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      With a Rare ‘Oedipe,’ the Paris Opera Pulls Together

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      Staged by the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, Enescu’s opera helps inaugurate a new era for the storied company.PARIS — Ahead of rehearsals for his staging of George Enescu’s “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera, the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad did something unusual. He put together a glossary of all the obscure references in the libretto — like “the water of Castalia,” a sacred spring in Delphi — and sent it to the chorus.Mouawad, 52, who runs the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, was taken aback to find the choristers had never received anything like it. When he approached the company’s technical crew to explain to them the story of “Oedipe,” a rarity from the 1930s based on the Greek myth, their reaction was similar, he said in an interview — few directors ever bothered to pay them much mind.“It’s odd, because I hear, ‘It’s wonderful, you say hello,”” Mouawad added. “I feel like I’m stepping into a traumatized world that now believes its trauma is the norm.”Trauma is not a bad way of describing the past few years at the fractious Paris Opera. In late 2019 and early 2020, labor strikes over a pension policy overhaul resulted in a 45 million euro deficit in a budget hovering around 230 million euros. And that was before the pandemic forced the cancellation of over a year’s worth of performances. (While some performances took place in September and October last year, the company didn’t resume its regular schedule until late May.)So “Oedipe,” which opens at the Opera Bastille, the company’s larger theater, on Monday, may just inaugurate a new era. It is the first production that was commissioned by Alexander Neef, who took over as the Opera’s general director last year.It is no coincidence that he turned to Mouawad. In his last job, leading the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, Neef co-produced Mouawad’s first stab at opera, a 2016 production of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” that Neef calls “one of the most satisfying experiences that I’ve ever had with a director.”“His strength as an artist is that he really wants to work with humans,” Neef added in an interview in his office. “With ‘Oedipe,’ my hope was that he would pull the whole company together. Sometimes, you almost need to encourage him not to be too nice.”The return of “Oedipe” to the Paris stage has been a long time coming. Enescu’s only opera, it had its premiere at the company’s smaller, ornate Palais Garnier in 1936, but has never been revived there, even as other opera houses took a belated interest in it. The North American premiere took place at the University of Illinois in 2005, while Achim Freyer directed an acclaimed staging at the Salzburg Festival two years ago, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who will return to the score in Paris.Mouawad, center, during a rehearsal for “Oedipe.”Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisNeef believes the course of history, rather than quality, explains the long lack of appetite for “Oedipe,” which earned positive reviews upon its premiere. The New York Times reported in 1936 that the French composer and critic Reynaldo Hahn had described it as “imposing, lofty, minutely elaborated” and “always compelling admiration.”“After 1945, I think the music had fallen out of fashion,” Neef said of Enescu’s lush score. “For a lot of composers writing after the Holocaust, it couldn’t be tonal music anymore, for a long time.”When Neef first approached him, Mouawad was less concerned with the score than with the libretto. The legend of Oedipus was familiar to him: In his 30-year career, Mouawad has staged Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King” three times. In 2016, he also wrote a play, “The Tears of Oedipus,” that tied the character’s plight to modern Greek politics.The librettist of “Oedipe,” Edmond Fleg, closely based the third and fourth acts on “Oedipus the King” and another play by Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus.” (The first and second acts flesh out the plays’ background.) “It’s slightly summarized, but the dialogue is essentially the same,” Mouawad said. “I thought I would have space to tell this story.”Storytelling has long driven Mouawad, who was born in Lebanon in 1968. When he was 10, his family fled the civil war, moving first to France, then to French-speaking Quebec.“When I tried to understand the Lebanese civil war, I was either told that there was nothing to understand, or that it was the fault of others,” Mouawad said. “There was a gaping lack of stories in my life.”After training as an actor at the National Theater School in Montreal, Mouawad rose to prominence with an epic tetralogy, “The Blood of Promises,” that has been produced all over the world. Composed of “Littoral” (1999), “Scorched” (2003), “Forests” (2006) and “Skies” (2009), it delved into intergenerational trauma, war and displacement.His work has served as an introduction to contemporary theater for many French-speaking millennials. Even after he moved back to Paris in 2016 to direct the Théâtre de la Colline, Mouawad steered clear of the prevailing European taste for nonlinear, highly conceptual productions. Lisa Perrio, an actress who has worked with Mouawad several times in recent years, said that “he loves drama, pathos, and it works.”“When everything is fine, you deconstruct,” Mouawad said. “When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”Julien Mignot for The New York Times“His work is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to perform,” she added, “because it requires so much emotion.”To Mouawad, postmodernism is a luxury beyond the means of those who have experienced deep trauma. “I myself am postmodernism,” he said “There is nothing more postmodern than the Lebanese war. Deconstruction is a rich person’s thing. When everything is fine, you deconstruct. When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”In March, a year into the disruption caused by the pandemic, the Théâtre de la Colline was one of the first French theaters to be occupied by protesters. Students and arts workers demanded government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits. The movement soon spread to over 100 playhouses.Sébastien Kheroufi, who was among the drama students who first entered La Colline, said in a phone interview that Mouawad was one of the few high-profile directors to extend the occupiers a warm welcome. “One night, he even stayed with us for several hours after his rehearsals because we needed to talk,” Kheroufi said.Yet the end of the occupation, in late May, left Mouawad frustrated. He and his team offered the students the opportunity to stay on for the reopening and speak before shows; Mouawad also hoped to start a permanent youth company, offering year-round contracts to young actors.Christopher Maltman, center, plays the title role in “Oedipe.”Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisThey ultimately said no, Mouawad now speculates, “because the idea had come from us, and they didn’t want to owe us anything.” It was a blow for the hierarchy-averse Mouawad, who reflected on the “failure” of all parties of the occupation movement in a despondent open letter.Then, in early September, just as rehearsals for “Oedipe” were in full swing, Mouawad’s longtime dramaturg François Ismert passed away. “He was such a luminous, atypical person,” Mouawad said. Ismert had introduced him to Sophocles in the 1990s — “and not just that,” he said. “To everything else, without ever being paternalistic.”The loss loomed over the approaching premiere. Days before, though, Mouawad remained intent on sifting through the chaos.“I know everything is in ruins,” he said, before returning to the rehearsal room. “But we have to make something of those ruins.” More

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      A Climate Opera Arrives in New York, With 21 Tons of Sand

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      “Sun & Sea,” an operatic installation that won the top prize at the Venice Biennale, is being staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.On a rainy morning last week, a beach arrived at the front door of a theater in Brooklyn.Or at least the raw ingredients for one: 21 tons of sand, packaged in 50-pound bags, 840 of them. Wheeled into the BAM Fisher on pushcart dollies, they were unceremoniously dropped onto the theater’s tarp-covered floor with a dull thud.Once opened and spread around, the sand would form the foundation of “Sun & Sea,” an installation-like opera that won the top prize at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and has emerged as a masterpiece for the era of climate change. Neither didactic nor abstract, it is an insidiously enjoyable mosaic of consumption, globalization and ecological crisis. And its next stop is the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 26.Over 20 tons worth of sand were brought to the BAM Fisher for the production in 50-pound bags.George Etheredge for The New York Times“The way it delivers its ideas, it’s totally surprising,” said David Binder, BAM’s artistic director. “It disarms you and lures you in. That’s not the way we’re used to receiving work about the issues of our day — what we’re all facing in this summer of fires and floods and what we’ve done to the planet.”For the work’s creators — Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte — the reception of “Sun & Sea,” only their second collaboration, has been something of a Cinderella story, as they said in a recent video interview. But as much as it is a fairy tale, the work is the fruit of a friendship that began in the Lithuanian town where they all grew up.Barzdziukaite eventually became a director; Grainyte, a writer; Lapelyte, a musical artist. In working together, they were attracted to opera, they said, because it provided “a meeting place” for their individual practices. As a trio, Grainyte added, “we can listen to each other and dive into this process without fighting or dealing with egos.”The sand was used to create an indoor beach for “Sun & Sea,” which uses the setting for a musical meditation on climate change and globalization.George Etheredge for The New York TimesTheir first project was “Have a Good Day!,” which traveled to New York for the Prototype festival in 2014. Like “Sun & Sea” it approached its subject — the thoughts of supermarket cashiers, and cycles of consumption — with a light touch. The cast of 10 singers, all women to evoke a typical store in Lithuania, shared stories that charmed until, in their accumulation, they took on the nauseating excess of the photographer Andreas Gursky’s similarly themed “99 Cent.”“The idea was to have this zoom-in approach using micro narratives,” Grainyte said, “but also being conscious that we also belong to this part of buying and selling circles.”It was important to the three creators that, while bitterly ironic, “Have a Good Day!” was not polemical. “We tried to really avoid the ‘one truth’ because it’s never black and white,” Lapelyte said. “That goes the same with ‘Sun & Sea.’ When we talk about the climate crisis, it’s never coming with one view.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times“Sun & Sea” is more ambitious: still subtle, intimate and haunting, but sprawling in scale. From a sliver of sand, Barzdziukaite, Grainyte and Lapelyte extract broad implications. The beach, after all, is a battleground of the Anthropocene that both embraces and defies nature. It’s a destination deemed worth flying around the world, expelling tons of carbon, to simply lounge on — though not without a heavy dose of sunscreen to avoid a burn, or worse.The characters in Grainyte’s libretto, which is both plain-spoken and poetic, are overworked and over-traveled, both self-righteously against technology’s intrusion in their lives and welcoming of it. Their stories are told as monologues and vignettes, broken up by choruses of sinister serenity.Often, the characters are oblivious. “What a relief that the Great Barrier Reef has a restaurant and hotel!” one woman sings. “We sat down to sip our piña coladas — included in the price! They taste better under the water, simply a paradise!” Her husband seems unaware that his burnout isn’t so different from that of the earth itself as he sighs melodically, “Suppressed negativity finds a way out unexpectedly, like lava.”“Sun & Sea” in Venice, where it won the top prize at the Venice Biennale in 2019.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesSome characters find beauty in the horrors of modern life. “The banana comes into being, ripens somewhere in South America, and then it ends up on the other side of the planet, so far away from home,” one sings. “It only existed to satisfy our hunger in one bite, to give us a feeling of bliss.”Another, in the most unforgettable image of the opera, observes:Rose-colored dresses flutter:Jellyfish dance along in pairs —With emerald-colored bags,Bottles and red bottle caps.O the sea never had so much color!“We didn’t want to be too declarative,” Barzdziukaite said. “At some point, Vaiva was taking off all the words which were dealing with ecological issues directly.” The final work amounted to about half of what was written.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesWhat they didn’t want was to give the impression that they were climate activists. “It would be unfair to say that,” Grainyte said. “If we were activists, we wouldn’t create this work that is traveling the world.” (The production, like many in the performing arts, isn’t the most eco-friendly: For the BAM presentation, all that sand was transported by truck from VolleyballUSA in New Jersey to Brooklyn.)But that doesn’t mean “Sun & Sea” avoids responsibility by design. Political art is a spectrum, and its creators are aware that they are wrestling with unwieldy and urgent topics; they just want their opera to “activate,” as Lapelyte put it.Crucial to that effect are, beyond the text, the music and visual presentation. The electronic score — earworm after earworm — provides minimal accompaniment for the singers, and was written to reflect the ease of leisure.After “Sun & Sea” closes, the sand will be vacuumed up, sanitized and repurposed.George Etheredge for The New York Times“We wanted it to be quite poppy, that it would remind you of a song that you know well but you can’t say which,” Lapelyte said. “And at the same time it’s very much reduced to very few notes, and it’s also repetitive like a pop song.”The action, while largely improvised by volunteers who flesh out the cast, is obsessively managed by Barzdziukaite. Participants are asked to arrive wearing specific colors (mostly calming pastels). While the roughly hourlong opera is sung in a loop, they are instructed not to seem to be acting, nor to acknowledge the audience. For the performers, the experience shouldn’t be any different from a trip to the beach.“We are very much using this documentary approach in every aspect,” Barzdziukaite said. Observant audience members might notice how casually plastic fills the space; a pair of partially buried headphones, or some abandoned toys, will be familiar sights.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn Venice, audiences left “Sun & Sea” to be confronted by countless cheap souvenirs and towering cruise ships. When the run ended, the city was flooded. Heavy rain will also have preceded the piece’s arrival in Brooklyn, with the storm carrying the remnants of Hurricane Ida having killed over 40 people in New York and three neighboring states. None of this is lost on the creators, who find themselves wrestling with what it means to make subtle art in a world whose natural disasters increasingly have the heavy-handedness of agitprop.“I feel like I’m living in a dissonance and asking myself what’s next and how I should behave,” Grainyte said.Those who attend the BAM production might find themselves asking similar questions. They won’t see tchotchkes crowding Venetian shops, but perhaps on the way home they will take another look at the garbage on the subway tracks or the shelves of miniature Empire State Buildings in Midtown.If there’s any waste they shouldn’t be worried about, it’s all that sand. After “Sun & Sea” closes, it will be vacuumed up, sanitized and repurposed as a beach volleyball court, maybe, or as a playground. But probably never again as an opera.Sun & SeaWednesday through Sept. 26 at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org. More

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      Teresa Zylis-Gara, Plush-Voiced Polish Soprano, Is Dead at 91

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      She took on a wide range of roles in her long international career, which included a stretch as a stalwart of the Metropolitan Opera in the 1970s.Teresa Zylis-Gara, a Polish soprano who displayed a plush voice, impressive versatility and beguiling stage presence during a three-decade international career that included a stretch at the Metropolitan Opera during her prime in the 1970s, died on Aug. 28 in Lodz, Poland. She was 91. Her death was announced by the Polish National Opera. In her early years, Ms. Zylis-Gara was essentially a lyric soprano who excelled in Mozart and other roles suited to a lighter voice. But as she developed more richness and body in her sound, she moved into the lirico-spinto repertory, which calls for dramatic heft along with lyricism, including the title role of Puccini’s “Tosca,” Tatiana in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” and Elisabeth in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser.”Her repertory ranged from the Baroque, including works by Claudio Monteverdi, to 20th-century fare by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. She also championed the songs of her countryman Chopin, works that had been surprisingly overlooked.To some opera fans and critics, Ms. Zylis-Gara’s voice, though beautiful, lacked distinctiveness. And in striving for refinement, she was sometimes deemed overly restrained. Peter G. Davis of The New York Times described this mixture of qualities in a mostly glowing review of her performance as Pamina in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” at the Met in 1970.Her “cool, silvery voice does not possess a wide range of color nor any special individuality,” Mr. Davis wrote, “but it is a lovely thing to hear in itself, and she sculpted Mozart’s melodies gracefully and stylishly.” In addition to “naturally feminine warmth and charm,” Mr. Davis said, she “interjected a pleasant note of humor into her early scenes and a genuine tragic pathos later on.”Two years later, reviewing a Met production of Verdi’s “Otello” presented on tour in Boston, the critic Ellen Pfeifer wrote in The Boston Globe that Ms. Zylis-Gara’s Desdemona was “a spirited and mature young woman instead of the usual adolescent clinging violet.” Her singing, Ms. Pfeifer added, “was beautiful, ample in size, with the requisite transparency and flexibility.”In a revealing 1974 interview with The Atlanta Constitution, Ms. Zylis-Gara spoke about the risks of being too emotional in performance. At the time, she was in Atlanta to sing the title role of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly,” and she recalled crying onstage during one particularly intense scene while performing the role as a student.“It was terrible,” she said. “When you cry you can’t sing. Since that time I’ve never allowed myself to get this far, but it’s still a danger for me.”Ms. Zylis-Gara in the title role of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at the Met in 1981. The tenor Giuliano Ciannella sang Des Grieux, Manon’s lover.J. Heffernan/Metropolitan Opera ArchivesTeresa Geralda Zylis was born on Jan. 23, 1930, in Landwarow, Poland, now Lentvaris, Lithuania, near Vilnius. She was the youngest of five children of Franciszek and Jadwiga Zylis; her father was a railway worker, her mother a homemaker.After the postwar political reconstitution of the region, the family settled in Lodz, Poland, in 1946. The 16-year-old Teresa decided to devote herself to singing and began nine years of study with Olga Ogina.She won first prize in the 1954 Polish Young Vocalists Contest in Warsaw, which led to engagements with Polish National Radio and, in 1956, her professional debut with the Krakow Opera in the title role of “Halka,” by the 19th-century Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, a staple of the Polish opera repertory. Further prizes during the next few years in Toulouse, France, and in Munich led to engagements with opera houses in Oberhausen, Dortmund and Düsseldorf in West Germany.Determined to advance her career, she made professional decisions that affected her personal life, as she explained in the 1974 interview.She had married Jerzy Gara, the director of a technical school in Lodz, in 1954. The next year their son, also named Jerzy, was born. But it proved “impossible to be a wife, mother and artist of international fame all at one time,” she said.“I chose to be the artist,” she added. “I accept my choice and everything that has happened in my private life as a result.”When her son was 6, she left him in the care of her own mother in Lodz and settled in Germany to pursue her career, which quickly prospered. (Her marriage ended in divorce.)“It is something special to have a talent,” she said. “It brings a responsibility with it.” She added, referring to her son, “I saw sometimes he was not happy; and this is difficult.”He survives her, as does a granddaughter.Ms. Zylis-Gara in 1968, the year Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” became, as she put it, her “destiny role.” Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMs. Zylis-Gara had a significant breakthrough in 1965 when she sang an acclaimed Octavian in a production of Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” at the Glyndebourne Festival in England, which led to her debut with the Paris National Opera the next year. In 1968, a banner year, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” became her calling card — or, as she put it in a 1969 interview with The Los Angeles Times, her “destiny role.” She sang Elvira for her debuts at the Salzburg Festival (with Herbert von Karajan conducting), the San Francisco Opera and, in December, the Met.Of the San Francisco performance, the Los Angeles Times critic Martin Bernheimer wrote that Ms. Zylis-Gara “sang a Donna Elvira that easily withstood comparison with the finest recent exponents of that difficult role, Sena Jurinac and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.”At the Met, the cast included the formidable Cesare Siepi as Giovanni and Martina Arroyo as Donna Anna. In a 2015 article in Opera News in which various opera professionals were asked to pick their favorite “diva debuts” at the Met, Ms. Arroyo chose Ms. Zylis-Gara’s Donna Elvira. “She sang so well, a pure voice just right in style — one of the very best Elviras,” Ms. Arroyo said.The Met’s general manager, Rudolf Bing, promptly engaged Ms. Zylis-Gara for future bookings. She went on to sing 232 performances with the company over 16 seasons, taking on 20 roles, including the Marschallin in “Rosenkavalier,” Wagner’s Elisabeth and Elsa (in “Lohengrin”), Puccini’s Mimi, Butterfly and Desdemona, and Tchaikovsky’s Tatiana.Through the 1980s, Ms. Zylis-Gara continued to sing in the world’s major houses. In later years, she divided her time between a home in Monaco and visits to her native land, sat often on competition juries, and eagerly taught emerging singers. Asked in a 2009 Opera News interview whether she would ever say farewell to opera, she asserted that this “would never take place!”“The stage lights won’t dim for even a second,” she said, “since I transmit to my gifted pupils all my artistic soul, my knowledge and my experience.”Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw. More

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      The Met Opera Races to Reopen After Months of Pandemic Silence

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      The company, which faced steep losses after the pandemic forced it to shut down on March 12, 2020, is working to lure operagoers back to its 3,800-seat theater. Tera Willis was backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, painstakingly adding strand after strand of salt-and-pepper hair to a half-finished wig — one of dozens she and her team were racing to finish in time for opening night later this month after the pandemic had kept performers from getting measured until mid-August.“I would love about six months,” Ms. Willis, the head of the company’s wig and makeup department, said. “We have six weeks.”The chorus was back at work, singing through masks.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesA performer warmed up at a rehearsal for Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which will open the season.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesIn the Met’s underground rehearsal rooms, chorus members were straining to project through the masks they must rehearse in, a few pulling the fabric a couple of inches from their face for a moment or two. Just outside its gilded auditorium, which has been empty since the pandemic forced the opera house to close a year and half ago, stagehands were reupholstering some worn red velvet seats. Beneath the arched entry to the opera house, an electrician was installing wiring to make some of the heavy front doors touchless.Reopening after the long shutdown was never going to be easy for the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts company in the nation. Unlike a Broadway theater, which must safely bring back one show, the Met, a $300-million-a-year operation, is planning to mount 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, typically changing what’s on its mammoth stage each night.The financial stakes are high: The Met, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, must now draw audiences back to its 3,800-seat opera house amid renewed concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. Will people return in force, after getting out of the habit of spending nights at the opera? Will the Met’s strict vaccine mandate — it will ban audience members under 12, who cannot yet be vaccinated — reassure operagoers, especially older ones? How much will travel bans hurt the box office, where international visitors made up as much as 20 percent of ticket buyers?The Met is warily watching sales. It has sold about $20 million worth of tickets for the season so far, the company said, down from $27 million at the same point in the season before the pandemic. Subscriptions, which have been steadily eroding at American symphony orchestras and opera companies in recent years, are down by about a quarter from before the pandemic, but officials expect more subscribers to renew when they feel safe about attending. Strong recent sales, and the speed with which the Met sold out an affordably priced performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, offered hope that audiences will come back.The financial uncertainty led the Met to seek concessions from its unions, some of which will be restored if and when the box office approaches prepandemic levels. The ensuing labor disputes further complicated the reopening: The company did not reach a deal with its stagehands until July, delaying summer technical rehearsals, and only settled another, with its orchestra, late last month, removing the last major barrier to reopening.Riyo Mitsui, one of the Met’s wigmakers, at work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSo now the company is gearing up quickly, preparing to marshal the forces of roughly 1,000 singers, orchestra players, conductors, dancers and actors scheduled to perform this season. It started with two free performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” outdoors at Lincoln Center last weekend; will perform Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday, its first performance back inside the opera house, a concert that will be broadcast on PBS; and it will finally open the opera season on Sept. 27 with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer. The company is hoping that “Fire” and another contemporary opera — “Eurydice,” by Matthew Aucoin — will draw new audiences. The whole organization is getting ready to reopen. Keith Narkon, a ticket seller, was with his colleagues behind the Met’s box-office windows, stuffing tickets into envelopes — and happy to be back after the virus had taken away their jobs for more than a year.In the box office, employees are getting the tickets ready for opening night.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“It was just this numbness,” Mr. Narkon, a self-described opera fanatic, said of the long shutdown. As the opera house buzzes with preseason anticipation, there are still bruised feelings from the labor battles, but there is also a palpable sense of relief to finally be back in the building together and working again after so many months of unemployment checks and uncertainty.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” said Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, as he ripped the worn velvet off a seat cushion.“You don’t realize how much you respect the job until you don’t have it,” Phillip D. Smith, a stagehand who has worked at the Met for over 20 years, said as he reupholstered a chair.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesThe doors to the auditorium got a fresh coat of paint.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut life backstage is still far from normal, as company officials keep a close eye on the Delta variant, and the steps they must take to keep the company and the audience safe..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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 company’s vaccination mandate is so strict that an unvaccinated telecom worker who arrived for a job was turned away. A special patron’s entrance area has been turned into a testing center where people in rehearsals must get nasal-swab tests twice a week. And to keep audience members apart from the performers, the first two rows of seats in the auditorium will be blocked off through the end of the year.“On one hand, it’s frightening and frustrating to see the rate of infection,” said Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met. “But it’s so thrilling to see the possibility within grasp of actually opening performances.”Workers cleaned one of the stairways at the opera house.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome bitterness lingers over the labor disputes, which were resolved when the company’s three biggest unions agreed to new contracts that cut their pay modestly, saving the company money by moving some workers to a different health care plan and reducing the number of guaranteed full-time members of the orchestra and chorus.In the props department, where scenic artists were working to create corn on the cob and a pat of butter for a Thanksgiving dinner in the upcoming production of “Fire,” Ryan Hixenbaugh, an artist, lamented that some of the work had been finished in California, where Met management outsourced work after locking out its stagehands in December in the fight over pay cuts. “We had the capability of making all the scenery for all of these operas here,” Mr. Hixenbaugh said.With the opera house empty for more than a year, there was sprucing up to do: Keishla Nieves cleaned a brass railing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesWith no audiences and no crowds for a year and a half, there was no need for stanchions to direct people to the Box Office. But they will soon be put in service again.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesSome stagehands made ends meet during the shutdown, and the lockout, by building outdoor shelters for the city’s new al fresco dining spots. Others got work in television production, which rebounded before live performance.When they returned to the Met in July, the stagehands found an enormous amount of work. For more than a year, the opera house had sat still, as if frozen in time. The decades-old machinery that makes the Met’s stage run was not built for such dormancy.Two scenic backdrops that had been hanging for months had fallen to the ground earlier in the year. The wheels on the Met’s wagon system — which is powerful enough to quickly shuttle its mammoth sets of Ancient Egypt, Imperial China or Fin-de-Siècle Paris on and offstage — were flattened by the weight of the sets that had been left on top of them. And parts of the fly system, made up of wire rope lines and riggings, had rusted.“To leave it sitting still for that length of time was terrifying,” said David Feheley, the Met’s technical director. “So many of these systems have lasted as long as they have because of constant attention.”Stagehands built sets backstage. When they returned to the opera house, they found that the stage machinery needed a great deal of maintenance work.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo accommodate all the urgent maintenance work, the Met’s technical rehearsals were pushed from the beginning of August to the end of the month. One opera, Gluck’s “Iphigénie en Tauride,” was canceled.The orchestra saw 11 of its 96 regular full-time members retire or leave their jobs during the pandemic, according to the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. A number of veteran stagehands retired too.The company hopes the excitement of working together again will outweigh any residual resentment.“The Met is maybe slightly fractured,” Mr. Gelb said, “but it is a family.”The Met is planning 196 performances of 22 different operas this season, which means a lot of ironing.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesPaul Tazewell, the costume designer for “Fire,” said that it was odd not to be able to see the faces of performers, who have been staying largely masked.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAt this stage of the pandemic, it’s a family that can’t have any members under the age of 12, and not just in the audience. The Met’s performers cannot be young, either. In “Boris Godunov,” which is scheduled to open on Sept. 28, a part that is often sung by a boy soprano will be given to an adult mezzo-soprano. And in “Fire” — which is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, an Opinion columnist for The New York Times — a 13-year-old, Walter Russell III, will play the role of young Charles, who is supposed to be 7.“I have been trying to get into the mind of a 7-year-old kid,” Mr. Russell said.In the props department, scenic artists prepared a Thanksgiving dinner for the upcoming production of “Fire.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesTo reopen smoothly, the Met’s staff members still have numerous battles to wage.Everything from fabrics for costumes to machinery for stage lights to basic materials like plywood and steel are proving difficult to obtain because of pandemic supply-chain problems. And booking the international performers opera relies on has become a mess of unpredictable red tape, between visa troubles and virus-related travel restrictions.One of the few times performers can take their masks off these days is when they are being fitted in the costume shop, for photos that are taken to help designers take in the effect of each costume.“If there’s an unspoken feeling, normally I would be able to see that on a performer’s face, but I can’t access that,” said Paul Tazewell, the Tony-winning costume designer for “Fire.”A model of the “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” set.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBut, come Sept. 27 — if all goes as planned — the masks will come off, the Sputnik chandeliers will ascend, the curtain will go up and live opera will be back onstage.Zachary Woolfe contributed reporting. More

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      Classical Music Looks Ahead to a Fall in Flux

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      How will performances feel in the midst of pandemic regulations? Will institutions respond in actions, not just words, to calls for racial equity?Normally, when I look ahead to a new season, I have a pretty good idea of what the performances will be like.But it goes without saying that this is not a normal time. So even with usually sure bets — a new piece by a composer who has excited me in the past; recitals by performers I cherish; great casts in operas old and recent — it’s hard to know what the performances this fall will feel like. The very experience of gathering in concert halls is in flux with the lingering challenges of the pandemic.It looks as if vaccine mandates for audience members will be routine; I’m with those who see this move as the only way to make performances feel safe. But will masks be required or optional? Will there be full capacity, or some spacing in the audience? Will children be allowed, even if they’re still unvaccinated?And even with precautions, will audiences — especially ones that tend to be older, like those for many orchestras and opera companies — feel safe enough to come back? Will musicians gathered together on stages and in cramped pits convey confidence?Again, what will it feel like?And other crucial issues loom. Just months into the pandemic, when nationwide protests against racial injustice broke out after the killing of George Floyd, classical music was forced to grapple anew with questions of relevance, diversity and inclusion. One major institution after another issued statements condemning discrimination and pledging to do better at connecting with the diverse people they serve. Will these words be reflected in policies and programs?The Metropolitan Opera is speaking to the moment while addressing a gaping hole in its history. It will open its return season with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” by the composer Terence Blanchard and the librettist Kasi Lemmons, based on a memoir by the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow about growing up poor and Black in rural Louisiana. This will, shockingly, be the first opera by a Black composer to be presented by the company since its founding in 1883.In this case, I know what to expect, having reviewed the work’s 2019 premiere at Opera Theater of St. Louis, and can eagerly recommend this musically original, dramatically affecting and wrenchingly personal opera. Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter who has written acclaimed film scores, describes “Fire” not as a jazz opera, but as an opera in jazz. What he means, I think, is that jazz naturally permeates his compositional voice, but his score is symphonic — subtle, intricate, complex — taking an essentially traditional approach to opera as drama, with some inventive strokes.The Met’s vaccination policy means that it will not allow children under 12, which might threaten its holiday presentation of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met is requiring proof of vaccination from everyone in the audience, and will not allow children under 12, since they are not yet eligible for the vaccines. Will this affect the company’s abridged, English-language version of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” this holiday season? The production typically attracts lots of parents with children. The company’s website says that, should young children be able to be vaccinated this fall, they will of course be welcome. If not, it would seem untenable for the Met to go forward with a family-friendly entertainment in December.Nagging concerns like these — along with the threat of cancellations because of virus outbreaks — may well linger in all the performing arts..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.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;}As for the New York Philharmonic, this season it will not have access to David Geffen Hall, which is in the midst of an extensive, long-awaited renovation. The orchestra will perform mostly at Alice Tully Hall, the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.Some intriguing programs reveal serious attempts to bring in composers from underrepresented groups and to showcase exciting younger artists, without neglecting the core repertory. Dalia Stasevska will lead a program (Oct. 20-23) featuring works by Missy Mazzoli, John Adams and, of special interest, Anthony Davis, the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his opera “The Central Park Five.” Davis’s “You Have the Right to Remain Silent,” a clarinet concerto written in 2007 and revised four years later, is its composer’s autobiographical depiction of an encounter with the police, and is therefore more timely than ever. Anthony McGill, the Philharmonic’s superb principal clarinetist (and the orchestra’s only Black player) is the soloist.Earlier in the month (Oct. 14-16), the Philharmonic’s music director, Jaap van Zweden, leads a seemingly more traditional program — but with a twist that shows the subtle ways in which concerns about racial and gender representation are affecting the concert experience. At the Rose Theater — more intimate than Geffen Hall — Leif Ove Andsnes will play Robert Schumann’s beloved Piano Concerto, but will open the concert with Clara Schumann’s solo Romance in A Minor, a nod to a composer slowly getting her long-belated due.Jaap van Zweden, the New York Philharmonic’s music director, will lead the orchestra at different venues as David Geffen Hall is closed for renovations.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesYou might have thought that a powerhouse institution like Carnegie Hall would want to come roaring back. It says much about this still-dicey moment for classical music, in terms of both financial and public health, that the hall is pacing itself and keeping its fall season relatively light. Its opening night on Oct. 6 offers Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who leads the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in a program that attempts to be both a gala celebration and a statement of purpose.The program, featuring the Philadelphians, opens with Valerie Coleman’s new “Seven O’Clock Shout,” written during the pandemic, followed by Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, with the dazzling Yuja Wang as soloist. Next comes that gala standard, Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide.” The Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi’s “Jeder Baum spricht” (2019), commissioned by the orchestra for Beethoven’s 250th anniversary last year, was written in dialogue with Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies. Here it will lead into an account of Beethoven’s Fifth, setting off a full Beethoven symphony cycle with Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra, originally planned for last year.These classic symphonies will be interspersed with contemporary pieces — which, though not a novel idea, is a good one. It feels all too familiar for a complete Beethoven symphony cycle to dominate Carnegie’s season.But will it in practice? It may well be that for some time yet, hearing even standard works played beautifully will feel restorative, almost miraculous.Yet given the crises we have endured and the urgent challenges that remain, I hope my wish wins out that institutions try harder to connect and engage, to foster living composers and new generations of artists. I’ve long believed that many classical ensembles, especially major orchestras, spend too much time thinking about how they play and not enough about what they play and why they play it. We all love the standard repertory. But an ensemble puts more on the line and fosters classical music as a living art form when it presents a new piece, champions a neglected older work or takes a risk with unconventional programming.These things have always mattered crucially in my thinking — now, more than ever. If this results in what some may see as grading on a curve — by giving extra credit, in a sense, to artists who reach out and take risks — so be it. The status quo will no longer suffice. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: 9/11 Specials and ‘American Crime Story’

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      Several networks will air specials timed to the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11. And “American Crime Story” will return for a third season.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 6-12. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1968) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. Clint Eastwood is slated to return to theaters this month with “Cry Macho,” a modern-day western. The role gives Eastwood an opportunity to dust off one of his signature looks: grizzled man with a cowboy hat. The quintessential example of that look can be found in this Sergio Leone odyssey, in which Eastwood plays a bounty hunter caught up in a plot that involves buried treasure and betrayal. While the movie — and its score, by Ennio Morricone — has become a classic, initial reception was mixed. This “must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre,” Renata Adler wrote in her review for The New York Times in 1968. “If 42nd Street is lined with little pushcarts of sadism,” she added, “this film, which opened yesterday at the Trans-Lux 85th Street and the DeMille, is an entire supermarket.” Critical opinion regarding “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” has improved since — though the same cannot necessarily be said of 42nd Street.TuesdayBeanie Feldstein in “Impeachment: American Crime Story.”Tina Thorpe/FXIMPEACHMENT: AMERICAN CRIME STORY 10 p.m. on FX. After dramatizing the trial of O.J. Simpson and the murder of Gianni Versace, the anthology series “American Crime Story” turns to the events leading up to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for its third season. This telling focuses on the perspective of the women involved, with Beanie Feldstein starring as Monica Lewinsky, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones and Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton. Clive Owen plays President Clinton. Lewinsky is a producer of the season, and discussed her involvement with it in a recent interview with The Times. “The reality is that this story has been part of a collective conversation for 20 years,” she said, “and as I evolve, as the world evolves, it comes to have different meanings.”BITCHIN’: THE SOUND AND FURY OF RICK JAMES (2021) 8 p.m. on Showtime. The life of the funk singer Rick James is revisited in this documentary, which aims to give a holistic view of James’s complicated legacy. Directed by Sacha Jenkins (“Fresh Dressed”), “Bitchin’” looks at James’s roots — including his enlistment in the Navy — his music and his famously wild lifestyle while also examining his relationships with women. The film is one answer to a question that the critic Candice Frederick asked in a recent article in The Times: “How do you reckon with the man who is just as famous for committing sexual assault and perpetuating misogyny in the music industry?”WednesdayWOMEN OF 9/11: A SPECIAL EDITION OF 20/20 WITH ROBIN ROBERTS 9 p.m. on ABC. Women who were affected by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, share their experience in this two-hour special hosted by Robin Roberts. Among those interviewed is Genelle Guzman-McMillan, who spent more than 24 hours buried in the rubble of 1 World Trade Center before being rescued. Also at 9 p.m., Vice TV will air TOO SOON: COMEDY AFTER 9/11, which explores the impact of the attacks on the work of comedians. Interviewees in that documentary include David Cross, Ahmed Ahmed, Janeane Garofalo, Hari Kondabolu, Cedric the Entertainer, and Marc Maron.ThursdayBenedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange.”Disney/MarvelDOCTOR STRANGE (2016) 8 p.m. on TNT. If you watched the just-released “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” over the weekend and are in the mood for more Marvel, here’s a chance to revisit “Doctor Strange.” The actor Benedict Cumberbatch plays a neurosurgeon who goes on a spiritual journey, while Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams also have major roles. Manohla Dargis called the film “giddily enjoyable” in her review for The Times. “Doctor Strange,” she wrote, “is part of Marvel’s strategy for world domination, yet it’s also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand.”FridayDATELINE 10 p.m. on NBC. On Friday night’s special episode of NBC’s “Dateline,” Lester Holt interviews the family members of passengers and crew members who died on United Airlines Flight 93. Several other networks will also air programming timed to the 20th anniversary of 9/11. On History Channel, 9/11: THE LEGACY, airing at 7 p.m., looks at stories of children whose lives were impacted by the attacks. At 8 p.m., CBS will air THE RACE AGAINST TIME: THE C.I.A. AND 9/11. And at 9 p.m., the documentary DETAINEE 001 (2021) on Showtime looks at the case of John Walker Lindh, who became known as the “American Taliban.”ILANA GLAZER PRESENTS COMEDY ON EARTH: NYC 2020-2021 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. For some counterprogramming, consider this hourlong comedy special, which brings together an array of stand-up performances that riff on life during the pandemic, with Petey DeAbreu, Alison Leiby, Larry Owens, and Sydnee Washington.SaturdayYannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra in 2019. Nézet-Séguin will lead the orchestra in Verdi’s “Requiem” to recognize the 20th anniversary of 9/11, in a performance that will air on PBS.GREAT PERFORMANCES: VERDI’S REQUIEM: THE MET REMEMBERS 9/11 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Saturday programming recognizing the 20th anniversary of 9/11 includes this special episode of PBS’s “Great Performances,” which features Verdi’s “Requiem.” Misty Copeland will host. The Met Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will conduct the orchestra, which will be joined by the singers Ailyn Pérez, Elina Garanca, Matthew Polenzani and Eric Owens.Sunday2021 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS 8 p.m. on MTV. The rapper and singer Doja Cat is slated to host this year’s edition of the MTV Video Music Awards. Nominees for the top prizes include Justin Bieber, Megan Thee Stallion, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift; performers are to include Olivia Rodrigo, Camila Cabello, Lil Nas X, Foo Fighters and Kacey Musgraves. More

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      Review: The Met Opera Reunites, With Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’

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      After a year and a half, the company’s forces came together for an outdoor performance of the sprawling, ecstatic symphony.The Metropolitan Opera hardly ever plays concerts at home at Lincoln Center. But before Saturday evening, the company had opened its season with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection,” once before.In 1980, a bitter labor battle kept the Met closed more than two months into the fall. When peace was re-established, Mahler’s sprawling journey of a soul, ending in ecstatic renewal, seemed just the thing — and the symphony, with its enormous orchestral and choral forces working in intricate lock step, is nothing if not a paean to cohesion.“The ‘Resurrection’ Symphony almost chose itself,” James Levine, then the Met’s music director, said at the time. It was, he added, “a way for the company to get in touch with itself again.”If there has ever been another time this company needed to get in touch with itself, it is now. That two-month hiatus four decades ago seems like child’s play compared with the situation today.Twenty twenty-one has, like 1980, brought contentious labor struggles — on top of a pandemic that has threatened the core conditions of live performance and kept the Met closed for an almost unthinkable 18 months. Its orchestra and chorus, as good as any in the world, were furloughed in March 2020 and went unpaid for nearly a year as the financially wounded company and its unions warred over how deep and lasting any pay cuts should be.The “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesJeenah Moon for The New York TimesInstituting a vaccine mandate and gradually coming to terms with the unions, the Met inched closer to reopening as the summer dragged on. And on Aug. 24, it removed the final barrier by striking a deal with the orchestra, paving the way for a resurrection — and a “Resurrection.”The company scheduled a pair of free Mahler performances outdoors at Damrosch Park, in the shadow of its theater, on Labor Day weekend, at the start of what has become an opening month. On Saturday, the Met will return indoors for Verdi’s Requiem, in honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. And on Sept. 27 the opera season begins in earnest with the company premiere of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first work by a Black composer, and, the following evening, a revival of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.”Led by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the “Resurrection” Symphony brought the full company and its audience back together in grand style: 90 minutes; an orchestra of 116; a chorus of 100; and 2,500 attending in the park, as well as hundreds more listening from the street. The mood was a blend of parks concert — one woman tried to muffle the crinkling of her bag of potato chips — and serious focus; a man sitting on the aisle followed along with the score, brightly lit on his tablet.With so much to celebrate, this was indeed a celebratory, smiling reading: Punchy and taut at the start, yes, but without the neurotic, feverish quality that some conductors sustain throughout. There was an overall sense of gentleness and soft-grained textures. The second movement was more sly than sardonic; the climactic burst of dissonance in the third movement was beautiful, not brutal. The chorus, facing the audience in front of the stage and getting its cues from screens, sang with mellow sweetness.It goes without saying that outdoor classical performance is never ideal. (Speaking from the stage, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, claimed, tongue perhaps in cheek, that Lincoln Center’s president had promised no helicopters in the area for the duration of the symphony. Well. …)Ying Fang, the soprano soloist, is a symbol of the company’s present and future.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAmplified violin sections are inevitably harsh; woodwinds tend to get swamped by the strings and brasses, even more than usual in Mahler’s dense orchestration. And so much of this and every symphony’s power depends on musicians massed in a room together with their audience. Under the open sky, even on a gorgeous, mild evening like Saturday, the visceral and emotional impact of the music is diffused.But the offstage percussion and brasses finally sounded like they were coming from a real distance, as they rarely do in a concert hall. And there is special resonance in a great opera company performing this score, so redolent of the music-theater repertory, especially Mahler’s beloved Wagner. The stormy start of “Die Walküre”; the motif of the sleeping Brünnhilde from the end of that work; the mystically stentorian choruses of “Parsifal”; the sighing winds as Verdi’s Otello dies — all echo through the visionary excess of the “Resurrection.”It was moving to see Denyce Graves, a classic Carmen and Dalila at the Met 20 or 25 years ago, onstage and dignified in the great alto solos, even if her voice is a shadow of its former plush velvet. The soprano soloist, Ying Fang, a radiant Mozartian, was a symbol of the company’s present and future.While no one is ever hoping for distractions during Mahler, there was something heartwarming about the siren wailing down 62nd Street and tearing into the symphony’s majestic final minutes. What would a New York homecoming be without noise, and more noise? More

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      When Opera Livestreams Became Live Performances

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      This summer, three European productions, previously available to American audiences only online, were at last accessible in person.I should start with a confession: Rarely during the pandemic have I been able to watch an entire livestream through.Work is one thing: If I’m “attending” something for an assignment, I try to bring to it the focus of a before-times performance — phone off, sound system on, ideally in the dark. But nearly all my extracurricular experiences online have been nothing like my old days off. I would never walk in and out of Carnegie Hall during a recital or pull out my phone mid-Schubert to scroll through Instagram or write an email.Yet that’s exactly what the past year and a half has been like. Life and livestreams are inherently incompatible; there is always a dog to walk, a dinner to cook, a meeting to join. I have seen the greatest musical artists in the world in fragments from the seat of a Peloton; in a small window at the corner of a laptop screen; and, more times than I would like to admit, in bed.If anything has been likely to hold my attention from start to finish, it’s opera. That’s partly baked into the form; concerts, for all their recent engineering feats, generally can’t offer the multisensory experience of theater. And, miraculously, there have continued to be new productions during the pandemic — mostly in Europe, where they often premiered to small audiences or empty houses.Three of those — Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging of Weber’s “Der Freischütz,” Marina Abramovic’s project “7 Deaths of Maria Callas” and a production of Strauss’s “Elektra” by Krzysztof Warlikowski — were at one point available only as online streams for Americans like me, barred from casually traveling to most of Europe.Ausrine Stundyte, front, in the title role of “Elektra” at the Salzburg Festival.Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg FestivalBut this summer, a halcyon time of reopened borders and the return of large-scale productions in full houses, I was able to see all three again, now in person: “Freischütz” and “7 Deaths” at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and “Elektra” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria.That juxtaposition — livestream and live performance — is worth reflecting on as a wave of opening nights heralds the arrival of a new season; as international travel becomes newly precarious; and as orchestras and opera houses consider whether to weave livestreams into their regular programming.Some projects, it should be said, have emerged independent of any live audience or presentation — even traditional ones, such as the Paris Opera’s new production of Verdi’s “Aida,” which was altered to look better online than in the house (where critics were invited to see it, and mostly panned it). One of the great treasures of the pandemic has been Opera Philadelphia’s digital shorts, with contributions from the likes of Angélica Negrón and Tyshawn Sorey. Boston Lyric Opera developed “Desert In” as a mini-series, bringing the art form into the Netflix era.The productions I saw both onscreen and onstage, though, were conceived for the opera house. Opera just isn’t a filmic medium, even if certain composers anticipated it — such as Richard Wagner, with the immersive theatrical experience he pioneered in Bayreuth, Germany.But not every composer is Wagner, and although the streamed productions I later saw live had flashes of revelation, those moments were few and far between in what was, on balance, limited by the medium: the subjective and inevitably narrow perspective of the camera, the engineered flattening of sound. Virtual opera, unless designed as such, is ultimately just a document.Tcherniakov’s “Freischütz” production splits the stage into two halves: the bottom a set for the actors, and the top a surface for projections.Wilfried HöslEspecially in a staging as acutely dramatic as Tcherniakov’s “Freischütz.” It abandons the work’s fantasy Romanticism, setting it in the corporate penthouse of Kuno, a chief executive who behaves like a Mafia boss.The other roles, too, bear little resemblance to any traditional production. To bridge the gap between libretto and concept, the stage is treated as a split screen, with the set occupying the bottom half and the top serving as a surface for projected text messages — and, during the overture, background information on each character in Tcherniakov’s treatment. (The camera mostly shows either the set or the projection, rarely both, which in the final scene makes for a confusing resolution that is easily legible in the house.)Crucially, the introductions reveal that Kaspar — in the libretto a jealous rival of the protagonist, Max, he wants to marry Kuno’s daughter, Agathe — suffers from a trauma that, we later learn, manifests as a kind of multiple personality disorder. (He also takes on the demonic role of Samiel.)As sung by the bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, Kaspar is the opera’s horrifying black heart. In a crowd of excellent performances — including Golda Schultz’s heavenly Agathe and her character’s Sapphic subplot with Anna Prohaska’s Ännchen — it’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off the fierce and angular intensity of Ketelsen’s face.A viewer of the livestream wouldn’t necessarily get that. The score’s focus in its climax is on Max, and the camera follows, with a close-up of the tenor Pavel Cernoch’s fright and anguish. In the theater, however, I could see that Ketelsen’s scowl was more pronounced than ever — a sign that the opera’s traditionally happy ending would here be anything but.“7 Deaths of Maria Callas” features arias performed by sopranos including Adela Zaharia (bottom left) and campy videos starring Willem Dafoe and Marina Abramovic.Wilfried HöslAlso at the Bavarian State Opera, Abramovic’s “7 Deaths” — which pays homage to Callas through seven arias and a prolonged final scene that imagines that famed soprano’s final day — worked better as a livestream, because it worked so intermittently as a live performance. With in-person singers accompanying big-screen videos of Abramovic and Willem Dafoe artfully acting out death scenes inspired by the arias, the piece relegates opera to mere soundtrack.Abramovic is an undeniably electric presence. But the scale of the opera house — the vast distance it can put between a performer and audience member — negates much of the charged intimacy on which she has built her career as a performance artist. At least the livestream of the work’s premiere allowed for a proper zoom on every facial expression and gesture — while also reducing her to just an image on a screen, less powerful than she can be at her best.In Salzburg, Warlikowski’s “Elektra” — using the breadth of the unusually wide Felsenreitschule stage — was almost defiantly unfilmable, with multiple parts of the set in use nearly all the time. The opening credits of the streamed version doubled as a tour of the whole space: a pool (where Elektra’s father, Agamemnon, was murdered) and showers, as well as a glass box filled with luxurious furniture and the vast rock walls of the theater, a canvas for projections.Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, left, and Stundyte in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of “Elektra.”Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg FestivalThese close-ups presage the limits of the filmed production, in which the camera tends to focus on only one thing at a time, with wide shots largely reserved for the eventually blood-splattered, fly-swarmed walls. The stream did catch chilling details I missed in the theater: Klytämnestra, for example, commanding as sung by Tanja Ariane Baumgartner but easy to miss in a silent moment of handling human organs in a bucket inside the glass box. Or Ausrine Stundyte’s Elektra, wide-eyed and wild-haired from the start, yet progressively more so each time she appears onscreen.But “Elektra” is a musically dense, busy opera that Warlikowski matches in his staging, while the camera lacks the restlessness of a spectator’s eye. The only perspective that would accurately reflect the production would be a wide, straight-on view of the stage — something you might find in the research archive of Broadway shows at the New York Library for the Performing Arts.That problem pales, though, in comparison with the sound of the streamed “Elektra.” I like to believe the story that, ahead of the opera’s 1909 premiere, Strauss told the conductor: “Louder, louder! I can still hear the singers!” Franz Welser-Möst led the Vienna Philharmonic in Salzburg as if that were true (if with a little more of a level head). At its best, this score overwhelms and terrifies. On a laptop, however, it was simply too balanced, with singers and instrumentalists favored equally; no one came out better for it.As Europe again considers whether to close its borders to Americans, and as live performances remain more of a delicate triumph than a given, new productions may return to the small screen. If that happens, I’ll tune in. But I’d rather see you at the opera house. Because this “Freischütz,” “7 Deaths” and “Elektra” affirmed what we already knew: Fundamentally, opera is theater. That couldn’t be more obvious, or more essential. More