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      Jake Heggie’s Adaptation of ‘Moby Dick’ Comes to the Metropolitan Opera

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      Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s 2010 adaptation of Melville’s unruly novel opens this week at the Metropolitan Opera.When “Moby Dick” opens at the Metropolitan Opera this week, audiences will experience a deeply American story of unchecked ambition, fomented grievances and a self-destructive desire for revenge.Based on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, the opera delivers an economical and resolute retelling of the fateful tale of the Pequod, a ship in pursuit of a vengeful white whale. The libretto, by Gene Scheer, hits the book’s main conflicts without losing track of the action. The score, by Jake Heggie, is graceful and propulsive. The opera’s ending is certain and clear.It’s probably fair to say that more people know the story of the white whale from parodies or synopses than from reading “Moby Dick.” But an adaptation is not just a summary of the book’s major events. A society obsessed with efficiencies can be overly focused on directness.Skillful though it is, the opera, which had its premiere in Houston in 2010, has a kind of scrubbed and airless storytelling that leaves the singularity of the novel behind. This is the sort of adaptation that audiences have long responded to — a simplification of the book’s billowy structure to emphasize its plot. But can a tidy adaptation truly represent this unruly book, with its dramas born of endless uncertainties? Or is the purpose of adaptation something different?The tenor Brandon Jovanovich, center, sings Captain Ahab at a dress rehearsal of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of “Moby Dick,” which opens on Monday night.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA composer decides what aspects of the narrative can be told through music, while a librettist shapes the story through words that can be thrown out into the air by way of song. An aria reveals a character’s singularity and ambition. Characters sing them to announce what they want and what lengths they must pursue to get it. Each creative turn adds distance from the book.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Olga James, a Star of ‘Carmen Jones’ and ‘Mr. Wonderful,’ Dies at 95

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      An operatic soprano, she had high-profile roles on film and stage in the 1950s. But after that, she mostly spent her career away from the limelight.Olga James, an actress and operatic soprano whose career highlights occurred nearly back to back in the mid-1950s — as Harry Belafonte’s jilted girlfriend in the all-Black musical film “Carmen Jones” and as Sammy Davis Jr.’s love interest in the Broadway show “Mr. Wonderful” — died on Jan. 25 in Los Angeles. She was 95.Her death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by her niece Janet Adderley.Ms. James had performed with an opera company in France and in a popular musical revue in Atlantic City, N.J., when her manager, Abe Saperstein — the basketball impresario behind the Harlem Globetrotters — landed her an audition in 1954 for “Carmen Jones,” the movie version of Oscar Hammerstein II’s hit 1943 Broadway update of Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen.” The opera is set in 1820s Spain; the setting of the film, like that of the Broadway musical, is the American South during World War II.Auditioning for the role of Cindy Lou, whose boyfriend, Joe (played by Mr. Belafonte), a soldier headed for flight school, is seduced by Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge), a worker in a parachute factory, Ms. James sang an aria at the Alvin Theater (now the Neil Simon Theater) for Otto Preminger, the film’s imperious director.“It wasn’t a stretch for me,” she was quoted as saying in “Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King” (2007), by Foster Hirsch. “I was that character, a country-looking girl. I was just a little ingénue.”Ms. James with Harry Belafonte in a publicity photo for “Carmen Jones.” She did her own singing; his singing voice and Dorothy Dandridge’s were dubbed because they could not sing in an operatic range.20th Century Fox, via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesShe won the role. “Carmen Jones” would be her first movie — and her last.Of the film’s three lead performers, only Ms. James did her own singing; Mr. Belafonte’s and Ms. Dandridge’s songs were dubbed because they could not sing in an operatic range.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Met Opera Announces Its 2025-26 Season

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      Our critics choose highlights from a lineup that includes six new productions and modern works by Mason Bates, Kaija Saariaho and Gabriela Lena Frank.The Metropolitan Opera, which has championed contemporary opera in recent years as it works to attract new audiences, announced on Wednesday that it would bring three modern titles to its stage in the 2025-26 season.The company will open the season in September with the New York City premiere of Mason Bates’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” an opera based on the 2000 novel of that name by Michael Chabon, which was first heard at Indiana University last fall. The lineup also includes local premieres of Kaija Saariaho’s final opera, “Innocence,” from 2021, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s first opera, “El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego,” from 2022.There will be new stagings of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” directed by Yuval Sharon, in his company debut; Bellini’s “I Puritani,” for the annual New Year’s Eve gala; and Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” directed by the star tenor Rolando Villazón and featuring the soprano Nadine Sierra. Among the dozen revivals planned for the season are Bizet’s “Carmen,” Strauss’s “Arabella” and Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, will conduct the new productions of “The Amazing Adventures,” “El Último Sueño” and “Tristan.”The company’s embrace of contemporary opera, which its leaders have said is necessary to overcome serious financial pressures, with the belief that newer works sell better than the classics, has had mixed results. Attendance has averaged about 70 percent of capacity so far this season, compared with 73 percent at the same point last season. (Still, the Met said that it expected to reach an average of 75 percent capacity by the end of the season.)“It’s impossible to predict hits,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “On the other hand, if we don’t promote new works, then we’re saying goodbye to the art form.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Barrie Kosky Is the Director New York Has Been Waiting For

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      One of the busiest stage directors in Europe is fully arriving, at last, with “The Threepenny Opera” this spring.When “The Threepenny Opera” returns to New York this spring, for an all-too-brief visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it will be notable for a few reasons.For one, it will be a homecoming. Although “Threepenny” was born in Berlin, an artifact of Weimar-era culture, with music by Kurt Weill and text by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, it had a midcentury resurgence on the level of a pop-culture phenomenon when it was revived Off Broadway in 1954.And it will be performed by the Berliner Ensemble, which was founded by Brecht and still operates out of the theater where “Threepenny” had its premiere in 1928. The group is a trustworthy custodian of a work that is often mishandled today, especially in recent New York productions.But what is most important about this run of “Threepenny,” presented by BAM and St. Ann’s Warehouse April 3 through 6, is that it will be the first real opportunity for New York audiences to see the work of the director Barrie Kosky.Though Kosky, 58, graced local playbills once before, when his production of “The Magic Flute,” a collaboration with the company 1927, came to the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2019, “Threepenny” will be the first show that is purely his own. Which should come as a shock, since Kosky is one of the busiest and most brilliant, not to mention entertaining, directors working in Europe today.He is a director accomplished in theater and opera. His work could fit easily on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera, with a balance of intelligence and showmanship that would breathe new life into both. This “Threepenny” will be an opportunity for him to win over New York audiences. Will impresarios be watching?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Live Performance in New York City: Here’s What to See This Spring

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      Onstage, Denzel Washington is Othello, and Paul Mescal is Stanley Kowalski as stars illuminate the theater marquees. Plus: FKA twigs takes “Eusexua” on tour. Bang on a Can, Twyla Tharp, and much more.BroadwayOPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)Mel Semé and Natalie Venetia Belcon in the musical “Buena Vista Social Club.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Is an Entire Age of American Opera Missing at the Met?

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      “Vanessa” had the kind of pedigree you rarely see in a world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera.Samuel Barber, who was already famous for his Adagio for Strings, composed the score. Gian Carlo Menotti, his partner and an experienced hand at opera, wrote the libretto and directed. Cecil Beaton, mere weeks from winning his first Academy Award, designed the production. Dimitri Mitropoulos, the house’s leading maestro, conducted.On opening night, in January 1958, audience members sounded pleased during the intermission, according to a report. There were 17 curtain calls. The next day, Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times that “Vanessa” was “the best American opera ever presented” at the Met. It would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.The opera was revived the next season, and again in 1965, when a critic wrote that it “deserves to be kept in the repertory.” Instead, it disappeared from the Met.“Vanessa” has survived, to be sure. The aria “Must the winter come so soon?” is a staple of recitals and competitions. Conservatories and small companies stage productions; a “reimagined” version by Heartbeat Opera is coming to the Williamstown Theater Festival this summer.Why, then, is it impossible to see “Vanessa” at an opera house like the Met? That’s a question with deeper implications: If one of the finest, most enduring American works of the mid-20th century can’t make it to the grandest stage in the country, what hope is there for others from its time?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Edith Mathis, Radiant Swiss Soprano, Is Dead at 86

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      Known for her interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Weber, she was praised for her clear, bright voice and her perfect intonation even on the highest notes.Edith Mathis, a light-voiced Swiss soprano who sparkled in Bach, Mozart and Weber and was the agile-voiced favorite of several of the conducting giants who dominated mid-20th-century concert halls, died on Sunday at her home in Salzburg, Austria. She was 86.Her death was announced by the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where she sang throughout the 1970s and ’80s.But she was also a star in all the world’s other major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, illuminating roles like Cherubino and Susanna in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” Ännchen in Weber’s “Der Freischütz” and Marzelline in Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which she sang five times at the Met in 1971 under Karl Böhm. She was a favorite of his, as she was of his rival for conducting pre-eminence in the last century, Herbert von Karajan.The dozens of opera, oratorio, cantata and song recordings Ms. Mathis left behind illustrate why: a clear, bright voice, perfect intonation even on the highest notes, an unaffected manner and absolute service to the text — “the voice so reliably radiant and clear, the musicianship so reliably impeccable,” the British critic Hugo Shirley wrote in Gramophone magazine in 2018, reviewing a CD collection released by Deutsche Grammophon in observance of her 80th birthday. She was, the dramaturg Malte Krasting wrote in a tribute for the Bavarian State Opera, “the epitome of an ideal Mozart singer.”She was also ideal in the German lieder repertoire — Schubert, Schumann and Hugo Wolf — many of whose songs she recorded with all-star partners like Christoph Eschenbach and Graham Johnson.When, for instance, she sang the Schubert song “Schlaflied” in a 1994 recording with Mr. Johnson, she gave a slight, barely perceptible push to the German word “jedem” (“all” or “every”), in the line “And is healed of all pain.” The extra measure of reassurance for the poem’s subject, a young boy, adds a dramatic point to the whole song.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      In ‘Festen,’ a Nightmare Birthday Becomes an Opera

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      The composer who put Anna Nicole Smith’s life onstage has a new piece: an adaptation of a cult movie about child abuse.Mark-Anthony Turnage has a habit of provoking stuffy opera fans.The revered British composer’s 1988 debut, “Greek,” appalled some audiences by transposing Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” into to a cursing, brawling working-class London family. And some critics hated the pole dancers onstage in “Anna Nicole,” his opera about the tragic life of the Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.Now, Turnage is preparing to present “Festen,” in which a patriarch’s 60th birthday party descends into chaos after a speech exposes a family’s deepest secrets. When “Festen” premieres on Tuesday at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London, the show’s dark subject matter looks set to upset traditionalists, too.Based on Thomas Vinterberg’s cult Danish-language movie of the same name, “Festen” includes descriptions of child abuse and suicide. The opera’s 35-strong cast will fight, engage in simulated sex and hurl racist abuse at the show’s only Black character.Yet Turnage insisted in a recent interview that he hadn’t set out to challenge anyone — except himself. “Part of me thinks, ‘Why don’t I just do a nice fluffy story that will be performed a lot?’” Turnage said. “But I know if I did, it wouldn’t be any good.”Allan Clayton as Christian, who accuses his father, Helge, of abuse.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times“I need to be provoked,” Turnage added. “I need an extreme or strong subject to write good music.”This “Festen” premiere comes just over 25 years after Vinterberg’s movie won the jury prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Released as “The Celebration” in the United States, “Festen” was created under the banner of the Dogme95 movement, which required movie directors to follow 10 strict rules. Those included only using hand-held cameras and a ban on music, unless it occurs naturally in a scene.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More