With anthems and flags, the Met Opera plays for Ukraine
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, December 6, 2024


With anthems and flags, the Met Opera plays for Ukraine
Apollinariia Kiselova, an audience member from Kyiv, draped herself in a Ukrainian flag as she leaves the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Monday, March 14, 2022. Caitlin Ochs/The New York Times.

by Zachary Woolfe



NEW YORK, NY.- Vladyslav Buialskyi stood center stage at the Metropolitan Opera, his hand on his heart, and sang the national anthem of his country, Ukraine.

That was Feb. 28, when the house reopened after a month off from performing and the Russian invasion of Ukraine was just a few days old. The company’s chorus and orchestra joined Buialskyi, a member of the Met’s young artists program, in a message of solidarity with him and his suffering people.

Exactly two weeks later, on Monday, Buialskyi, a 24-year-old bass-baritone from the besieged port city of Berdyansk, Ukraine, stood center stage once more, his hand again on his heart, and sang the anthem with the orchestra and chorus.

This time it wasn’t a prelude to Giuseppe Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” but the start of “A Concert for Ukraine,” an event hastily organized by the Met to benefit relief efforts in that country and broadcast there and around the world.

Banners forming the Ukrainian flag stretched across the travertine exterior of the theater, bathed in blue and yellow floodlights. Another flag hung above the stage; a few in the audience brought their own to unfurl from the balconies. Seated in the guest of honor position in the center of the parterre, Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, responded to an ovation at the start by raising his arms and making resolute V-for-victory signs.

It has been a trying time for the Met, which broke with Anna Netrebko, its reigning diva, over her unwillingness to speak against the war and distance herself from President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

But the conflict has also given the company — still bruised by labor battles despite remarkable success staying open during the omicron wave of the coronavirus — a sense of unity and moral purpose. Who would have predicted a few months ago that the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, broadly reviled within the ranks for imposing a long unpaid furlough on many employees during the pandemic, would get applause from some in the orchestra as he declared from the stage that they were “soldiers of music”?

His remarks had a martial tinge, saying that the Met’s work could be “weaponized against oppression.” But much of the concert, led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the company’s music director, was consoling, with favorites like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, here fevered and unsentimental, and “Va, pensiero” from Verdi’s “Nabucco,” with its chorus of exiles longing for their homeland, “so beautiful and lost.” Most powerful was Valentin Silvestrov’s delicate, modest a cappella “Prayer for the Ukraine,” written in 2014 amid the Maidan protests against Russian influence.




Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” wasn’t quite on message, with its autumnal vision of accepting death’s imminence. But it provided a vehicle for the Met’s prima donna of the moment: young soprano Lise Davidsen, currently starring in Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos.”

At opening night of “Ariadne” two weeks ago, Davidsen kept inundating the theater, seeming intent on proving just how much vibrating sound can flow out of her. It was thrilling, and a little much. At the performance of the opera Saturday afternoon, she seemed consciously trying to restrain herself — even a bit tentative, fumbling a phrase in her opening aria and only gradually building to a true compromise of power and nuance.

On Monday, Davidsen again seemed to be finding her way. Her high notes in the first of the “Four Last Songs,” “Frühling,” had a steely edge rather than soaring freedom; in “September,” she sounded muted in lower registers; and in “Beim Schlafengehen,” her phrasing was stiff. But she began “Im Abendrot” with a soft cloud of tone and proceeded with unforced radiance to an ending that felt light and hopeful.

The soloists in the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which closed the concert, were drawn from the Met’s current roster: Soprano Elza van den Heever is singing the title role in George Frideric Handel’s “Rodelinda”; mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, Eboli in “Don Carlos”; tenor Piotr Beczala, Lensky in a coming revival of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”; and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, a bit part in “Ariadne.”

Nézet-Séguin’s conducting in this famous finale was neither grand nor patient; when the orchestra is onstage at the Met rather than in the pit, the balances are not ideal for rich unanimity, and the pacing was febrile, a bit scrappy. But it was moving to watch the face of Beczala, who is from Poland, shift from stony focus to grinning. And the “Ode to Joy” inevitably makes an impact, particularly with Green declaiming the opening lines with such memorable defiance.

The anthem of the European Union, “Ode to Joy” is music for every inspiring occasion, but especially for right now. (Perhaps it was the time to follow Leonard Bernstein, who, when leading the work just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, replaced the cries of “Freude,” or “joy,” with “Freiheit” — “freedom.”)

It’s worth remembering, though, that while this anthem seemed so fitting Monday, with the audience streaming out of the Met colored with the blue-and-yellow light shining on the theater, it doesn’t always mean what a given listener wishes it did. When Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic coruscated through the Ninth Symphony during World War II, the Germans thought Beethoven was writing for them. If the piece were played tonight in Moscow, the Russians might think the same.

However stirring, this music doesn’t pick sides, and it doesn’t change us. It makes us more of what we are.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

March 16, 2022

Asia Week Returns with In-person Exhibitions, Auctions and Museum Show

Suspect in New York MoMA stabbing is arrested in Philadelphia

Pritzker Prize goes to architect from West Africa

Roman imperial women heads and French manuscript join Getty Museum collection

Joan B Mirviss LTD opens an exhibition of works by artist Kondō Takahiro

Legendary Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson's main arsenal of iconic guitars and archive head to Julien's Auctions

Lute music anthologies at risk of leaving UK

Artist Atong Atem awarded inaugural La Prairie Art Award

New edition of VOLTA Art Fair in Basel

University Archives announces Rare Autographs, Manuscripts, Photographs & Books auction

The Grolier Club exhibits photographs from the Collection of Dr. Roger Härtl

Wanrooij Gallery in Amsterdam presents 'The Shadow of the Master'

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Feyenoord unveil art from supporters' memories

Paul Holberton Publishing releases 'Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction'

Ancient Roman gold coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar to be auctioned

Exhibition focuses on a selection of contemporary artists working in photography today

Detroit Institute of Arts acquires major video work by renowned conceptual artist Rashid Johnson

With anthems and flags, the Met Opera plays for Ukraine

Thinking of going to Southeast Asia? Here is what to expect.

A near-mint copy of 'Captain America Comics' No. 1 storms hstoric comics auction this April

Four super-historic DC Comics prototypes, including a 1939 'Superman Comics,' soar to Heritage Auctions in April

Why Should Everyone Use Home Maintenance Tools?

Are You an Artist? Here Are the Reasons Why Gallery Representation is Beneficial!

Pros & Cons of TAJ Residencia:

Choosing Popcorn Ceiling Removal Services in Denver

The Most Legendary University Mascots

Casinos in Japan

Holyart: An Online Store for Religious Products

5 Pro Resume Development Tips for Maintenance Manager




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Houston Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง
Motorcycle Accident Lawyer

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful