#metropolitan-opera

#metropolitan-opera

MOZART IN MOTION: His Work and His World in Pieces, by Patrick Mackie Musicians tend to be wary of ascribing specific meanings to music or making too much of a piece's extra-musical associations.In one of his Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1973, turning to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Leonard Bernstein asked the audience to forget all about birds and brooks and rustic pleasures and instead concentrate on pure music.

Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer who was brought up in the world of male-dominated high modernism but who broke away to forge an identity of her own, becoming the first woman to have more than one work of hers staged by the Metropolitan Opera, died on Friday at her home in Paris.She was 70.She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021, said her publisher, Chester Music, which confirmed the death.

There's a lot of fat-shaming in Verdi's Falstaff, but the opera has never really been a candidate for revision or cancellation, probably because the victim of those insults refuses to see himself as one.Eloquent and self-aggrandizing, Falstaff proudly identifies with his stature.This is my kingdom, he proclaims, patting his belly, I will enlarge it.

Gustavo Dudamel, recently named, to cheers, as the New York Philharmonic's next music director, will arrive to lead the orchestra officially in 2026.But the time before then shouldn't be thought of something to be endured or, at worst, a slog.Just look to the Philharmonic's program this week titled The March to Liberation and conducted by Leslie B. Dunner which on Thursday had a streak of urgency and plenty of orchestral splendor.

True to its name, Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites is an opera built on conversations, specifically ecclesiastical ones, about spiritual heroism, martyrdom and crises of faith.But in the Metropolitan Opera's searing revival, which opened on Sunday, much was left unsaid, too to stunning effect.

Some singers simply have a voice built for the stage  an instrument whose particular blend of color, vibrancy and volume is best heard live.The mezzo-soprano J'Nai Bridges is one of them.When she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, as Nefertiti in the company premiere of Philip Glass's Akhnaten in 2019, she loosed a luscious voice as opulent and seamless as the regal fabric of her costumes.

Danielle DowlingReporting on the arts Danielle DowlingReporting on the arts Eric Zachanowich/20th Century Studios In The Menu, revenge is a collection of dishes served menacingly to a group of elites by a disgruntled superstar chef, played by Ralph Fiennes (seen here with Anya Taylor-Joy).Here's more on that film and other entertainment highlights this weekend  Danielle DowlingReporting on the arts Directed by Mark Mylod, The Menu is a brutal satire of class division  viewed through the lens of high-end gorging that is ruthlessly focused and gleamingly efficient, our critic writes.

An immersive drama about homelessness, a moral thriller about the intersection of faith and medical ethics, and the world premiere of a theatrically staged solo performance of the composer Franz Schubert's final songs are among the 2023 season offerings the Park Avenue Armory announced on Tuesday.Each of the featured artists in the season, which spotlights social issues, will push the limits of their respective forms and offer perspectives that speak to the important issues of our communities here in New York and around the world, Rebecca Robertson, the Armory's founding president and executive producer, said in a statement.

Ask Mark Morris why he chose the music of Burt Bacharach, the legendary songwriter who died on Feb. 8, for his 2022 dance work The Look of Love, and the award-winning choreographer doesn't hesitate.The music's great, obviously, he says during an interview that took place before Bacharach's passing.He's written genius music for many decades.

Emily D'Angelo made her point with attire before singing a single note at the Metropolitan Opera's concert to mark the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.The 28-year-old Canadian mezzo-soprano walked onto the stage Friday night for the Mozart Requiem wearing a dark skirt covered with white tally marks, like on a school chalkboard: four vertical slashes and a diagonal to close out each set of five.

One day when Denyce Graves was a ninth-grader at DC's Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a friend pulled her into the library to play some music she'd discovered.Graves didn't know much about opera at the time, but when she heard the voice of Leontyne Price, she was transfixed.The two students proceeded to listen to Price recordings for the next eight hours.

Nine days after an audacious cyberattack struck the Metropolitan Opera, forcing its website offline, paralyzing its box office and hobbling its ability to sell tickets, the company announced on Thursday that those services had been restored.After suffering a cyberattack that temporarily impacted our network systems, we're pleased to announce that the Met is now able to process ticket orders through our website and in person at our box office, the Met said in a message on its website, which reassured customers that no credit card information had been stolen during the attack.

After I fell down the stairs as a toddler, I became very timid.Hoping to expand my comfort zone, my parents signed me up for a baby gymnastics class, enlisting my grandfather to take me.Week after week, he sat with me on the sidelines.I never got the courage to join the group, and he never pushed me.

Three days after a cyberattack first paralyzed its website and box office, the Metropolitan Opera on Friday announced that it would sell $50 tickets to some performances on a site run by Lincoln Center.The Met, in a brief note posted on social media, said it would offer the general admission tickets as it worked to fully restore its computer systems, which have been down since Tuesday morning.

A top Ukrainian official Oleksandr Tkachenko has urged the country's allies to boycott Russian culture  and ban Russian composer Tchaikovsky from performances  until the bloody invasion comes to an end.Mr Tkachenko said over 800 cases of destruction of Ukrainian culture, including destroyed museums, liquidated libraries and erasure of the word Ukraine, have been recorded by its ministry of culture and information policy since Russia's invasion of its neighbour began on February 24.