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      La Scala Takes a Big Step With a Small Audience

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      Emerging from pandemic lockdowns, the opera house in Milan will be filled with the music of Wagner, Verdi, Brahms and more, and up to 500 fans.After suffering through the coronavirus pandemic’s devastation and lockdowns in the Italian region of Lombardy, La Scala is making a comeback: It is opening its doors in Milan to a live audience — capped at 500 people, sitting in the balconies and loges — for the first time since October.On Monday, the music director Riccardo Chailly leads the house orchestra and choir in a program of Wagner, Verdi, Purcell and more, featuring Lise Davidsen, a rising star soprano. On Tuesday evening, Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic will be in Milan to perform works by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schumann, commemorating the 75th anniversary of La Scala’s reopening after World War II, which featured a legendary concert under Arturo Toscanini.Also coming up are streaming performances of a ballet program featuring work by eight choreographers (Saturday) and Rossini’s “L’italiana in Algeri” (May 25) in a revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s classic staging.All this is taking place under the leadership of Dominique Meyer, who began his tenure as artistic director and chief executive of La Scala in March 2020 while wrapping up nearly a decade as general director of the Vienna State Opera.The theater is undergoing renovations, including relocating its set and costume workshops, and modernizing its storage space.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesLa Scala had been lying low in recent months, presenting occasional performances for streaming while Mr. Meyer and his staff overhauled the infrastructure to become both more digitally advanced and more ecologically sustainable.This year, the house’s budget decreased to an approved 86 million euros, about $104 million, from €133 million in 2019. But it has achieved a record high in private funding, recently bringing aboard the Armani Group and the supermarket chain Esselunga as new sponsors.Meanwhile, the theater has proceeded with extensive construction plans. A high-rise building designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, budgeted at €17 million and scheduled to open in two years around the corner from La Scala, will include administrative offices and a rehearsal room that doubles as a recording studio. The theater is also expanding its academy into a university with its own campus, relocating its set and costume workshops, and modernizing its storage space; all those projects are expected to be complete in five years.In addition, Mr. Meyer has been developing outreach plans. “I am probably in my last position,” Mr. Meyer, a 65-year-old native of France’s Alsace region, said in a video interview from his office in Milan. “I have 33 or 34 seasons behind me. Now is the time to invest my experience in this theater and work with the young generation of La Scala on the future of this house.”The following conversation, conducted in German, has been translated, edited and condensed.Is it a challenge to bring traditional houses like the Vienna State Opera and La Scala into the 21st century?I don’t see it that way. The problem for many opera houses is that they can be quite self-referential. But people remain very faithful.In Vienna, we installed a streaming system and tablets with subtitles. I was heavily criticized at the time. Now, one is happy to broadcast an opera every evening during this period.This summer, we will install cameras not just in the auditorium but in the foyers because performances also take place there. I didn’t do this in Vienna and very much regretted it. We want to stream the whole program: operas, ballets and many concerts.Tell us more about your first season at La Scala.You can’t come to a house like La Scala and criticize everything. If you do, then you are the foreign body.The first thing we had to do was a kind of screening or X-ray of the house. The second was to mobilize the young [employees].It turned out that we had progress to make with regard to the administrative use of computers. After a year of Covid, I had, in fact, seen that some things don’t work — that bills or salaries were paid too late. And so these different problems made it possible to make reforms at a fast pace.A crisis sometimes offers the opportunity to do things new and differently. We will have empty seats, and so I want to do something for families here, so that parents can bring their children to the front rows of the theater for €15.Work is under way to clean the exterior of the theater for the  reopening. Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesNorthern Italy was, of course, hit very hard during the first wave of the pandemic. Was it difficult to make the right decisions under those conditions?Yes and no. I have a lot of understanding for politicians because I used to work for the French government. When one is at the steering wheel, it is not easy. So I understand when mistakes are made.What I didn’t like is that everyone wanted to be better than their neighbor. And so a situation emerged where the rules are so different: There are not two countries where quarantine has the same duration.The virus is the same, so why isn’t it possible to create a reasonable way of working together? Some people give themselves an air of importance because they have the best conditions. Later on, things will look different. More

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      ‘Zoetrope’ Review: And You Thought Your Apartment Was Small?

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      Exquisite Corpse Company’s clever choose-your-own-adventure play has a handful of viewers peek in on a Brooklyn couple in really close quarters.In this real estate market, Brooklyn agents can find renters for pretty much any apartment, even one in a vacant lot across from a Subway and a Smoothie King at the border of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. One Lilliputian even by New York City standards.Meet the tenants: a Black woman named Angel (Starr Kirkland) and her white girlfriend “Bae” (Leana Gardella), who share the space in the Exquisite Corpse Company’s imaginatively conceived and playfully executed “Zoetrope,” a live interactive show performed inside — surprise — an 8 by 12 trailer. A handful of audience members peek in through glass cutouts on three sides, listening through plastic headphones plugged into a mini MP3 player.It’s 2020, right at the start of the pandemic, and at first the stay-at-home orders land like news of a snow day: Angel and Bae dance around the apartment, smoke bowls, watch TV. But things quickly unravel. In various versions of the roughly 35-minute plot, they fall out about race and privilege; find emotional connection elsewhere; and fight about the struggle to buy groceries or get a flu shot.The ending of the play is inevitable, but the path it takes to get there varies, depending on the audience. Directed by Porcia Lewis and Tess Howsam, “Zoetrope” is both a surreal diorama of the recent past and a voyeuristic choose-your-own-adventure-style performance.Forget traditional seating options like mezzanine or balcony; for “Zoetrope” you get to choose from “TV,” “Time (a calendar),” “Portrait” and “Fish Tank.” These are the openings through which you examine Angel and Bae’s pandemic life.From my seat at the TV, I peered, “Truman Show”-style, through the screen, unnerved by the glances of the couple as they sat down to watch Netflix, in fact staring directly through the glass at my face.Starr Kirkland as Angel, with her hand in a fish tank that doubles as a window for a viewer looking in from outside.Jess DaleneWritten by Leah Barker, Emily Krause and Elinor T. Vanderburg, the play has over two dozen possible story lines: Each writer has contributed three scenes, with audience members selecting how the narrative will progress from one setup to another by choosing among buttons illustrated with seemingly random images.The images give few hints of what plot turns may come: My own options were a VHS tape, a Goldfish cracker with sunglasses perched on its head, and a bottle of Absolut vodka with a tag that said “Drink me.”I won’t tell you what I picked (your experience, should you go, will be your own). But my selection was beside the point; the small scale of “Zoetrope” allows it to be truly interactive in ways that larger productions cannot logistically pull off. The show lets the audience be, in some small but significant way, the authors of the story.Though I shouldn’t give short shrift to the actual authors, who deliver a heightened experiment in language with frequent leaps into the surreal. A pet fish speaks; the TV offers prophecies of the future; scenes are paused and fast-forwarded.All the while Angel and Bae share a kind of whimsical dream-speak, interrupted by moments of brutal honesty and bold self-definition. “Before I was all airy hollow soft spaces and those spaces filled up solid and now I don’t feel like I owe anyone anything anymore,” Bae says in one scene, almost as a threat.Kirkland and Gardella, the actors at my performance (Vanessa Lynah and Jules Forsburg-Lary star on other evenings), lack chemistry but tap into the volatile brio of the script’s terse exchanges and passive-aggressive asides.Bae, flattened into a liberal feminist villain, bursts into many scenes as an interruption of her girlfriend’s thoughts and monologues. Angel, whom the script clearly favors, comes off as real and familiar, caught between fury and exhaustion at a throwaway comment or phrase from Bae, her face suddenly tight and guarded.The biggest pleasure of “Zoetrope” is spying on this couple in their space, beautifully designed by Emily Addison and Dominica Montoya. The black-and-white interior does double duty, catching the eye but also echoing the racial tensions; the set combines the chic sophistication of an art installation (the Victorian-style love seat, the white owl bust) and the self-aware playfulness of Brooklyn millennial life. (I really liked the Lucky Charms box, rendered without any of the usual cheery colors.)Strobe effects and abrupt color shifts (lighting by Krista Smith) punctuate the sudden absurdist twists. Ran Xia’s sound design is more hit-or-miss; too often the cheap headphones were no match for the everyday street music of Brooklyn.Given the choice to go back to the dark early days of lockdown, I would absolutely pass. But at “Zoetrope” I found myself falling into an anomalous nostalgia — a kind of historical fiction where the strangeness of isolation allows for the possibility that anything can happen.After one of my scene selections, Angel knelt down in front of the TV screen to ask me, “Do we ever go back to how we were?”Did she mean a world without social distancing and masks? Or did she mean a world that seemed less (overtly) frightening for us, two Black women?The best I could do was shrug. After all, I was just a face on a screen, watching through the glass.ZoetropeThrough May 23 at 134 Vanderbilt Ave Brooklyn, N.Y.; exquisitecorpsecompany.com More

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      Broadway Is Reopening. But Not Until September.

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      Even as New York City begins to reopen this summer, Broadway will not resume performances until Sept. 14. Here’s why.Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says that most pandemic capacity restrictions will ease in two weeks. Mayor Bill de Blasio says he wants the city to fully reopen on July 1. But Broadway, a beacon for tourists and an engine for the economy, is not quite ready to turn on the stage lights.Most shows are not planning performances until September or later. But there are signs of life: Mr. Cuomo said Wednesday that Broadway shows would start selling tickets for full-capacity shows with some performances starting Sept. 14.Why the four-month wait? With as many as eight shows a week to fill, and the tourists who make up an important part of their customer base yet to return, producers need time to advertise and market. They need to reassemble and rehearse casts who have been out of work for more than a year. And they need to sort out and negotiate safety protocols.But the biggest reason is more gut-based: individually and collectively, they are trying to imagine when large numbers of people are likely to feel comfortable traveling to Times Square, funneling through cramped lobbies and walking down narrow aisles to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. Most Broadway shows lose money even in the best of times, so producers say there is no way they can afford to reopen with social distancing, given the industry’s high labor and real estate costs.“We’ve never done this before,” said Victoria Bailey, executive director of TDF, the nonprofit which oversees the TKTS ticket-selling booth in Times Square. “The last time the theater industry opened from a pandemic, Shakespeare was still writing new plays.”Broadway’s emerging timeline, which is constantly being re-evaluated, serves as a reminder that New York’s rebound from the pandemic will be slow and gradual. Edicts from elected officials are only one factor in reopening: every economic sector will have to figure out when and how to restart, and every individual will have to figure out when and how to re-emerge.Broadway, home to 41 theaters, drew 14.6 million people who spent $1.8 billion on tickets in 2019. The coronavirus pandemic forced them all to close March 12, 2020, and reopening is clearly going to be far more complicated than shutting down. One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is the dearth of tourists, who made up roughly two-thirds of the Broadway audience before the pandemic struck.“We had such a good year before the shutdown, but now we need the ability to reignite the energy that we were sailing on,” said Tom Hulce, a lead producer of “Ain’t Too Proud,” a jukebox musical about the Temptations. “We basically are starting from zero advance, as most shows are, and now we need time to reach out and build back up.”“Ain’t Too Proud,” a jukebox musical about the Temptations, had a good year before it closed, but needs time to build back its audience.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAbout 30 shows are currently planning to begin performances on Broadway before the end of 2021 — approximately half starting in September, and the rest spread out across the year’s final quarter.Among the first to go on sale following the governor’s announcement: “The Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show, which said Wednesday evening that it would put tickets on sale Friday in anticipation of resuming performances Oct. 22. “Emphatically: Yes, we are coming back,” said the show’s composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber.The three juggernaut musicals that were the biggest box office grossers before the pandemic — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” — have been planning to jointly announce next week that they expect to reopen in mid-September. Those shows, with their well-known titles and fervent fans, face lower hurdles than others in reintroducing themselves to potential ticket buyers, and they are also the most able to withstand financial risk.A number of other musicals are also hoping to open in September, including the long running “Chicago,” the David Byrne concert show “American Utopia,” Disney’s “Aladdin” and the inspirational Canadian hit “Come From Away.” Each is confident they can find an audience even as some forecasts suggest that it could be several years before tourism fully recovers.“I do think there’s going to be a real push to reach out to the tristate area, to day-trippers, and to locals,” said Sue Frost, a lead producer of “Come From Away.” “But does the pent-up demand explode and then go dormant? If we don’t put our toe in the water, we won’t know.”The longest running show in Broadway history, “The Phantom of the Opera,” which opened in 1988, said it will resume performances on Oct. 22.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere remain many uncertainties. Will masks be required for patrons? (Probably, at least at first.) Will performers sign autographs at the stage door? (Probably not, at least for a while.) Will vaccinations be required? (Governor Cuomo said he would prefer that, but said it would be up to the theater industry to decide. “Are you willing to go into an indoor theater and sit there for two hours next to a person who you don’t know if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated?” he asked. And “Phantom,” in its announcement, said protocols could require vaccination or negative test verification.)Even the frequency of performances is still to be determined. The Broadway League and several labor unions have been talking about the possibility of opening with fewer than the customary eight shows a week. That would mean lower pay for cast and crew, a concession they are likely to consider only if theater owners take the same percentage cut in rent.Pricing practices are expected to be fluid. Several producers said they expect to start selling tickets at prices similar to those in place before the pandemic, but that they could adjust depending on what demand looks like. One change that seems certain in the post-pandemic era: more liberal refund policies. (“Phantom,” for example, said all tickets could be refunded or exchanged until two hours before a performance.)“There’s never been a time when all the tickets have basically gone on sale at once, so there’s going to be a lot of learning,” said Brian Fenty, the chief executive of TodayTix, which runs a popular ticket-selling app.Every show faces casting complications, because most, if not all, contracts with actors have expired and will need to be renegotiated. Some performers need to recondition their bodies or their voices. Some are dealing with lingering effects of Covid. Some ensemble members may decide that life in, say, Nebraska is actually better than life in New York. Some child actors — and there are children in the casts of a half-dozen shows — have aged out of their roles. Elizabeth Stanley, a star of “Jagged Little Pill,” is pregnant. And Karen Olivo, whose character is central to “Moulin Rouge!,” issued a critique of Broadway’s priorities and the industry’s lack of response to abusive behavior and said she would not return.Karen Olivo of “Moulin Rouge!” decided during the pandemic that she does not intend to return to Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway has been rocked not only by the pandemic, but also by the unrest over racial inequity that coursed through the country last year after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed by police.All of the new plays announced for Broadway this fall are by Black writers. Two are commercial productions — Keenan Scott II’s “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” about a single day in the life of seven Black men in Brooklyn, and Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over,” about two Black men trapped by existential dread in a society where too many Black people are killed by police.“We are leaning in to the conversation that’s happening in America,” said Brian Moreland, a lead producer of “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which is aiming to open in October.There will also be three nonprofit productions of plays by Black writers on Broadway: “Clyde’s,” a new play by Lynn Nottage presented by Second Stage; “Lackawanna Blues,” a one-man show by Ruben Santiago-Hudson presented by the Manhattan Theater Club; and “Trouble in Mind,” a classic play by Alice Childress getting its first Broadway production via the Roundabout Theater Company.“It’s been a really hard year for the not-for-profits — we’re all suffering, and we all have deficits,” said Carole Rothman, the artistic director of Second Stage, who said she hopes to start performances of “Clyde’s” in November, after opening her smaller Off Broadway stage a little earlier. “I’m an optimist,” she said. “Definitely there’s going to be an audience chomping at the bit to see theater.” “Lackawanna Blues,” a one-man show by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, standing, is one of several works by Black playwrights coming to Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA handful of shows are not expected to return until 2022. The most prominent among them is the two-part play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which is rethinking its length and structure before deciding how and when to reopen. And plans for a pair of shows produced by Scott Rudin, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and a revival of “West Side Story,” are unclear following his decision to step back from active involvement after a series of news reports detailed his bullying behavior toward employees and collaborators.Expect at least four new Broadway musicals to open this fall, including “Six,” the concert-style British pop show about the ill-fated wives of King Henry VIII, which was just 90 minutes from opening when theaters closed, as well as “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Diana” and “Flying Over Sunset.” And a fifth new musical — “MJ,” about a chapter in the life of Michael Jackson — is planning to start performances late this year.The lead producer of “Phantom,” Cameron Mackintosh, said the return of theater is essential for the cultural and economic life of both New York and London, but acknowledged that much is unknown.“No one is taking this for granted, and no one is assuming we’re going back to what it was pre-Covid,” he said. “We need to be completely optimistic, but also pragmatic, because none of us have been in this situation before.” More

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      A Rare Peek Inside a Semi-Secret ‘Secret Garden’

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      The 2018 workshop for a possible revival of the lush musical was never meant to be seen by the public, but will now stream as a benefit this weekend.When Marsha Norman suggested to the producer Jerry Goehring the idea of streaming the 2018 workshop of a stalled Broadway revival of “The Secret Garden” as a benefit, he thought it was a great idea.He just didn’t know if it would be possible.“I was like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know that it’s ever been done before,’” said Goehring, a member of the team angling to bring back to Broadway the sumptuous musical that has never been revived there since the Tony Award-winning 1991 production that starred Mandy Patinkin.Securing the rights to stream a musical — much less a workshop, footage that was never intended to see the light of day and showcases actors in their rawest form — can be complicated.But it helped that Norman, the musical’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book writer, was already on board — as was the new director, Warren Carlyle (“After Midnight”), and all 21 actors, among them Sierra Boggess (Lily), Clifton Duncan (Archibald Craven) and Drew Gehling (Neville Craven).“They were all asking ‘Please, what can we do to help?’” Goehring said this week.Getting buy-in from every member involved and compensating the actors were the stipulations for Actors’ Equity Association, the labor union, to grant permission for the project, which will benefit The Dramatists Guild Foundation and The Actors Fund.“They said they rarely get requests for archival recordings,” said Goehring, who teamed with the producers Michael F. Mitri and Carl Moellenberg to develop the project. “But, if, at the end of the day, 100 percent of their members involved in the show agree, we could do it.”The two-hour workshop, which includes a full run-through of the show sans costumes or sets, will premiere on Broadway on Demand on Thursday, May 6 at 8 p.m. and remain available through May 9. It is dedicated to Rebecca Luker, the musical’s original Lily, who died in December at age 59 less than a year after announcing she had A.L.S.“It’s wonderful and terrifying at the same time,” said Carlyle, who directed and choreographed the workshop. “It’s in its rawest form, with all my terrible ideas and some good ones. It’s really like pulling back the curtain.”Goehring said the workshop showcases the production at its “very beginning” stages — and was never intended to be seen by any kind of audience, much less the public.“We didn’t plan on inviting anyone,” he said, noting that the authors had initially just wanted a chance to take their first look at the entire show — artistically. “But it turned out so special that everyone agreed we should invite our friends in the industry, including Broadway theater owners, to get their opinion.”Mandy Patinkin, left, and Daisy Eagan in the original Broadway production, for which Eagan, at just 11,  earned a Tony Award.Bob Marshak, via the Everett CollectionThe musical, based on the 1911 children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, tells the story of an orphaned English girl whose personality blossoms as she and a sickly cousin restored a neglected garden. The original Broadway production earned three Tonys, with a cast that included Luker, Patinkin, a pre-Hedwig John Cameron Mitchell and 11-year-old Daisy Eagan, who won for her performance as the heroine Mary Lennox.The revival, Carlyle said, is a “complete reimagining.” It will feature pared-back sets, more intimate orchestrations and different scenic design. But all of Lucy Simon’s songs are intact, he reassured fans of the original, just shifted around — not that anyone would dare cut “Lily’s Eyes.”“We joke that we lost a lot of big bushes,” he said. “Lots of big scene transitions from back in the early ’90s have been eliminated, so it really flows much better.”It’s clear, Carlyle said, that the workshop is a rough draft: The garden is imaginary; the dress code more T-shirts than waistcoats. Pieces of tape on the bare floor mark the edge of the stage, as well as where the wings would be. There are only a few props.“There are no frills,” he said. “Which allows me, as a director, to make sure we’re getting the story right.”To help people keep track of scene changes, the team inserted digital renderings by the production designer Jason Sherwood (“Rent: Live”) as transitions. But ultimately, Carlyle said, the material speaks for itself.From left: Drew Gehling, Sierra Boggess (near back wall) and Clifton Duncan in three of the musical’s key roles.via The Secret Garden workshop“The book Marsha has written and Lucy’s music are so strong that you can be in an empty room with talented artists and have it move you just as much as if it were on a Broadway stage,” he said.There are reasons the show has never been revived on Broadway: Critics said the lavish set and elaborate costumes left the actors fighting to be in focus, and the book was overstuffed with secondary characters.“Whether ‘The Secret Garden’ is a compelling dramatic adaptation of its source or merely a beautiful, stately shrine to it is certain to be a subject of intense audience debate,” The New York Times theater critic Frank Rich wrote in his review of the original. “I, for one, often had trouble locating the show’s pulse.”Broadway is still a target for the future, Goehring said, though the pandemic has thrown the timeline in flux.“We are not seeking new investment right now,” he said. “Our only goal is to raise money for the nonprofits.”The 2018 workshop was the latest in a string of high-profile iterations of the musical that also included a 2016 concert at Lincoln Center featuring Ben Platt, Ramin Karimloo and Boggess. David Armstrong directed a production at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle and Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater Company in 2016-17.No cast has yet been set or theater secured, but Goehring hopes the orchestrations will begin taking shape in the fall.“As soon as we can all get back in a room again, we’ll keep working on it,” he said.“Our ultimate goal is to make this as good as we can,” he added. “However long that takes.”Inside The Secret Garden: Workshop and Livestream ExperienceMay 6-9; livestream.broadwayondemand.com More

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      Back in the Girdle Again: Getting Fitted After a Year Untouched

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      Confessions of an actress seeking reassurance — and sleeves — as she steps before a live concert audience again.The actress and singer Melissa Errico returns to the fitting room for the first time since March 2020. Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesHere I am, back at the confessional at last. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been 13 months since my last visit to you. The father-confessor, to whom I am looking for absolution, is Eric Winterling, one of the great Broadway costume makers, and my confession is that (whisper it!) the pandemic had been unkind to my arms. To be specific, my upper arm in the rear, with a strange new pocket of femininity developing just to the interior of my elbow, on both sides.I had to confess this news because that is what actors do when we are in a costume fitting. For a show, we want to make an impression, and that means we have to deal with our bodies, and we need someone to whom we can tell the truth.A lovely fitter named Rita zips me into a dress and adjusts my undergarments. The pandemic has been filled with women writing about their bra drawers and what they don’t need; a woman actor has an additional secret drawer filled with Spanx and other strange, confining underwear, some almost medical, with fiercely strong zippers.The dress needed to say femme fatale — betrayal! cruelty! jazz! — while, of course, covering the arms.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesThat morning I had ransacked mine for the first time in forever. “Back in the girdle again,” I hummed to myself. I turned to Rita as I struggled into one, and said I hoped her day was going well. She said simply, “You are the first actor I have seen in a year.”Eric slipped into the room, turned me to the mirror and laid his hands on my hips — the first time that had happened in a long time, too. We stared at me in three-sided reflection, and I asked, meekly, if I was now a singer who required sleeves.His task was to find, or create, a dress in which I could sing an evening of film noir-inspired songs — many, dauntingly, in French — to a limited in-person audience on May 6 for the French Institute Alliance Francaise. It will be the first time I have sung in front of living people since March 2020. Four cameras will be present, for those watching virtually, making it a concert in the round, so to speak.Eric Winterling, one of the great Broadway costume makers, created a dress of his own after several Donna Karans were rejected.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesThe dress needed to say femme fatale — betrayal! cruelty! jazz! — while, of course, covering my arms. No stranger to creating costumes for ripening actresses, Eric projected confidence that the vintage improves in a tightfitting bottle. I tried to trust him.Intimacy, humor and humiliation hung in the air as we quickly tested a series of sleek Donna Karan gowns he had assembled, all of which were wrong on me in various, dreadful ways. Then he spoke decisively. “It would just be easier if I made you a whole new dress,” he said, adding benevolently, “Angela Bassett ruined everything with her toned arms.”A Psychic EncounterOf all the intimacies of an actor’s life, none is as intimate as that with the costume fitter; he is your confessor and also, sometimes, your co-conspirator.As a child growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia, Eric spoke sewing the way a violin prodigy speaks music. He watched his mother and used his paper route money at age 9 to buy dress patterns.“The dress is made in the fitting room,” he says, quoting the designer Jane Greenwood.Landon Nordeman for The New York Times“I have three brothers — they were very athletic,” he tells me. “One day, I realized that in the back of the pattern books in the fabric stores, they had stuffed animal patterns and Barbie dress patterns. And that was it. I was off to the races.” His first triumph was an orange gingham stuffed dog that he made from a store-bought Simplicity pattern.Eric studied costume design at Temple University, and after three years working as resident costumer of the Houston Grand Opera, he moved to New York in 1987, taking a job at Terilynn Costumes. When they closed, Eric decided to start his own costume-making business, though he was only 29.“I’m rarely the designer, as a matter of fact,” he explains. “I decided a long time ago that I’m much better at interpreting designer sketches than designing myself. And so, I thought that what I could do sewing was much more useful for the world.”Before the pandemic, as many as 15 shows were being worked on at once in Eric’s shop.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesEric’s light-filled Flatiron district fitting room has French doors that open out to 8,200 square feet of industrial space, with 38 sewing machines and 18 cutting tables, while hundreds of yards of rolled fabric lie on shelves like sacred scrolls. If he is my confessor and the studio his cathedral, the fitting room is the mirrored apse where the very essence of his craft takes place.“The dress is made in the fitting room,” Eric tells me, quoting the designer Jane Greenwood, with whom he has often worked, and whom I first met when she designed (and he made) the costumes for the Broadway musical “High Society.” (Just over my shoulder, on the back wall, hangs a framed, and fading, sketch of me as Tracy Lord in my — her! — wedding gown.)The fitting room itself has to be just so: “This room is 400 square feet, and not just a corner of the room with a curtain on it. You have to really have people be comfortable in it.” Eric long ago installed stage lighting on the ceiling.The final product is bosomy without being modern, the neckline inspired by Jane Greer’s in the 1947 noir film “Out of the Past.”Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesAnd he understands that a costume fitting is a psychic encounter as much as a physical one. “You have to listen to people,” he says. “What the person who’s wearing the costume sees with her eyes, you have to make the match through the process of a fitting. You have to switch each other’s glasses to just see what they’re seeing.”Struggling to Stay OpenBefore the pandemic, as many as 15 shows were being worked on at once in Eric’s shop. His atelier created Elphaba’s witchy dress for “Wicked” (designed by Susan Hilferty) and the blue velvet harem ensemble for the Genie in “Aladdin” (designed by Gregg Barnes). He solved the challenge of the breakaway costume for Elsa as she belts “Let It Go” in “Frozen.”Nearly 50 full-time employees were working in Eric’s studio, hailing from the Dominican Republic, Pakistan, Thailand, Japan, the Czech Republic and Russia, among other places. Now, though, he is working with only a third of his usual team.He’s been active with the new Costume Industry Coalition, which raises awareness of how hard hit this sector has been. Last summer, he struggled even to keep his shop open.“I spent a lot of time last May, June, driving things around to people’s homes, like this ice dress,” he says of a beaded number, intended for a Tokyo production of “Frozen.” “It had to be hand-painted over here, and then it had to go over there to be beaded, then it had to go to New Jersey to be made.”Eric understands that a costume fitting is a psychic encounter as much as a physical one. “You have to listen to people,” he says.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesHis staff was working and sewing from home, and he lent his studio to organizations making P.P.E.; instead of magical dresses, they made protective gowns. And television work, including HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” replaced the theater.I sensed that one reason Eric was pleased to make me a dress was because he saw it as an offering to the Gods of the Balcony: If I go on making dresses, the singing will come back.Sleeves Again!At my second fitting a week later, a black sequined gown was placed on my body. I stepped into it, and Rita guided my voluptuous elbows into two tunnels of sparkling masquerade. Sleeves!She zipped me into a near-finished, brand-new dress and sat on the floor to stare at the hemline while Eric came in to get a look. The look was bosomy without being modern, the neckline inspired by Jane Greer’s in the 1947 noir film “Out of the Past.” While describing a Parisian bead-and-sequin shop he loves called Fried Frères, Eric tended to my arms and pinched the fabric, experimenting with taking it in, or shortening the sleeves.After 14 months of Lululemons and T-shirts, I had a real costume on my body. It felt wonderful to be in a slinky, sinuous gown with a flirtatious satin sash. I felt like a candy box.Inspiration for a noir-era costume and cabaret show.Landon Nordeman for The New York TimesI’m no stranger to doing cabaret jobs in rented gowns — there is an app for slightly-used dresses for gently-worn actresses — so this feeling was precious. Eric and I looked at each other. The costumer-confessor and actress-penitent were in a state of hope. He, because sewing is what he does; she, because despite all the agonies, singing is what she does. That’s the irony of the actor’s life: The costume frees us from the insecurities that the need for a costume creates. It’s the actor’s version of infinity — a new look, a new role, a new possibility.More practically, I suggested he could tighten the waist.“There is no need,” he reminded me. “You have to sing. You have a lot to do in this dress. It’s fine as it is.” I wiggled my hips, with a few bars of “Put the Blame on Mame.” Eric let out an audible sigh. He moved to the back of the room and turned off the lights. Then he flipped the switch, and the ceiling’s stage lights burst into a warm glow.“There’s the magic,” he said. I was dressed.Melissa Errico is an actress and singer. “Mystery,” her new concert, is Thursday at 7 p.m. at Florence Gould Hall in Manhattan; stream at fiaf.org. More

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      Virtually live performances are getting livelier (and bigger), with some great acts and multi-artist concerts to watch this month.While many cities across the country are increasingly opening up, the state of entertainment remains bifurcated. Socially distanced indoor shows have returned to live-music venues like City Winery in New York, and Austin’s Nutty Brown Amphitheater, while NY PopsUp is offering a series of indoor and outdoor performances at locations across New York State, leading up to the eventual reopening of Broadway. (As part of the venture, Nathan Lane and Savion Glover were the first artists to grace a Broadway stage since last March, while Amy Schumer, Chris Rock and Hugh Jackman are scheduled for future events.)But until vaccination numbers increase, livestreamed shows will continue. And as the traditional concert seasons near, the scale increases. For example, Glastonbury Festival (which will not occur in person until 2022) is holding a concert featuring customary top-tier artists. But while signs of a recovery might be in the air in some places, Covid remains very much top of mind. Selena Gomez will host a Global Citizen concert in an effort to encourage vaccination, while celebrated indie artists will come together to honor the songwriter Adam Schlesinger, who died of Covid-19 in 2020. So kick back and safely enjoy tuning into some of these multigenre continent-spanning shows.‘Adam Schlesinger: A Musical Celebration’The music, film and TV communities all mourned the loss of Adam Schlesinger, a founding member of Fountains of Wayne and an Emmy and Grammy winner who wrote songs for film like “Shallow Hal” and “That Thing You Do!” Artists including Courtney Love, Sean Ono Lennon, Michelle Branch and Micky Dolenz will perform his songs at a memorial concert that will benefit MusiCares, the nonprofit organization for musicians in need, and the venue Bowery Electric. May 5, 8 p.m. E.S.T., tickets are $20; rollinglivestudios.com/pages/box-officeVan MorrisonThe day after the release of his latest album, “Latest Record Project: Number 1,” the Northern Irish artist will perform songs from it, along with some best-known hits, in what will be his first virtual concert. Morrison has made waves in recent months with his anti-lockdown stance, which included a threat to sue the Northern Ireland Department of Health, and recently released three songs addressing the shutdown, including “No More Lockdown.” None of the three will appear on the new album. May 8, 3 p.m. E.S.T., tickets start at $14.99; nugs.net‘VAX LIVE: The Concert to Reunite the World’The anti-poverty organization Global Citizen is embarking on a very ambitious mission with their Vax Live concert to both endorse vaccination against Covid and advocate for global access to doses. The show, which is to be taped at Southern California’s SoFi stadium on Sunday, will be hosted by Selena Gomez with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle serving as campaign chairs. President Biden will also appear, while Jennifer Lopez and the Foo Fighters will be among the acts performing. May 8, 8 p.m. E.S.T.; airing on ABC, CBS, Fox and YouTubeKehlaniFans of Kehlani can tune in to see the R&B and pop artist performing her 2020 album “It Was Good Until It Wasn’t.” As a result of the pandemic, this will be her first time presenting the album in full, as well as her first livestreamed show. May 10, 9 p.m. E.S.T., tickets start at $20; nocapshows.com/artist?name=kehlani‘Glastonbury Festival Presents Live at Worthy Farm’England’s famed Glastonbury, a jewel in the crown of summer music festivals, will be on hiatus this year, just as it was in 2020. As a consolation, this livestreamed event, held at the festival’s traditional home in Somerset, will include A-list performances from the likes of Coldplay, HAIM and Jorja Smith (and no mud). Hopefully, this virtual sampling can hold festival-lovers over until the show goes on in June 2022.May 22, 7 p.m. E.S.T., tickets start at $27.50; glastonburylivestream.seetickets.com More