A new golden era for opera begins at the Met
Once viewed as a static art form, opera is being revitalised with contemporary stories and fresh perspectives to connect with modern audiences.
From groundbreaking productions like Grounded to the passion of young singers from around the globe, The Met embraces change while preserving opera's timeless ability to ground us as human beings.
The Metropolitan Opera's Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and General Manager Peter Gelb discuss the bright future of the art form alongside lauded tenor Benjamin Bernheim.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
26 minutes ago
- The Sun
Love Island fans beg bosses to axe islander after ‘cruel' comment to one girl
LOVE Island fans have begged bosses to axe Ben Holbrough after his cruel comment to Toni Laites on tonight's show. ITV2 viewers were left open-mouthed when Ben told some of his fellow Islanders that US Toni had given him the "ick". 4 4 4 It came after he snapped at her when she told him to "not make it all about himself". He then told Shakira in the kitchen that Toni had given him the "ick" and that there was no spark between them. After Shakira told Toni what Ben had said, the Connecticut based beauty pulled Ben aside for a chat, where he brutally ended their romantic connection. But those watching at home were gobsmacked at his brutal approach and have begged for him to be axed next. One wrote: "Ben is a loser, get him off Love Island." A second posted: "Ben is unnecessarily cruel, it's giving negging & all the red flags." A third said: "I feel so bad for Toni, Ben is VILE." "I wish I could vote Ben off right now," a fourth commented. The fallout came after Ben admitted she gave him the 'ick' after her reaction to Sophie Lee being sent home. Shock moment Love Island cast realise two islanders who AREN'T coupled up have secretly gone to the Hideaway after VERY awkward lapdance As the Islanders are still reeling about Shakira Khan choosing Harry Cooksley, Toni said: 'Boys, it's your turn, just saying - I don't think you're gonna be safe.' Ben replied: 'Are you saying me in particular?' Toni added: 'No it's about boys, not everything is about you.' Her comments didn't go down well with Ben and he walked off - leaving the others surprised by his reaction. Meg later told him: 'That was a bit much…I don't get what she said that was really offensive?' Ben replied: 'She said, 'Not everything is about you…' I just got the ick.' Ben then told Shakira he'd got the ick with Toni and Shakira lets Toni know about this and suggests she pulls him for a chat. Toni does exactly that and asks Ben: 'I've heard from people you said I'm giving you the ick?' It quickly turned sour and he told her: 'I don't feel like me and you have got that spark if I am being honest.' Looking taken aback she replied 'okay' as he continued: 'That is just me being honest but I know when I have got it with someone. That I feel it straight away. But yeah I don't feel like you and me have got it.' Toni told him: 'I mean I don't think that technique is going to work for you here.' He asked what she means and she replied: 'Right away off the bat.' Smirking, he responded: 'You'd be surprised. I feel like sparks have already been made.' A very unhappy Toni hits back: 'Good luck pal.' Ben asked Shakira to join him in the Hideaway for a chat, where he admitted he fancied her. 4
Daily Mail
26 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Beloved 80s sitcom star re-emerges as LA ICE protester clad in terrifying outfit
Eighties sitcom actress Jodie Sweetin has been seen among protesters at the Los Angeles riots as they spiraled out of control this week. The Full House star was spotted by fans despite wearing all-black with a baseball hat, ski goggles, and a Covid-style face covering over her mouth. One person excitedly filmed her walking among protesters with a megaphone before sharing the 13-second clip on TikTok. The fan shouted to get Sweetin's attention, and she said: 'Hey man, what's up?' and gave a thumbs-up before returning to the scene. Sweetin confirmed she was behind the terrifying mask 'on the front lines in LA' in response to a fan's Instagram post praising the former child star for using her 'platform to speak against these unlawful ICE kidnappings'. 'Thank youuuuuu!! Much love', Sweetin said. Self-described activist Sweetin, 43, is a regular face at progressive protests in California. She has marched for issues including trans rights and abortion access. The actress hit the headlines in June 2022 when a video surfaced showing LAPD officers throwing her to the ground during an abortion rights protest. Sweetin was among a large group of protesters marching on a freeway in response to the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade that summer. Video showed officers pushing Sweetin back toward the crowd, causing her to stumble over the curb and into the freeway where a group of protesters caught her. Sweetin has also been sharing content about the LA riots via her Instagram account, including a list of related social justice organizations looking for donations. Demonstrators are protesting against Trump's immigration policies, which they said are breaking migrant families apart. LA-born Sweetin is best known for starring as Stephanie Tanner in the ABC comedy show Full House, and its Netflix sequel series, Fuller House. The LA riots erupted on Friday, June 6, in response to sweeping immigration raids conducted by ICE agents in the city. Demonstrations were initially peaceful, but they escalated into lawlessness and violence when some protestors lit vehicles on fire and looted stores. The first day of protests began outside a manufacturing business where ICE agents appeared to be detaining two truckloads full of people. A crowd gathered at the scene to try to stop the trucks from leaving, but they did not succeed despite one person even laying in front of the vehicles. Later on Friday, a large group gathered outside the US Courthouse in downtown LA demanding an end to the immigration raids in the city. Video shows protesters vandalizing the building while launching projectiles at police officers, who used shields to defend themselves from flying objects. At 10pm on Friday, the LAPD called the protest an 'unlawful assembly' and asked people to leave the area. But the protests only swelled in size over the next few days, and turned increasingly violent. One man was seen waving a Mexican flag while riding a dirt bike in donuts around a burning vehicle, while cops fired tear gas into a crowd. The protests spilled over into nearby Compton and San Francisco, and by the evening of June 7 Donald Trump had sent 2,000 National Guard members to disperse the gatherings in LA. But demonstrators stayed on the streets throughout Saturday night into Sunday, with some launching what LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell described as deadly 'commercial grade fireworks' at officers. On Monday, 700 US Marines joined the fray. LA Mayor Karen Bass said 23 businesses were looted during that day alone. Local authorities imposed a curfew from 8pm until 6am in an effort to clear the streets, while California Democrats fought with the federal government about how to police the riots. Trump favored a heavy-handed approach and even said it would be 'great' if his border tsar Tom Homan arrested California Governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom hit back by challenging Homan to arrest him, while slamming Trump's decision to deploy troops in LA as fulfilling 'the deranged fantasy of a dictatorial president'. The protests in LA are ongoing, and have inspired anti-ICE demonstrations other cities including New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. Some demonstrations involved a few dozen people, while others attracted thousands.
The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Brian Wilson obituary
Waves of two kinds characterised the career of Brian Wilson, who has died aged 82. The first, to be found breaking on the surfing beaches of Southern California, provided the inspiration for the songs – Surfin' USA, Surfin' Safari, Surfer Girl – with which he and his group, the Beach Boys, achieved their early fame, defining an American teenage subculture that became a universal dream. The second was the giant wave of affection that greeted him in every concert hall around the world during a late-career comeback, when grateful audiences left a damaged figure in no doubt of the lasting value of his life's work. If Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington were geniuses of American musical composition, then so was Wilson. Emerging from the garage of a family home in a humdrum Los Angeles suburb where he, his two brothers, a cousin and a friend formed the band that achieved worldwide hits with I Get Around, California Girls and Good Vibrations, he developed into a musician of outstanding range and imagination, particularly gifted in the adventurous manipulation of vocal harmonies but also capable of devising instrumental pieces that ventured into structural and textural territory far beyond the normal frontiers of pop music. Wilson's early music, conceived in a climate that provided a natural home for open-top sports cars and drive-in movie theatres, was lit by the California sun. But right from the start it also had a darker, more anxious side. He had just celebrated his 21st birthday when his song In My Room expressed, via a lyric written by his friend Gary Usher, his uncertainty in the face of the adult world and its expectations. Even when the waves were at their most inviting, some of Wilson's songs contained an undertow of knowledge that the good times of youth come to an end: 'Won't last forever' went the insistent background chorus to When I Grow Up (To Be a Man), a hit for the Beach Boys in 1964, when its composer was only 22. As the first tortured genius of the 1960s pop music explosion, Wilson sometimes gave the impression that he would also become its first victim. While creating expressions of youthful rapture, he was suffering episodes of personal unhappiness and confusion, which culminated in a lengthy period of seclusion and therapy. But if he would never again match the magical quality of his early masterpieces, he survived his difficulties to tour the world in later life, performing his classic songs to audiences happy to get the chance to register their affection and, through their applause, to help soothe his old wounds. The evolution of his talent had been accelerated in the mid-60s by the transatlantic competition between the Beach Boys and the Beatles. The two bands listened with respect and fascination to advance copies of each other's albums; when Wilson heard Rubber Soul in December 1965, it stimulated him to create the following year's Pet Sounds, the album containing God Only Knows, the song that Paul McCartney later described as one of the greatest ever written. The rivalry may have contributed to pressures that eventually proved intolerable. But in the six short years between his first blithe hymns to California beach culture and the sophistication and complexity of Heroes and Villains and Surf's Up, Wilson produced a body of work of a richness and originality unparalleled in its field, and even more remarkable in the light of the tensions and conflicts that lay behind its creation. He was born in Inglewood, California, the first of three sons of Murry Wilson, a would-be songwriter who earned his living by working on the production line at the nearby Goodyear tyre factory, and his wife, Audree (nee Korthof). Married when they were 21 and 20 respectively, both parents played the piano. The arrival of a second son prompted a move in 1944 to Hawthorne, a town in the south-west of Los Angeles county, then with a population of 10,000, within easy reach of Manhattan beach and the Pacific ocean. According to Brian, he and his brothers, Dennis and Carl, were subjected to physical and mental abuse by their impatient and irascible father, who lived out his thwarted ambitions through his sons while constantly belittling their achievements. 'My dad's tirades were unending,' he claimed in a controversial 1991 autobiography, Wouldn't It Be Nice. 'The effects these outbursts had on me was severe. By the time I started elementary school, I was nervous and high-strung, withdrawn and frightened of almost everything. I expected everyone to yell at me or threaten me.' He was also completely deaf in his right ear, although whether through a birth defect or from one of his father's regular beatings he was never sure; its origin was 'lost and buried among my family's many skeletons'. As well as saving him from the Vietnam draft, his deafness meant that the inventor of sumptuous chorales and instrumental tone poems would never be able to hear his music in stereo. The three Wilson boys grew up with music. Brian learned the piano and the accordion, listened to doo-wop, R&B and the Everly Brothers on the radio, and sang in his school choir, until his pure falsetto voice drew taunts. His sensitive, easily bruised temperament was already seemingly at odds with his tall build, his early prowess at sport (baseball and gridiron football in particular) and his love of goofy horseplay. His younger brothers formed a striking contrast: Dennis the irresponsible golden youth, devoted to surfing, hot rods and the pursuit of beach girls; Carl a gentler soul who took on the role of conciliator. In 1961 the three brothers formed a group, with Brian on bass guitar, Dennis on drums and Carl on lead guitar. Their neighbour Al Jardine played rhythm guitar and their older cousin Mike Love sang, as they all did. Calling themselves the Pendletones, after a brand of plaid shirts popular among local teens, they already had been turned down by one Los Angeles record company when they visited Hite and Dorinda Morgan, a husband-and-wife team who were friends of the Wilsons' parents and ran a small label from an office in Hollywood. Favourably impressed by their cover versions of current hits, the Morgans suggested that they needed to come up with their own songs, preferably with an original theme. Returning to the Morgans' office a few days later, the group brought with them a simple but catchy song called Surfin', with a melody by Brian and a lyric by Love, prompted by Dennis's enthusiasm for his hobby. At the suggestion of a promotion man, the Pendletones became the Beach Boys in time for the release of the record, which became a regional hit and led to an approach from Capitol Records, with whom the group quickly signed a contract. Their next 45s, Surfin' Safari and Surfin' USA, took them into the upper reaches of the national charts. If those initial up-tempo successes illustrated Brian's debt to Chuck Berry (whose Sweet Little Sixteen was the template for Surfin' USA), the next hit showed a different side of the young songwriter's talent. Surfer Girl, a dreamy ballad with adventurous close harmonies, displayed the influence of the Four Freshmen, but with a teenage sensibility. The lovestruck lyric was Wilson's own work, inspired by his feelings for a girlfriend. The B-side, the up-tempo Little Deuce Coupe, was also a hit, and found Wilson collaborating with a new lyricist, the disc jockey Roger Christian, who proved adept at celebrating the group's other shared interest besides surfing and girls: the California culture of hot rods and drag racing. A third major influence, the lavish production style of Phil Spector, would emerge in another Wilson-Christian collaboration, the sublime Don't Worry Baby, in 1964. Fear of the ocean meant that Brian was no surfer, but he loved cars and girls. In November 1964, aged 22, he married the 16-year-old Marilyn Rovell, who, with her elder sister Diane and their cousin Ginger Blake, had formed a vocal group called the Honeys, on whom Brian would sharpen his production skills. They had begun dating two years earlier, and Brian proposed by phone while on tour with the group, on landing in Australia after a mid-air panic attack that proved a harbinger of problems to come. It would not be long before Brian staged a successful revolt against the crude attempts of his father to control every aspect of their career through playing the parts of manager, promotion man and – particularly unwelcome – adviser on songwriting and record production. Murry's financial generosity had provided his teenaged sons with their first instruments, as well as cars and surfboards, but he derided the songs about what he saw as silly, ephemeral subjects, and fined them for such offences as hanging out with girls ($50), swearing ($100) and not setting up their equipment fast enough (also $100). He was fired by the group following an argument at the 1964 session at which they recorded I Get Around, their first No 1. But he still retained control of their song publishing company, and five years later, to Brian's fury, he sold their copyrights for $700,000; within a few years they would be worth many millions. At the very peak of their success, however, Brian was exhibiting symptoms of instability. He had always suffered from nerves on stage, and after another in-flight breakdown the group decided to replace him for live appearances. The session musician Glen Campbell, not yet a solo star, was their first choice, with another friend, Bruce Johnston, eventually becoming the long-term replacement. Freed from the terrors of the road, the group's chief songwriter was able to spend increasing amounts of time in the recording studio. That was where he was happiest, collaborating with the cream of Hollywood's session musicians, who were intrigued by his unorthodox imagination. They responded by pouring their own creativity into his sessions, responding to his desire to introduce new sounds. Soon Beach Boys records were featuring the bass harmonica, the accordion, and bottles and cans transformed into percussion instruments. His intention, he later claimed, was 'to redraw the entire map of pop music'. Hints of the different approach evident in two massive hits, Help Me Rhonda and California Girls, came into full bloom in Pet Sounds, where a cover version of Sloop John B – suggested by Jardine, who had started out as a folk singer – represented the only acknowledgement of the style that had made them famous and provided them with another hit single. But now, rather than zestful and optimistic songs about cars and surfing, it was the yearning ballads with their chromatic melodies, unexpected harmonic shifts and delicate instrumental textures – the heart-melting Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, I Know There's An Answer and Caroline, No – that set the tone. Not all the members of the group were delighted by the new approach, which they rightly suspected to have been rooted in Brian's first experience of LSD: an undiluted dose taken in the spring of 1965 which left him, in the words of his biographer Tim White, both exhilarated and distraught, and never quite the same again. Love, in particular, despised the introspective lyrics supplied by Tony Asher, an advertising copywriter who found precisely the right words to match the swooning poetry of Wilson's melodies. As the group's extrovert front man, Love wanted to stay with the simple formula that had worked so well, and was not reluctant to express his opinion in the most caustic terms. A rift opened, and it would never be fully closed. A mixed reception for Pet Sounds in the US (although it was acclaimed in Britain) indicated to Love that he was in the right, and Brian's next project, a song cycle originally titled Dumb Angel and later known as SMiLE, proved even more divisive. Love provided the hippy-trippy words for Good Vibrations, the epic product of 30 separate studio sessions, but he balked at the new style of free-associative lyrics supplied by Van Dyke Parks, a 23-year-old former child actor and musical prodigy, for the other songs, whose melodies Brian composed at a grand piano placed in a sand-box specially built in the dining room of his Beverly Hills house. Famously, Love found it impossible to get his head around 'Over and over / The crow flies / Uncover the cornfield' (from the song Cabin Essence). The orchestrations for these new multi-sectioned songs were becoming ever more elaborate and eccentric, culminating in Brian's insistence that the session musicians playing on a piece called The Elements: Fire, a strident cacophony intended to evoke the conflagration that devastated Chicago in 1871, should do so wearing plastic firemen's helmets bought by Marilyn at a children's shop. A real fire across the street after the session, followed by an outbreak of blazes in Los Angeles, seemed a bad omen, but the real reason for the abandonment of SMiLE was the internal strife that disheartened first Parks, who walked away from the project, and then Wilson. Brian's increasing dependence on drugs – marijuana, LSD, and eventually and most damagingly cocaine – destroyed what had once been an exemplary work ethic; now he stayed at home in his new Bel Air mansion with his wife and two small daughters, rising late, eating junk food and playing Spector's records over and over again to the occasional visitor. There was concern as the weight of the man who had once owned a Hollywood health-food store called The Radiant Radish ballooned until, still in his early 30s, he weighed more than 109 kg (17st 2lb). Remnants of the aborted SMiLE project were released under the title Smiley Smile, and Good Vibrations became a No 1 hit around the world, but Brian's contributions to the group's subsequent albums diminished along with their mass popularity, even though there were occasional new jewels, veering from the euphoria of This Whole World and to the almost unbearable poignancy of Til I Die. Not even an appearance at Fillmore East in New York alongside the Grateful Dead and the long awaited release of the legendary Surf's Up – based on a solo version performed for Leonard Bernstein on a US TV show – on an album of the same name in 1971 could fully restore the Beach Boys' fortunes. At Wembley Stadium on midsummer's day in 1975 they performed a magical set that briefly reminded 50,000 people who had turned up to hear Elton John of the timeless joy of their music, but of Brian there was no sign. Patchy reunion albums, managerial upheavals, Brian and Marilyn's divorce, artistic and financial disagreements between Love and the Wilsons, peacemaking efforts by Carl, Dennis's death by drowning in 1983 and the departure of Jardine punctuated the years leading up to the appearance, in 1988, of an excellent solo album led off by a fine song, Love and Mercy, in which Brian seemed to have made peace with his demons. For six years he had been in the care of Eugene Landy, a psychotherapist who insisted on 24-hour care and control of his clients. In Brian's case he also assumed the functions of manager, co-songwriter and record producer, earning fees of about $300,000 a year for his work, as well as royalties. Wilson's autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice was ghostwritten under Landy's supervision and later disowned by its subject. Landy's success in persuading Brian to lose weight and give up recreational drugs helped to avert a possible early death, but many believed that his use of other forms of medication had turned his patient into a muted, zombie-like creature: the inmate of a prison without walls. But in 1986, while browsing in a Cadillac showroom, Brian met a saleswoman, Melinda Ledbetter, with whom he struck up a relationship. As depicted in the 2014 feature film Love & Mercy, in which the youthful and older versions of Brian were played by Paul Dano and John Cusack, she helped free him from the clutches of Landy, who was eventually charged with unethical behaviour and improper prescription of drugs, losing his licence to practise. Wilson married Ledbetter in 1995. His new wife became his new manager, supervising a revival that took wing in 1998, when – shortly after his brother Carl's death from lung cancer – he toured the world performing Pet Sounds in its entirety, with the skilled members of a Los Angeles band, the Wondermints, taking the place of the original Beach Boys. (The performances were repeated in 2016, on a tour marking the album's 50th anniversary.) In 2002 he appeared in the garden of Buckingham Palace, performing God Only Knows at Queen Elizabeth II's golden jubilee celebration. Two years later he chose the Royal Festival Hall in London for the world premiere of the painstakingly reconstructed SMiLE, giving a triumphant performance prefaced by a standing ovation for Van Dyke Parks, who was in the audience. A new recording of the piece was released to further acclaim, followed by the appearance of the original version, pieced together from the 1967 recordings. Several solo albums followed, featuring new songs of variable quality and guest appearances from such admirers as Elton John and McCartney. Witnesses to his post-comeback appearances would sometimes be disconcerted by occasional signs of strain and bemusement, and that angelic voice had lost most of its youthful range and flexibility. Nevertheless in every concert there were moments when he came to life and demonstrated that he could share the audience's enjoyment of bathing in the still-sunkissed warmth of a seemingly endless string of great songs, the products of one of the most fertile and innovative musical minds of his time. Melinda died in January 2024. Two weeks later Wilson's management team applied for a conservatorship order, following a diagnosis of dementia. He is survived by the two daughters of his first marriage, Wendy and Carnie, by five adopted children – the daughters Daria, Delanie and Dakota, and the sons Dylan and Dash – and by six grandchildren. Brian Wilson, songwriter and singer, born 20 June 1942; died 11 June 2025
