The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  Of course, one could name at least as many great artists from the Met’s past who chose not to be on hand for one reason or another. But it was worth the whole evening to study those faces as two young Met artists, Leona Mitchell and Giuliano Ciannella, sang the bridal-night duet from “Madama Butterfly” and to wonder what was going on in these experienced heads as young Timothy Jenkins sang the hero’s prayer from “Rienzi.’’

  The plain, unsentimental approach was completely swept away at last by Marilyn Horne and Birgit Nilsson. After Miss Horne’s sumptuous delivery of Dalila’s “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from “Samson et Dalila,” she walked over and embraced Rïse Stevens. No explanation was necessary: it was Miss Horne’s tribute to the woman who owned that Saint-Saëns role for so many years. Did the audience love it? Is the ocean damp?

  And then came Miss Nilsson to sing Isolde’s Narrative and Curse from “Tristan und Isolde” with chandelier-shaking top notes that would do any Wagnerian soprano proud, let alone a 65-year-old. One fan, determined to give her a bouquet, struggled briefly with an usher in the aisle, then lofted the flowers onstage.

  Pavarotti Dies a Final Time in Last Performance at Met

  By ALLAN KOZINN | March 14, 2004

  LUCIANO PAVAROTTI OFFERED HIS FAREWELL to the opera stage with a performance of Puccinis “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera, and when the curtain fell on the third act, the packed house gave him a 15-minute standing ovation, including several minutes of insistent rhythmic clapping when it appeared that he would not return to the stage.

  There was, surprisingly, neither the tossing of bouquets or the rain of program-book confetti that often occurs on such occasions. But after the third of 10 curtain calls, a large red and white banner on the second tier was unfurled and spotlighted. It read, “We Love You Luciano,” with a heart-shaped “o” in “Love.” The banner was from the Met.

  The performance was the 68-year old tenor’s 379th at the Met since his debut in 1968. Of those, 357 were in full-fledged opera productions; the rest were in galas (which often include operatic scenes and arias), special concerts and recitals. Of his operatic appearances, 61 were of the doomed painter Mario Cavaradossi, the hero of “Tosca.”

  Buoyed by the energy of the occasion, Mr. Pavarotti sang better and with a touch more subtlety last night than he had earlier in the week, and if his voice never approached the kind of power it had in his prime, there was no mistaking that distinctive timbre and his way with a musical phrase.

  Now and then, he raced ahead of James Levine, who conducted, and at intermission one heard murmurs from operagoers about dropped notes. Still, when he was at his best, one heard the magic that made him the most famous tenor of his time, with only Placido Domingo able to challenge him for that distinction. One of those moments was the third act showpiece, “E lucevan le stelle” (“The Stars Shone”), which drew an extended ovation.

  An Appreciation: Beverly Sills

  By VERLYN KLINKENBORG | July 4, 2007

  WHENEVER I THINK OF BEVERLY SILLS, WHO died Monday at 78, I find myself imagining a baseball player—New York-born, raised on the sandlots, rising through the big leagues, M.V.P., Cy Young award—who then went on to become the commissioner. I don’t think Ms. Sills ever played much baseball, but I stand by the analogy.

  She had that kind of popular hometown importance to her sport, which was opera. For many years, her singing career seemed to illustrate the tensions between the American League of opera—that is, the New York City Opera, where she got her start—and the National League—the Metropolitan Opera. And when she stopped singing, she took over the whole shebang and made Lincoln Center her enterprise.

  The force of Ms. Sills’s personality, the extraordinary quality of her voice, the powerful dramatic presence she created on a stage and the ease with which she occupied her many public roles made her seem somehow inevitable. But there is nothing inevitable about someone who excelled at the highest level of her art and was able, at the same time, to make audiences unfamiliar with opera feel as though they had access to it through her. She represented her art as though she had been elected to the task, and she took the job of representing it seriously.

  It will be hard to imagine Lincoln Center without her. A decade ago, she was even then threatening to step back into her private life. But it was an idle threat. There was never any emerita in her.

  Laszlo Halasz, First Director of City Opera

  By ALLAN KOZINN | October 31, 2001

  LASZLO HALASZ, THE FIRST MUSIC DIRECtor of the New York City Opera, died on Friday at his home in Port Washington, N.Y. He was 96.

  During a tumultuous eight-year tenure, which began in 1943, Mr. Halasz established several crucial elements of the New York City Opera’s artistic personality. He believed that tickets should be inexpensive and insisted on offering at least one production in English every season. Unable to compete with the Metropolitan Opera for big stars, he made his company an important platform for young singers, particularly Americans. But perhaps his most important contribution was his insistence that the company’s repertory include not only the standard works, but new ones as well. This put him at odds with the board, but Mr. Halasz prevailed and the company came to be known as one of the country’s most adventurous houses.

  Mr. Halasz was born in Debrecen, Hungary on June 6, 1905. He enrolled at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and in 1928 he joined the Royal Hungarian State Opera as an assistant conductor. He became music director of the Sakharoff Ballet in 1932 and in 1939 was appointed artistic and music director of the St. Louis Grand Opera.

  When the New York City Opera was formed in the fall of 1943 under the imprimatur of Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia as a way to bring opera to the masses, Mr. Halasz was appointed its music director. The company’s first season included productions of Puccini’s “Tosca,” and Bizet’s “Carmen.” Tickets were priced between 75 cents and $2.

  In 1946, Mr. Halasz conducted the City Opera’s first world premiere, William Grant Still’s “Troubled Island,” with a libretto by Langston Hughes. But the board was uneasy with Mr. Halasz’s ventures into modern opera, and it opposed him when he scheduled the world premiere of “The Dybbuk,” by David Tamkin. Mr. Halasz resigned.

  After he left the City Opera, Mr. Halasz began a second career as a record producer and conducted opera at houses in Frankfurt, Barcelona, Budapest, London and South America.

  Baryshnikov and “King Rudolf”

  By CLIVE BARNES | August 18, 1974

  IN DANCE THINGS HAVE BEEN PRETTY COOL for a hot August. At Lincoln Center, where American Ballet Theater and the National Ballet of Canada were playing across the plaza from one another, we saw some pretty remarkable dancing. The other Friday night, for remarkable example, we had Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn dancing in “La Sylphide” at the Metropolitan Opera House, while Mikhail Baryshnikov was dancing he “Don Quixote pas de deux” at the New York State Theater, for the first time in New York.

  Bruhn, Nureyev and Baryshnikov, all three great dancers and all, in their diverse ways, supreme examples of the great Franco-Danish-Russian tradition that Christian Johansson brought to St. Petersburg around the end of the last century.

  It is interesting that after some years of eclipse men are at least the equal of women in dance today, and in some respects even rather bigger stars. Russia seems a little short on the distaff side at present, apart, of course, from Ekaterina Maximova, Natalia Bessmertnova and Maya Bessmertnova, Maya Plisatskaya, who admittedly are pretty big “aparts”—the men seem to be emerging as the really big box-office stars.

  Mr. Baryshnikov is a phenomenon, and we have seen nothing like the best of him yet. He is the last product of that greatest Soviet teachers, Alexander Pushkin. I will always recall seeing the very young Mr. Baryshnikov in Pushkin’s class in Leningrad 1967; he was dancing next to the reigning Kirov stars, Valery Panov and Yuri Soloviev. He and Mr. Panov laughed a lot, and were fiercely competitive in class, with that good-natured camaraderie tha
t Russian dancers so often possess.

  Now they have both followed that other great Kirov dancer, the one that an audience banner on the last night of the Canadian season proclaimed, as “King Rudolf,” into the West.

  The Child In Balanchine Still Jumps for Joy

  By JENNIFER DUNNING | November 26, 2007

  WHY HAS GEORGE BALANCHINE’S PRODUCtion of “The Nutcracker” remained the gold-standard version of this holiday classic?

  The New York City Ballet began its annual run of the piece the other night at the New York State Theater and worked its usual magic, despite generally run-of-the-mill performing. Part of the charm comes from the timelessly old-fashioned costumes by Karinska and sets by Rouben Ter-Arutunian: like candy but not too sweet and blessedly unchanged in spirit over the 53 years since the premiere. And there are a few choice choreographic set pieces and effects in the second act, which essentially departs from the narrative to spool out a series of traditional divertissements, most of them alluding to holiday treats.

  But no one goes to “The Nutcracker” to see the choreography, though casting can exercise a special pull. I think the greatest attraction is the way Balanchine approached the work. True, the production was seen as a validating popular spectacle for a company better known for challenging common notions about the art of ballet. But there is something here of the impressionable child he might have been when, as a ballet student, he performed the child prince in “The Nutcracker” in St. Petersburg.

  And Balanchine treated his “Nutcracker” as seriously as any new bit of brilliant experimentation. He did not condescend to his child performers, giving them dances that, though based on their level of accomplishment, are every bit as authoritative as anything he gave the grown-ups to do.

  The evening’s most exciting performing came from Ashley Bouder, the most daringly quicksilver of Dewdrops, and from Robert La Fosse, whose delicately nuanced Drosselmeier has come to look eerily like Balanchine himself. Nicholas Smith as the child prince performed the mime scenes, so lovingly unstinted on by the choreographer, with refreshing boldness and clarity in a lead children’s cast completed by Margot Pitts as Marie and Jonathan Alexander as her brother Fritz.

  At Last, Shimmering Acoustics In Alice Tully Hall

  By ANTHONY TOMMASINI | February 23, 2009

  FINALLY, AFTER WHAT FEELS LIKE ENDLESS years of planning, fund-raising and sometimes contentious debates among the constituent institutions of Lincoln Center over the scope of the renovation and redevelopment of the 16-acre campus, the first tangible results of the formidable project were shown off.

  Alice Tully Hall, closed for nearly two years, opened its grand, airy and people-friendly new lobby to the public and presented a large roster of fine musicians, ranging from living masters to eager students. In an inspired choice, the first music heard by an actual audience in the extensively renovated auditorium, now called the Starr Theater, was not some brassy fanfare or festive overture, but three mournful, elegiac Sephardic Romances from the 15th century. These timeless pieces by anonymous composers were offered, as the program stated, as a “Sephardic Invocation.” Sometimes serious music befits a joyous occasion.

  The music was immediately revealing of the question that really matters as Alice Tully Hall returns: what are the new acoustics like? The astonishing early music performer Jordi Savall played a gently melancholic melody on the vièle, an early string instrument. And the quiet sounds—ancient and earthy—carried beautifully in the hall. When the soprano Montserrat Figueras, another luminary in the early music movement, joined in, along with the period instrument ensemble Hespèrion XXI, concerns about whether the acoustics in the hall could be markedly improved were largely allayed. Ms. Figueras’s tender, pale tones, as she shaped the yearning phrases of the romance, shimmered.

  I, for one, never thought the acoustics of Tully Hall were really poor. The sound was clear and honest, just a little dull and distant. And even as some halls feel smaller and more cozy than they are, Alice Tully Hall, at 1,087 seats, somehow always felt larger than it actually was. Both the auditorium and the sound of performances in it lacked intimacy.

  The most remarkable and it seems to me indisputable achievement of the renovation, which is the work of Diller Scofidio & Renfro in collaboration with FXFowle Architects and of the acoustical consultant firm Jaffe Holden, is that the Starr Theater, though not any smaller, now feels intimate and warm. The interiors have been covered with rich, russet African veneer wood. The stage area can now be extended farther into the house. And those purposeless low-wall dividers between different sections of seats have been eliminated.

  I was especially impressed when, after the Sephardic Romances, the pianist Leon Fleisher played a rhapsodic and affecting performance of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. I had never found the hall ideal for piano recitals before. But Mr. Fleisher’s tone, especially in softer passages, had a presence and body that seemed to be evidence of the new acoustical bloom.

  The Thrill and Kicks Of Being a Rockette

  By LYNNE AMES | December 21, 1997

  Hundreds of young, aspiring dancers audition for a spot on the Radio City Rockette dance line.

  ROCKEFELLER CENTER WITH ITS TOWERING tree and Radio City Music Hall with its resident Rockettes are arguably the most famous contemporary Christmas spots in America. And here in the epicenter, the ground zero of all this holiday spirit—in fact, almost exactly in the middle of the kick line—is a lifetime Westchester resident, 29-year-old Laureen Repp-Russell.

  “It’s thrilling, really it is, to be on the stage and to look out at all of the seats, at the beautiful musical, and know that you are part of history,” she said in an interview. “Sometimes, even after all these years, it’s a little overwhelming.”

  If she felt overwhelmed on this recent afternoon, she did not show it. At 5-foot-9, 120 pounds, with chiseled features, bright blue eyes and an even brighter smile, she is friendly and poised. Chatting with a visitor and wearing blue jeans and no makeup, she could have been any young woman with good looks and a nice personality.

  Then, in a matter of minutes, came the transformation: she disappeared into a dressing room and emerged pure Rockette from head to toe. Her eyes were framed in flattering blue eyeshadow and dark mascara; her lips glistened red. She was wearing a green velvet costume adorned with glittering, silvery rhinestones and a bright red bow. On her legs were flesh-toned tights studded with hand-painted silver sparkle. (It takes 2½ months to make these stockings for all 36 Rockettes.) Onstage, she became virtually indistinguishable from the other Rockettes—which is exactly the way everyone wants it to be.

  “We are a team, we work as a team,” she said. “We sometimes refer to ourselves as sisters.”

  The Rockette team had its genesis in 1925 in St. Louis as the “Missouri Rockets.” Later, they were taken to the Roxy Theater in Manhattan and nicknamed the Roxyettes by the showman S. L. (Roxy) Rothafel. On Dec. 27, 1932, Radio City’s opening night, they first performed as the Rockettes—and, according to publicity material, were an “instant sensation.

  Ms. Repp-Russell said her favorite numbers are “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” and “Christmas in New York,” in which the orchestra rises onto the stage.

  She also gets—well, a kick—out of the perennially popular kick line. Each dancer is instructed to kick to eye level, adding to the amazingly effective illusion that all are the same height. (Actual height ranges from 5 feet 5½ to 5 feet 9½ inches, with the tallest woman at the center and the shortest ones at the end.)

  People everywhere recognize the Rockettes and want to speak to them and get their autographs.

  “You can feel their excitement when we’re on stage. You can feel their appreciation. It’s hard work, but I like to think, this is our Christmas gift to them.”

  The Last Act Is Charity, by Accident

  By DAN BARRY | January 1, 2005

  Crowds of mostly tourists leave the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall in 2005. />
  SANTA SHARED A HIGH-FIVE WITH A STAGE-hand as he waddled past. One of the elves, maybe Tinker, maybe Inkwell, sighed a weary “whew” from close to the backstage floor. Rockettes rushed to exchange their revealing costumes for robes long enough to control any involuntary high kick during the “Living Nativity” scene.

  With the finale drawing to a close, Joseph grasped the hand of Mary, Christmas music swelled, and Radio City Music Hall glittered with camera flashes.

  An entertainingly holy moment, a thoroughly New York moment: done. The second of the day’s five performances of the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” had ended, and now it was time to shepherd 5,900 people out of the landmark theater to make room for the 5,900 people waiting for the next show, beginning in less than an hour.

  Politely pushy ushers nudged the former out of fantasyland and into the midafternoon Midtown glare.

  In the half-hour or so before the next show, cleaning crews vacuumed the errant popcorn, picked up discarded programs and collected any forgotten valuables. A red-jacketed usher hustled to a desk in the lobby and handed over a Radio City gift bag stuffed with the 1 o’clock show’s leftovers.

  Some hats, some gloves. A pair of sunglasses, a pair of prescription eyeglasses, a pair of cheap silvery earrings still in their case. A boy. A girl.

  The last two did not actually arrive by way of gift bag. They seemed surprisingly calm, given that they had misplaced their adult chaperons. One reason for their poise was perhaps reflected in the boy’s response when he was asked where he lived.