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    Tanglewood Opens for the Summer, With Change in the Air

    The Boston Symphony Orchestra gave its first concerts of the Tanglewood season, which is already showing signs of its new leader’s ambitions.Tanglewood, the lush summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, opened its season this past weekend, and it did so with one of the most Tanglewood programs imaginable.James Taylor was present to celebrate July 4, of course, and he was celebrating five decades of singing at the venue this year. On Friday night, the orchestra gave an evening of Beethoven under its music director, Andris Nelsons; on Sunday, Renée Fleming, no less, was on hand to cap a matinee of Strauss. In between, the Boston Pops offered a glorious review of recent Broadway musicals, with Victoria Clark bringing down the house as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s George III in “Hamilton.” Fellows attending the Tanglewood Music Center gave their first concerts, joining a lineage that stretches back to 1940.The crowds chattered amiably, the grounds were resplendent, and the music was good. What could feel more timeless than this?Sneaking through the shrubbery, however, was the light breeze of change. Chad Smith, the Boston Symphony’s ambitious new president and chief executive, plans to return this august institution to its most radical roots. Should Smith have his way, Tanglewood will see its creaking theater refurbished and put to good use, its Linde Center for Music and Learning pressed into service year-round, and Seranak, Serge Koussevitzky’s old home in the hills, restored as a meeting place for artists and the public. This will takes years, and tens of million of dollars, but for now, even one of the coloring sheets that volunteers offer eager children has heard the message: a butterfly, yet to be filled in, with the tagline “A Summer Tradition Transformed.”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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    Review: ‘The Hours’ Returns to the Met Opera With Its Stars

    Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato reprised their roles in Kevin Puts’s adaptation of the award-winning novel and film.Kevin Puts’s “The Hours,” which had its stage premiere at the Metropolitan Opera last season and returned for its first revival on Sunday, is even prettier than I remember.In the often exquisite score, the strings throb and the woodwinds flutter. When Puts reaches for percussion instruments, he chooses the sweeter ones — glockenspiel, crotales, chimes, vibraphone — and combines them luxuriously. Woodwinds at the top of Act II are practically Wagnerian in their extravagant stateliness. Tender piano chords toll lonesomely. Musical surges are thick with nostalgia. The luscious vocal lines revel in love, and understanding, of the human voice.But it’s easy to miss the score’s manifold beauties when the stage is full of distractions. Extraneous dancers and supernumeraries flood Phelim McDermott’s production at the Met. In one moment, the choreographer Annie-B Parson has them twirl around holding pillows while a character considers killing herself in a hotel room. Adding to the busyness, Puts heavily features the chorus as a collective, omniscient narrator and the characters’ inner voices. As a device, it doesn’t work; while the story intimately intertwines the emotional lives of three women, the chorus infringes upon their connection with the audience.It’s almost as though Puts and McDermott are afraid to take a sustained look at their heroines, or that they don’t trust the audience’s attention span. This is especially perplexing considering they have three leads on the order of Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato, who reprised their roles on Sunday. When the stage was free of clutter, their star wattage was dazzling.As Virginia Woolf, DiDonato was a haunted, magisterial presence. Her voice, dark, fulsome and cutting, communicated Woolf’s intellectual depth and her personal demons; there was the insight and occlusion of a novelist at the height of her powers hiding her suicidal ideations from others. As Laura, O’Hara sang with a voice of fine crystal, and while her timbre was a little cloudier than it used to be, she embodied Laura’s fragile nerves and anxious self-loathing. The overall shape of Fleming’s voice remained improbably youthful in its creamy roundness. Her Clarissa was patrician yet superficial, though partial blame rests with the libretto, in which every other word of hers is “flowers” or “party.”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