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      Review: With Fresh Subtlety, Opera Returns to New York City

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      Teatro Nuovo’s “Barber of Seville” was the first full-scale live performance in the city since before the pandemic.Opera is back in New York City.On Tuesday evening, two months before the Metropolitan Opera is scheduled to reopen, a full-scale live performance took place, for the first time since before the pandemic. And it was in the Met’s shadow, in Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, where Teatro Nuovo presented a semi-staged, concert-dress version of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” (There is a second performance on Wednesday evening.)Like almost all outdoor performances, this one required amplification. Usually this is a burden. Yet on Tuesday it proved a salve for the audience of roughly 750, as the music had to compete with the sounds of grunting generators and crunching machinery on a nearby street.Members of the cast get ready backstage before the performance.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesLike almost all outdoor performances, this one required amplification, which proved a salve for the audience of roughly 750.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAn outgrowth of the Bel Canto at Caramoor series that Will Crutchfield, a conductor and scholar of early 19th-century Italian opera, ran for 20 years, Teatro Nuovo is a performing and training program focused on the bel canto repertory. Generally known for his devotion to complete performances of these works, Crutchfield had to make trims to Rossini’s score to end the performance by 10 p.m., the park’s curfew.No matter. This was still nearly three hours of opera. And what came through was a fresh, lively performance full of ideas and rich in subtleties.The artists who work with Crutchfield study the performance practices of a golden era of opera. His goal is not to make performers today feel beholden to the past in matters of ornamentation and rhythmic execution; after all, the style in Rossini’s day encouraged freedom and flair. Crutchfield tries to embolden his colleagues to start from scratch and think for themselves.Hannah Ludwig starred as Rosina.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe ensemble was made up of artists in Will Crutchfield’s training institute focused on bel canto operatic style.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThat this cast, backed by 31 orchestral players, had made their own interpretive choices came through consistently. Early in Act I, the tenor Nicholas Simpson — as Count Almaviva, who has fallen for the lovely Rosina — brought bright sound and expansive lyricism to the serenade he sings from below her balcony. Simpson certainly embellished the melodic lines with ornate ornamentation; not for nothing has Crutchfield called one offering of his program “ornamentation boot camp.” But his embellishments emanated from the melody and the mood, and never seemed overly elaborate.As Figaro, the dynamic bass Hans Tashjian, whose voice has a nice, light ping in its upper range, adorned the character’s famous aria “Largo al factotum” with fresh, inventive ornaments. Many singers overdo Figaro’s bluster as he boasts of being Seville’s indispensable jack-of-all-trades. But Tashjian sang the aria almost as a personal revelation to the audience — underplayed, with some wonderfully soft-spoken phrases. You felt that this Figaro seriously believed himself to be special, beyond arrogance.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesThe mezzo-soprano Hannah Ludwig, as Rosina, went perhaps a step too far in ornamenting her defining aria, “Una voce poco fa.” Still, with a rich, dark voice she shaped supple phrases and conveyed the character’s mix of reticence and sass.The baritone Scott Purcell excelled as the officious Dr. Bartolo; as his housekeeper, Berta, the soprano Alina Tamborini was unusually big-voiced and feisty. The young bass Daniel Fridley, as the wily Don Basilio, was downright chilling in the aria “La calunnia,” in which he explains to Bartolo that the way to deal with Almaviva is to start a rumor and help it spread until an explosive scandal erupts. (Rossini anticipated social media by two centuries.)Rather than relying on a single conductor, this performance — nodding to the usual practice in Rossini’s day — was guided by both Crutchfield, who also played the accompanying fortepiano, and the violinist Jakob Lehmann, the concertmaster, who led the orchestral players while seated on a stool. If this looser approach sometimes resulted in minor slip-ups, the gain in spontaneity and freshness was well worth it.The Barber of SevillePerformed Tuesday at Damrosch Park, Manhattan. More

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      Review: To a Rare King Arthur Opera, Bard Says ‘Welcome Back’

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      Superb singers and a clear production make a strong case for Ernest Chausson’s seldom heard “Le Roi Arthus.”ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — It took just two words over the loudspeakers for the audience at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College on Sunday evening to break into vigorous applause: “Welcome back.”Welcome back, indeed, to Ernest Chausson’s seldom heard opera “Le Roi Arthus,” being presented as part of Bard’s SummerScape festival. And welcome back to many in the audience, for whom being in a theater for live opera with a full orchestra and chorus, after such a long deprivation, was truly something to cheer.“Le Roi Arthus,” based on the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, proved a powerful work for this fraught, polarized moment in American life. It is the story of an idealistic ruler who fails to bring about the era of enlightenment he strives for, but whose principles will endure, as an angelic chorus assures him at the end of an often ravishing score. The production is the latest project in the conductor Leon Botstein’s long campaign to break classical music from its fixation on repertory staples and call attention to neglected works.This remarkable opera, first performed in Brussels in 1903, four years after its composer’s death in a cycling accident at 44, is especially deserving. Chausson, who also wrote the libretto, labored on it for almost a decade — not because he was stuck, but because he wanted to get it right. He did. The Bard production, directed by Louisa Proske, is scenically spare but richly costumed and dramatically effective. And Botstein, leading the American Symphony Orchestra, an impressive cast and the excellent Bard Festival Chorale, made a compelling case for the piece. (How has it languished when many lesser scores by French composers of Chausson’s era — especially, for me, Massenet — keep returning to international stages?)The Bard production, directed by Louisa Proske, is scenically spare but richly costumed and dramatically effective.Maria BaranovaThe influence of Wagner, especially “Tristan und Isolde,” looms over “Le Roi Arthus.” Chausson was a Wagner devotee, no question: For his honeymoon in 1883, he took his wife to the Bayreuth Festival to see “Parsifal.” As he worked on “Arthus,” Chausson exchanged letters with his friend Debussy, who had a love-hate relationship with Wagner. In one letter Chausson wrote that the similarity of subject matter between his opera and “Tristan” — both concerning overpowering feelings of love that lead to betrayals of marriage and duty — would not matter to him if he “could only successfully de-Wagnerize myself.”Wagnerian strands run through the music, even hints of motifs from “Tristan” and the so-called “Tristan” chord. Yet the score also comes across as beholden to the French heritage Chausson was born into, especially Franck and Massenet. His use of thick chromatic harmonies is less dark and elusive, more ludic and radiant, than Wagner’s writing. The score is rich with lyrical stretches that almost break into song.The orchestral prelude teems, at first, with swashbuckling music that suggests the triumphant battle the king’s forces have just waged over the invading Saxons. We meet Arthur, with his wife, Guinevere, at his side, presiding over a celebratory gathering of his court. The baritone Norman Garrett, in elegant robes and gold crown, looked and sounded splendid as Arthur. His voice, deep-set but capable of lightness in its high range, easily conveyed authority and dignity. Yet even in his opening monologue he plumbed the music for hints of the king’s vulnerability.The opera’s illicit lovers, Lancelot (Matthew White) and Guinevere (Sasha Cooke), are reminiscent of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.Maria BaranovaWhen the king singles out the valiant knight Lancelot (the ardent tenor Matthew White) as a “true victor,” the other knights mutter their resentments, especially the menacing Mordred (Justin Austin, a youthful baritone). In this telling of the story, Lancelot and Guinevere are already deeply consumed by illicit love. As the queen, the mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke brings gleaming sound and a touch of self-destructive volatility to her singing. Unlike Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, this couple is fully aware that they are betraying their king and their oaths. But, as Guinevere sings, “love is the only law.”The singers brought dedication to an important project, learning these demanding roles for this production. Botstein’s enthusiasm for a score he has long championed came through — sometimes too much. In bringing out the brassy richness and intensity of the music, he sometimes let the orchestra overpower the singers. Still, he brought urgent pacing and color to this nearly three-hour score.The opera ends with a series of death scenes, one for each of the principal characters — a dramatically risky move that Chausson handles deftly. In a daringly slow, mesmerizing monologue, Guinevere strangles herself with her own long hair. Lancelot, having offered no defense in a battle with former comrades who are avenging their king, comes back to the castle mortally wounded, living long enough to ask Arthur’s forgiveness in anguished yet noble phrasesThe shaken Arthur, seeking death, is greeted by a group of heavenly maidens who offer to take him away — not to death, but to eternal sleep. Chausson turned this sequence into a shimmering, harmonically lush double chorus, performed here by choristers in celestial white robes. “Your name may perish,” they tell Arthur, but “your ideas are immortal.”Let’s hope this production helps Chausson’s opera thrive as well.Le Roi ArthusThrough Sunday at Bard College; fishercenter.bard.edu. Also streamed at that website on July 28. More

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      Review: At Wagner’s Festival, a ‘Dutchman’ Never Sails

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      With neither ship nor sea, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new Bayreuth Festival staging recasts the opera as a tale of violent revenge.BAYREUTH, Germany — The pilgrims to the Green Hill, who have been making their way to the storied festival Richard Wagner founded here 145 years ago, looked more like cattle on Sunday. The theater’s bucolic grounds had become a network of roped-off, one-way sidewalks and checkpoints.With stricter pandemic safety measures than many other European opera houses, the Bayreuth Festival’s opening night — a new production of “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman”) — lacked some of its usual glamour. Indeed, the romance ended at the sight of mobile bathrooms outside the theater; the ones inside had been deemed too risky. The audience was limited to 900, less than half the house’s capacity.Yet the unpleasantness of these restrictions faded as the lights dimmed, the hall resounded with the stormy opening of “Holländer,” and the Bayreuth experience began to work its usual magic.And what a sound it was: The orchestra, propulsive and spirited from the start, was led by Oksana Lyniv, the first female conductor in the festival’s history. Much has rightly been made of that milestone, however embarrassingly overdue.In Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production, the opera takes place firmly on land, with the opening scene at the bar of a small town.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleLyniv’s “Holländer” was occasionally a little brash, but it was always both driven by and driving the drama, with sharp attention to detail and pacing — in a work whose repetitive score can easily sag under a less assured baton.She wasn’t the only newcomer at the festival this summer: Dmitri Tcherniakov, virtually unavoidable at European houses in recent years, was directing his first Bayreuth production. And Asmik Grigorian, a steel-voiced soprano and one of the finest acting talents in opera, was making her debut here as Senta — a performance met with a roaring ovation.There was polite applause for Grigorian’s colleagues, as well; the audience seemed ready to warmly greet whatever they saw after Bayreuth was canceled last year. But although there were some elements of normalcy on Sunday — Chancellor Angela Merkel was even back in her usual box — the festival was still far from its former self.The full forces of Bayreuth’s fabled chorus, for example, were not allowed onstage. Instead they were divided: half singing in the theater, complemented by an ensemble of lip-syncing actors, and half broadcast from a separate hall. The effect was at times acoustically disorienting.From left, Marina Prudenskaya as Mary, Eric Cutler as Erik and Grigorian as Senta.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleAs a director, Tcherniakov is often interested in trauma: the ways in which it is overcome, sublimated or succumbed to. Here, that was manifest in the Dutchman’s origin story, recounted in a series of vignettes during the overture.The Dutchman, in this telling, grew up in a small town — possibly coastal, though there is neither a ship nor sea in sight — with uniform, clean, monochromatic, rather sinister architecture. His single mother had an affair with a married man, who violently broke things off with her. Gossip spread, and she became an outcast, isolated in an already isolating place. So she hanged herself; the boy, unable to help, was left mournfully holding onto her swinging foot.He leaves his hometown and later returns — like the libretto’s cursed Dutchman, docking his ship every seven years in search of a love that will redeem him. Now an adult, with an imposing build and furrowed brow, he is unrecognizable at a local bar, where he tells his tale to a half-interested crowd. (The baritone John Lundgren’s delivery of the monologue was strained, and misaligned with the menacing force of his demeanor.)Among the people the Dutchman meets at the bar is Daland — in the libretto a sea captain and the father of the opera’s heroine, Senta, but here a clean-cut, middle-class man. (Indeed, the one who ruined his mother’s life.) The bass Georg Zeppenfeld portrays him with a warm tone and a touch of naïve insouciance.From left, John Lundgren, Prudenskaya, Georg Zeppenfeld and Grigorian in Act II of the opera.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleThe cityscape shifts between scenes, its buildings fluidly rearranging into new configurations. At the beginning of Act II, they create a plaza-like space for the “Spinning Chorus,” led by Mary, Senta’s nurse (though in Tcherniakov’s staging presented as her mother and played, often silently, by Marina Prudenskaya with weary exasperation).This scene introduces Grigorian’s Senta, a young woman with Billie Eilish hair and a defiant streak. She sings her Ballad — which recounts the Dutchman legend, with an emphasis on his redemption by a woman who will be faithful to him until death — with dramatic gesticulations and a sense of ironic overstatement. But later, when she is alone onstage and her theme returns, Grigorian delivers the tune with quiet, sincere longing, perhaps seeing in the Dutchman a kindred spirit.She and the Dutchman meet over an awkward dinner at her house, separated by her parents and seated at opposite ends of the table, which is laid out slowly and fussily. It’s not exactly a meet-cute, but something clicks, and the parents fade to invisibility as Senta and the Dutchman sing what came off on Sunday as a mismatched duet, Grigorian luxuriously lyrical and Lundgren a little thin. (Eric Cutler, who sang the role of Erik, the Dutchman’s rival for Senta’s affections, similarly struggled to rise to her level.)The Bayreuth Festival’s chorus was divided in two, with half singing onstage, complemented by silent actors, and the others broadcast from a separate hall.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleAct III opens like most any “Holländer” production, with the town’s women bringing the men food — only here they gather to enjoy it together. Off to the side, though, is a group of sullen men whose dark clothing contrasts with the earth tones of the locals. Traditionally, they would be the Dutchman’s ghostly crew, and they provide one strategic use of the broadcast choir. As their lines are played through speakers, the men onstage remain threateningly silent.They are, it becomes apparent, willing collaborators in the Dutchman’s plot to exact deadly revenge on the town. After Erik confronts Senta about their now-broken promises to each other, a fight breaks out in which the Dutchman coolly shoots someone while the crowd retreats back into the town — which the mysterious men have set on fire.As smoke fills the space and the Dutchman violently casts Senta aside — just as her father once did to his mother — Mary enters with a shotgun, aims it directly at the Dutchman’s chest and pulls the trigger. It’s a lot of violence in not a lot of time, and it wasn’t easy to follow on opening night.But one thing was clear. Even though this production, as it had been described in advance press, is focused on the psychology and background of the Dutchman, the redemptive power of Senta was inescapable. Rather than join him in an act of eternal devotion, she takes the gun from her shaking mother and holds her, bringing a sense of calm as the curtain comes down.So while Tcherniakov might have been most interested in the psyche of an angry and vengeful man, the only character who truly changes — and, indeed, matures — in his staging is Senta. Especially with Grigorian onstage, it’s very much her opera.Der Fliegende HolländerThrough Aug. 20 at the Bayreuth Festival, Germany; bayreuther-festspiele.de. Also streaming Tuesday on DG Stage; dg-premium.com. More

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      A King Arthur Rarity Is an Apt Way to Return to the Opera

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      Ernest Chausson’s “Le Roi Arthus,” with its fragile promise of renewal, is coming to the Bard SummerScape festival.In the third act of Ernest Chausson’s opera “Le Roi Arthus” (“King Arthur”), Guinevere asks Lancelot, “United in love, united in sin, will we also be joined in death?”The tangled Arthurian love triangle is familiar from “The Once and Future King,” “Camelot” and the works of Sir Thomas Malory. But here the question, set to longing sighs in the orchestra, immediately evokes another complicated 19th-century operatic romance: Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”Chausson’s only opera, which is being given a rare staging at the Bard SummerScape festival starting on Sunday, never fully escapes the shadow of “Tristan.”But in “Le Roi Arthus,” he also managed to find his own path. A contemporary of Henri Duparc and Gabriel Fauré, Chausson (1855-99) is today best known for his “Poème” for violin and orchestra. Born to wealth, he composed slowly and carefully. “Arthus,” which he wrote over the course of almost a decade in the 1880s and ’90s, didn’t premiere until 1903, years after he died in a cycling accident. By the turn of the 20th century, the work already seemed dated, and it has only occasionally been performed since.“It’s unbelievably beautiful,” Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College and the production’s conductor, said in an interview. “And not only beautiful, but grammatically very smartly put together.”Chausson, like many composers of the late 19th century, labored in the shadow of Wagner. But in his only opera, he did carve out his own path.Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty ImagesLike many composers of his time, Chausson labored under the anxious influence — what he called the “ardent and despotic inspiration” — of Wagner. “If you’re going to be influenced by someone, Wagner is as good as you can get,” Botstein said. “But it is terribly obvious that it’s not by Wagner; there is very French chromaticism and a French melodic sensibility.”Chausson was well aware of the threat of merely rewriting “Tristan.” His friend Claude Debussy wrote to him in 1893 with concerns that part of Debussy’s own opera then in progress, “Pelléas et Mélisande,” “resembled the duet of Mr. So-and-So” — meaning Wagner. Later, after reviewing a draft of “Le Roi Arthus,” Debussy wrote to Chausson, “We would gain, it seems to me, by taking the opposite course.”Chausson’s score does occasionally sound like Wagner, notably in a brief, portentous appearance by Merlin. But he also made conscious decisions to distance himself from the master: He tends to avoid characteristically Wagnerian dense orchestration and that composer’s shifting thickets of leitmotifs — bits of music representing characters or concepts.As was Wagner’s practice, Chausson wrote his own libretto, and repeatedly edited it — especially after his colleague Duparc sent him a 51-page critique singling out the opera’s similarities to “Tristan.” By its final form, unlike in Wagner’s opera, Lancelot and Guinevere’s illicit affair is already in progress at the start of the opera, and they are fully in command of their own fates — not, as in “Tristan,” under the spell of a love potion. And Lancelot, crucially, experiences a crisis of conscience unlike any faced by Wagner’s hero.Chausson makes his mythic figures into fallible, conflicted humans. Arthur (at Bard, the baritone Norman Garrett) struggles with the loss of his marriage and of his most trusted confidant. The extended duets for Lancelot (the tenor Matthew White) and Guinevere (the mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke) explore earthly questions of trust, loyalty and love — far from Wagner’s weightily philosophical, Schopenhauerian mists.Louisa Proske, the production’s director, sees this as one of the opera’s strengths. “This love is organic, it’s genuine, and it’s human,” she said in an interview. “And it’s very modern, in the sense that Chausson is really interested in the impasse between the two lovers and how the arguments on each side keep playing out.”Writing about “Le Roi Arthus,” the musicologist Steven Huebner has pointed out that Guinevere can be seen as a typical fin-de-siècle operatic seductress, her chromaticism aligned with Carmen before her and Salome after — “driven by sensuality, a threat to virility.”But Proske disagrees. “She’s not a femme fatale who splits up the good work of the men,” she said. “She is a woman who is fighting for a love that she deeply believes is sublime, and the highest good in this world. There’s so much substance in what she says and expresses musically.”Proske’s staging mixes images from different cultures, both ancient and modern. She said that the abstract set and timeless costumes — including new heraldry for Arthur’s knights — “create a tension between the past and the future.”“They’re not historically accurate,” she added of the designs. “They express an imaginary idea of Europe. I really love that it’s, at the same time, an action movie as it has knights and kings and queens. It has this kind of grand, epic scale that is really fun to put onstage. And at the same time, it’s deeply an opera of ideas.”The work depicts Arthur’s Round Table at its twilight. “The Round Table,” Proske said, “which Arthur devotes his life to, stands for or embodies an idea of good governance and good kingship, which is not quite the same as democracy.”The political context will come to the fore in Bard’s presentation of what is perhaps the opera’s most distinctive sequence: its ending, in which a boat arrives to carry Arthur away. Five offstage sopranos and what the score describes as an “invisible chorus” call to him to “come with us beyond the stars” for a “deep, endless sleep.” (Morgan Le Fay and Avalon go unmentioned.) This all comes after two protracted death scenes for Lancelot and Guinevere, who strangles herself with her own hair.The Bard production will bring that invisible chorus onstage. “Arthur and the heroic, charismatic autocratic nobility essentially disintegrate and recede into the heavens,” Botstein said. “The people come onstage. They represent the future. There’s a symbolic vision of the possibilities of democracy.”Proske also sees the ending as an image of recurrence: “It’s the situation of a political leader at the end of his life. It is a complete failure because the project has failed. The gift that the chorus brings to Arthur is to say that it hasn’t failed, because in the future, it will recur, your thought will live on and take shape in different periods of history, and people will pick up what you left us.”Such a fragile promise of renewal and rebirth is perhaps an apt way to return to the opera house after the coronavirus pandemic. “I think this is a really exciting piece to come back with, because at heart, it actually thinks about the necessity of collective storytelling,” Proske said. “I hope that the audience will feel part of that collective at the end and will take home something that will stay with them.” More

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      Kennedy Center Taps Joni Mitchell and Berry Gordy for Awards

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      Bette Midler, Lorne Michaels and Justino Díaz will also receive tributes at a ceremony that is expected to look much more like it did before the pandemic.The last Kennedy Center Honors aired on television less than two months ago, but on Wednesday, the institution announced a new batch of honorees, taking a step toward getting the program back on schedule after the upheaval of the pandemic.The recipients include the folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell; the stage and screen performer Bette Midler; Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown; Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live”; and the opera singer Justino Díaz.Because of the pandemic, the 2020 honors were delayed until this year and the celebration did not at all resemble the event from prior years, when artists, politicians and other prominent figures packed into the opera house. Instead, the ceremony was split over several days, and television producers stitched together a combination of recorded at-home tributes and in-person performances that aired in June.This time, the ceremony, scheduled for Dec. 5, promises to look more like the Kennedy Center Honors of old, with the house at capacity and, if all goes well, President Biden in attendance. (President Trump was a no-show at the three ceremonies held during his time in office.)Throughout her career, Bette Midler released more than a dozen studio albums. Her starring role in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” earned her a Tony Award for best lead actress in a musical in 2017.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“It’s going to be the party to end all parties because we haven’t had one in so long,” said Deborah Rutter, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.The ceremony will air on CBS, but the date has not been set.The honorees, selected on the recommendation of an advisory committee that includes Kennedy Center officials and past award recipients, include two singer-songwriters, Mitchell and Midler, whose careers started to soar in the early 1970s, when they were in their 20s.Fifty years ago, Mitchell, 77, released “Blue,” her fourth album, which went on to have an enduring influence on singer-songwriters for decades to come. Mitchell, who helped shape an era of protest music with songs like “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock,” said of the honor, “I wish my mother and father were alive to see this.”Midler’s debut album, “The Divine Miss M,” came out a year after “Blue,” and helped propel her into a career that spread to Broadway, television and film. Midler, 75, put out more than a dozen studio albums, and her run as Dolly Levi in the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” earned her a Tony Award for best lead actress in a musical in 2017.Berry Gordy, right, onstage in 1981 with Smokey Robinson, one of the many singers discovered by Gordy.Joan Adlen/Getty ImagesIn Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, the Kennedy Center is honoring the figure behind an entire generation of musical talent. Gordy, now 91, once borrowed $800 from his family to start the record company and then went on to discover and help ignite the careers of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and more.After announcing his retirement two years ago, Gordy said in an interview, he spends much of his time playing golf, tennis and chess.“Here we are 60 years later and Diana Ross and the Temptations are both coming out with new albums,” he said. “Motown’s legacy continues without me having to do anything.”This year is the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center’s opening in 1971, more than a decade after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating a National Cultural Center. Shortly after the grand opening of the center, Díaz, then a 31-year-old opera singer, performed there as the male lead in Ginastera’s “Beatrix Cenci.” He played a villainous count and recalled handling two huge Mastiffs onstage during his first entrance.Now, at 81, Díaz, a bass-baritone who has performed for opera companies across the globe, will return to the opera house to see artists pay tribute to his career.Fifty years ago, Justino Díaz sang at one of the opening performances at the Kennedy Center. Now, he will return for a celebration of his career.Presley Ann/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Image“Little old me?” he said in an interview. He noted that despite his fame in the opera world, he is not a household name.“I say I’m an opera singer,” he said, “and immediately I have to follow with, ‘No, I’m not Plácido Domingo and I’m not Luciano Pavarotti.’”Rutter said that although the last ceremony was limited by social distancing requirements, there are aspects of it that she wishes to maintain. In particular, she said, there was a sense of intimacy in that celebration that had not been there before. At one point, she noted, as the artists mingled outside on a terrace, Rhiannon Giddens picked up her banjo, began playing, and Joan Baez started to dance.“It was spontaneous,” Rutter said. “The artists broke open their instruments and people started singing and dancing together.”(It is unclear whether the attendees this year will be required to wear masks, as they will be required to do for the Kennedy Center’s fall programming.)Michaels, 76, who created “S.N.L.” in 1975, was also forced by the pandemic to drastically rethink his show. In the spring of 2020, “S.N.L.” filmed sketches at its actors’ homes, allowing the audience to connect with the cast members in a new way. Now that they have returned to a live audience, they are thinking of ways to apply what they learned in quarantine.“Those shows had a strong homemade quality, which was part of their charm,” he said. “Once we went back to the audience, we kept pushing the limit of what we could do.” More

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      After 145 Years, Bayreuth Festival Has Its First Female Conductor

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      Oksana Lyniv will open the festival, founded by Wagner to present his own operas, leading “Der Fliegende Holländer.”The Bayreuth Festival in Germany is one of the most venerable events in classical music. Richard Wagner founded it to present his own operas, and it’s been open most summers since 1876.But 2021 brings something new in the festival’s 145-year history: On Sunday, Oksana Lyniv will become the first woman to conduct a production there.A native of Brody, in western Ukraine, where she grew up in a family of musicians, Lyniv, 43, has spent the better part of the last two decades in German-speaking Europe. She was an assistant to the influential conductor Kirill Petrenko at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and from 2017 to 2020 was chief conductor of the Graz Opera and Graz Philharmonic Orchestra in Austria. She has also maintained strong musical ties to Ukraine, and is the founder and artistic director of LvivMozArt, a festival in Lviv inspired by that city’s 19th-century ties to Franz Xaver Mozart, the great composer’s son.“It was always my goal to come to Germany,” she said in a recent interview. “It was unimaginable for me to be a professional conductor without a connection to sources in the German language, which are very important when I prepare for concerts.”The first books she read in that language, she added, were Mozart’s letters.She spoke on a video call late last month from Bayreuth, where she was rehearsing for her debut leading the new production of “Der Fliegende Holländer.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Eric Cutler, right, sings Erik in the production of “Der Fliegende Holländer,” directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleYou have been to Bayreuth before, as a member of the audience and an observer in the unusual covered orchestra pit. What is unique about the festival?Everything is different; there is really no comparison with anywhere else. The position of the orchestra members in the pit, for instance, was prescribed by Wagner. First violins sit on the right, and second violins sit on the left, with the double basses on either side of the strings. This all creates a special sound.And because of the construction of the pit, which is covered, the sound goes back to the wall then out to the audience, so there is a slight delay. As a conductor at Bayreuth, you’re very dependent on your assistants, who are sitting in the audience. There are phones near the podium, and we can all communicate the whole time about how the orchestra is sounding in the theater. In the pit itself, it’s rather tight, and the sound is very, very loud — but it’s really exciting.How are you getting ready for your debut?It was important for me to find out what Wagner was thinking when he created “Der Fliegende Holländer.” At the time he wrote it, he was in debt and artistically frustrated, but he had great ambition. He had moved to an apartment on the edge of Paris — angry at the whole world, feeling that no one understood him — and he wrote this opera to prove something. We hear that struggle in Act I, Scene 1, when a storm begins. I was in Paris recently, for my debut at the Opéra Bastille, and I went to look for the house where he composed the opera. This kind of history is very important for me.What do you make of Senta, the opera’s heroine?Wagner was creating a prototype of the modern woman in Senta. She doesn’t belong to her family, or to tradition. She doesn’t want to get married, or sit with the other village women and spin. And she doesn’t want to do what her father wants her to do; she has her own ideas. That was very unusual in the 19th century. In his operas, Wagner went on to create other women like this, such as Isolde or Brünnhilde, women who are gradually being emancipated, who are acting on their own.Dmitri Tcherniakov is directing and designing the production. Have you worked with him before? What is his interpretation of the piece?Yes, I got to know him when I was Kirill Petrenko’s assistant in Munich, and he staged “Lulu.” Tcherniakov likes to explore the psychological background of the characters. I can’t give too many specifics now, but I can say the production is not set in any particular period. And the focus is on the Dutchman. Tcherniakov likes to point out that other productions are focused on Senta: Why does she dream about the Dutchman? Why does she want to save him? Here, Tcherniakov is asking: Why is the Dutchman the way he is? Why was he driven out, and why can’t he go back? What is he looking for?Lyniv at a rehearsal. She is separately preparing two groups of musicians to have an alternate ensemble ready in case coronavirus cases are discovered in one.Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther FestspieleYou’re from western Ukraine, a former cultural crossroads. What was it like when you were growing up? Were you aware of the region’s vanished traditions?I was born during the Soviet period, when Russian and Soviet culture were imposed on us, but I like to read, and did my own research. I came across great names like Joseph Roth, Paul Celan and Stanislaw Lem, the Polish science- fiction writer who was born in Lviv.I also discovered that Leonard Bernstein’s parents were from Rovno, 100 kilometers from Brody, where I was born. Brody was once known as “the Jerusalem of Austria,” and there are still the ruins of a synagogue destroyed in the Second World War, which reminds us of the past in a very strong way. In 2019, I conducted a special concert there in memory of Joseph Roth, and we played Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony.Do you sing yourself?I started with piano. Then I played flute, studied violin a little, and then I studied singing. I have a high soprano voice, and I really liked singing in a choir. When I was young, I thought about being a choir director like my father, but then orchestra conducting prevailed. The sound of an orchestra fascinated me.What do you do before a performance? Do you have any habits or superstitions?It is important for me to have a coffee and something sweet, but I don’t really have any other needs. The most important thing for me is inspiration. I rely on finding out so much about the composers beforehand that I feel I know them personally, that they’re almost my friends.Do you sense resistance to female conductors today?In the last 15 years, everything has changed a lot. I don’t feel any hostility; in fact, just the opposite. There is a lot of interest and support: from the public, from orchestras, from managers and from the critics. Next season, I have some great things planned: In November, I will have my debut at Covent Garden in London with “Tosca,” and next May I will have my first concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, a Stravinsky program.How is the pandemic affecting Bayreuth this year?During the pandemic, I have had to deal with every kind of situation. In Frankfurt, we did a whole “I Puritani” with only 19 musicians in the orchestra pit. Now in Bayreuth, we’re playing with a full orchestra, but we have two groupings; I rehearse with each one in case something happens. We have 140 people in the chorus, and they are divided. Seventy are in a special room and their singing is broadcast into the theater, and the other 70 are onstage, like extras, but they can’t sing a note for safety reasons — though they’re meant to react the whole time as if they’re singing.Are you vaccinated?No, I have not yet been vaccinated, though I plan to. But we have PCR tests every day. And I don’t meet anybody or go anywhere — except rehearsal. More

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      Gil Wechsler, an Illuminating Fixture at the Met Opera, Dies at 79

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      Mr. Wechsler, the first resident lighting designer at the Met, created lighting designs that helped bring numerous operas to life.Gil Wechsler, who with innovative lighting designs helped bring to life more than 100 productions at the Metropolitan Opera, translating the visions of some of opera’s best-known directors while also contributing to a more modern look for the Met’s stagings, died on July 9 at a memory-care facility in Warrington, Pa. He was 79.His husband, the artist Douglas Sardo, said the cause was complications of dementia.Mr. Wechsler was the first resident lighting designer at the Met. He lit his inaugural show in 1977 and, over the next 20 years, made days dawn, rain fall and cities burn in 112 Met productions, 74 of them new.His career also took him to London, Paris and other international centers of opera and ballet. Wherever he was designing, he knew that audiences often didn’t take much notice of his contributions to a production — which was usually the point.“If lighting is good, you really shouldn’t notice it often,” he told Opera News in 1987. “In some operas, however, such as ‘Die Walküre,’ the lighting becomes the show. It should seem natural — it shouldn’t jar, but you should be moved by it.”Fabrizio Melano was among the many directors who appreciated Mr. Wechsler’s skills even though, as he noted, audiences often did not.“They sort of take the lighting for granted, and it’s something intangible,” Mr. Melano said in a phone interview. “You can see sets, you can see people moving, but lighting is an atmosphere. But sometimes the atmosphere is the most important thing, because so much depends upon it. And he was a master of atmosphere.”One of many examples of Mr. Wechsler’s handiwork was seen at the Met in Mr. Melano’s staging of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” on which they collaborated in 1977. The set featured a number of scrims and screens, with treelike images projected onto them.“The illusion of moonlight coming through the trees is created by a patterned slide placed in front of one of the lamps,” The New York Times explained in a 1978 article on Mr. Wechsler and how he created his effects. “From the audience, the set looks remarkably like a three‐dimensional forest.”Joseph Volpe, a former general manager at the Met, said that Mr. Wechsler was an important part of an effort instituted by John Dexter, the Met’s director of productions from 1975 to 1981, to modernize the look of the company’s productions. Previously, lighting had usually been handled by the head electrician, and the approach was simply to illuminate the whole stage. Mr. Wechsler brought nuance and visual effects into play, including by using light to make a soloist stand out and the chorus fade into shadow.“The company had a nickname for Gil: Prince of Darkness,” Mr. Volpe said in a phone interview, “because Gil of course understood that it’s important that you don’t flood the whole stage with light.”Teresa Stratas as Mélisande and José Van Dam as Golaud in Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande,” presented in the Met’s 1977-78 season. “From the audience, the set looks remarkably like a three‐dimensional forest,” The New York Times wrote at the time in describing the impact of Mr. Wechsler’s work.Metropolitan Opera ArchivesGilbert Dale Wechsler was born on Feb. 5, 1942, in Brooklyn. His father, Arnold, was a stockbroker, and his mother, Miriam (Steinberg) Wechsler, volunteered at the Brooklyn Museum.When he was growing up his parents often sent him to summer camp in New Jersey, Mr. Sardo said in a phone interview, and working on camp productions is where young Gil first discovered his fascination with theater.He graduated from Midwood High School in Brooklyn and studied for three years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., before realizing that a career in business or finance was not in his future. In 1964 he earned a theater degree at New York University, and in 1967 he received a master of fine arts degree at Yale.Upon graduating he found work as an assistant to the prominent set and lighting designer Jo Mielziner, and in 1968 he received his first Broadway credit, as lighting designer on the Charles Dyer play “Staircase.” He would have one more Broadway credit, in 1972, for Georges Feydeau’s “There’s One in Every Marriage.” Before coming to the Met, he also designed for the Stratford Festival in Ontario, the Harkness Ballet, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and other leading regional theaters and festivals.At the Met, Mr. Wechsler worked with Otto Schenk, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, David Hockney and many other leading directors and designers. Lighting for the Met is particularly challenging because — unlike on Broadway, for instance — the shows change on a weekly or even daily basis. One of Mr. Wechsler’s accomplishments, Mr. Sardo said, was to develop accurate records of the lighting schemes for each production, so that one show could be swapped for another more efficiently.“Before Gil was involved, there were no reference manuals as to how that should be done,” Mr. Sardo said. “Someone kinda remembered how the lighting was supposed to be.”In 1979, Mr. Volpe said, Mr. Wechsler further smoothed the changeovers by installing the Met’s first computerized light board.His work on a production began well before opening night or even the first rehearsal; for an opera, he would study an opera’s score and develop his own ideas of how each scene should look.“The lighting cues are always a function of the music,” he told The Times, “and in that sense, the score is the bible. The music will suggest a sunrise, or a gloomy day perhaps, as well as a feeling of continuity from scene to scene. As I follow the score, certain pictures will automatically occur to me.”But they were not necessarily the same pictures that occurred to the director or the scenic designer; once they all put their heads together, the compromising would begin. In the Opera News interview, he recalled a particular scene in “Turandot” that he and the director Franco Zeffirelli conceived very differently.A scene from “Turandot,” performed during the Met’s 1987-88 season, lit by Mr. Wechsler and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.Metropolitan Opera Archives“Puccini’s score doesn’t indicate when the scene is held,” he explained, “except to mention that lanterns are placed around the stage. That clue meant ‘night’ to me, but Franco sees it another way” — he wanted the scene staged in daylight.Mr. Wechsler also found compromises with the set and costume designers, and with the performers. There was, for instance, the issue of fire.“Fire is difficult, because you obviously can’t have a full stage fire, even though quite a few operas call for them,” he told The Times. “We create fire with smoke, steam and projections. The more smoke and steam we can use, the better it will look. Unfortunately, the more smoke we use, the less happy the singers are.”The Prince of Darkness didn’t use shade only to hide the chorus; in the case of some of the Met’s older productions, he used it to keep the wear and tear on the sets from being visible. That could be difficult, though.“When the score calls for a bright, sunny day, we can’t make it too bright, or you’ll see where the paint is flaking,” he said. “And we can’t make it so dark that it doesn’t look like daytime anymore.”Mr. Wechsler, who lived in Upper Black Eddy, Pa., oversaw his final Met production, Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” in 1996. He and Mr. Sardo, whose relationship began in 1980, married in 2017. In addition to Mr. Sardo, Mr. Wechsler is survived by a brother, Norman.Mr. Wechsler’s lighting designs were still in use by the Met for a number of productions before performances were halted by the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. More

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      Graham Vick, Director Who Opened Opera’s Doors, Dies at 67

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      The British director was no stranger to the prestige houses, but his calls to make opera more inclusive and available to everyone eventually found their moment.LONDON — Graham Vick, a British opera director who worked at prestigious houses like the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala while also seeking to broaden opera’s appeal by staging works in abandoned rock clubs and former factories and by bringing more diversity to casting, died on Saturday in London. He was 67.The cause was complications of Covid-19, the Birmingham Opera Company, which he founded, said in a news release.Mr. Vick spent much of the coronavirus pandemic in Crete, Greece, and returned to Britain in June to take part in rehearsals for a Birmingham Opera production of Wagner’s “Das Rhinegold,” Jonathan Groves, his agent, said in a telephone interview.Mr. Vick was artistic director at the company, which he saw as a vehicle to bring opera to everyone. His productions there, which were in English, often included amateur performers. And he insisted on keeping ticket prices low so that anyone could attend, and on hiring singers who reflected the ethnic diversity of Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city. His immersive production of Verdi’s “Otello” in 2009 featured Ronald Samm, the first Black tenor to sing the title role in a professional production in Britain.The company never held V.I.P. receptions because Mr. Vick believed that no audience member should be seen as above any other.Ronald Samm was the first Black tenor to sing the title role in “Otello” in a professional production in Britain.Peter Roy“You do not need to be educated to be touched, to be moved and excited by opera,” he said in a speech at the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards in 2016. “You only need to experience it directly at first hand, with nothing getting in the way.”Opera makers must “remove the barriers and make the connections that will release its power for everybody,” he added.Oliver Mears, the Royal Opera House’s director of opera, said in a statement that Mr. Vick had been “a true innovator in the way he integrated community work into our art form.”“Many people from hugely diverse backgrounds love opera — and first experienced it — through his work,” he said.Graham Vick was born on Dec. 30, 1953, in Birkenhead, near Liverpool. His father, Arnold, worked in a clothing store, while his mother Muriel (Hynes) Vick worked in the personnel department of a factory. His love of the stage bloomed at age 5 when he saw a production of “Peter Pan.”“It was a complete road-to-Damascus moment,” he told The Times of London in 2014. “Everything was there — the flight through the window into another world, a bigger world.”Opera gave him similar opportunities to “fly, soar, breathe and scream,” he said.Mr. Vick studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, intending to become a conductor. But he turned to directing and created his first production at 22. Two years later, he directed a production of Gustav Holst’s “Savitri” for Scottish Opera and soon became its director of productions.With Scottish Opera, he quickly showed his desire to bring opera to local communities. He led Opera-Go-Round, an initiative in which a small troupe traveled to remote parts of Scotland’s Highlands and islands, often performing with just piano accompaniment. He also brought opera singers to factories to perform during lunch breaks.Mr. Vick became director of productions at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1994. That same year he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera with a raucous staging of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” the first time the company performed the opera. He also directed Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron” and “Il Trovatore” at the Met.Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called Mr. Vick’s “Moses und Aron” “a starkly modern yet poignantly human staging.”Mr. Vick put on his first production at La Scala in Milan in 1996, directing Luciano Berio’s “Outis.” In 1999, after a multiyear renovation and expansion, he reopened London’s Royal Opera House with Verdi’s “Falstaff.”Mr. Vick with the cast of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the Birmingham Opera in 2019.Adam FradgleySome of his productions received mixed or even harsh reviews. “Stalin was right,” Edward Rothstein wrote in The Times in reviewing “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” in 1994, calling Mr. Vick’s production “crude, primitive, vulgar,” just as Stalin had done with Shostakovich’s original. Just as often they were praised, however.Despite Mr. Vick’s success at traditional opera houses, he sometimes criticized them. “They’re huge, glamorous, fabulous, seductive institutions, but they’re also a dangerous black hole where great art can so easily become self-serving product,” he told the BBC in 2012.Mr. Vick’s work at the Birmingham Opera Company, which he founded in 1987, was celebrated in Britain for its bold vision. Its first production, another “Falstaff,” was staged inside a recreation center in the city; other productions took place in a burned-out ballroom above a shopping center and in an abandoned warehouse.Mr. Vick decided to use amateurs after rehearsing a Rossini opera in Pesaro, Italy, in the 1990s. It was so hot and airless one day, he recalled in a 2003 lecture, that he opened the theater’s doors to the street and was shocked to see a group of teenagers stop their soccer game and watch, transfixed.“To reach this kind of constituency in Birmingham, we decided to recruit members of the community into our work,” he said. People who bought tickets should see reflections of themselves onstage and in the production team, he added.Mr. Vick kept returning to Birmingham because, he said, it was only there, “in the glorious participation of audience and performers,” that he felt whole.The company was praised not only for its inclusivity. Its 2009 staging of “Otello” “gets you in the heart and the guts,” Rian Evans wrote in The Guardian. And Mark Swed, in The Los Angeles Times, called Mr. Vick’s production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Mittwoch aus Licht” in 2012 “otherworldly.” (It included string players performing in helicopters and a camel, and was part of Britain’s 2012 Olympic Games celebrations.)“If opera is meant to change your perception of what is possible and worthwhile, to dream the impossible dream and all that, then this is clearly the spiritually uplifting way to do it,” Mr. Swed added.Mr. Vick, who died in a hospital, is survived by his partner, the choreographer Ron Howell, as well as an older brother, Hedley.In his speech at the Royal Philharmonic Society awards, Mr. Vick urged those in the opera world to “get out of our ghetto” and follow the Birmingham example in trying to reflect the community where a company is based.People need to “embrace the future and help build a world we want to live in,” he said, “not hide away fiddling while Rome burns.” More