The New Yorker - 11.11.2019

14 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019

It’s hard to imagine anyone entering

the holidays with quite as much to do

as the American mezzo-soprano Joyce

DiDonato, who is as dazzling as she is

hardworking. As one of Carnegie Hall’s

four “Perspectives” artists for 2019-20,

she sings Berlioz’s dramatic “La Mort de

Cléopâtre” with the Chicago Symphony

Orchestra (Nov. 15), some sublime Mo-

zart arias with the Orchestre Métropolit-

ain de Montréal (Nov. 22), and Schubert’s

“Winterreise,” an intense narration across

twenty-four songs, with Yannick Nézet-

Séguin at the piano (Dec. 15). She also

brings Handel’s “Agrippina,” an extrava-

gant historical fiction of Nero’s ascent to

the throne, to the Metropolitan Opera’s

company première (Feb. 6-March 7).

The holidays are a time of splendor

at the Met, with a new staging of Philip

Glass’s “Akhnaten,” starring the counter-

tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (Nov. 8-

Dec. 7), and a revival of Strauss’s “Der

Rosenkavalier,” conducted by Simon

Rattle in a rare appearance (Dec. 13-

Jan. 4). In On Site Opera’s production

of Menotti’s gentle “Amahl and the

Night Visitors,” the three wise men seek

shelter at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen,

where audience members are invited to

donate nonperishable goods (Dec. 4-8).

Menotti wrote the role of Amahl for

the angelic tone of a boy soprano; such

voices distinguish the Saint Thomas

Choir’s performance of Britten’s divine

“Ceremony of Carols” at its namesake

church (Dec. 19).

In the New Year, the New York Phil-

harmonic marks the hundredth anni-

versary of the Nineteenth Amendment,

which extended voting rights to women,

with commissions by nineteen female

composers, starting with Joan La Bar-

bara, Ellen Reid, and Paola Prestini

(Feb. 5-22); Juilliard’s Focus Festival

( Jan. 24-31) programs works by women

born in the wake of the law’s passage.

The city’s new-music festivals also tell

women’s stories, with Ricky Ian Gor-

don’s chamber opera “Ellen West” at

the Prototype Festival ( Jan. 9-19) and

Lucy Dhegrae’s musical investigation

of trauma at National Sawdust’s FERUS

Festival ( Jan. 10-15).

Carnegie Hall offers a bounty of

world-class recitalists, including the pi-

anists Behzod Abduraimov (Dec. 10) and

Yuja Wang (Feb. 28), the bass-baritone

Bryn Terfel (Feb. 9), and the violinist

Maxim Vengerov (Feb. 11). Lincoln

Center’s “American Songbook” series

provides cozier encounters with both

classical and Broadway talent, including

Stephanie Blythe as her drag-king per-

sona, Blythely Oratonio ( Jan. 30), and

the 2019 Tony winners André De Shields

( Jan. 29) and Ali Stroker (Feb. 28).

—Oussama Zahr

CLASSICAL MUSIC

WINTER PREVIEW

Female Composers, Intimate Recitals

ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON LANDREIN

promenading in bizarre, silhouette-altering cos-
tumes. For her first evening-length show, the
vogue dancer and accomplished photographer
Kia LaBeija finds inspiration in the final third
of Schlemmer’s work, the section known as the
“black act.” In LaBeija’s piece “Untitled, the
Black Act,” presented as part of Performa 19,
five dancers represent alternate versions of the
choreographer in outfits by Kyle Luu.—B.S.
(Nov. 7-9.)

Big Dance Theater

N.Y.U. Skirball
The choreographer and dancer Annie-B Parson
may be finding new acclaim for answering the
insanity of our age by getting musicians to
perform Dada pantomime in David Byrne’s
“American Utopia” concert, now on Broadway,
but absurdism has run through the work of
her company, Big Dance Theater, for decades.
The troupe returns in “The Road Awaits Us,”
which riffs on Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano”
in a self-aware pageant about mortality, fea-
turing a cast of dance elders that includes
Bebe Miller, Meg Harper, and Keith Sabado.
Parson’s new “Ballet Dance” takes on ballet in
general, and Balanchine’s “Agon” in particu-
lar.—B.S. (Nov. 8-9.)

Rashaad Newsome

New York Live Arts
On one level, the concept for “Five” sounds
fairly simple. The number refers to the compo-
nents of vogue femme: hand gesture, catwalk,
duckwalk, floor work, spin-and-dip. Performers
mixing these elements are accompanied by a
band, a gospel choir, an opera singer, and a ball-
room-style m.c. Meanwhile, Newsome, using
motion-capture and video-game technology,
incorporates the dancing into digital drawings,
and “Five” grows larger.—B.S. (Nov. 8-9.)

Camille A. Brown

Joyce Theatre
“Mr. TOL E. RAncE,” which premièred in 2013,
is the first installment in a trilogy of dances in
which Brown delves into ideas about race and
identity. In the piece, Brown explores the ste-
reotypes of black performance, from minstrelsy
to depictions of blackness in the current culture.
The dancers, accompanied by snippets of film,
mimic and deconstruct the material, in a struc-
ture akin to a theme and variations. The sumptu-
ous silent-movie-style score is played onstage by
the pianist Scott Patterson.—M.H. (Nov. 9-10.)

Jerron Herman & Molly Joyce

Danspace Project
The dancer Jerron Herman, a strong and
supple standout with Heidy Latsky Dance, is
affected by cerebral palsy on his left side. The
composer-performer Molly Joyce, injured in a
car accident, has limited use of her left hand.
These two artists treat disability as creative
opportunity. In “Breaking and Entering,” they
explore their struggles and their transforma-
tions together—Joyce with ethereal vocals and
an electric toy organ, Herman with his body
in motion. Each performance is followed by a
dance party.—B.S. (Nov. 12-16.)