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☆ Costuming a Small Army of Virgins for the Met Opera’s ‘El Niño’
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-23 | by ( Louis Lucero Ii | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “El Niño,” which reimagines the story of Jesus’ birth and early childhood, there are singing and dancing Virgin Marys, Marys of the land and sea; there’s an Indigenous Mary, a Tropical Mary, a Golden Mary. In the director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s vision, the action takes place across multiple “planes.” It could be a lot to take in. Thankfully for Mr. Levi Blanco, 39, he has developed something of a shorthand while working with Ms. Blain-Cruz, whom he has known since he was an M.F.A. The pair have collaborated several times, including on “The Skin of Our Teeth,” for which Mr. Levi Blanco won a Tony Award in 2022. In the case of “El Niño,” painterly scenery by the set designer Adam Rigg evokes the natural environment.

Persons: El, Jesus ’, Virgin Marys, Marys, Montana Levi Blanco, John Adams, Peter Sellars’s, Lileana Blain, Levi Blanco, . Blain, Cruz, Adam Rigg Organizations: Metropolitan, Yale School of Drama Locations: Mary

☆ Jorie Graham’s Poetry of the Earth and Humanity, Set to Music
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Joshua Barone | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Peter Sellars wanted to know more. He was in San Francisco a few years ago, attending a performance of “The No One’s Rose,” a fascinatingly idiosyncratic work of music theater that featured some of his favorite artists, from the American Modern Opera Company, and a score by the young composer Matthew Aucoin. One section of the piece stood out: “Deep Water Trawling,” a setting of a poem by Jorie Graham that felt both human and not, both natural and spiritual. Most important, it seemed to have brought out something new, and special, in Aucoin’s writing. After the show Sellars, who at 66 has long been a reigning opera director, asked Aucoin, “What was that?”

Persons: Peter Sellars, ”, Matthew Aucoin, Jorie Graham, Sellars, Aucoin Organizations: American Modern Opera Company Locations: San Francisco

☆ When Henry Kissinger Became an Opera Character
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Zachary Woolfe | More About Zachary Woolfe | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As opera characters, both Nixon and Mao Zedong are faintly ridiculous and faintly noble, singing of their hopes and dreams in Goodman’s enigmatic, evocative lines. And Kissinger — Nixon’s national security adviser in 1972 and, a year later, his secretary of state, too — is there by their side, just as he was in history. “When Peter Sellars proposed the idea of the opera,” Adams said in an interview, “he had just finished reading Kissinger’s ‘White House Years,’ which I seem to recall being pretty pompously self-congratulatory. The opera’s Kissinger, though, is never really human; he doesn’t get the exposure of thoughts and ambivalence granted to the other main players. “He’s not the character we go into great psychological depth with,” Adams said.

Persons: Nixon, Mao Zedong, Kissinger —, “, Peter Sellars, ” Adams, Kissinger’s ‘, ” “ Nixon ”, Adams, Sellars, Goodman, J, Robert Oppenheimer, opera’s Kissinger, doesn’t, “ He’s, He’s, Kissinger Organizations: Palestine Liberation Front militants

Known as a passionate and provocative theater advocate who pushed for boundary-breaking works and for classics to be adventurously modernized, Brustein founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. He was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and during that time founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. “They'll have an unresolved experience.”After a painful, highly publicized dismissal from Yale, Brustein in 1979 switched to Harvard, where he taught English and founded the American Repertory Theatre in 1980. At both Yale Rep and A.R.T., Brustein told The Boston Globe in 2012, he embraced popular theater with a nationalistic streak: “We were trying to liberate American theater from its British overseers. The light, absurd comedy, which gently mocks the lavishness of other musicals, premiered in 1994 at the American Repertory Theatre and was close to making it to Broadway.

Persons: — Robert Brustein, Brustein, Gideon Lester, Lester, Doreen Beinart, “, ”, Tony, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Linda Lavin, Adam Rapp, William Ivey Long, Steve Zahn, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, Peter Sellars, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare, August Wilson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, ” “ Chekhov, Ice, George Polk, Barack Obama, Daniel, Norma Brustein, it’s, ___ Mark Kennedy Organizations: Fisher, Bard University, Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Harvard, New York Times, Tea Party, Suffolk University, Harvard University, The New, Fulbright, Cornell, Vassar, Yale School of Drama, Yale Rep, Broadway, Los Angeles Times, Yale, Institute, Advanced Theatre, Time, Boston Globe, “, Vineyard, Washington , D.C, Abington Theatre, Theatre, Globe, Journalism, American Academy of Arts and, Theatre Hall of Fame, Arts, White, Carr, for Human Rights, Kennedy School of Government Locations: Cambridge , Massachusetts, The New Republic, New York City, Amherst, Columbia, Brustein, American, Washington ,, New York, New, “, United States

☆ Benjamin Millepied Uses Movement to Reinvent ‘Carmen’ on Camera
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Roslyn Sulcas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

For IndieWire, David Ehrlich wrote: “‘Carmen’ is stretched across a few too many borders to ever feel like it’s standing on solid ground. “It’s an unsteady composition, a frenzied combination of willowy movement pieces, an ecstatic score and a too-loose narrative,” Lovia Gyarkye wrote in The Hollywood Reporter. Over coffee, Millepied discussed the critical reaction to the film, the allure of “Carmen” and working with actors. Early on, when I was starting to think about the story, I had dinner with [the director] Peter Sellars and mentioned I wanted to make a “Carmen” film. He got kind of passionate, and said, “You have to reinvent it, it’s a terrible story.” I thought he was right.

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