Theater Boards

 

[In 1985, I conducted interviews with my father, Eugene K***** (1918-96), and Herbert Schmitz (b. 1933), members of the Folger Theatre Group’s Advisory Board, and Lee G. Rubenstein (b. 1934), President of Arena Stage’s Board of Trustees.  The interviews were for Cynthia (C. Lee) Jenner when she was trying to start Theatre Junction (see notes following the script evaluation for Primary Colors by Steve Carter on “More Script Reports II,” 29 November 2021 on Rick On Theater).

[Arena Stage is Washington, D.C.’s premier regional rep theater.  There is some history of the company in “Washington’s Arena Stage: Under Construction,” 26 November 2011.  The Folger Theatre Group, predecessor to today’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, is described briefly in the afterword to “Much Ado About Nothing: A ‘Recovered’ Report,” 20 March 2021.

[Though the Folger Theatre Group no longer exists and I’m sure many changes have occurred in the configuration and administration of Arena’s board since these interviews took place, theater boards have been more-or-less the same creatures since they were conceived.

[As it happens, now is a period of considerable upheaval in both the way theater boards work and who sits on them (read Jesse Green’s four essays on the “reformation” of theaters in the United States, published in the New York Times between 12 June and 4 September; I reran them on ROT from 23 September to 4 October.  Article 4, the last installment of the series, addresses boards.

[I think, as an entry in my occasional series about work in the theater that few theatergoers know about, posting the interview summaries—these were memos I sent to Cynthia for her reference a few days after conducting them—would be informative.

[The disguised name above, Herbert Schmitz’s Folger colleague, is my late father.  As regular ROTters will know, I don’t use my family name on the blog.]

INTERVIEW WITH LEE G. RUBENSTEIN
President, Board of Trustees
Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.
25 January 1985 

Rubenstein was fund-raising chairman of Arena Stage before he became president of the board.  It hadn’t been a requirement till then for board members to raise money or be active in any specific way.  The recommendation to raise money was not often followed.  When Rubenstein became president, he instituted the changes and laid out the requirements of the board before new members joined.  He made clear that each member would be responsible for three things: 

1. Get or give $10,000 in “pure fundraising,” not including benefits, raffles, in-kind donations (e.g.: props), ticket sales, etc.
2. Be active on at least one committee.
3. Support all the theater’s functions (e.g.: bring people to the theater, recruit new board members, promote the theater’s shows and activities, etc.)

(At the change-over, about half the existing board resigned as Rubenstein anticipated.  Of the remaining 20, 10 had been active for a very long time and had been long-time contributors.  These were exempted from the “give-or-get” requirement.  The other 10 were not, and new trustees were informed of the requirement at the outset.  The board now stands at about 62 members; only the remaining old-timers are exempt from the “get-or-give” policy.)

Another change instituted by Rubenstein was the establishment of several committees, including an Executive Committee which over­sees the board’s operation and the participation of the trustees, and a Finance Committee, separate from the Fundraising Committee, to deal with budgetary questions and project revenue figures each season. 

He renamed the Nomination Committee, the Evaluation Committee, tasking it not only with the responsibility of finding prospective new board members, but of evaluating the participa­tion of serving members within established policy.  At present Arena has 14 standing committees on which board members—and prospective board members—must serve.

Rubenstein established a new policy for the terms of board mem­bers.  Members are now only elected for one year their first term.  They may be reelected for four-year terms subsequently.  (There is no limit to reelections.)

The board’s responsibilities include approval for both the expense budget and, in a separate action, the revenue budget—the projection of expected income from tickets, grants, and fundraising set against the cost of getting that income.  It also approves ticket prices and the salary of the top two positions—the Artistic and Executive Directors.  The board has no direct artis­tic influence, though its fiduciary responsibility gives it con­siderable indirect influence.

In the area of personnel, the board has authority to hire and fire only the Artistic and Executive Directors.  All other posi­tions are the sole responsibility of those two Directors, who are of equal power in the organization and cannot fire each other.  Only the board can hire or fire one of these Directors.

Rubenstein stressed the importance of the equality of the Artistic and Executive Directors, and their vulnerability to board action.  On the other hand, he also emphasized that the board must be sensitive to the artistic needs of the theater, while the directorate and theater staff must be “fiscally minded.”  When questions of art conflict with questions of finance, the matter is resolved by discussion and compromise resulting in a consensus. 

The biggest problem a board and direc­torate must contend with, according to Rubenstein, is mutual communications.  If trustees are selected on the basis not only of their business success, fundraising abilities, or organiza­tional skills, but of their sincere interest in the company’s success and growth and their openness to new ideas and the staff seeks their advice and makes use of their expertise, lines of communication will be kept open and consensus will always be possible.

The openness to learning new things is a prime attribute for board members in Rubenstein’s estimation.  “Inquisitiveness” was a criterion for his board because “educating” the members is one of his three principles of keeping a board happy and active.  In his terms, trustees “must be told what’s expected of them from the very beginning, educated and motivated.”  Their education about the theater’s inner working gives them a sense of belonging to the organization. 

Toward this end, Arena holds orientation meetings for new members to meet the staff department heads and other key personnel, and tour the backstage work areas.  Arena also holds periodic dinner parties and Directors’ Luncheons where board members can meet the performers, directors, and other ar­tists the theater employs in its productions.

The inquisitive nature of board members also comes into play in the “motivation” principle in Rubenstein’s equation.  Board mem­bers must be motivated by feeling they are offering more than their money.  They must feel they are “learning something new” and “doing something useful.”  Both of these are accomplished by active work on committees.  Not only are trustees performing useful and important functions by serving on committees, but they are applying talents or expertise in ways their professions don’t demand. 

The implication of this is clear: if the trustees are expected to be motivated by useful committee work, the theater must put real responsibility in the board and its committees.  A board with no real power or responsibility will be unlikely to attract active members.  Rubenstein was skeptical about the chances of success for a theater whose board is only expected to raise or give money and takes no active role in the theater’s development. 

In this sense, he insists that there be only one board of trustees, one with both responsibilities to the theater and authority within it.  Any other advisory bodies should not bear the name “board” to reserve that title for the people most involved in supporting the theater.  If other people are enlisted to advise or lend their names, but are not expected to participate actively or regularly, they should be designated an “Advisory Council” or “Artistic Consultants.”         

*  *  *  *
INTERVIEW WITH HERBERT SCHMITZ AND EUGENE K*****
Members, Advisory Board
Folger Theatre Group, Washington, D.C.
25 January 1985 

The Folger board is without power or authority and has no way of influencing the running of the theater other than persuasion and force of will.  There is no communication between the board members (or the board as a whole) and the staff either of the theater or the Folger Shakespeare Library, its parent organiza­tion.  (The Library is governed by the Amherst College Board of Trustees who hire the Library director.  He in turn has authority over the operation of the theater.) 

Furthermore, the responsi­bilities of the Advisory Board were never spelled out, and there is no defined term length or number of members.  There is no prescribed method of election to the board, and members are usually just invited to join by the Artistic Director or another board member.

Schmitz concluded that a board “cannot have responsibility without authority.”  He specifically called for the board to “have authority over the directorate with power to hire and fire” at the directorial level.  He felt that competent Artistic and Executive Directors would be able to hire competent professional staffs without interference. 

The current situation at Folger provides no oversight of the Artistic Director or The Executive Director (who is considered incompetent by both Schmitz and K*****).  As a result several staffers hired on the authority of the Directors are not capable of doing their jobs.  A considerable number of incidents of high-handedness on the part of the Artistic Director led to actions the board only learned of by hearsay or even in the newspaper after the fact.

The lack of communication, either by statute or mutual respect, has also caused several occasions where board members and staff took conflicting actions due to ignorance and lack of coordina­tion.  Frequently these bodies found themselves working at cross purposes inadvertently—often in the areas as serious as fund­raising and community relations. 

On a recent occasion when Schmitz and a committee tasked with approaching some prospective contributors attempted to coordinate his efforts with the staffs of both the theater and the library (which does its own fund­raising and Schmitz did not want to approach the same prospects on behalf of the theater), communications broke down, and the coordination never occurred. 

(The proposed solicitation was therefore never mailed, which turned out to be fortunate because of another communication failure.  The letter would have been in the mail when the recent announcement by the Amherst Board to close the theater was published [see the explanation in the afterword, below].  No one on the Advisory Board knew of this impending action before the publication.  Indeed, the action had even not been recommended shortly before by an ad hoc committee formed by the director of the Library to consider the matter.)

Both men said they would serve on a new Folger board, should the closing be averted or the theater be reformed later, only if the board were given clear statutory authority and control.  Addi­tionally, they agreed that their interest in serving on a theater board came from a desire to make a contribution and to be actively involved in the operation of the theater.  Aside from some individual, private benefits, both men have a general interest in the cultural life of their community. 

Other incen­tives for serving on a board included the perquisites accorded members, such as free tickets (particularly to opening nights), inclusion in theater receptions and the availability of the theater facilities for entertainment in conjunction with a pro­duction.  (The Folger Theatre, because it is part of the Folger Library, has extensive facilities for receptions and parties. 

Several years ago, for instance, K***** held a celebration of his wife’s birthday at the Folger, with dinner served in the library before the show and a reception in the Great Hall after it.  Guests were personal friends, but also potential contributors and subscribers.)  Schmitz, who serves on several non-theater boards as well, added that he always appreciates little amenities at board meetings, such as nice surroundings, wine, or even lunch served to the members.  This adds, he said, to the feeling of substance to the board’s work.

Both K***** and Schmitz advised that careful attention be paid to selecting the skills of board members.  They recommended not concentrating solely on lawyers and businessmen, but examining what expertise the board could use to help in its work.  The Folger board has a banker, for instance, and another of Schmitz’s boards always has an architect as a member to advise on building maintenance and repairs.  Such considerations as public rela­tions, accountancy, or fundraising would be useful to a newly formed theater.

In some general advice not directly pertinent to the conduct, assembly, or motivation of a board, Schmitz and K***** both pointed out that the most important new staff member for a de­veloping theater is a strong development officer.  In both their cases, it was the development officer who was instrumental in recruiting them for the board.  Apropos of this, the men made a suggestion regarding seeking corporate funding.  (Schmitz is the head of the Washington office of a large national corporation.) 

They explained that recently most corporations have begun chan­neling their funding through corporate foundations.  These foun­dations rely on the head of the local office to recommend funding.  Anyone seeking funding from a major corporation should cultivate the local top man who has a small discretionary budget for local contributions, because the home office will not fund an applicant that has not been “sanctioned” by the local office.

[In 1986, as the consequence of a financial shake-up, Amherst College, the administering body of the Folger Shakespeare Library, withdrew financial support for the Folger Theatre Group.  To save the company, concerned D.C. citizens reincorporated it as the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger.  

[In 1992, the troupe moved into the newly-built Lansburgh Theatre (renamed the Michael R. Klein Theatre at the Lansburgh in 2019) in the former Landsburgh’s Department Store in the revitalized shopping area in the city’s downtown.  It changed its name again and is now called the Shakespeare Theatre Company.]

Boris Mikhailov: Photographic Provocateur

 

[I’m not usually a fan of art photography, but when I read this article on the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, I was fascinated by his vision.  I’d never heard of Mikhailov before, so I filled out the post with a brief bio of the artist and a little blurb on the venue of his current exhibit.  (It’s in Paris, tant pis.)]

“A SUBVERSIVE LENS ON UKRAINE”
By Jason Farago 

[Jason Farago’s “A Subversive Lens on Ukraine” was published in the New York Times on 2 November 2022 (Section C [“Arts”]).  It was accompanied by several reproductions of Mikhailov’s photographs from the exhibit, Ukrainian Diary, which are also included in the online version of the article: The Life’s Work of Boris Mikhailov: Photography’s Great Trickster, and Ukraine’s Greatest Artist - The New York Times (nytimes.com).]

In Paris, a new exhibition features the life’s work of Boris Mikhailov, photography’s great trickster.

PARIS — A new nation needs heroes; but when the mayhem comes suddenly, you take whatever heroes you can get. In 1991, as the Soviet Union lurched to dissolution and Ukraine prepared to declare independence, the photographer Boris Mikhailov fabricated a new self-portrait, wearing a military uniform and looking straight-on like a Moscow official. [He looks a little like Sean Penn, I think.] But on his green jacket, traditional Ukrainian embroidery had been slapped on top of the Soviet insignia. The background was a sickly, Pop-pink sherbet. The airbrushing was so over-the-top, the eyes so blue, the lips so rouged, that he looked like a porcelain doll. Here was a “National Hero” for Ukraine’s year zero, but he was not convincing anyone of his valor.

A counterfeit hero: I can think of worse descriptions of Boris Mikhailov, Ukraine’s most influential artist, and the sparkiest and most unpredictable photographer to have emerged from Eastern Europe during the Communist era. In the 1960s and 1970s, working in Kharkiv outside official Soviet structures, he devised a new photographic manner that availed itself of cheapness and low finish to discreetly disparage the regime. Later, in independent Ukraine, he pictured the chaos of economic liberalization in visceral images that pushed the ethical complications of social documentary to the breaking point. His art is mordant. Untrustworthy. At times delirious. It is, also, some of the profoundest art made anywhere in Europe in the past 60 years.

“Boris Mikhailov: Ukrainian Diary,” which opened recently at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (M.E.P. [European House of Photography; 7 September 2022-15 January 2023]) in Paris, is the biggest show of his life and — to spell it out — arrives as Ukrainian culture receives attention for the worst possible reason. It includes no fewer than 800 photographs, covering almost all of the series he undertook before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. There are burlesque self-portraits, but also straight reportage from the 2013-14 Maidan Uprising in Kyiv. Conceptual mockery of “lousy” Soviet pictures, as well as aching collages of poetry and everyday snaps. Preparations for the show were well underway when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the war has reformatted “Ukrainian Diary” into a show of improbable resistance: to Soviet repression and now to Russian historical revisionism, to the fraudulence of official Communist art and to the global market’s appetite for trauma porn.

[According to Wikipedia: “Euromaidan, or the Maidan Uprising, was a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on 21 November 2013 with large protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv. The protests were sparked by the Ukrainian government's sudden decision not to sign the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Ukraine’s parliament had overwhelmingly approved of finalizing the Agreement with the EU, while Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject it. 

[“The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych and the Azarov Government. The protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, the influence of oligarchs, abuse of power, and violation of human rights in Ukraine. Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world. The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger. The Euromaidan led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity (Maidan Revolution).”]

Separately, two other Paris institutions zoom in on two series Mikhailov shot in the first years of Ukrainian independence. The Pinault Collection at the Bourse de Commerce has hung the twilit, blue-tinged panoramas of “At Dusk” (1993), whose wintry obscurity outlines the violent transition to a market economy. And Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, in the Marais district [historic district of Paris in the 3rd and 4th arrondissements on the Rive Droite, or Right Bank, of the Seine], is displaying dozens of photographs from “Case History” (1997-98), Mikhailov’s most famous and most controversial series — in which the wretched, the drunk and the homeless of the new capitalist Ukraine take on the roles of martyred saints and holy fools.

This summer, after spending several weeks in Kyiv, I met Mikhailov and his wife, Vita, at their home in west Berlin. It was an anxious time for them: overloaded, disquieted, with overlapping pressures from work and home. Until the pandemic, the Mikhailovs had been regularly commuting between the German capital and Kharkiv, which lies just 25 miles from the Russian border. Now, Ukraine’s second city was being flattened; shells were landing daily, even as western Ukraine found an unsteady calm. The neighborhood of their Kharkiv apartment had recently been bombed; much of Boris’s archive is there, and they knew nothing of its fate.

“War kills our life,” Mikhailov told me in Russian, his native language — which Vita translated for me with varying degrees of fidelity. (A Times researcher translated Mikhailov’s quotes for this article.) “It kills the meaning of life, it kills the past, it kills the future. It kills everything. And now everything is different.”

He was leafing through a proof of the M.E.P.’s catalog, and asking himself if the invasion had nullified this summation of his life’s work. “There are times when something stays, and times when it doesn’t,” he sighed at one point, doubting whether his images from the Soviet era would mean anything to young people today. “Maybe they will find something new. If not” — and here he switched to English — “bye-bye!”

But to judge from the crowded galleries in Paris this week, Mikhailov’s art has indeed found a young audience, not least for the experimental images of the 1960s and ’70s that filleted Soviet ideology with a light touch and acrid wit. I mingled with dozens of lycée students who were engrossed in his double-exposure color images that superimpose nudes, religious imagery and other forbidden material onto pictures of abundant wheat fields or Khrushchev-era apartment blocks [Nikita Khrushchev, 1894-1971; First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (de facto head of state): 1953-64]. They pored over his “Black Archive,” shot clandestinely in Kharkiv between 1968 and 1979, in which young women smoke, grandmothers dance, and Mikhailov poses nude in a chintzy living room, flashing a wicked grin.

These unofficial pictures were printed on cheap paper; they incorporated blurs and backlighting and too much headroom; the nudes, especially, could have gotten him packed to Siberia. Mikhailov, along with other artists of what’s now known as the Kharkiv School of Photography, could exhibit only in private, usually in friends’ kitchens. (“They were free artists,” Vita said, “because they didn’t think, ‘We should sell for money.’”) And the lack of public opportunities, not to mention a market, inspired a self-sufficiency guarded long after the Soviet censors faded from view.

Mikhailov was born to a family of engineers in Kharkiv in 1938, between two atrocities. A few years before his birth was the Holomodor, Stalin’s orchestrated famine, which killed nearly 4 million Ukrainians as collective punishment for their belief in cultural and political autonomy [Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 1922-52]. By 1941, Mikhailov’s father (who was from the Donbas) had enlisted as a Red Army officer, while his mother (born in a shtetl [Jewish village or small town in Eastern Europe] near Kyiv) escaped west with young Boris just before the Nazis entered Kharkiv and slaughtered the city’s Jews. He remembers the sirens from those early days, he said; the current invasion is not his first.

Kharkiv, even more than Kyiv, had been the crucible of the Ukrainian avant-garde in the first years of the Soviet Union. It was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the proving ground of wildly ambitious Constructivist architecture [Constructivism: early 20th-century Russian movement in art and architecture characterized by the creation of nonrepresentational geometric objects using industrial materials] and the hub of a generation of experimental poets and writers. But by the time of Mikhailov’s youth, socialist realism [state-approved Stalinist artistic or literary style in the USSR that depicts an idealized vision of the life and industriousness of the workers] had become the only permitted style, and imagery of the revolution had decayed into Stalinist kitsch.

Mikhailov’s series “Luriki” (1971-85) took found black-and-white photographs of anonymous soldiers and sailors, or of happy families who are all alike, and overpainted them with hand coloring — a common technique in the Soviet Union, where color printing was expensive. These were probably the first artworks in the Soviet Union to use found imagery to capture the Soviet zeitgeist and tweak the regime. Yet their garishness gave him an out with irony-blind censors, to whom he could always explain that he was just trying to make the sitters look prettier.

Frequently his conceptual subversion led him to turn the camera on himself, in performative photography like “Crimean Snobbism” (1982): In sepia-toned prints, we see Boris, Vita and their friends, posing like Italian movie stars at a Black Sea resort town near Yalta. The peninsula is now occupied by Russia, though I also felt another contemporary abrasion; even before perestroika the Mikhailovs and their friends were pouting and flexing like Instagram influencers, playacting as richer and freer than the dominant system allowed. Those desires would recur in his post-Soviet photography, notably the series “Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino” (2000-10), which bitterly skewered the free-market free-for-all of independent Kharkiv, its plastic furniture, its trashy clothes.

Now the war has sent Ukraine into an economic tailspin, and Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s electrical grid threaten millions with scarcity and worse. Mikhailov never shied from misfortune and crisis, especially in the first years of Ukrainian independence, when the country fell into a spiral of hyperinflation that peaked at 10,000 percent. A new underclass of homeless people appeared in Kharkiv’s city parks, without any state aid to help them.

Out of that misery came the unshrinking “Case History,” for which Mikhailov photographed Kharkiv’s most desperate people and printed them at billboard size. He frequently had them pose nude, laughing or crying in the snow. He posed them in positions that recall a Pietà or the Descent from the Cross. He showed their chapped, burned, infected skin, their tumorous bellies and misshaped genitals; economic history is written on the flesh. Boris and Vita paid these subjects, and often invited them into their home — the 400 or so pictures of “Case History” were not reportage. They were a requiem for all of the failed promises of both communism and capitalism, a danse macabre on the grave of the 20th century.

The “Case History” pictures have compelled, disturbed and enraged viewers for two decades now, with a corpus of academic literature now trailing behind them. They certainly defy Ukraine’s current projection of itself through viral propaganda, though with their indictment of local corruption, the images in “Case History” also call forward to Ukraine’s two revolutions of the 2000s: the Orange Revolution of 2004 and especially the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, which pushed the whole country, Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking alike, into a new democratic era.

Mikhailov and his wife were in Kyiv during the 2014 revolution, and his images of Maidan display an atypical sincerity even as they bristle with the anticipation of war. He returned to hand-coloring for these pictures: yellow outlines of placards, white stripes framing protesters. Black brushstrokes streak above the barricades, and wipe across the neo-Baroque, 200-foot Ukrainian independence monument that lords over the capital’s central plaza.

I’d stood there in Kyiv this past summer, looking up at that kitschy angel, who looked back down onto the square that the invading army planned to parade through and never reached. To see it again, through Mikhailov’s eyes, was to see at last how all of the parts fit together: the trashy and the conceptual, the heroic and the parodic, the busted utopias of the past century and the Ukrainian bravery of 2022.

“Soviet history gave us a common culture, and we had a connection to Moscow, but less and less with time,” Mikhailov told me. “And this is why Maidan happened: because people waited and waited and did not get anything.” He showed me a photo from Kyiv, one more ironic record from a lifetime spent under misrule, and said: “Whatever system there might have been, it was broken, and it brought a lot of grief. But on the other hand, that grief made the country.”

[Jason Farago, critic at large for the New York Times, writes about art and culture in the U.S. and abroad.  In 2022, he was awarded one of the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes for criticism and journalism.  Milana Mazaeva provided translation support for this article.]

*  *  *  *
MAISON EUROPÉENNE DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE (MEP), PARIS 

The Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) is a photography exhibition center that opened in 1996.  It’s run by the association Paris Audiovisuel – Maison Européenne de la Photographie, founded in 1978 by Jacques Chirac (1932-2019), then mayor of Paris (1977-95) and financially supported by the City of Paris, which provides the building.  (Chirac was later also Prime Minister of France, 1974-76 and 1986-88, and President of the Republic, 1995-2007.)

The MEP is housed in the Hotel Henault de Cantobre, which was built in 1706 and has belonged to the City of Paris since 1914.  It contains an exhibition center, a 36,000-book library, an auditorium, and a video viewing facility with a wide selection of about 1,000 films.

The MEP is designed to make the three fundamental photographic media (exhibition prints, the printed page, and film) easily accessible to all and offers guided tours, conferences, and film series related to the exhibits.  

The MEP’s collection, dedicated to contemporary work, has more than 20,000 pieces, mainly photographs (film and digital) and videos (artists’ DVDs), as well as a wide range of reference books on photography, including both books by artists and technical or theoretical writings, including many rare editions.  

The facility also has a photographic restoration and conservation workshop (ARCP or, Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris – Workshop for the Restoration and Conservation of Photographs of the City of Paris).  Since 1983, it’s worked to preserve the photographic heritage of the libraries, archives, and museums of Paris, and it offers its services to other French or foreign institutions as well.

*  *  *  *
BIOGRAPHY OF BORIS MIKHAILOV 

Boris Andreyevich Mikhailov (Ukrainian: Борис Андрійович Михайлов; sometimes romanized as Borys Andriyovych Mykhailov) was born on 25 August 1938 in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, when it was still part of the Soviet Union.  He used to split his time between Kharkiv and Berlin, but as of this year, he’s moved permanently to Berlin.

Mikhailov is considered a classic of modern photography and one of the premier media artists, a master of photomontage.  Mikhailov’s art has a conceptual and socio-documentary character.  His works record changes in everyday life and society that took place at the end of the USSR and after its collapse.

Winner of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation Award in 2000, awarded in Sweden to “a photographer recognized for major achievements,” his album Unfinished Dissertation (Zürich, 1998) was named one of the top ten best photo albums in the world.  In 2014, he was made an Honorary Academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine.

Mikhailov graduated from the Kharkiv Institute of Municipal Construction in 1962.  He began his career and first photographic experiments in Kharkiv.  His works became symbols of social documentary photography.

After graduating from the Kharkiv Institute, Mikhailov was sent to various machine plants around the USSR as an engineer, ending up at a plant back in Kharkiv.  He almost immediately volunteered to make a film about the plant.  

To study the history of the plant, he was sent to the State Film Fund of the USSR, the state archive of films of the Soviet Union, where he got access to documentary films about the children’s labor colony for the homeless.  Studying archival materials, Mikhailov worked with documentary and social photography, which influenced the focus of his photography.  Creating a film about the plant, he actively shot while studying the basics of Soviet official photography.

In the early ’60s, Mikhailov joined the film club at the regional House of Amateur Art of the Trade Unions, where the classes were conducted by Soviet documentary filmmaker and screenwriter Aron Kanevsky (1920–2000), who officially covered the scandalous trial of members of a Kharkiv youth counterculture (stilyagi) called Blue Horse who wanted to explore American and European culture, fashion, and music.  A group of the youths were attacked in the late 1950s and nude photographs taken by members of the group were confiscated, later to be used in their trials.

Conversations with Kanevsky, whose stories about the trial of the stilyagi who sought freedom and became interested in the Beatles, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll (all taboo in the USSR), and were unfairly punished for it, influenced Mikhailov’s perception of life and photography.  

Actively engaged in photography and obtaining the kind of results that gave him confidence, in the mid-’60s, Mikhailov moved from a film to still photography.  He had his first exhibition at the end of the 1960s.   In 1969, however, the KGB found nude images of his wife in the photo laboratory, he was dismissed from the plant.  He gave up engineering and took up photography full time.

Following on his learning about the Blue Horse incident, personal experience of injustice and problems with the KGB, along with reports of Stalin’s repressions and internment camps, give Mikhailov a different understanding of the Soviet Union and its duality.  He gained an understanding of the possibility of criminal behavior of the Soviet authorities and this informed his critical thinking in ways that affected his photography.

From 1968 to 1975 he shot several series documenting everyday scenes depicting life in the USSR.  Within these pictures, the photographer secreted critical comments of the existing Soviet political circumstances.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Mikhailov traveled and formed relationships with photography artists in places like Lithuania and Moscow.  He was becoming well known and respected in Eastern Europe.  With the beginning of perestroika, the program of reconstruction of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: 1985-91; President of the Soviet Union: 1990-91), he became a prominent member of the Soviet unofficial photography movement.

By the 1990s, the Ukrainian artist was being shown worldwide and in 2004, he took up residence part time in Berlin.  In 2022, he moved there full time.  He has received many international awards and honors, and he’s worked as a visiting professor at many prestigious schools and universities: the Department of Visual Environmental Research at Harvard University (2000) and the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts (2002-03); in 2008, he was elected Academician of the German Academy of Arts in Berlin.

'The Hours' – New Opera at the Met

 

“ADAPTATION OF ‘THE HOURS’ BECOMES OPERA EVENT OF THE YEAR”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[The Hours, a new opera in English composed by Kevin Puts (b. 1972), with a libretto by Greg Pierce (b. 1978), playwright, lyricist, and fiction writer, opened in a fully staged production at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday, 22 November. 

[Pierce’s libretto was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham (b. 1952), which was also adapted in 2002 for the Academy Award-winning film of the same title.  Cunningham, in turn, drew on Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel (whose working title was The Hours), which Woolf (1882-1941) is writing in Cunningham’s story. 

[The Met’s production of The Hours is scheduled to run through 15 December.  It follows on the opera’s concert première performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, Friday and Sunday, 18 and 20 March.

[The report below, broadcast on the PBS Newshour on 22 November, makes some interesting points about the theatrical differences in storytelling technique among the media of the stage, the novel, and film on which opera can draw.  Correspondent Jeffrey Brown also gets Québécois conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin to talk about working on new material with a living composer (as opposed to the classic operas whose composers are long dead).]

Judy Woodruff:  One day in the lives of three women from three different times and places brought together on stage through the magic of opera.

“The Hours” is a new work opening tonight on one of the world’s biggest stages, the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Jeffrey Brown reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The real-life English writer Virginia Woolf in 1923 in a suburb of London. Sung by Joyce DiDonato, she fights the demons in her head as she struggles with an idea for a novel.

Laura Brown, sung by Kelli O’Hara, a fictional housewife in 1949 Los Angeles barely surviving a sense of meaninglessness to her life. And Clarissa Ward in New York City at the end of the 20th century on a day her dear friend dying of AIDS will take his life, and she will contemplate the course of her own, sung by soprano Renee Fleming.

Renee Fleming, Opera Singer: You have got an incredibly interesting story about three women from different periods and their complicated lives, their sexuality, their — there’s suicide, there’s mental health, there’s pretty much everything in it.

And opera can do this without any problem, kind of taking three different periods and putting them together, because it’s the music that connects everything.

Jeffrey Brown: The music is by 50-year-old Kevin Puts. And days before opening, he was intently watching and listening at a rehearsal.

This is his fourth opera. The first, “Silent Night,” won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize [world première: Ordway Theater, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 2011]. In “The Hours,” he’s worked with librettist Greg Pierce to adapt the 1998 novel by Michael Cunningham, also a Pulitzer winner, which was made into a star-studded film four years later by director Stephen Daldry, and which itself was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.”

For lovers of different art forms novels, films, operas, it offers a way into thinking about what each can do. With opera, two characters from different times can share the stage and sing with, almost to, one another.

For Puts, who’s composed everything from solo to orchestral music as well, this taps into his love of large-scale storytelling.

Kevin Puts, Composer: It’s that I love storytelling in music. I love evoking certain things, emotions, situations through music. I think that’s the kind of most amazing thing that music can do, to first introduce the three stories of “The Hours” and sort of establish different musics for each of those, and then gradually begin to blur the lines between them and have them overlap in a way that only music can.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Metropolitan Opera Conductor: Bringing new opera is my passion.

Jeffrey Brown: Met opera conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin says he loves the collaborative aspect of opera, especially when he can work with a living composer.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin: We play so many dead ones.

(LAUGHTER)

Yannick Nezet-Seguin: We play so many Mozart and so many Verdi operas and so many Wagner operas.

Jeffrey Brown: You’re not knocking Mozart and Verdi are you?

Yannick Nezet-Seguin: No, I love them. But, sometimes, you — oh, you wish that you would be able to ask them questions.

And, often, I make a joke with the orchestra. I say, one day, I’m going to ask Verdi, is it in heaven or in hell? I don’t know. But I’m going to ask Verdi what he means, but hopefully not too soon. Now we have Kevin Puts. We have Greg Pierce. They’re here. And we’re reminded how the music that’s written, especially in opera, is a living element.

Jeffrey Brown: Opera as a living art form, and one that can engage contemporary issues.

Renee Fleming: Every time I work on a new piece with a composer, I say, listen I want to sing words that are relevant to me in my life, that sound like I could be singing them and should be singing them.

Jeffrey Brown: You, Renee Fleming.

Renee Fleming: Exactly. At this stage of my life, I said, I want to sing something that means something to me.

Jeffrey Brown: In “The Hours,” Renee Fleming saw it, a story of women as artists, friends, lovers, mothers. Here, it’s the smallest pieces of daily life, buying flowers, for example, that somehow raise the biggest questions about life itself.

Underlying all of this, the knowledge that the real Virginia Woolf would take her own life in 1941 at age 59.

Renee Fleming: Every single person who’s in this opera has a really interesting role and a tale to tell. And the stories are relevant. We’re in a mental health crisis in this country that is — in the world, actually, that is unprecedented certainly in my lifetime.

And I fear for young people, and especially because it’s hitting them so hard.

Yannick Nezet-Seguin: If the audience recognizes themselves on stage, they’re going to relate to the story.

I believe that this then can bring more people to the opera, not just because we want to have more people in our seats, but because we believe in the mission of opera, that is, to convey those messages and collectively have a cathartic experience that can give us hope.

Jeffrey Brown: Kevin Puts, who also teaches at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore [a private music conservatory and preparatory school associated with Johns Hopkins University], says tapping into that mission and the contemporary possibilities for opera is attracting a new generation of composers.

Kevin Puts: The fact that so much new opera is happening in this country, not only at the Metropolitan Opera, but in companies all over the country, my students all want to write operas. When I was a student, I had no interest in doing that, because I thought, well, who’s going to perform it?

Maybe I will write an orchestra piece and try to get an orchestra. Even that would be difficult.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Kevin Puts: But, these days, it’s a real possibility.

Jeffrey Brown: At opera’s end, in a gorgeous trio, Puts shows what opera can do, finally bringing the three women fully together, the hours of one day, three lives.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Judy Woodruff: All I can say is wow.

[In his more than 30-year career with the NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.  Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of CANVAS at PBS NewsHour.]

*  *  *  *
“GRAND VOICES, UNITED AND APART”
by Zachary Woolfe 

[Below is the New York Times review of the Philadelphia concert début of The Hours, which ran on 21 March in Section C (“Arts”) of the paper.  Following this notice is a review of the Metropolitan Opera’s première production of the opera in New York from a website devoted to opera.  I was going to post the Times’ review of the Met production, but as the writer was the same one who wrote this review, I thought it would be more interesting to see someone else’s opinion.

[For anyone interested in Zachary Woolfe’s assessment of the fully staged opera at the Met, his review ran on 24 November in the print edition (Section C) and was posted online on 23 November at Review: Renée Fleming Stars in ‘The Hours’ at the Met Opera - The New York Times (nytimes.com).]

Kevin Puts’s new opera had its premiere in a Philadelphia Orchestra concert presentation before coming to New York this fall.

PHILADELPHIA — Three women are left alone onstage.

The orchestra is low as they begin to sing. Their voices (two soprano, one mezzo-soprano) gradually swell and intertwine in a radiant, aching trio about all that separates them from one another — and their essential union.

This is, famously, the ending of [Richard] Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier” [1911], which five years ago was the last work the superstar soprano Renée Fleming sang at the Metropolitan Opera. But her performance, a farewell to the canonical repertory, did not mark a full retirement. Fleming said she would continue to concertize, and left open the possibility of returning to staged opera for new pieces written with her in mind.

So on Friday here in Philadelphia, it felt like a moving nod to her distinguished career that a radiant, aching trio of women (two sopranos, one mezzo) left alone onstage — a trio about all that separates them from one another, and their essential union — is also the coda to “The Hours,” which will bring Fleming, for whom it was composed, back to the Met this fall.

There the work, Kevin Puts’s new adaptation of the 1998 novel and 2002 film about the reverberations of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” in the lives of three characters in different places and eras, will be conducted by the company’s music director [since the 2020–2021 season], Yannick Nézet-Séguin. And on Friday, at the Kimmel Center, Nézet-Séguin led its world premiere in a concert presentation with another ensemble he leads, the Philadelphia Orchestra.

With a libretto by Greg Pierce, “The Hours” is even prettier and more sumptuous than “Silent Night,” a grandly scored yet sweetly humble opera about a cease-fire over Christmas during World War I, for which Puts won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012. The new work is, like “Silent Night,” direct, effective theater, with a cinematic quality in its plush, propulsive underscoring, its instinctive sense for using music to move things along. For all its shifts and overlaps of time and place, it’s an entirely clear piece, its sound world never too busy or difficult — never too interesting, perhaps — to muddy the waters.

Fleming has the role Meryl Streep played in Stephen Daldry’s film: Clarissa Vaughan, a prosperous book editor in late 1990s New York City who is preparing a party for her friend, a famous poet dying of AIDS. She suffers regrets and despair, as do other two women: Laura Brown (the acclaimed Broadway soprano Kelli O’Hara), a Los Angeles housewife in 1949; and Woolf herself (the mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano on Friday, but Joyce DiDonato at the Met) in a London suburb, trying to surmount her depression long enough to write “Mrs. Dalloway” in the early 1920s.

In Michael Cunningham’s delicate novel, these three are linked in a carefully wrought knit of Woolfian prose and coincidences, among them that Clarissa Vaughan shares a first name with the title character of “Mrs. Dalloway,” who in Woolf’s novel — which Laura Brown is reading as she fights anomie and the urge toward suicide — is also making a party.

The film version is far more lugubrious, not least in Philip Glass’s melodramatically undulating score, which so defines the movie’s mood — its dusky, urgent strings inseparable from Nicole Kidman’s Woolf and her puttied aquiline nose striding off to drown themselves — that there is something brave in another composer taking on this material.

Puts has gotten from Glass’s Minimalism a taste for using repeated figurations as a kind of sonic carpeting, but his repetitions are much less insistent. The opera begins in a watery blur, with a choir, sounding simultaneously floating and precise, chanting fragments of Woolf’s classic opening line: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

The events of the opera, as in the book and film, are studiedly modest, taking place in a single day. Clarissa goes to the florist, visits her dying friend, and muses on what her life would have been like had she not, years ago, broken off a budding romance with him. Woolf chats with her husband about page proofs, forms phrases and greets her sister’s family. Laura attempts to bake a cake for her husband’s birthday before escaping to a hotel to read alone.

With each of the two acts unfolding in an unbroken stream, Puts moves smoothly between parlando sung conversation and glowing lyrical flights. The stylization of opera allows him to bring his characters together in the same musical space, even if they are otherwise unaware of one another. So there are, for example, ravishing duets for Woolf and Laura, one in which they sing lines from “Mrs. Dalloway” in close harmony over trembling strings. Puts is acute in using the chorus, which will presumably be offstage in a full production, to convey further shadows of these women’s interior lives.

Prepared with remarkably limited rehearsal time for a two-hour work with a substantial cast, this was a lush yet transparent account of the score, performed with polish and commitment. The opera leans heavily on this orchestra’s storied opulent strings, as well as on its characterful winds and brasses, and precision at a large battery of percussion instruments (including a celesta, used frequently, in a cliché of dreaminess).

Puts’s work is attractive and skillful. Yet much of it, despite lots of activity and ostensible variety in the orchestra and among the singers, gives a sense of engulfing sameness of musical texture and vocal approach. The arias, if you set the words aside, are more or less interchangeable: pristinely soaring. The saturated orchestral colors recall Nelson Riddle’s symphonic pop arrangements and Samuel Barber’s gently reflective soprano monologue “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” But Riddle songs are just a couple of minutes long; “Knoxville,” about 15. Over a couple of hours, it’s lovely but wearying.

The ’50s style for Laura’s world — mild Lawrence Welk-type swing, choral writing like TV jingles — feels obvious. And some moments of highest drama smack of the overkill that mars the film, as when the threat of Woolf’s devastating headaches is marked by pummeling darkness, yawning brasses and instrumental screams.

New fantasy sequences, demarcated in concert with sudden shifts of lighting, telegraph a bit too crudely how much these women want to run from their lives. Woolf’s imaginary interaction with a contemporary male novelist who speaks about how much she’s meant to him — an invention of the libretto — is cloying and overwrought, drenched in bells.

The more intimate and understated, the better for Puts’s music, and the cast embodies both those qualities. Cano sings with mellow sobriety — and, in Woolf’s darkest moments, stricken intensity. O’Hara’s voice is silvery at the top and full in the middle, her pain registering gracefully.

As Clarissa’s poet friend, Richard, the baritone Brett Polegato sang with lightly sardonic airiness. The tenor William Burden sounded shining and eager as his old lover, Louis. The tenor Jamez McCorkle, the mezzo Deborah Nansteel and the bass-baritone Brandon Cedel were steady, sonorous presences as the main characters’ much put-upon romantic partners.

Fleming began with some paleness of tone, but grew in command through the evening, past her characteristic propriety to a kind of somber nobility. Clarissa dominates the opera’s final scenes, when “The Hours” is at its finest: the emotions sincere and persuasive, the music fervent.

And at the end, the three women come together, perceiving one another in a way they cannot in the novel or film and arriving at a simple moral: “Here is the world and you live in it, and you try.” There was poignancy in having a great diva, now 63, singing the nostalgic leading role, a woman taking in all she has done — and realizing she still has more to give.

[Zachary Woolfe has been the classical music editor of the New York Times since 2015.  He was previously the opera critic of the New York Observer.]

*  *  *  *
“METROPOLITAN OPERA 2022-23 REVIEW: THE HOURS”
by David Salazar

[David Salazar’s OperaWire notice of The Hours was posted on 23 November 2022 at Metropolitan Opera 2022-23 Review: The Hours - OperaWire).  OperaWire is an online source of daily news, reviews, and announcements of the international opera scene.  The site was founded in 2016 and is headquartered on New York City.]

Joyce DiDonato, Kyle Ketelsen, Kai Edgar Shines Amidst Kevin Puts’ Gorgeous Musical Tapestry

SPOILER & CONTENT WARNING: There will be a lot of spoilers for the plot details of this opera. There are also references to self-harm and suicide.

In 2012, Kevin Puts’s “Silent Night” won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. And following that victory, the opera, which premiered in Minnesota in 2011, seemingly toured all over the country getting performances at Arizona Opera, Utah Opera, Washington National Opera, Austin Opera, Opera San Jose, Philadelphia, Calgary, Kansas City, Fort Worth, and even in Ireland.

But somehow, it never arrived at the Met Opera (OperaWire did make a case for the work when the company announced that Yannick Nézet-Séguin would be taking over the music director position with a goal of bringing new opera). However, Kevin Puts has finally been given his shot in the limelight with his new opera “The Hours,” which received its staged world premiere on Nov. 22, 2022.

And he certainly did.

Vast Musical Tapestry

“The Hours” is a new opera by Puts and librettist Greg Pierce that tells three intersecting stories set across three different timelines. In New York City at the close of the 20^th century, Clarissa (Renée Fleming) is preparing a party to celebrate the life of his beloved friend Richard (Kyle Ketelsen). In Richmond, England in 1923, Virginia Woolf ponders her new novel and struggles with her inner demons. And finally in Los Angeles circa 1949, Laura Brown seemingly has it all – a loving husband, an adorable young son, and she’s pregnant. But she’s also struggling with her own sense of identity within these social strictures. The opera is based on the book by Michael Cunningham and the Academy Award-winning film by Stephen Daldry that starred Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore as Clarissa, Viriginia [sic], and Laura, respectively.

A work like this that spans time and space requires music that is seemingly flexible in its style and approach, something that Puts is quite adept at. As a composer Puts does not seem allergic to either melodic vocal writing or tonal harmonization, both of which he integrates throughout this opera in combination with a unique balance of styles.

The opening of the opera feels like a movie score with its propulsive and potent string sound and dissonances in the brass, followed by a chorus singing “The Flowers” in increasingly fragmented lines so as to create an echo that literally transcends time and the space. When we settle into Virginia Woolf’s world, the orchestration strips down to a simple piano accompaniment and a very delicate aural fabric that also spotlights Virginia’s inner struggles. When Laura comes on the scene, we initially get a swing-like choral passage and music that intersperses showtune-like melodies with others that harken to mid-20^th century cinema scores. Laura’s son Richie even sings a baroque tune halfway through the first act, furthering this mélange of music styles. At other times, we get sweeping vocal passages that draw from German romantics like Strauss and [Richard] Wagner, particularly major climactic passages. Some passages that stood out in this regard were Laura getting swept up in her emotions right before kissing her neighbor Kitty or Clarissa mourning the body of her beloved Richard after he commits suicide.  And almost everything Virginia Woolf [sings?] feels like one extended vocal passage.

What’s more, there’s a fantastic balance to be found between what is going on in the pit and onstage. A lot of modern opera, unfortunately, buries the singers behind intensely rhythmic recitative, barely allowing for the voice to do what it does best – SING. Instead, we get what often feels like quasi-plays (where the singing is but a mere effect to replace spoken dialogue) while the orchestra tells the story, often through intellectualized harmonic writing that feels aimed at impressing musicologists first, audience second. The result is often that the music and the experience and emotions it can generate become secondary, a soundtrack to the text rather than the center of the experience. It’s only when you digest it later on and really think about it that the structure and machine of it all makes sense and can even potentially be exciting. That isn’t to say that opera CAN’T be that (it should be that, but also more), but the in-the-moment experience never quite generates that immediacy of emotional connection and requires the viewer to do more work in retrospect.

Puts’ priorities are clearly different and there’s one passage in particular that stood out in this regard. It’s Richard’s final scene seconds before he jumps out the window to his death. The orchestra has a pleading melody. Richard isn’t singing the melody, but his line is in line rhythmically allowing for us to focus in on the intense emotional connection of the character through and with the music. You’re not just focused on the text and what it expresses, but how it is expressed through the music without having to think about it.

And to add to that sense of immediacy of connection with the viewer, Puts makes ample references and nods to other classic works throughout “The Hours.” Kathleen Kim’s Barbara sings the Queen of the Night’s famed high Fs from [“Der Hölle] Rache” [a soprano aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1791 opera, The Magic Flute] during Clarissa’s meeting with her. At another moment, the violins seem to quote from one of the interludes of [Benjamin] Britten’s “Peter Grimes” [1945] and the opening of the second act has a subtly uncanny resemblance to a passage from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” There was also a Stravinskyesque use of winds during one scene as Laura struggles to get out of bed. And even if it isn’t a direct musical quotation, how can you not hear the final trio between two sopranos and a mezzo and not automatically think of the grand finale of “Der Rosenkavalier.”

The openness about the vastness musical canvas also has the impact of keeping the audience engaged throughout, waiting for how Puts will eventually put it all together.

And it’s crucial that he does because Pierce’s libretto, a monster undertaking for the opera stage, is a bit all over the place, literally. Pierce’s writing, while fascinating, can be quite ambiguous at times, shifting into abstraction and jumping from scene to scene in quick succession. It definitely ensures that a lot of stuff is happening at an unrelenting pace, but it makes the first half a bit indecipherable at times, and unless you’ve seen the movie or read the book, rather aimless in the sense that we don’t really know where it’s all headed from a dramatic standpoint. To be fair, there’s a lot of story to cover and a lot of characters to introduce (including the three leads) and in opera, where music takes up a lot of time to develop, setting these stages isn’t as simple as it is in film or literature.

But to that point, the opera’s ambition leads to overstuffing of characters, some of which feel a bit underwritten. Sally (Denyce Graves) feels rather prominently underwritten in comparison to such narrative counterparts as Leonard Woolf or Dan Brown (the couples of the other two leads); these two men themselves also are a bit one dimensional, though to be fair, in an opera centering women, it’s fair to see men get the treatment women got in stories for so long. But again, that’s what makes Sally, a LGBTQIA+ character in a work that has several LGBTQIA+ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning/queer, intersex, asexual, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the conventional binary gender taxonomy] characters, somewhat of a disappointment. Meanwhile, Vanessa, Virginia Woolf’s sister, barely registers as a character, in a crucial dramatic scene where Virginia seemingly threatens one of her nephews with impending doom. Same goes for Barbara, who gets a flirtatious scene with Clarissa that somehow rhymes with Laura’s with Kitty; however, whereas the latter has major dramatic and character implications for Laura’s story, Barbara’s scene, while fun musically, could probably be cut without affecting the dramatic momentum all that much.

The second half of the opera, which is also the shorter one, is admittedly far stronger in its narrative propulsion and in its emotional payoff, particularly in how it manages the death of Richard, the aftermath, and that final hopeful trio in which the heroines come together to contemplate how they must keep on trying to move forward in a difficult world.

Stage World of Possibilities

[Stage director] Phelim McDermott’s production is brilliant in how it takes the libretto’s structure, Puts’ musical interpretation, and then layers it with a similarly vast theatrical palette.

The meat of the production features panels that move on and off the stage, delineating several major locations: Clarissa’s NY apartment, Virginia’s studio, Richard’s apartment, Laura’s kitchen, and Laura’s bedroom. The majority of the scenes take place within those confines and it’s quite fascinating to notice certain parallels between the spaces and how they connect the characters. Laura’s bedroom is first introduced as an elevated platform, the first of such set in the opera, expressing her isolation, but also creating a precarious sensation for the viewer; with Laura constantly contemplating suicide, her set and its height foreshadows and connects with her son’s eventual suicide from the top of his building. Likewise, Richard’s apartment is also elevated on a platform, linking it with Laura’s initial room. Meanwhile, the other sets hue [sic; hew = ‘to conform’?] quite closely with one another. We see a kitchen for both Clarissa and Laura, while the dark brown of Clarissa’s apartment connects with the brown hues of Virginia’s studio.

But just as the music shifts from style to style, the set is also malleable. Anything seems possible as McDermott strips away the sets, drops a curtain, and projects a beach across it. Later on, the three main sets converge and the three leads (or at least Laura and Clarissa) switch locations, hinting at their eventual convergence at the close of the opera.

Then there’s the use of the dancers, who serve a similar function as the chorus, in that they not only serve the action directly, but also abstractly and emotionally. At the start of Act two, with Laura contemplating suicide, the dancers hold pillows seemingly mimicking or counterpointing her emotions. In another scene, they uncomfortably surround Virginia Woolf. At another moment, they cause chaos in the kitchen, spotlighting Laura’s emotional distress. Near the end of the opera, they zip around her for a wardrobe change before whisking her away into the future for her meeting with Clarissa.

Even if the integration of so many elements can result in chaotic viewing at times, most of it is so well-staged and coordinated that it doesn’t detract but adds to the action. If some of the libretto feels confusing at times, the stage magic more than makes up for it and even clarifies it.

Three Divas, One Shining Star

The lead up to this production centered on the three women headlining the opera – Renée Fleming, Kelli O’Hara, and Joyce DiDonato.

For Fleming this was a homecoming following her Met “retirement” a few seasons back in a production of “Der Rosenkavalier.” And her first appearance, it was clear that the audience at the Met was excited to have her back. It hasn’t been that many years, but for those who forgot, Fleming immediately set out to remind audiences of her spellbinding vocal abilities throughout the night. Paired with impeccable diction throughout the evening, her ample vibrato served to express the nerves and unease that Clarissa feels throughout as she ponders whether Richard will attend the party or whether he is okay. Her standout moment came, without a doubt, in that final encounter with Richard. As she implored him to get down from the ledge, her soprano grew more accented, her singing more desperate in its intensity. And in the following scene, where she finds him on the ground, dead, she delivered some searing legato singing, her voice weeping beautifully.

If there was anything potentially disappointing in Fleming’s turn as Clarissa, it was that outside of her relationship with Richard, there was a lack of depth in the other interactions. Part of that is on the libretto (the Barbara scene), but some of it was how Fleming interacted with everyone in quite the same manner. While one might understand a certain withdrawn feeling toward Sally, it didn’t feel like there was any real connection between her and Denyce Graves (making the repeated use of “Babe” rather grating; it just sounds weird in an opera). The scene with Barbara, which is supposed to be flirtatious, didn’t quite soar, again because Fleming felt a bit disengaged. I bring this up because Clarissa’s narrative features the most character interactions and she carries the weight of making each one feel unique and different. It unfortunately didn’t feel that way.

This was further amplified by the performances of her other two co-leads. O’Hara didn’t have to move about the stage as much with a lot of her scenes locking her down either on a bed, or in her kitchen, but there was a razor-sharp focus in how her body language, as minimal as it was, communicated the despair she was feeling. Whether it be how she lay on the bed in the opening scene, or how she frozen in that very same space as she pondered suicide, or how she gently caressed her son in one scene or the stern expression she gave him in another, O’Hara’s Laura was always alive and full of intense emotions.

It helped overcome some vocal shortcomings that cropped up here and there. O’Hara sounded a bit small during her opening lines, but that might have been a function of how far back and elevated she was on stage. But eventually, her voice became more present and resonant as the night developed. Her high notes could feel a bit forced and shrill, particularly at the beginning, but as she warmed into the role they also started to brighten and cut cleanly. Without a doubt, her big moment was the opening of Act two where she contemplates suicide, her delicate singing drawing us as she read a passage from Virginia’s book. When she was later joined by Joyce DiDonato’s, the two singers blended beautifully in one of the most arresting musical cues of the entire evening (the orchestration here, with a rich bass in the strings created a sense of tension and warmth all at once).

And that brings us to Joyce DiDonato, who was the undisputed star of the night, as Virginia Woolf. The mezzo was last heard at the Met Opera in 2020 in the title role of “Agrippina” [1709 opera by George Frideric Handel] and she has been a fixture with the company in a wide range of repertory. But something about this performance struck differently. From her opening and highly exposed monologue, accompanied only by piano, DiDonato’s voice had a roundness that I hadn’t heard before, a freedom that allowed her to sculpt long lines with unparalleled warmth and elegance. Even her high note vibrato, which has always had a unique quality and color that could often feel a bit disconnected from the rest of her registers, blossomed more organically from the thicker core. That opening monologue might have been the first instance in the opera where I felt that Puts’ vocal writing had taken flight. Virtually every scene with Virginia features this kind of beautiful vocal writing, allowing DiDonato’s rich mezzo to take flight.

But Virginia wasn’t just about soaring vocal lines. In between, DiDonato delivered some incredible comic and dramatic moments. When asked to have breakfast by her husband and put something in her stomach, few people could respond with the intensity and sarcasm that DiDonato managed as she noted that she had some coffee and almonds in her stomach. Or when Nelly offers to serve her more food later in the work, she was menacing as she shut her down and demanded that they stop trying to force-feed her. Even in more contentious encounters where her husband Leonard, DiDonato’s mezzo shifted from more aggressive and leaner to slenderer and more tender. Another standout interaction was with her niece and nephews as she cuddles them, her singing sprightly before her mind and singing shifted into a darker mode as she pronounced the death of Septimus, all while menacingly pointing at her nephew.

And in the final trio, where the three artists managed some beautiful lyrical moments together, it was DiDonato’s grounded sound that gave the passage its depth and warmth.

The Main Men

While this is an opera about women, men do play an important role, none more notable than that of Richard, the man that Clarissa is hoping to save. Taking on this intense role was Kyle Ketelsen who also stole every scene he was in. We first meet Richard in his apartment, pale, broken, and despairing. Ketelsen’s voice, hard-edged and accented, snarled and barked at Clarissa, emphasizing his state of mind; his darker, rugged sound contrasted wonderfully with Fleming’s brighter color. He also stayed mostly rooted to the sofa, his body language transmitting this sense of defeat. Ketelsen returns a few scenes later in a flashback, sporting a red shirt, his singing far more full-bodied, brighter in color, and more fluid in line. Standing tall and firm, there was also a looseness in his body language that allowed us to see the Richard that once was, adding to the pain of watching the man he has become.

And that’s what made his final scene arguably the most potent of the entire opera. Sitting by the ledge as Clarissa enters, Ketelsen’s Richard engaged in a game of cat and mouse, moving from window to window, despite Clarissa’s constant pleas. At one point, as he lamented not knowing what to do with the hours coming his way, his voice melted into a weep, a devastating moment that really expressed the existential crisis that he was at odds with. If in his first scene he sounded bitter and aggressive, here his baritone, noticeably softer in timbre, was full of pain but also acceptance. In that pivotal moment, Ketelsen simply let his body drop, adding to the pain of the moment. Puts, in another one of his finest moments, scores this with a gentle suspended chord, where other composers would have gone for a bombastic dissonant orchestral explosion. That musical cliché automatically hijacks a tragic moment like this, pulling the listener into the aural maelstrom, leaving the tragic moment behind. But Puts’ choice lends this moment greater intimacy for the listener, allowing them to truly process what is going on before letting the despair set in with a choral explosion.

Another standout performance came from Kai Edgar, all of 11-years-old, in the role of Richie. Credit to Puts for giving such an ample role to a child performer, but even more so to Edgar who looked unfazed on the Met stage as he sang throughout the night with confidence. He even gets a solo, the aforementioned baroque tune, that he managed quite well. But he didn’t just have to sing – at moments, the opera actually probes the young boy’s emotions as he asks his mother straight up if she went to the hospital, Edgar’s eyes searching for O’Hara’s in what resulted in a truly gut-wrenching moment.

Sean Panikkar delivered a warm tenor as Leonard Woolf, giving his character warmth. There were hints of despair and agitation with Virginia, but Panikkar, whose body language was gentle and fluid, made Leonard out to be a more supportive figure.

Bass-baritone Brandon Cedel provided an interesting counterpart as Laura’s husband Dan Brown. Where Pannikkar was concerned, Cedel’s Dan was completely sunny and unflustered, his voice relishing every line; few can sing the word “Fantabulous” with that much gusto and keep a straight-face.

Strong Support

John Holiday played the Man under the Arch, a spirit-like presence that, with the exception of one scene, sang intermezzo-like vocalizes throughout. Holiday’s countertenor is quite beautiful in its texture, sounding free but also resonating quite potently in the Met. I don’t think I’ve quite heard any countertenor singing at the Met, blossom with such depth and volume as Holiday does. Again, his passages were other examples of Puts’ ability to write some glorious lines for the voice.

Sylvia D’Eramo appeared in two scenes as Kitty and then Vanessa. While Vanessa was not a particularly potent presence in the overall fabric of the work, her Kitty more than delivered. From her very first entrance as Kitty, she delivered a potent and dark soprano that contrasted nicely with the O’Hara’s softer timbre. She moved about the stage as if she owned it, immediately allowing the audience to see and feel why Laura might have interest in her. In addition to the authority was a more playful and flirtatious side, which further intensified the encounter, allowing for the sudden kiss at its apex to deliver. But right after that moment, D’Eramo, utilized a darker texture to ask Laura for a favor, adding tension to the scene.

Kathleen Kim, always a scene stealer, delivered vocal fireworks with her Queen of the Night passages as Barbara, while somehow sounding worlds different as Mrs. Latch. Whereas Barbara was characterized with unrestrained vocal brightness and pop, Mrs. Latch was softer and drier in timbre.

As Sally, Denyce Graves’ ample mezzo, even with its unwieldy vibrato, had presence and strength, which added to the frustration that she wasn’t given more to do than to try and get Clarissa’s attention.

Tony Stevensen as Walter, William Burden as Louis, Lena Josephine Marano as Angelica, Atticus Ware as Julian, and Patrick Scott McDermott as Quentin filled in well in their respective roles.

Finally at the Met

It’s been largely underwritten how two months in, the Met Opera’s music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin had yet to lead the company in any opera, especially when you consider how the past year he canceled his participation a production [Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in January] and also withdrew from the end of another run of [Giuseppe Verdi’s 1867 opera] “Don Carlo,” even skipping out on the HD performance [a series of live movie theater transmissions of opera performances]. But here he was, finally making his very first appearance of the 2022-23 season. In this case it was better late than never.

As per usual, the Met Opera music director, who cuts frustratingly inconsistent form in repertory staples, excels in modern works. From the opening notes of this production, it was clear that he was in complete control of the Met Opera orchestra. He seemed quite attuned to his soloists throughout the night, ensuring that they always cut cleanly over the orchestra; even at the most potent fortissimo climaxes, the voices were always clear amidst the texture. Engaging with a new work for the first time can be a major challenge unless the person in the pit is able to deliver through with clarity and concision; there’s no doubt that (based on all I was able to write about the score in this review), Nézet-Séguin managed exactly that throughout the evening. He’s also set to conduct “Champion” [2013 opera with music by Terence Blanchard and a libretto by Michael Cristofer] later this season [April 2023], which given his track record with newer works, generates anticipation for that production as well.

For those familiar with the numerous reviews I have written already this season, this is going to sound like a broken record. But the truth is, the 2022-23 season is shaping up to be one of the best the Met Opera has produced in some time. You can add “The Hours” to the list of must-see operas this season.

[David Salazar is the Editor-in-Chief for OperaWire and is one of its co-creators.  In addition to writing reviews and interviews, he also heads the weekly Opera Meets Film articles and Opera Quizzes.  Prior to creating OperaWire, Salazar worked as an entertainment reporter for Latin Post, an online media company that serves the Latino population in the United States with informative and innovative news, where he interviewed opera stars and was chief opera critic.  He’s also a violinist who performed as concertmaster with several youth and university orchestras at major venues around New York, including Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall.] 

*  *  *  *
“‘DESIGNING THE WOMEN OF ‘THE HOURS’ FOR THE OPERA”
by Louis Lucero II

[This article on the costume designs for the Met’s production of Puts’s The Hours appeared in the New York Times on 27 November 2022 in the “Sunday Styles” Section.  I’m posting it simply because I thought it was an interesting read—and there’s almost nothing more theatrical in a play or an opera than the costumes!

[The article was accompanied by some wonderful illustrations of the costume renderings and photos of the finished dress—all the costumes in the article are for the lead women.  I didn’t reproduce them for Rick On Theater because adding illustrations is a hassle on Blogger, but the online version of the story has the same pictures for anyone interested: Costuming ‘The Hours’ at the Met: Vintage Wallpaper and ’90s Calvin Klein - The New York Times (nytimes.com).]

While creating the costumes for a new opera adaptation of “The Hours,” a designer found inspiration in archival wallpaper, an English farmhouse and 1990s Calvin Klein.

When the British designer Tom Pye was first brought on to the creative team of “The Hours,” a new opera by Kevin Puts that had its premiere at the Met on Tuesday, it was just for the sets.

But that was before he learned that the opera, like the 2002 movie inspired by the same Michael Cunningham novel, had pulled out all the stops when it came to filling the principal roles: three women strewn across the 20th century whose fates seem united by a mysterious connection to Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” In Joyce DiDonato, the Met found its Virginia; in Kelli O’Hara, its despairing midcentury homemaker Laura Brown; and in Renée Fleming, its high-powered Manhattanite book editor Clarissa Vaughan.

“When I heard the castings, I was like, ‘I’m doing the costumes as well,’” Mr. Pye said.

Although he “loved it when it came out,” Mr. Pye, 54, had scrupulously avoided the film, which received an Academy Award nomination for Ann Roth’s costume design.

“It can be really distracting, if you’re trying to design and find your own image for everything,” he said.

In a recent interview, he explained his vision for the three women at the heart of “The Hours.”

Virginia: ‘Mustards and Burnt Oranges and Olive Greens’

While adapting Mr. Cunningham’s sprawling, multigenerational story for the stage, one objective quickly became clear: to help the audience not lose track of who’s doing what where — and in which decade.

“In the book, it’s very ‘one chapter, one chapter, one chapter,’” Mr. Pye said, referring to the episodic structure of Mr. Cunningham’s novel. “In the film, they get to play a bit more, and this is like five times more.”

Knowing there would often be several characters singing onstage at the same time made Mr. Pye want to be “as simple and direct” as possible.

“So I’ve been very, very clear — or, I’m trying to be very, very clear — in the color palettes and the worlds of the costume and the sets,” Mr. Pye said, “so that you know you’re in Virginia’s world, you know you’re in Laura’s world, so that even if the singer doesn’t stand exactly in her world, her color palette follows her, and she can be free onstage to be a little bit more complex.”

To create a coherent palette that would follow Virginia throughout the performance, Mr. Pye looked to the Bloomsbury group, an informal collective of thinkers and artists, so named for the bohemian London neighborhood many of them called home.

The real-life Virginia Woolf and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, belonged to the group, which had “a really specific palette,” Mr. Pye said, pointing to the work of Bell and Duncan Grant, a fellow painter she took up with in a Sussex farmhouse called Charleston. “You see these sort of tertiary colors — mustards and burnt oranges and olive greens.”

Laura: ‘The Opposite of Virginia’

If audiences are meant to associate Virginia with the autumnal and the earthbound — “natural pigments that you believe could be made from natural products,” as Mr. Pye put it — the character of Laura occupies a completely different wedge of the color wheel.

“There’s nothing natural going on there,” he said.

For Laura’s palette, Mr. Pye took inspiration from Technicolor in an effort to project postwar optimism. “They’re not normal colors,” he said, comparing them instead to Cadillacs and 1950s diners. “They’re all quite man-made, manufactured — the opposite of Virginia.”

Clarissa: ‘Go as Simple as We Can’

To outfit the character of Clarissa, a professional woman living in Manhattan at the end of the last century, Mr. Pye drew on his own memories of the late 1990s, including some of his first jobs in New York theater. He was mostly doing sets then, he recalled, which at the time meant a lot of glass walls, glass boxes and “reclaimed everything.”

“All we ever did back then was minimalism,” he said. “It was lots of empty stages.”

“I was looking at Calvin Klein, and Donna Karan, and all those great designers that were working then, and it’s so minimalist in the color palettes,” Mr. Pye added.

According to Mr. Pye, the 1990s sensibility was defined by an instinct to pare down: “‘Let’s strip everything back, let’s go as simple as we can,’” he said. “So that’s what I’ve done with Clarissa.”

Wearing white and often standing before a plain wall, Clarissa frequently functions as a sort of monochrome barrier between the more colorful worlds of Virginia (stage left) and Laura (stage right). To Mr. Pye, there was something satisfying about the overall visual effect.

“There’s a purity in that, and a modernity in it,” he said.

The Roses

The famous first sentence of “Mrs. Dalloway,” Virginia Woolf’s landmark novel that forms the spiritual backbone of “The Hours,” contains a clue to the opera’s signature motif: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

Clarissa also begins her day with a trip to a flower shop, where she buys roses (herself). Seizing on that connective thread, Mr. Pye spied an opportunity to make the theme of roses “echo, and sort of bounce down the decades.”

“Both Laura and Virginia are wearing rose prints, but I wanted them to be complete opposite ends,” he said. To create the pattern on both Virginia’s and Laura’s dresses, he turned to wallpaper, not textiles, from their periods. For Virginia, he found two promising options, both from the 1920s, in a Smithsonian digital archive.

“I liked the roses on one and the background on another, so I pulled them together and changed every single color,” Mr. Pye said. The result is a custom-printed fabric that, while not vintage in the traditional sense, is nonetheless “very, very ’20s” in spirit. In contrast with the “quite tight, very Deco” florals of Virginia’s dress, Laura’s own “very ’50s” pattern was adapted from a Sanderson wallpaper and features big, splashy roses.

The Silhouettes

The three women of “The Hours” are also distinguished by their costumes’ silhouettes — no two quite alike, and each a reflection of its decade.

The dropped-waist silk dress Mr. Pye created for Virginia would have been a familiar style in the 1920s, with a relaxed feel befitting a woman living and writing in the countryside. “I wanted it to be soft and to have movement,” he said, adding, “the Bloomsbury group were all artists, so it didn’t want to feel too structured.”

There’s a certain postwar extravagance to Laura’s look: With wartime privations largely a memory, a woman like Laura could enjoy a skirt that was full for fullness’s sake. “Suddenly, it’s: ‘Let’s use five times as much fabric as we need to make a skirt, just to enjoy the opulence of that,’” Mr. Pye said.

The nipped-in waist and voluminous skirt of Laura’s house dress hark back to an hourglass silhouette innovated by Christian Dior: “It was that famous Dior dress — the white jacket and the big, full skirt — that was really radical after the ’40s, and after the war. Suddenly we’re going back to something more optimistic.”

For Clarissa, each detail seems to communicate ease and confidence — the rolled-up sleeves, the functional pockets of her skirt.

“There’s certainly a bit of that ’80s power dressing that would’ve continued into the ’90s, particularly for a woman of her status,” Mr. Pye said.

In early conceptions of the character’s costume, Clarissa wore pants. But Ms. Fleming wasn’t crazy about the idea, Mr. Pye said, and it was ultimately dismissed as a bit too on-the-nose.

“This feels stronger,” he said.

[Louis Locero II joined the New York Times Style Section as a senior staff editor in April.  Previously, he covered breaking news for the last four years on the Express team.]