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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ SU C

BOOK WORLD

Ron Charles reviews the latest

from Stewart O’Nan. C2

VALERY GERGIEV

The Munich Philharmonic fires

the pro-Putin conductor. C4

MARLENA SLOSS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

X iaochen

Yang views

holographic

artwork at

an immersive

NFT exhibit

at the San

Francisco

Mint.

BY MICHAEL ANDOR BRODEUR

new york — Before plunging us nearly

five hours deep and as many centuries

back into Verdi’s 1867 masterpiece “Don

Carlos,” Metropolitan Opera General

Manager Peter Gelb wanted to ensure we

were all firmly seated in the present.

“The plot of ‘Don Carlos’ deals with one

of the d arkest periods in h istory, t he Span-

ish inquisition,” he said from the stage

Monday, before curtains rose. “Here we

are five centuries later, and we seem to be

just as uncivilized, watching helplessly in

horror as Ukraine is subjected to the

tragic terrors of a war it doesn’t deserve.”

The remarks were in keeping with a

video statement released by the Met on

Sunday, in which Gelb flatly stated the

company “can no longer engage with art-

ists or institutions that support Putin or

are supported by him.” B ut here they w ere

tempered by a somber acknowledgment

of lives already lost, in the form of a

moment of silence.

The Metropolitan Opera Chorus then

took the stage, with Ukrainian bass-

baritone Vlad Buialskiy front and center.

Buialskiy, a second-year a rtist in the Met’s

Lindemann Young Artist Development

Program (and who would appear deeper

into the evening as the Flemish Deputy in

“Don Carlos”), had earlier trained his col-

leagues in the proper pronunciation of

“Shche n e vmerla Ukrainy,” the Ukrainian

national anthem (composed in 1863 by

Mykhailo Verbytsky). The Chorus’s rendi-

tion roared — a forecast of the force they

would bring to the opera’s monumental

third act — and t he h ouse sprung to its f eet

(if a bit uncertain what to do with their

hands).

Perhaps the plainer parallel between

Verdi’s tale of a doomed betrothal and the

Met’s desire to be e xplicit in its support f or

Ukraine is that b oth have the makings of a

royal mess. Already we’ve seen the Rus-

SEE OPERA ON C3

OPERA REVIEW

Reflections of

today’s world

in the Met’s

‘Don Carlos’

Women’s show

of strength is

very different

from Putin’s

A marker of the current

hell of Ukraine can be

found on the Instagram

page of former Miss

Ukraine Anastasiia

Lenna. A few weeks ago

Lenna’s social media had

the tawny content one

might expect from

someone with her title.

She demonstrated advanced yoga,

arranged flowers and posed in sequins

against a variety of city landscapes. For

Valentine’s Day, she wore a pink

bathing suit and cradled a bouquet of

roses.

In one of Lenna’s most recent

photos, posted over the weekend, she

wore protective goggles and khaki

pants and she cradled what looked like

an assault-style weapon. She hash-

tagged the photo, #handsoffukraine.

This photograph was as carefully

staged as the others — a pageant

winner knows how to find her good

lighting whether she’s holding roses or

guns — but that only made the

symbolism of the image even starker:

The beauty queens have taken up arms.

Commenters on Lenna’s photo

question whether her rifle is real; she’s

said she participates in airsoft sports,

and this might have been a piece of

sporting equipment. But if her post was

a symbolic call to arms, there are plenty

of other women who have felt the call

literally.

“Nobody thought this is how we

would spend our weekend,” a teacher

from the town of Dnipro told a

cameraman as she and her neighbors

made molotov cocktails.

“I planned to plant tulips and

daffodils on my backyard today.

Instead, I learn to fire arms and get

ready for the next night of attacks on

Kyiv,” tweeted Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian

SEE HESSE ON C5

Monica

Hesse

“ Are we in the metaverse right now?” I ask the man in line behind me. We’ve been waiting about 30

minutes to be outfitted with holographic glasses that will make 3D digital images appear in rooms

that, to the naked eye, look empty.

Once we have on our glasses, a whimsical forest with falling origami-shaped

leaves appears in one room, the skull of Abraham Lincoln in another. A horse

neighs down the hall. As we wait, a child twirls around a virtual ballerina as his

parent cautions him to look out for the flesh-and-blood humans.

We’re at Verse, an art exhibit where nothing is nailed to the walls and visitors

can walk right through the digital images before them. It’s held at the Mint, a

stately building in downtown San Francisco. In the 1870s, the Mint was said to have housed nearly

one-third o f the n ation’s w ealth. T he vaults that once held g old are now b are, a nd the b rick-walled space

is a backdrop for weddings, haunted houses and tonight’s display of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

SEE MEMO ON C3

BY LISA BONOS

IN SAN FRANCISCO

MEMO

NFTs, virtually visualized

At a San Francisco museum’s exhibition, a peek at the metaverse

BY PETER MARKS

new york — “English” is one of those
invigoratingly funny and perceptively
drawn plays that satisfies a curiosity you
didn’t know you harbored. That is, what
are the aspirations of the ordinary citi-
zens of a country whose government
paints us as the enemy?
You encounter in Sanaz Toossi’s ab-
sorbing seriocomedy, mounted impecca-
bly by director Knud Adams for off-
Broadway’s Atlantic Theater Company, a
cross-section of middle-class Iranians in
a city just west of Tehran who could be
the people in the house next door to you.
And isn’t that often what good theater

ideally seeks to convey? The adult stu-

dents in the English class taught by

Marjan (Marjan Neshat) want what ev-

eryone wants: safety, material comfort,

proximity to loved ones, career advance-

ment, everyday joy, a sense of belonging.

These desires are filtered in Toossi’s

character-driven drama through the re-

lationships the teacher and her charges

develop with a foreign tongue — in this

instance, a language that represents both

opportunity and access. For Elham (Tala

Ashe), for example, fluency leads to qual-

ifying for a graduate program in Aus-

tralia; for Roya (Pooya Mohseni), it fig-

ures in a reunion with her Westernized

SEE THEATER ON C3

THEATER REVIEW

The language of opportunity

avoids cliches in ‘English’

AHRON R. FOSTER

From left, Tala Ashe, Pooya Mohseni, Marjan Neshat, Hadi Tabbal and Ava

Lalezarzadeh in Atlantic Theater Company’s production of “English.”