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      Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s ‘First Lady of Song,’ Dies at 63Proficient across a range of genres, she had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer.The South African singer Sibongile Khumalo in performance at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn in 2007. Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021, 3:04 p.m. ETSibongile Khumalo, a virtuoso vocalist whose ease of motion between opera, jazz and South African popular music made her a symbol of the country’s new social order after the end of apartheid, died on Thursday. She was 63.Her family wrote on Instagram that the cause was complications of a stroke, and that she had endured a long illness. The post did not say where she died.Fleet and precise across a wide vocal range but particularly elegant in the upper register, Ms. Khumalo’s voice had the hall-filling power of an operatic mezzo-soprano and the directness of a pop singer. After making her debut as Carmen in a production in Durban, she earned wide acclaim for her roles in South African operas and plays, including “UShaka KaSenzangakhona,” “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” and “Gorée,” all of which toured internationally.At home she was equally known for her catchy original compositions and her renditions of South African jazz standards like the straight-ahead anthem “Yakhal’ Inkomo,” written by the saxophonist Winston Ngozi, which became a calling card.When the apartheid government fell and Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected president in 1994, Ms. Khumalo performed at his inauguration. Mandela famously referred to her as the country’s “first lady of song,” and the title stuck.The next year, when South Africa went to the Rugby World Cup — a moment of national reconciliation later immortalized in the film “Invictus” — Ms. Khumalo was invited to perform both her home country’s national anthem and that of its opponent, New Zealand. It was “the one and only time I’ve ever watched a rugby match, at any level, of any kind,” she told a television interviewer in 2017, laughing.In 1996 Sony released her debut album, “Ancient Evenings,” which included a number of originals and loosely adhered to a vocal-driven South African pop style. Over the next two decades she would release a steady stream of albums, earning four South African Music Awards. For her stage performances, she garnered three Vita Awards.In 2008 she received the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, among the country’s highest honors for contributions to the arts.Sibongile Mngoma was born in Soweto on Sept. 24, 1957, to Grace and Khabi Mngoma. Her mother was a nurse; her father was a scholar and musician who helped found the music department at the University of Zululand.Sibongile began studying at age 8 under a respected local music teacher, Emily Motsieloa, focusing on the violin. She was heavily influenced by the music of local healers and ministers at the nearby church, as well as the Western classical and pop records her parents played around the house.She also inherited her father’s passion for education and went on to earn undergraduate degrees from both Zululand and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She later received honorary doctorates from Zululand, Rhodes University and the University of South Africa.She taught at Zululand, but she also sought opportunities to reach children who lacked access to major institutions. She held teaching and administrative positions at the Federated Union of Black Artists Academy in Johannesburg and the Madimba Institute of African Music in Soweto.Ms. Khumalo’s husband, the actor and director Siphiwe Khumalo, died in 2005. The couple had two children, Ayanda and Tshepo Khumalo. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.In 1993, she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award at the famed Grahamstown National Arts Festival, and her star rose swiftly. She had already begun turning heads with a concert program, titled “The 3 Faces of Sibongile Khumalo,” that showed off her versatility across genres. Those “faces” were jazz, opera and traditional South African music.When Ms. Khumalo was a girl, her father had brought her to see Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu, a Zulu princess and musician known for her prowess as a singer and composer. “My dad made me sit at her feet to listen to her play ugubhu and sing,” Ms. Khumalo wrote in the notes to her self-titled 2005 album, referring to a Zulu stringed instrument. “I thought he was being very unkind to me because all the other children were out in the yard playing.”But decades later, she drew upon the experience when she collaborated with the scholar Mzilikazi Khumalo (no relation) to create “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu,” billed as the first Zulu opera, centered on the princess’s own compositions. “It must have been destiny,” she said. “In my professional years the music came back and it began to make sense.”When “Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu” traveled to the United States in 2004, Anne Midgette reviewed it for The New York Times, praising Ms. Khumalo’s “talent and versatility.” Ten years after South Africa had achieved democratic rule, Ms. Midgette noted, Ms. Khumalo seemed to represent “a symbol of its new culture.”In a 2019 interview ahead of her performance at the Joy of Jazz Festival in Johannesburg, Ms. Khumalo said that no matter the symbolism, her main commitment was to the singularity of her own voice. “While exposing yourself and opening yourself up to what is out there, it is also important to remain true to yourself, so that even when you allow yourself to be influenced by others, you retain an identity that clearly defines you,” she said.Whatever the subject matter, she added, “it is the truth in what you express, and how you express it, that is paramount.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity Officer

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity OfficerMarcia Sells has been brought on to rethink equity and inclusion at the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Marcia Sells, who has been hired as the first chief diversity officer in the Metropolitan Opera’s history.Credit…Eileen BarassoJan. 25, 2021Updated 1:32 p.m. ETMarcia Sells — a former dancer who became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and the dean of students at Harvard Law School — has been hired as the first chief diversity officer of the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Her appointment, which the Met announced on Monday, is something of a corrective to the company’s nearly 140-year history and a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It’s also a conscious step toward inclusivity by a major player in an industry in which some Black singers, including Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman, have found stardom, but diversity has lagged in orchestras, staff and leadership.Since last summer, cultural institutions across the country have made changes as the Black Lives Matter movement drew scrutiny to racial inequities in virtually every corner of the arts world. The Met was no exception: The company announced plans to open next season with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer, directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown, who will become the first Black director to lead a production on the Met’s main stage. It also named three composers of color — Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to its commissioning program.But to make broader changes at the Met, an institution with a long payroll and a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Met is turning to Ms. Sells. As a member of the senior management team, she will report to Peter Gelb, the general manager. The human resources department will be brought under her direction, and her purview will be broad: the Met in its entirety, including the board.“Sometimes horrible events like the killing of George Floyd catalyze people, and they realize this is something we need to do — at the Met and across the arts,” Ms. Sells said in an interview about her plans to make the Met a more inclusive company that values the diversity of its staff and the audiences it serves.Mr. Gelb described Ms. Sells as an “ideal” candidate. “Not only does she have a history of accomplishment, but she also has a knowledge of the performing arts, having been involved in them herself,” he said in an interview. “And she loves opera, which is definitely a plus.”Ms. Sells began dancing as a 4-year-old in Cincinnati, an arts-rich city where she found herself both onstage and in the audience of the storied Music Hall, and where she saw a young Kathleen Battle sing as a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.“It had been part of my growing up to experience art,” she said.She later joined Arthur Mitchell’s company, Dance Theater of Harlem, then remained in New York to attend Barnard College and Columbia Law School. Ms. Sells described herself as “an affirmative action baby,” and said that as both a dancer and a law student she had encountered racism, both overt and insidious, that made her feel unwelcome.Ms. Sells recalled, for instance, a judge in the mid-1980s who told her that witnesses had to wait outside the courtroom. She said that she was actually an assistant district attorney, and he replied, “Wow, things have changed.”Diversity has been at the fore of her work as an administrator — at places including Columbia, the N.B.A. and eventually Harvard Law, where she has been the dean of students since 2015. Her mandate at the Met won’t be too far from that of Harvard, another institute often perceived as elite to the point of exclusivity.“It’s not just that you want to get it right,” Ms. Sells said. “There are a lot of eyes on you, but it’s a huge opportunity to show the way, as well as learn from other organizations that don’t have as big a name, are not as well known, and help shine a light on that work and on them.”She plans to start at the Met in late February. Among her early tasks will be to conceive a diversity, equity and inclusion plan that could be implemented across hiring, artistic planning and engagement; she will also examine structural inequities at the Met, and work with the marketing and development departments to broaden the company’s audience and donor base.The Met has been shut down because of the pandemic since last March, and most of its workers have been furloughed without pay since April. It is facing a major labor dispute with its unions, as well as more than $150 million in lost revenue from the theater’s closure. But Mr. Gelb said that the company hopes to receive assistance for diversity-related costs from foundations.What those costs are will become clearer as Ms. Sells settles into her new job. She said that she was ready, and motivated by the company’s recent recognition “of how structurally or historically the Met has not felt welcoming to people of color” and the range of possibilities for change.“I truly believe,” Ms. Sells said, “that this is the Met’s moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      He Called His Song ‘American Anthem.’ It Actually Became One.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Biden AdministrationliveLatest UpdatesReview of Russian HackingBiden’s CabinetPandemic ResponseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHe Called His Song ‘American Anthem.’ It Actually Became One.In his inaugural address, President Biden quoted Gene Scheer’s song, a patriotic hymn championed by the opera star Denyce Graves and recorded by Norah Jones for a Ken Burns soundtrack.Gene Scheer was watching the inauguration on television when President Biden suddenly began quoting “American Anthem,” a song he wrote more than 20 years ago.Credit…Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesPublished More

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      Elijah Moshinsky, Met Opera Director With Fanciful Touch, Dies at 75

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and Cases13,000 Approaches to TeachingVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostElijah Moshinsky, Met Opera Director With Fanciful Touch, Dies at 75Mr. Moshinsky, known for mixing traditional staging ideas with modern flourishes, also created productions for the Royal Opera and Opera Australia. He died of Covid-19.The director Elijah Moshinsky in 2015. Joseph Volpe, the Metropolitan Opera’s former general manager, said Mr. Moshinsky was “the closest thing the Met had to a house director.” He also worked in theater.Credit…Jeff BusbyJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:53 p.m. ETElijah Moshinsky, an Australian theater, television and opera director known for his productions at the Royal Opera in London, Opera Australia and especially the Metropolitan Opera, died on Jan. 14 at a hospital in London. He was 75.The cause was Covid-19, his family said.The best Moshinsky productions combined traditional staging ideas with modern, striking, sometimes fanciful touches, as in his 1993 version of Richard Strauss’s “Ariadne auf Naxos” for the Met, which is slated for revival in the 2021-22 season.That production reached the essence of Strauss’s opera, a delicate mix of grandeur and farce, providing “the thrill of beauty encased in irony, of sincerity at the end of self-consciousness,” Edward Rothstein of The New York Times wrote in a review.Mr. Moshinsky’s version featured an exaggeratedly bustling depiction of backstage preparations for an entertainment at the home of a Viennese gentleman, as well as a trio of eerily gigantic nymphs, their colorful dresses falling to the ground.“Ariadne” was one of nine new productions Mr. Moshinsky presented at the Met from 1980 to 2001, making him “the closest thing the Met had to a house director,” Joseph Volpe, the company’s general manager for much of that period, wrote in his 2006 memoir, “The Toughest Show on Earth: My Rise and Reign at the Metropolitan Opera.”Along with “Ariadne,” four are still in the Met’s active repertory, including a boldly stylized 1995 version of Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” that had a film-noir feel, and a bleak, eerily contemporary, almost Expressionist 1996 staging of Janacek’s mysterious “The Makropulos Case.” Mr. Moshinsky’s last Met production was Verdi’s “Luisa Miller.”Mr. Moshinsky’s Met career began inauspiciously with a roundly criticized production of Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” a clumsily updated and poorly executed production starring Luciano Pavarotti. He returned in 1986 for Handel’s oratorio “Samson,” starring the tenor Jon Vickers in the title role, a stiff production that originated at the Royal Opera. But with that 1993 “Ariadne,” he announced himself anew.In attempting to bring a contemporary edge to his productions, Mr. Moshinsky was sometimes criticized for forcing what seemed quasi-modern elements and stark monumentality onto an otherwise traditional staging.His 1994 production of Verdi’s “Otello,” mounted for the tenor Plácido Domingo, was full of grandly operatic spectacle, yet some felt it seemed heavy-handed. It was dominated by “soaring columns and towering facades” that “alternately embrace and smother a great opera,” the critic Bernard Holland wrote in The Times.When Mr. Moshinsky followed his instincts to keep things traditional, the results were often effective. The critic Peter G. Davis, in a review for Classical Music, called the director’s 2001 production of “Luisa Miller” the Met’s “most satisfying Verdi effort in years.” Working within a “sensible but atmospheric setting,” Mr. Davis wrote, Mr. Moshinsky directed his characters “with skill, flexibility, and a sure understanding of who these people are.”He was also content, unlike some directors who come to opera from the world of theater, to work with singers who bring “outsized emotions” and “huge egos” onstage, as he put it in an interview with the BBC in 1993. Opera, he said, needed “people who can fill those emotional roles,” and part of his job was to engage with a performer’s temperament “to enable the best performance to occur.”Plácido Domingo as the title character and Renee Fleming as Desdemona during a dress rehearsal for a Moshinsky production of Verdi’s “Otello” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2002.Credit…Jack Vartoogian/Getty ImagesElijah Moshinsky was born on Jan. 8, 1946, in the French Concession in Shanghai, to which his Russian Jewish parents, Abraham and Eva (Krasavitsky) Moshinsky, had fled. He was the youngest of the couple’s three sons. Even though the family left Shanghai for Australia when Elijah was 5, he retained vivid memories of his early childhood, fortified by family stories and memorabilia, he said in the BBC interview.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Two Friends, Two Continents, Very Different Pandemics

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTwo Friends, Two Continents, Very Different PandemicsSteven LaBrie is a freelance baritone in New York. Jarrett Ott has a full-time job singing in Germany. As the coronavirus spread, that made all the difference.The singers Jarrett Ott (left, in Stuttgart, Germany) and Steven LaBrie (right, in New York City) are friends whose careers were hit very differently by the pandemic.Credit…Roderick Aichinger for The New York Times; Michael George for The New York TimesJan. 13, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAs two singers rising through the close-knit world of Philadelphia’s most acclaimed conservatories, Steven LaBrie and Jarrett Ott knew each other in passing. But on one raucous night in 2009, when Mr. Ott joined the celebration of Mr. LaBrie’s 21st birthday — an evening of tequila, dancing and after-hours pizza — their friendship was sealed.Both baritones, Mr. LaBrie, now 32, and Mr. Ott, 33, stayed close as their opera careers began to blossom. They and their partners lived near each other in Astoria, Queens, for a time, and Mr. LaBrie and Mr. Ott worked out at the same gym. In 2018, with fellow baritone Tobias Greenhalgh, they released “Remember,” an album of songs by American composers.That year, their paths split. Mr. Ott started a full-time job in the ensemble at the respected opera house in Stuttgart, Germany. Mr. LaBrie remained based in New York, a freelance artist with a growing reputation.This divergence made all the difference when the coronavirus hit. With performances canceled around the world, Mr. LaBrie’s income fell to nothing; he hasn’t had health insurance for years. But across the Atlantic, support from the German government meant that Mr. Ott’s position was safe, his pay almost unchanged and his benefits secure.In separate interviews, they spoke about the impact of the pandemic — and political responses to it — on their lives and future plans. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Steven LaBrieA freelance baritone, Mr. LaBrie made his European debut in late 2019 in “Rusalka” at the Erl Festival in Austria. Plans to have him return to the festival were canceled because of the pandemic.Credit…Xiomara BenderI started when I was a teenager as a mariachi singer. My mother is Mexican, and she encouraged it. We would drive around Dallas to all these restaurants, and there were bands you could go up and sing with. And once I became a professional singer, I loved the lifestyle. I loved traveling; I loved being different places with different colleagues.A year ago, in December 2019, I was making my European debut. (I had sung in Paris, but on tour with New York City Ballet, so I’m not counting that.) I had gone on a German audition tour, and the head of the Erl Festival in Austria hired me to sing the Hunter and Innkeeper in “Rusalka” at the end of 2019.At the opening night party, I was immediately rehired for an obscure opera by Offenbach that hadn’t been performed since its premiere in Austria. It was a huge role, a huge thing for me. But since Covid happened, they decided that because of budgetary reasons they were cutting the show. And my hope for my singing career in Europe dwindled away. I was going to make my debut on the main stage at Carnegie Hall, and that flew away, too. A career is built one milestone at a time, so what now? I streamed a video performance, but I found it’s really difficult to get people to commit to watching any self-produced online content.I’ve been a lucky person in some ways. I have a partner, who’s also a musician but has a steady income as a coach at Juilliard, a pianist on the Met’s music staff and a recitalist. And losing my income — most years I probably made about $50,000 before expenses and paying my manager — wasn’t as much of a blow as some people who have a house they own, or children. I qualified for pandemic relief, and got the $1,200 stimulus.I don’t feel like the government has ever supported the arts. I pay high taxes, because I’m a self-employed person. That comes with many expenses and it’s difficult to get ahead financially when there are so many people a singer needs to employ to help him succeed. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve been told that the opera industry has been facing hardships and that fees have gone down, which makes me wonder if opera at some point will just be a hobby for people who already have a safety net.I kept thinking, what can I do with this time? I went straight to the Academy of Vocal Arts after high school; I’ve only ever known singing. What can I do with no degree? What the coronavirus has shown is that we’re not confined to staying put in one location anymore. We can do anything from anywhere in the world. I read a lot about people who made a career transition into tech. And I began looking into software engineering. I started learning a coding language, and did that the entire summer.Now I’m what they call a “resident” at a software engineering immersive program called Codesmith. It’s an intensive program for three months that takes you up to being hired at a high level, mid to senior.I’m not leaving singing. I’m preparing myself for having a skill set in an industry with a lot of opportunities and straddling both worlds. This idea people have, that you’re either a singer or not a singer, it’s just not the truth. And now, more than ever, it can’t be the truth.I really do believe I’m coming out of this feeling so much more empowered. I’m relying on myself to invent my future, as opposed to feeling I’m the victim of a system. I’m not saying I’m always at the computer with glee. I have shed a tear or two for my life and career. But at the same time, you have to keep moving forward. My dream has always been, and will always be, to be a singer. But now I have more than one dream.Jarrett OttMr. Ott, center, as Chou En-lai in John Adams’s “Nixon in China,” part of his full-time job as a member of the ensemble at the State Opera in Stuttgart, where government support has maintained his position, pay and benefits.Credit…Matthias BausThe main thing when you’re in an ensemble is to get so many roles under your belt. You can be singing three at the same time. No matter what training you get in the United States, nothing prepares you to be a full-time singer at a single company. A freelancer can hop among companies, but you’re never rehearsing one show in the afternoon, going into another show at night and in the morning a third. One time, someone got to perform in another house, so I was asked to do two Marcellos in the same day in “La Bohème.” It’s not always ideal circumstances, but it’s such a life-changing experience.It’s a full-time position, salary based. Full health benefits. Singers in Europe can afford to live off this salary, but it’s assumed that you’re also going to have some contracts at other opera houses. But this year, I watched my American engagements go in a dumpster, and I was still able to completely put food on the table and pay my bills. After taxes — about half is taken out — I earn about €2,500 ($3,050) a month.I did my first performance ever of the Count in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” on March 8. Our next performance was going to be the 13th, and we were locked down on the 11th. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be locked down away from my husband and my dog, in New York City, so I flew there on the 13th and did the initial lockdown there.I got the call, I think it was in the middle of May: “Would you want to come back and do a recital?” And at that point I was going crazy in a New York apartment, so it was: “Dear God, yes.” I arrived on June 1 and did a very strict 14-day quarantine. June 15 I could leave that, and the recital was June 19, in front of 100 people. It wasn’t even in the opera house; they didn’t have that figured out yet. It was at the Liederhalle, another performance space which the opera sometimes uses for concerts.Mine was one of the very first recitals. I think three or four other people got to do it, and then they started reducing the audience again slowly. And they did two almost-productions here before another lockdown started in the fall. We thought we might be able to do concert versions of “Madama Butterfly” in December; obviously that went away. We’re hoping to do them in mid-February, but that is also not looking like a possibility right now.But through this uncertainty, we are all paid — by the opera house, but also by the state. None of our benefits have gone away. For two months, we’re on what’s called “Kurzarbeit” — “short work” — when the government pays about 80 percent of our wages and then the opera makes up a various amount for each individual. I’m making 98 percent even during Kurzarbeit. I canceled my American health insurance in June. I’ve been going to the doctors here whenever I’ve needed. And I don’t have to pay extra for that; there are no co-pays or after bills.It’s hard to see my colleagues in the United States not have hope for the spring. Here we luckily still do. And a lot of my friends are doing what Steven is: They haven’t jumped shipped completely, but they’re in the tech world right now, while I haven’t had to really re-evaluate my career.Could I use some extra income? Sure. There was a lot of money lost last year. But I am so incredibly grateful to have this position here. It’s a lot of work, but man, is it worth it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More