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    Review: Robert Ashley’s ‘Foreign Experiences’ Returns

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    Robert Ashley’s 1994 opera “Foreign Experiences,” a portrait of a paranoid mind in free fall, is part of a wave of revivals following his death.The makings of opera are quite simple. Strip away the clichés of an opulent art form populated by Viking helmets and powdered wigs (and more than 400 years of history), and you end up with DNA shared by Claudio Monteverdi, Richard Wagner and Meredith Monk across centuries: an artificial, elevated form of speech that reaches for the sublime.Few composers have tested the fundamental qualities of opera as much as Robert Ashley, who died a decade ago at 83. He stretched language and banality to operatic extremes, exalting discarded bits of life as if they were cosmic, in stylized declamation that is every bit as musical as Mozart.Hardly mainstream, Ashley’s works were often performed as he wrote them, then talked about more than staged. Since his death, though, there has been a wave of fresh recordings and revivals, the latest of which is “Foreign Experiences” (1994), now running at Roulette in Brooklyn. A portrait of a mind in free fall, red-pilled before we were talking about red-pilling, it is essential viewing for those interested in the possibilities of opera.Picture an opera made entirely of a mad scene, and you have “Foreign Experiences,” an installment in “Now Eleanor’s Idea,” Ashley’s tetralogy whose construction recalls another four-work saga, Wagner’s “Ring.” In “Experiences,” the protagonist, Don Jr., spirals in isolation after a move to California, and from his apartment he imagines paranoid adventures in esoterica, in search of truths about power and wealth. He comes to conclusions like, “‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford one,’ I always thought we ought to have that carved into that stupid mountain with the four guys’ heads.”Don Jr.’s thoughts come quickly; “Foreign Experiences,” alone in “Now Eleanor’s Idea,” is set to 90 beats per minute instead of Ashley’s usual 72. And those beats matter to each line of the opera’s 50-page libretto. This is a work of extreme mathematical precision that, in performance, shows no signs of being precise at all, with manic speech unfurling over ambient synth chords that reflect both the mood and sound world of “The X-Files.”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

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      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

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      Andrew Davis, 80, Dies; Renowned Conductor Who Championed Britain’s Music

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      Celebrated for his long tenure with Lyric Opera of Chicago, he led this and other orchestras with force and a notably energetic podium presence.Andrew Davis, an ebullient British conductor who brought energy to his countrymen’s compositions and passion to hundreds of opera performances, died on April 20 in Chicago. He was 80.His manager, Jonathan Brill, said the cause of Mr. Davis’s death, in a hospital, was leukemia.More than many conductors, Mr. Davis was remembered by those who worked with him as deriving a sense of physical enjoyment from the music — “almost a palpable pleasure,” the pianist Emanuel Ax said in an interview. And that translated into a pleasure for his collaborators. “People loved playing for him,” Mr. Ax said.Mr. Davis spent 21 years, from 2000 to 2021, as music director and principal conductor of one of America’s great opera companies, Lyric Opera of Chicago, in a vast repertoire ranging from Mozart through Wagner to Berg. He also led orchestras in Canada — the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, from 1975 to 1988 — and Australia — the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, from 2013 to 2019. He also conducted at the Glyndebourne Festival in England from 1988 to 2000.But it was as an interpreter of 20th-century British music, and particularly the works of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius, Holst, Britten and others, that Mr. Davis made his mark and earned his way into the affections of his fellow Britons. With its fervid, billowing patriotism and ruminative pastoral interludes, this music sometimes struggles to cross national boundaries.Mr. Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1995. He was the orchestra’s principal conductor for a decade.Robbie Jack/Corbis, via Getty ImagesMr. Davis, as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 2000 and at summer London Proms concerts in front of enthusiastic audiences of thousands in the Royal Albert Hall, made the most of the British compositions that were his specialty. This deep homegrown commitment led The New York Times’s Bernard Holland, reviewing a 1987 Avery Fisher Hall appearance by Mr. Davis that included little-known works by Arnold Bax and Michael Tippett, to write that “the music of 20th-century Britain has hugely profited from the fervent ministrations of British musicians and the British musical press.”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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      ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ Review: A Met Milestone Returns

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      After making history as the Metropolitan Opera’s first work by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire” is back — with its showstopping step dance.The Metropolitan Opera premiere of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” on Sept. 27, 2021, was a momentous event. Doubly so: “Fire” was the company’s first staged opera after an 18-month pandemic closure, and it was, after 138 years, its first work by a Black composer.The opera, with a score by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, took on some of the grandeur and excitement of that moment. The raucous fraternity step dance that opens the third act brought down the house.That step dance still stopped the show on Monday evening, when “Fire” returned to the Met. Two and a half years later, the work is a test case. The company has sharply increased its diet of contemporary operas — some of which, including “Fire,” sold very well as new productions. But how will these operas perform when they’re brought back, without the same promotional push?On Monday, at least, the audience seemed robust and, as it was during the initial run, notably diverse. And “Fire” remains a heartfelt piece, emanating a touching if vague sadness. But without the exhilarating sense of occasion it had at its Met premiere, the opera’s shortcomings were clearer.Based on the New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow’s memoir of his turbulent upbringing in Louisiana, “Fire” is a progression of episodes — some upbeat, some forlorn. It takes the form of a search: The lonely Charles, his psyche wounded as a child by his cousin’s sexual abuse and his mother’s real but distracted love, looks for belonging and healing.He tries church, fraternity membership, his siblings, a woman, another woman, but none offer what he’s seeking; all want him to be different than he is. Only after a hasty, therapy-speak conclusion in the final minutes, presided over by an ethereal choir and the voice of his younger self, can he finally accept himself and sing, “Now my life begins.”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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      Ukrainian Conductor Oksana Lyniv Arrives at the Met Opera

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      Oksana Lyniv, who is leading “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera, has used her platform to criticize Russia and promote Ukrainian culture.The Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv was preparing for a performance of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the Metropolitan Opera this month when she saw the news: A Russian drone had hit a building in Odesa, not far from the home of her parents-in-law.She called her family to ensure they were safe. But images of the attack, whose victims included a young mother and children, lingered in her mind. When she conducted that night, she felt the pain of war more acutely, she said, praying to herself when Liù, a selfless servant, dies in the opera’s final act and the chorus turns hushed.“In that moment, I saw all the suffering of the war,” she said. “How do you explain such sadness? How do you explain who gets to be alive and who has to die?”Since the invasion, Lyniv, 46, the first Ukrainian conductor to perform at the Met, has used her platform to denounce Russia’s government. She has also set out to promote Ukrainian culture, championing works by Ukrainian composers and touring Europe with the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, an ensemble that she founded in 2016.The war has raised difficult questions for artists and cultural institutions. Russian performers have come under pressure to speak out against President Vladimir V. Putin. Ukrainians have faced questions too, including whether to perform Russian works or appear alongside Russian artists.Lyniv, who now lives in Düsseldorf, Germany, has sometimes felt caught in the middle. She protested last month when a festival in Vienna announced plans to pair her appearance with a concert led by the conductor Teodor Currentzis, who has come under scrutiny over his connections to Russia. (The festival canceled his appearance.)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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      At the Met Opera, the Show Goes On After a Technical Mishap

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      The company put on a semi-staged version of Puccini’s “Turandot” at the last minute, after a backstage lift got jammed.The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Puccini’s “Turandot” is one of the most lavish and intricate in the company’s repertoire, a spectacle that includes an imperial palace, a glittering throne room and expansive gardens.But on Wednesday evening, audience members had to make do without the opera’s usual visual delights. A jam in the Met’s main lift backstage forced the company to put on a semi-staged version at the last minute, with the cast and chorus singing from an improvised set instead.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, walked onstage before the show to explain the situation.“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to be a normal night at the opera,” he said. “Although our scenery will not be working, the show will go on.”Audience members were offered a refund if they wished to leave, and about 150 people did, the Met said. But most stayed, offering a hearty applause when the conductor, Oksana Lyniv, entered the pit. (The Met, which has about 3,800 seats, said that the performance’s paid attendance was about 80 percent of capacity before the problem was announced.)Gelb said in an interview that the machinery jammed around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, while the Met was changing sets for “Turandot” after a rehearsal for Puccini’s “La Rondine,” which opens next week. Crew members tried using saws to cut through steel bars to free the lift, but their efforts were unsuccessful.By about 6:30 p.m., one hour before the show was to begin, Gelb had to make a decision: cancel the show, or move forward with a pared-down version. He said he was reluctant to turn audiences away.“Everybody rallied together,” he said.The Met used a piece of scenery from the second act of “Turandot” — a wall in the imperial palace — as a backdrop, to provide some color. The action was confined to roughly the first 20 feet of the stage.Gelb tried to encourage the singers by telling them that their music would be more powerful, telling the tenor SeokJong Baek that when he sang the famous aria “Nessun dorma,” “you’ll be that much closer the audience.”Technical mishaps have rarely stopped productions at the Met. In 1966, when the Lincoln Center house was opened, a turntable malfunctioned at a dress rehearsal for Barber’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” The soprano Leontyne Price narrowly escaped being trapped inside the pyramid on top of it. And in 2011, a performance of Wagner’s “Die Walküre” was delayed for 45 minutes because of a technical problem with the 45-ton set.Gelb said that he expected things to be back to normal in time for a performance of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” on Thursday.“Tonight as soon as show ends,” he said, “it will be all hands on deck to free this lift.” More

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      The American Tenor Jonathan Tetelman, a Puccini Specialist, Arrives at the Met

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      Jonathan Tetelman will sing in “La Rondine” and “Madama Butterfly” in New York. He trained as a baritone and worked as a D.J. before finding his “authentic voice” as a tenor.In the middle of last summer’s production of Verdi’s “Macbeth” at the Salzburg Festival, the American tenor Jonathan Tetelman brought down the house. As Macduff, Tetelman gave a searing rendition of “Ah, la paterna mano,” the heartbreaking aria after his character learns that the bloodthirsty monarch has slaughtered his wife and children.Tetelman’s performance in Krzysztof Warlikowski’s monumentally gloomy production was one of the festival’s highlights. Later this month, the 35-year-old tenor will make his Metropolitan Opera debut in Puccini’s “La Rondine.” He’ll also be heard at the Met as Pinkerton in a revival of the composer’s better-known “Madama Butterfly” that reunites him with his “Macbeth” co-star, the soprano Asmik Grigorian, in April and May. (There are planned Met Live in HD broadcasts of both productions.)In an email, the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, wrote that Tetelman had a “beautiful and big voice that is perfectly suited to the generous size of the Met’s auditorium, which is much larger than most European opera houses, and to these soaring Puccini roles.”Tetelman has swiftly risen to become one of his generation’s most in-demand lyric tenors and is particularly sought after for his Puccini. After singing Rodolfo in “La Bohème” for the first time in 2017 in Fujian, China, he reprised the role a year later at Tanglewood (replacing the Polish star tenor Piotr Beczala) and then on opening night of Barrie Kosky’s production at the Komische Oper Berlin in January 2019.Tetelman played Macduff in a performance of “Macbeth” at the 2023 Salzburg Festival.Bernd Uhlig/SFBut Tetelman’s path to the Met’s stage was anything but typical. Born in Chile, Tetelman was adopted by an American couple when he was 6 months old and grew up in Princeton, N.J. As an undergraduate at the Manhattan School of Music, he trained as a baritone but felt frustrated.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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      Audience Snapshot: Four Years After Shutdown, a Mixed Recovery

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      Covid brought live performance to a halt. Now the audience for pop concerts and sporting events has roared back, while attendance on Broadway and at some major museums is still down.It was four years ago — on March 12, 2020 — that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half.The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums and movie theaters and leaving sports teams playing to empty stadiums dotted with cardboard cutouts.Now, four years later, audiences are coming back, but the recovery has been uneven. Here is a snapshot of where things stand now:Broadway audiences are still down 17 percent from prepandemic levels.On Broadway, overall attendance is still down about 17 percent: 9.3 million seats have been filled in the current season as of March 3, down from 11.1 million at the same point in 2020. Box office grosses are down, too: Broadway shows have grossed $1.2 billion so far this season, 14 percent below the level in early March of 2020.Broadway has always had more flops than successes, and the post-pandemic period has been challenging for producers and investors, especially those involved in new musicals. Three pop productions that have opened since the pandemic — “Six,” about the wives of King Henry VIII, “MJ,” about Michael Jackson and “& Juliet,” which imagines an alternate history for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine — are ongoing hits, but far more musicals have flamed out. The industry is looking with some trepidation toward next month, when a large crop of new shows is set to open.Many nonprofit theaters around the country are also struggling — attracting fewer subscribers and producing fewer shows — and some have closed. One bright spot has been the touring Broadway market, which has been booming.— More

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      ‘Blind Injustice’ Opera Spotlights Wrongful Imprisonment

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      “Blind Injustice,” which is being staged at Montclair State University, tells the stories of people freed with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project.Near the end of “Blind Injustice,” an opera about six people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later freed, the exonerees reflect on the time they have spent behind bars.“What makes a person strong enough to endure injustice?” they sing. “What makes a person free?”Questions of prejudice, guilt and resilience run throughout “Blind Injustice,” composed by Scott Davenport Richards to a libretto by David Cote, which has its East Coast premiere on Friday at Peak Performances at Montclair State University.The work, which was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera and premiered there in 2019, explores the effects of wrongful convictions on the prisoners and their families, and the help to overturn their convictions that they received from the Ohio Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.One man who was sent to death row describes spending 39 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. A bus driver falsely accused of sexual abuse describes the pain of being separated from her four children. “Oh Lord, protect them!” she sings. “Oh, God! Deliver me!”And a mother of a young man accused of murder pleads for his release. “Smash bricks into dust!” she sings. “Bust it! Bust it! Bust it! Bust this goddamned prison down!”The creators of “Blind Injustice,” from left: Scott Davenport Richards, Robin Guarino and David Cote.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWe 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