifted composers out there, it feels like Russian roulette, in a positive way,” Neuwirth said of the Grawemeyer news, which follows her winning the Wolf Prize in Music earlier this year. “But after everything, and the whole story with ‘Orlando,’ it is a really wonderful sign to keep going.” More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Review: ‘Tosca’ Catches Fire at the Met Opera

      by

      Sondra Radvanovsky and Brian Jagde sing thrillingly, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a superb performance of Puccini’s classic.Sometimes, for reasons no one can fully explain, an opera performance just catches fire. That’s what happened at the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday, when Puccini’s “Tosca” returned.In a fall at the Met that’s been full of momentous new works, intriguing repertory firsts and six-hour epics, this seemed on paper just an ordinary revival of David McVicar’s production. The soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was returning in the title role; the tenor Brian Jagde was appearing at the Met for the second time, singing Cavaradossi; the veteran baritone George Gagnidze (a late replacement for Evgeny Nikitin) was Scarpia; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, was in the pit.Yet starting with the opening measures, chilling orchestral chords that represent the villainous Scarpia, this performance abounded in crackling energy, sure-paced suspense, romantic reverie and thrilling singing from Radvanovsky and Jagde.It was Nézet-Séguin who seemed to be inspiring these formidable singers and the orchestra. On Monday, the Met announced that he was withdrawing from a January run of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” and taking a nearly four-week sabbatical from his conducting duties, including his directorship of the Philadelphia Orchestra.Nézet-Séguin has been maintaining a busy schedule this fall, including Met runs of two demanding contemporary works, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “Eurydice”; in the announcement he said he needed some time to “re-energize.” Though it was a concerning decision, and it’s disappointing to lose him for “Figaro,” if taking a short break will allow him to keep summoning the kind of energy he had for “Tosca,” then so be it.He didn’t bring an unusual interpretive approach to Puccini’s familiar score. He simply led a splendid performance: rhythmically crisp, transparent, textured and colorful. While giving singers expressive leeway, he maintained shape and direction and favored slightly brisker than usual pacing. When, in Act I, Cavaradossi, trying to calm his jealous lover’s suspicions, turns to Tosca with a lyrical outpouring that begins their duet, Jagde and Radvanovsky sang with plenty of melting lyricism. Still, what a pleasure it was to hear the music — thanks to Nézet-Séguin’s subtle control — performed with a clear pulse, in a tempo that did not allow for any indulgences.Radvanovsky’s account of the great aria “Vissi d’arte” was at once intensely anguished and surpassingly beautiful, our critic writes.Ken Howard/Metropolitan OperaRadvanovsky was extraordinary. Like Maria Callas, perhaps the 20th century’s defining Tosca, she uses the slightly grainy quality of her sound to exciting dramatic purpose. Her account of the great aria “Vissi d’arte” was at once intensely anguished and surpassingly beautiful. The ovation went on so long it seemed Radvanovsky might be forced to break character and acknowledge it. But not this Tosca. One of the best actresses in opera, she made the character her own with affecting touches — flirtatious and playful one moment, fearful and anguished the next.In Jagde she had a tenor who could match her soaring power. It’s hard to believe that he spent almost 10 years early in his career as a baritone. On Thursday his enormous, vibrant voice was capped by exciting top notes. Now and then I wanted a little more subtlety and elegance. But it’s hard to complain when you have a singer with such a big, beefy instrument.Gagnidze held his own as Scarpia, conveying the character’s malevolence but also his aristocratic disdain. Patrick Carfizzi as the Sacristan, Kevin Short as Angelotti and Tony Stevenson as Spoletta were all excellent.There are just four more performances this month with Radvanovsky, Jagde and Nézet-Séguin. When word gets out, tickets may be scarce.ToscaThrough Dec. 18 with this cast (and in January and March with different artists) at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. More

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      At 80, Robert Wilson Holds On to a Singular Vision for the Stage

      by

      Slowed but not stopped by the pandemic, Wilson has had a busy fall that continues with his production of “Turandot” at the Paris Opera.PARIS — The American director Robert Wilson has one of the most recognizable styles in modern theater. Honed over decades, his starkly drawn tableaus of abstract lines and shapes, lit with minute precision, have adorned Shakespeare plays and Philip Glass operas alike.And Wilson, who turned 80 in October, isn’t about to depart from that formula.Last week, as the Paris Opera put the finishing touches on his production of Puccini’s “Turandot,” which premiered at the Teatro Real in 2018 and opens here with a preview for young audiences on Wednesday, Wilson zeroed in on the minuscule imperfections, nudging performers centimeters closer to their marks. A misshapen reflection of the moon on the stage brought rehearsal to a stop. As the lighting team scrambled to fix the spot, he turned to them and asked, “Where is it?”“Some of his shows have 2,000 light cues, so you have to be very organized,” John Torres, a lighting designer who has worked with Wilson for a decade, said during a rehearsal break. “It’s a little bit of a puzzle.”Wilson’s “Turandot” production premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2018.Javier del Real/Teatro RealWilson has 184 stage productions to his name, along with many revivals, and neither age nor the pandemic have slowed him down. “I forget that I’m 80, because I’m fortunate that I’m still working,” he said in an interview at the Opéra Bastille. “I’m booked for the next two years, solid.”In Paris alone this fall, Wilson has brought four shows to stages around town. In addition to “Turandot,” his “Jungle Book,” a 2019 musical inspired by Rudyard Kipling, brought stilted animals to the Théâtre du Châtelet. He also reunited with the choreographer Lucinda Childs, with whom he staged Glass’s landmark “Einstein on the Beach” in 1976: As part of the Paris Autumn Festival, they presented a new creation (“Bach 6 Solo”) and a revival (“I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating,” from 1977).While Europe has long celebrated Wilson as one of the most important directors of the past century, he has been less of a prophet at home. His boundary-pushing artistic statements — “Deafman Glance,” a hit in France in 1971, was seven hours long and wordless — never secured him regular commissions in the United States, even though Wilson has had what he calls his own arts “laboratory,” the Watermill Center on Long Island, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year.Speaking about his busy Paris season, Wilson said that he probably won’t have as many productions in New York “until I die.” His longstanding disdain for naturalism hasn’t helped. “What are they thinking about, in these dramas in New York?” he asked. “They have all this psychology. Does it have to be that complicated?”Wilson, center, during a rehearsal for “Turandot,” one of four shows he has in Paris this fall.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesIn lieu of psychology, Wilson’s work is driven by image and sound, and was shaped by early encounters with forward-looking choreographers. After a difficult youth as the gay son of a conservative family in Texas, where he initially studied business administration, Wilson moved to New York in 1963 and discovered the work of Merce Cunningham and, especially, George Balanchine, whose large repertoire of plotless ballets have Wilson’s favor. (Nonetheless, he admitted to liking Balanchine’s ever-popular “Nutcracker” staging, a fixture of the holiday season at New York City Ballet and elsewhere.)“That changed my life,” Wilson said. “I thought that if theater could be like that, if opera could be like that, then I was interested.”Wilson approaches theater and opera in the same way. Even when he works with straightforward plays, as in his production of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” that opened in October in Sofia, Bulgaria, sentences tend to be distorted in artificial ways.“His take on text is almost strictly musical,” said the French performer Yuming Hey, who plays Mowgli in “Jungle Book.” In an email, Childs, the choreographer, said that “rhythm and timing are his foremost concerns” and that Wilson’s vision “hasn’t changed” much in the five decades she has known him.In fact, Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, down to details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures. To his critics, this sameness glosses over the differences between the works he stages. To Wilson, it’s just a way of acknowledging that a stage is “unlike any other space in the world,” as he told the cast of “Turandot,” and to craft visuals that help the audience “hear better than with their eyes closed.”“To see someone try to act natural onstage seems so artificial,” he said in an interview later. “If you accept it as being something artificial, in the long run, it seems more natural, for me.”Wilson’s aesthetic has been singularly consistent, including details like the white makeup performers wear and their stylized hand gestures.Javier del Real/Teatro RealHey said that during preparations for “Jungle Book,” the first step for him was to learn what he called “Wilson’s grammar,” which is often taught by assistant stagers. In auditions, he was given exercises with directions such as “stand still, like a sun, and shine while keeping the position and staying focused.”Somewhat paradoxically, Wilson’s work has consistently been described as avant-garde as other aesthetic trends have come and gone. “It’s a very interesting word, because for me, avant-garde means to rediscover the classics,” Wilson said. “All my works are based on classical patterns.”Work, for Wilson and his team, starts at 7 a.m. and often extends late into the evening. “It’s just what he does, so he kind of expects everyone to do the same,” said Julian Mommert, who was Wilson’s assistant for two years and now works as international relations and tour manager for the choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou. Mommert remembered Wilson as “very open and funny and warm,” but ultimately left in 2014, because of exhaustion.Wilson’s only break each year is a one-week trip to Bali around Christmas. “I go to a very modest hotel,” he said. “I’ve been going there for 30-something years, and no one knows who I am. I like the people; I like the food.”“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said.Julien Mignot for The New York TimesWilson didn’t even take a substantial break during the pandemic. In 2020, he spent several months in Berlin, at the Akademie der Künste. “I had a beautiful studio and I made lots of drawings,” he said. How did he fare away from the stage? “Of course one is upset, but working is like breathing. I just kept on breathing.”Still, the forced pause had “a tremendous impact” on his production machine, Wilson said. Performances were canceled, along with the Watermill Center’s 2020 summer festival and gala — which, he said, typically brings in “as much as 2 or 2.4 million” dollars. For summer 2021, because of travel restrictions, he did not invite his usual international roster of guests and residents but more local artists instead, for a weeklong festival organization with the artist Carrie Mae Weems.“Work for me is not really work; it’s a way of living,” Wilson said. “I’m still the same person I was when I first started working in the theater.”And at the Paris Opera, behind his single-minded focus and solemn demeanor, a hint of playfulness occasionally resurfaced with the cast of “Turandot.” Wilson described the opera as “a fairy tale, another world,” in which the Chinese princess Turandot, who initially refuses to marry, “is having fun being evil.” His minimalist aesthetic steers clear of orientalism, although the comic trio of ministers, renamed Jim, Bob and Bill when the production was performed by the Canadian Opera Company in 2019, are here restored as Ping, Pang and Pong.“The reason we make theater is to have fun,” Wilson told the singers. “You can’t take this work too seriously.” More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Met Opera’s Conductor Drops Out of ‘Figaro’

      by

      Yannick Nézet-Séguin said a nearly four-week break from the podium would allow “time for me to re-energize” after a busy autumn.Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director, will not conduct, as planned, a revival of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” in January, the company announced on Monday evening.Nézet-Séguin will be “taking a brief, almost four-week sabbatical from all conducting duties commencing Dec. 19,” the Met said, and quoted him as adding, “This short break will allow time for me to re-energize as we return in the new year with more inspiring art.”The Philadelphia Orchestra, of which Nézet-Séguin is also music director, announced that Xian Zhang would take over his scheduled concerts on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2, but said that his time off would not affect his appearance with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 11, nor two subsequent weeks of subscription concerts in Philadelphia in January.Nézet-Séguin — who earlier in his career was known for keeping a particularly hectic schedule, and sometimes canceling — is currently in the midst of leading the Met’s run of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice.” It is the second company premiere he has conducted this fall, after opening the season with Terence Blanchard and Kasi Lemmons’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”He also led the Met’s forces in outdoor performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony and a nationally telecast version of Verdi’s Requiem for the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as concerts in Philadelphia, at Carnegie and in Montreal, where he is the music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain.He conducts Puccini’s “Tosca” at the Met from Thursday through Dec. 18, as well as a new production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” that opens on Feb. 28.For the “Figaro” run, which opens on Jan. 8, Nézet-Séguin will be replaced by Daniele Rustioni — who is at the Met to conduct a new production of “Rigoletto” starting New Year’s Eve — and (for the final performance, on Jan. 28) Gareth Morrell. Five more “Figaro” performances scheduled for April will be conducted by James Gaffigan. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Covid Restrictions Are Back at Some of Europe's Theaters

      by

      Strict controls on playhouses and music venues are returning as the continent deals with a new coronavirus wave.For months, Europe’s opera, music and theater fans have been flocking to packed venues as if the coronavirus pandemic was fading from view. Now that feeling of freedom is receding for many.In Vienna, all performances are now banned until at least Dec. 13, after Austria imposed a lockdown to deal with a rise in coronavirus cases. The Dec. 5 premiere of the Vienna State Opera’s new production of “Don Giovanni,” directed by Barrie Kosky, will be televised from an empty house.In Munich, performances are still taking place at the city’s storied Bavarian State Opera despite a surge in cases in Bavaria. Only vaccinated patrons or those who have recovered from Covid-19 are allowed in, and they must also all show proof of a negative coronavirus test and wear a medical-grade mask. According to new rules announced Tuesday, venues in Bavaria can admit only 25 percent of their maximum capacity.In Milan, there are no restrictions on audience numbers at venues including La Scala, and no social distancing requirements — but only vaccinated audience members are allowed in.The confusing picture across the continent has been getting more complicated by the day in recent weeks as national and regional governments respond to a new wave of cases and as an alert about a new variant prompts concern. On Wednesday, Germany reported 79,051 new cases — its highest daily number since the pandemic began.After months of relative normalcy, Europe’s opera houses, concert halls and theaters are reintroducing measures all too familiar from earlier phases of the pandemic, restricting audience numbers and mandating testing, if not canceling shows outright. Some cultural workers at venues where the doors are still open are concerned that they might not stay that way for long.Leipzig Opera’s production of “Hänsel and Gretel” has been canceled for the rest of the company’s season because of coronavirus measures.Oper LeipzigDespite the new prevention measures, the mood was “very different” from previous lockdowns, said Ulf Schirmer, the general music director of Leipzig Opera, in eastern Germany. All performances in the city of Leipzig are banned until Jan. 9.“We’ve learned so much from past lockdowns,” Schirmer said, “we now know what to do.”Leipzig Opera would lose 1 million euros, about $1.1 million, by refunding tickets for canceled performances across all shows, Schirmer added. The company could cope with that, he said, because it receives a significant government subsidy and has sufficient reserves.Other venues throughout the continent, where the pace of cancellations and restrictions has been accelerating since last month, might not be in such a secure position. Latvia was one of the first countries to impose new restrictions on cultural life, when it ordered performance venues shut from late October as part of a national lockdown. Since then many other countries and regions have imposed new, if varied, restrictions. This month, the Netherlands went into a partial lockdown that let performances continue in front of seated audiences but forced other venues such as bars and restaurants to close by 8 p.m. Austria initially introduced a lockdown for unvaccinated people that included barring them from attending cultural events, before announcing a nationwide lockdown days later.Some venues that remain open in Europe are putting in place extra safety measures, even without government mandates. In Berlin, performance venues are allowed to operate at full capacity, as long as attendees show proof that they are vaccinated, recovered or provide a negative test, and wear a mask. But Sarah Boehler, a spokeswoman for the Sophiensaele, a theater in the city, said her venue would also require a negative test in addition to either proof of vaccination or recovery. The theater expected that city officials would require such a measure “in a week or two anyway,” she said, adding it was better to get ahead of the curve.There is one place that looks unlikely to see new restrictions on cultural life: Britain, where governing lawmakers have spoken since July of the need to live with the virus. New coronavirus cases have averaged around 40,000 a day for the past month, and one of the government’s leading scientific advisers this week said the country was “almost at herd immunity.”In England, theater and opera goers are not required to wear masks, or show proof of vaccination. Instead, each venue can decide its own requirements. Many West End theaters ask for proof of vaccination, and most encourage spectators to wear masks, but enforcement varies.This month, a revival of “Cabaret,” starring Eddie Redmayne at the Playhouse Theater, went further than other London shows by requiring attendees to show a negative test result to gain entry. The Ambassador Theater Group, which owns the venue, said in a statement that “the intimacy of the production,” in which the audience sits close to the actors, was behind the decision. But no other theaters have appeared to follow its lead.The composer and theater impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber on Tuesday told the BBC he would be happy to mandate masks and proof of vaccination at the six theaters he owns in London. “If that was what was necessary to keep our theaters open without social distancing, I think that’s a very small price to pay,” he said.Even if few in Britain’s theater world anticipate new restrictions, elsewhere in Europe, where governments are weighing actions to curb rising case numbers, industry figures are worried that more closures are on the way.“Everyone is still very concerned there will be another lockdown soon,” said Boehler of the Sophiensaele. “We just hope vaccinated people will be in a position to keep going to the theater.” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      ‘I Savor Everything’: A Soprano’s Star Turn at the Met Opera

      by

      Erin Morley, a fixture at the Met for over a decade, is now singing the title role in “Eurydice.”The soprano Erin Morley is no stranger to the Metropolitan Opera, where she has been a fixture for over a decade. But until now she has never been the face of the company.That changed in recent weeks, as her likeness — blown up to the size of buses and billboards — has promoted her star turn in “Eurydice,” which had its Met premiere on Tuesday.“I feel like I’ll never get used to seeing my face on a billboard,” Morley, 41, said in an interview on Wednesday morning. “It’s definitely been strange to walk by it every day on my way to rehearsal.”Morley sings the title role in the opera, composed by Matthew Aucoin and with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl based on her 2003 play. Eurydice is the heart of this retelling of the classic myth, which premiered at Los Angeles Opera in early 2020. In Ruhl’s conception, she is reunited with her dead father in the underworld and feels ambivalent (at best) about her relationship with history’s greatest musician; she contends with those uncertain feelings in the work’s most substantial aria, “This is what it is to love an artist.”Morley descending to the underworld in a rainy elevator in Mary Zimmerman’s production of “Eurydice.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPeter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, referred to that aria during a speech at the party that followed the premiere. Introducing the cast with generous superlatives, he said: “She’s singing ‘what it means to love an artist.’ But we are learning what it means to love her, the incomparable Erin Morley.”Since her 2008 Met debut, in the anonymous role of a madrigalist in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut,” Morley has become a scene stealer — comical and absolutely precise in the musical stratosphere as Olympia in Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann”; alluring even while singing offstage as the Forest Bird in Wagner’s “Siegfried”; and a full-bodied lyrical force holding her own alongside Renée Fleming and Elina Garanca as Sophie in Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier.” For the Met’s livestreamed At-Home Gala early in the pandemic, she memorably accompanied herself on piano in the bel canto showpiece “Chacun le sait,” from Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment.”In an interview, Gelb said that the Met has “a big stake” in her future. Within the next four seasons, she will sing eight different roles, including Pamina in a new staging of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” and a leading part in a Baroque pastiche the company is developing.Just before the show started on opening night, Morley and some dancers practiced a lift.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesWaiting backstage for her cue to enter.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesMorley and Nathan Berg, who plays Eurydice’s father, visible on monitors backstage.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesWith Orpheus (Joshua Hopkins, far right) and his double (Jakub Jozef Orlinski) in the background, Eurydice reclines in the beach scene that opens the opera.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesBut first “Eurydice,” which continues at the Met through Dec. 16 and will be broadcast in cinemas on Dec. 4. Still riding the high of opening night, she spoke about preparing for the role, weathering the pandemic and returning to the Met. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.What has your relationship with contemporary opera been?I did a lot of new music when I was in college. I had a lot of composer friends and loved learning their stuff. Since then I’ve done contemporary music but not premieres, and certainly not an opera premiere. A lot of my colleagues have done more new opera than I have. I’ve seen their experience, and how much it fuels them, and I didn’t really get it until now. This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever been a part of.How did the pressure of something new differ from the standard repertory?Both situations have a certain amount of gravity to them. But with this, I felt a sort of responsibility: I’m the first to bring this to the Met, and I’m offering a sort of baseline for people to look at for the years to come.Obviously, there are huge challenges in learning a new piece because there’s no reference for it, and it takes exponentially more time. The first time I talked with Matt was two and a half years ago. He writes very mathematical rhythms. I’ve never had my musicianship so thoroughly questioned; there were days when I felt like I spent 20 minutes on two measures. Part of that is that he writes with the intent of achieving some sort of natural speech rhythms. It comes out sounding quite nice, but it’s time-consuming.Morley has her costume and makeup touched up backstage by Marian Torre, left, and Riyo Mitsui.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesA fixture at the Met since 2008, she is taking on a title role there for the first time.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesShe reenters the stage from below, her feet painted a sooty black.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times“There are huge challenges in learning a new piece,” she said, “because there’s no reference for it.”Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesYou’ve been singing with the Met for a while, but how does it feel to be on posters and playbills?I started with the Met in their young artist program. Coming out of that, it’s a hard bridge to fully fledged professional, and the Met offered me a lot of those bridges. It’s kind of beautiful and satisfying to take your audience on a journey with you, and know that the people who saw me in “Eurydice” also saw me in “Manon Lescaut.”Seeing the billboards, I feel a certain responsibility to carry the show, to bring people into the theater and celebrate this moment that the Met is having. Sometimes that’s a lot to take on. But it really fueled me put that much more energy into it.A real highlight of the Met’s At-Home Gala was you accompanying yourself.It was satisfying and beautiful to be able to revisit my identity as a pianist. I was an accompanist for quite a while, and I didn’t realized how much I’d missed that. It was, however, dissatisfying to not be collaborating with anyone. It was extremely exciting to watch and be a part of that experience, but it was so sad to just be alone.We were all so nervous that day. My husband took our kids to the park when I went on, because there was nowhere to go. They came back after I finished, and my daughter said, “Mom, you missed a note.” Which I had.Morley takes in the applause at her curtain call after the show.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesEmbracing a castmate after the curtain fell, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, at left.Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesBut you seemed so carefree, not nervous at all. And you landed that — what is the high note in “Chacun le sait”?It’s a high F at the end. This is why I’m a performer. I respond to adrenaline pretty well. I was really high on nerves that day. And I had missed that. I missed adrenaline so much during the pandemic that I went skydiving. I remember feeling after it was over: It was the exact same experience as having a performance onstage at the Met.What was it like returning, finally, to the Met?About a year ago I did a photo shoot in the Met for Town & Country with Angel Blue, Isabel Leonard and Peter. And it was totally eerie to be in the building with all the lights off and nobody there. It was just so profoundly depressing.Then coming into the house for my first “Eurydice” rehearsal — it was almost too much for my heart to hold. It was a beautiful reunion, but it was also tinged with a little sadness because we’ve all been through so much. Everybody seems changed; I give 10 percent, 20 percent more to my projects now because I just don’t know if I’m ever going to have it again. It was so hard to lose it during the pandemic, that I savor everything so much more now. More