Levine Returns to the Met

He’s back.

James Levine returned to the pit of the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night for the first time since he was sidelined by injury more than two years ago, and before he even lifted his baton he was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted a minute and nine seconds.

Mr. Levine gave the effusive crowd a wave, turned his motorized wheelchair around to face the orchestra he has helped shape for more than 40 years, and began conducting his 2,443rd performance at the Met â€" Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte.”

It was his first performance at the Met since he suffered a spinal injury in a fall two years ago that makes walking difficult. So Mr. Levine entered the pit on a motorized wheelchair and used a series of lifts and ramps installed by Met technicians to clear his path to a rising mechanical podium, called the “maestro lift,” that he conducted from. 

Mr. Levine, 70, said during a recent interview that he was eagerly looking forward to returning to the house he is most closely associated with. (He played a concert at Carnegie Hall last spring.)

“This is such an amazing company,” Mr. Levine said after a session during the pre-season rehearsal period, as he prepared to make his return. “This is such a large number of dedicated artists under one roof, perhaps the largest single group under one roof in the world. Surely it’s one of them.”

Mr. Levine said that after a long run of ill health, surgeries, and rehabilitation therapy, he felt fortunate to get the chance to return to doing what he loves and feels most cut out for: making music.

“If someone asks me what’s the difference between conducting opera, and conducting symphonic repertoire or playing chamber repertoire â€" the answer is the differences are only technical,’’ he said. “Musically it’s all the same. It’s physically different to conduct opera than to play a piano quintet or a lieder recital or conduct a symphony. But I think other than that, the thing you’re actually trying to do is remarkably the same: you’re looking for your best way of arriving at the composer’s intention and communicating it to the listener. Very much easier said than done!”

Levine Returns to the Met

He’s back.

James Levine returned to the pit of the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night for the first time since he was sidelined by injury more than two years ago, and before he even lifted his baton he was greeted with a standing ovation that lasted a minute and nine seconds.

Mr. Levine gave the effusive crowd a wave, turned his motorized wheelchair around to face the orchestra he has helped shape for more than 40 years, and began conducting his 2,443rd performance at the Met â€" Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte.”

It was his first performance at the Met since he suffered a spinal injury in a fall two years ago that makes walking difficult. So Mr. Levine entered the pit on a motorized wheelchair and used a series of lifts and ramps installed by Met technicians to clear his path to a rising mechanical podium, called the “maestro lift,” that he conducted from. 

Mr. Levine, 70, said during a recent interview that he was eagerly looking forward to returning to the house he is most closely associated with. (He played a concert at Carnegie Hall last spring.)

“This is such an amazing company,” Mr. Levine said after a session during the pre-season rehearsal period, as he prepared to make his return. “This is such a large number of dedicated artists under one roof, perhaps the largest single group under one roof in the world. Surely it’s one of them.”

Mr. Levine said that after a long run of ill health, surgeries, and rehabilitation therapy, he felt fortunate to get the chance to return to doing what he loves and feels most cut out for: making music.

“If someone asks me what’s the difference between conducting opera, and conducting symphonic repertoire or playing chamber repertoire â€" the answer is the differences are only technical,’’ he said. “Musically it’s all the same. It’s physically different to conduct opera than to play a piano quintet or a lieder recital or conduct a symphony. But I think other than that, the thing you’re actually trying to do is remarkably the same: you’re looking for your best way of arriving at the composer’s intention and communicating it to the listener. Very much easier said than done!”

Michelle Obama Visits Studio Museum in Harlem

Tina Fineberg/Associated Press Michelle Obama at the Studio Museum on Tuesday.

As President Obama attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama hosted an event for dozens of the spouses of chiefs of state and heads of government at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

The event included her own tour of the museum, performances by Audra McDonald, the Dance Theater of Harlem and students from the Fiorella H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and a luncheon at which Mrs. Obama spoke. Her remarks focused on the importance of the arts in Harlem in expressing the complexity and struggle of African-Americans and she also spoke of the importance of education everywhere.

“There’s a reason why I wanted to bring you all to Harlem today and that is because this community is infused with the kind of energy and passion that is quintessentially American but that has also touched so many people around the world,” she said. She mentioned such artists as Louis Armstrong, Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Fitzgerald. She read from Hughes’s poem “Dreams”: “Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

Mrs. Obama noted that many of the women assembled have devoted significant time to improving the lives of women and girls in their countries, especially when it comes to education. “When both boys and girls have an equal opportunity to learn we all know that it’s not just good for our children, it’s also good for their families and it’s also good for their countries,” she said.

She added that students must also take responsibility for their own educations. Earlier, wearing a blue and white sheath designed by Carolina Herrera, Mrs. Obama stood in a receiving line in the sculpture garden of the museum at 144 West 125th Street, located on the commercial spine of Harlem. She traded kisses, hugged, shook hands and posed for photographs with 44 spouses from countries as varied as Samoa, Monaco, Pakistan and Poland. In all, 49 spouses attended the event.

The luncheon was held in the main gallery of the museum, a white room of track lighting and wooden floors. Surrounding the round tables was a selection of paintings by the Houston artist Robert Pruitt, whose exhibition “Women” will be on display at the museum until Oct. 27. The large canvases all feature black women adorned with references from art history to comic books, created with a kind of crayon on craft butcher paper.

The lunch was provided by Marcus Samuelsson, the celebrity chef who owns the popular Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem. The menu included arugula salad, shrimp and dirty rice and banana pudding parfait. Mrs. Obama thanked Mr. Samuelsson and told the women that they would be sent home with a gift basket that included his recipes.

Washington Spy Museum Eyes New Home

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press The International Spy Museum’s current home.

The popular International Spy Museum in Washington is only 11 years old, but it is already looking to move into bigger quarters at a redeveloped Carnegie Library, The Associated Press reported.

The proposal would include a 40,000 square-foot underground space as well as an above-ground glass-enclosed visitors center, museum store and cafe.

Peter Earnest, the museum’s executive director, said the institution needs more space, particularly for temporary and changing exhibits. “That’s actually one of the reasons people go back to museums, because there’s an exhibit for usually a limited period of time for something interesting,” he said.

The museum, not far from Ford’s Theater at 800 F Street NW, already draws 600,000 to 700,000 visitors a year, despite its $19.95 admission fee, an anomaly in the nation’s capital, where most museums are free.

The redevelopment plan, done in conjunction with Events DC, the city’s convention center authority, would be the centerpiece of a new entertainment and cultural district, said Gregory O’Dell, Events DC’s president. The museum would share the redeveloped library with the Historical Society of Washington at 801 K Street NW, a few blocks from the museum’s current site.

Washington Spy Museum Eyes New Home

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press The International Spy Museum’s current home.

The popular International Spy Museum in Washington is only 11 years old, but it is already looking to move into bigger quarters at a redeveloped Carnegie Library, The Associated Press reported.

The proposal would include a 40,000 square-foot underground space as well as an above-ground glass-enclosed visitors center, museum store and cafe.

Peter Earnest, the museum’s executive director, said the institution needs more space, particularly for temporary and changing exhibits. “That’s actually one of the reasons people go back to museums, because there’s an exhibit for usually a limited period of time for something interesting,” he said.

The museum, not far from Ford’s Theater at 800 F Street NW, already draws 600,000 to 700,000 visitors a year, despite its $19.95 admission fee, an anomaly in the nation’s capital, where most museums are free.

The redevelopment plan, done in conjunction with Events DC, the city’s convention center authority, would be the centerpiece of a new entertainment and cultural district, said Gregory O’Dell, Events DC’s president. The museum would share the redeveloped library with the Historical Society of Washington at 801 K Street NW, a few blocks from the museum’s current site.

Scholar Says He’s Found New Photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg

Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division/Courtesy of Christopher Oakley The highlighted figure in the crowd is Lincoln, according to Christopher Oakley, a professor of new media at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Abraham Lincoln’s appearance at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863, has been remembered in the roughly 270 ringing words he spoke that day and exactly one undisputed photograph.

But now, a scholar is claiming he has identified another image of Lincoln from that occasion: a tiny, dark-suited speck in a wide shot of the crowd, his head slightly bowed.

Christopher Oakley, a professor of new media at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, made the discovery, which was reported in the October issue of Smithsonian magazine, while working with a group of students on the Virtual Lincoln Project. That project, which includes a detailed digital reconstruction of the Gettysburg ceremony, involved looking at the nine known photographs from that day, as well as the roughly 130 known photographs of Lincoln from other occasions.

It was while looking at a much-scrutinized photograph taken by Alexander Gardner that a familiar face, belonging to a figure standing near a man Mr. Oakley had newly identified as Secretary of State William Seward, leaped out.

“It sank in very quickly,” Mr. Oakley, a former Disney animator, said in a telephone interview. “I jumped back from my desk and did a little historian’s happy dance.”

Mr. Oakley is not the first person to spot Lincoln among the throngs in Gardner’s photograph. In 2007, an amateur historian named John Richter drew headlines, and some vigorous rebuttals, when he announced that a different figure on the left-hand side of the photograph â€" a stovepipe-hatted man on a horse, with his back turned to the camera â€" was Lincoln.

But the image examined by Mr. Richter was actually one of two very similar stereoscopic images taken by Gardner that day, which were made simultaneously with two different lenses set about three inches apart, and would result in a kind of 3-D image when combined through a viewfinder. It was while looking at a highly magnified detail from the less damaged left-hand image, only recently scanned by the Library of Congress (and which Mr. Richter had not examined), that Mr. Oakley found further evidence supporting his own claim.

The man on the horse, Mr. Oakley argues, cannot be Lincoln, since the new scan reveals that he is wearing epaulets, which Lincoln would not have worn. And his own positive identification of Lincoln has drawn tentative support from some prominent scholars, including some, like Harold Holzer, the chair of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, who had previously supported Mr. Richter’s claims.

“It’s like ‘Law and Order,’” Mr. Holzer told Smithsonian. “You keep enhancing an image until you see the suspect.”

Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division/Courtesy of Christopher Oakley One of two very similar stereoscopic images taken by Alexander Gardner.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor Wins Polaris Prize

Willie Davis for The New York Times Godspeed You! Black Emperor performing in Brooklyn in 2011.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the reclusive Montreal musical collective, won the prestigious Polaris Music Prize on Monday for their first album in ten years, then snubbed organizers of the awards by not showing up to accept it, CTV reported.

The Polaris prize goes to the best Canadian album of the year. The group’s “Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” beat out a strong field that included the Toronto band Metric, Purity Ring and the duo Tegan and Sara.

But when last year’s winner, Feist, announced the results at a gala dinner in Toronto on Monday, none of the band members were present. Instead, an executive from the group’s label, Constellation Records, climbed on stage and announced the band intended to devote the $30,000 in prize money to buying instruments for people in Quebec’s prisons. The band posted an explanation online, saying that corporate sponsorship of the Polaris Prize and the atmosphere of government austerity made it inappropriate to attend. Additionally, the band wrote, “Organizing a gala just so musicians can compete against each other for a novelty-sized cheque doesn’t serve the cause of righteous music at all.”

Godspeed You! Black Emperor became well-known during the late ’90s and early 2000s for its wall-of-sound performances and its do-it-yourself esthetics. The members rarely give interviews. They released a handful of records before announcing an indefinite hiatus in 2003. Then they returned to touring in December 2010 and began working on “Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” which was released in in October 2012 and received positive reviews.

Seven of 10 nominees, including Godspeed, appeared on the Polaris short list for the first time. The list had no former winners or clear front-runners. An 11-person jury decides the winner; the short list of 10 album-of-the-year contenders is selected by about 200 music journalists, bloggers and broadcasters across Canada, who are asked to choose records strictly on merit, with no consideration for sales or airplay.

Robert Johnson’s Family Fights in Court Over Photo Rights

Greg Jenson/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated Press Claud Johnson, the son of the blues guitarist Robert Johnson, with his son Michael Johnson and one of the two known images of his father.

There are only two known photographs of the great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, whose songs like “Cross Road Blues” and “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” are classics. One is a studio shot of him in a wide-lapeled suit and a slick fedora, hands resting on the strings of a flat-top guitar; the other shows Mr. Johnson in a photo booth, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he fingers a chord.

The fate of those photos, which have become extremely valuable as Mr. Johnson’s posthumous fame has grown, now rests with the Mississippi Supreme Court. Three justices heard arguments on Monday in a complicated dispute involving the guitarist’s descendants, Sony Music Entertainment and a promoter, The Associated Press reported. Presiding Justice Jess H. Dickinson did not say when he and his colleagues will rule on the case.

Mr. Johnson died destitute in Mississippi in 1938 at the age of 27, leaving behind a trail of recordings. But his music has influenced several generations of guitarists, among them Eric Clapton, who in 2004 put out the acclaimed tribute album “Me and Mr. Johnson.” And his estate became more valuable after a 1990 collection of his recordings won a Grammy Award.

The dispute pits the descendants of Mr. Johnson’s half-sister, Carrie Harris Thompson, against his son, Claud Johnson, Sony Music Enterntainment, and a promoter named Stephen C. LaVere.

The Thompson family has argued the photos had always belonged to Ms. Thompson and her estate, and that the label profited from them. But Sony Music has countered that ownership of the photos was transferred to Mr. LaVere in November 1974 when Ms. Thompson signed a contract with him.

That contract, Sony’s lawyer argued in court, assigned the rights to Mr. Johnson’s work, photographs and other materials to Mr. LaVere in return for half of the royalties he might collect off record releases.

Later Mr. LaVere, who headed Delta Haze Corp., signed a deal with CBS Records to release a collection of Robert Johnson’s 29 recorded songs. CBS, which was later acquired by Sony, released a boxed set of Mr. Johnson’s recordings that sold more than a million copies and won the 1990 Grammy for Best Historical Album.

Ms. Thompson died in 1983 and her heirs have long argued they are entitled to royalties. But Claud Johnson, whose parents never married, filed suit in 2000 and was declared by a court to be the musician’s sole heir. The following year a circuit judge in Leflore County, Ashley Hines, ruled the royalties spelled out in the 1974 contract should go to Mr. Johnson.

The question of the photographs was not settled, however, and, after more legal maneuvering, Judge Hines finally ruled in 2012 that Ms. Thompson’s heirs had no grounds to assert a claim and the case should not go to trial. Now, the Thompson family has asked the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.

Shirtless on a Solemn Day

Dear Diary:

Did you ever have one of those dreams where you’re naked in church or a public place?

At 8:30 a.m. it was already 85 degrees, going up to a sweltering 95, so I decided to go out early for my daily run-walk with hand weights. My route is always the same. This morning I decided I’d go topless because of the heat. I’d done this before, even though an unfeeling young woman in a passing car once yelled out, “Put your shirt on!” It’s New York, and hot, and no one is shocked by seeing a few gray chest hairs pass by.

I started out, down 102nd Street, toward Riverside. There’s a little path at Riverside and 101st that I take down to the Firemen’s Memorial Monument, and from there I always head down the stairs to Riverside Drive.

Already so hot that my eyeballs felt as if they were melting in the sockets.

As I entered the path in the upper park, I heard horses’ hooves and saw a couple of mounted policemen clopping down Riverside Drive below. I didn’t think anything of it. But then I saw American flags up and down the stairs that lead from the Firemen’s Monument down to the Drive.

And then I realized that it was Sept. 11.

The Firemen’s Monument is one of the sacred spots where firefighters, their families and other first responders all gather, in uniform, to remember the lives that were lost. I’d attended the ceremony last year.

It was still early and the ceremony hadn’t yet begun. People were gathering. Everyone was dressed for the occasion except me: uniforms, dresses, suits. Voices were low and reverential, as they are at a funeral. Chairs and a lectern had been set up in the top plaza of the monument. I thought I would be able to quickly dart through and out of the way before anyone saw me. But suddenly I was in the thick of the setup, half-naked, and couldn’t find a way out. It was impossible to get through the rows of tightly packed chairs. The only way out was by the stairs themselves.

Do I say anything? I wondered. Do I apologize? It was strangely dreamlike, since, really, there was no one to apologize to, or even to talk to, in my half-naked state.

People looked at me but no one looked outraged as I threaded my shirtless way through the chairs, around the flags, past the lectern and down the stairs, dodging units of men in uniform posing for photos. I hope I’m not in any of them.

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In Performance: Matthew Maher of ‘Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play’

Anne Washburn’s generation-spanning “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which an episode of “The Simpsons” becomes a piece of cultural mythology. In this scene from the first act, set around a fire in the woods with a group of survivors, Matt (Matthew Maher) tries to recall details from the “Cape Feare” episode of “The Simpsons.” The show continues through Oct. 20 at Playwrights Horizons.

Recent videos in this series include Joe Manganiello as Stanley Kowalski in the Yale Repertory Theater revival of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 drama “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Hallie Foote in a scene from the Signature Theater production of “The Old Friends,” a family drama written by her father, the playwright Horton Foote.

Coming soon: Norbert Leo Butz sings a number from the new Broadway musical “Big Fish.”

In Performance: Matthew Maher of ‘Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play’

Anne Washburn’s generation-spanning “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which an episode of “The Simpsons” becomes a piece of cultural mythology. In this scene from the first act, set around a fire in the woods with a group of survivors, Matt (Matthew Maher) tries to recall details from the “Cape Feare” episode of “The Simpsons.” The show continues through Oct. 20 at Playwrights Horizons.

Recent videos in this series include Joe Manganiello as Stanley Kowalski in the Yale Repertory Theater revival of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 drama “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Hallie Foote in a scene from the Signature Theater production of “The Old Friends,” a family drama written by her father, the playwright Horton Foote.

Coming soon: Norbert Leo Butz sings a number from the new Broadway musical “Big Fish.”

New York Today: Small-Screen City

Michael Nagle for The New York Times On a clear night, you can see Brooklyn from Hollywood.

Time was when the Brooklyn of television shows was a pretty Bensonhurst kind of place. That was where Ralph Kramden and the rest of the Honeymooners held court.

Today, the slice of Brooklyn portrayed on the small screen looks a lot like the Brooklyn that has grabbed the real-life cultural spotlight: the Greenpoint of “Girls,” the Williamsburg of “2 Broke Girls” and the Park Slope to which the jailed yuppie protagonist of “Orange Is the New Black” yearns to return.

“Brooklyn used to be kind of working class, or the place where the police had to deal with criminals and drug dealers,” Alessandra Stanley, a television critic for The New York Times, told us. “Now it’s young people being sophisticated.”

Tonight, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a police comedy starring Andy Samberg that premiered on Fox last week, returns for Week 2.

“’Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ tries to have it both ways,” Ms. Stanley said. “It’s a cop show with a precinct in Brooklyn, but the sensibility is more of a young-person hipster’s. It’s a hybrid.”

Here’s what else you need to know for Tuesday.

WEATHER

After the coldest night in the city (49 in Central Park) since mittens were put away, it will be sunny and cool today with a high of 71.

TRANSIT & TRAFFIC

- Mass Transit: O.K. so far. Click for latest M.T.A. status.

- Roads: No major problems. Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect today and tomorrow.

COMING UP TODAY

- The Democratic candidates for public advocate, Letitia James and Daniel L. Squadron, debate at 7 p.m. on NY1, ahead of their Oct. 1 runoff.

- Joseph J. Lhota tours businesses in Flushing, speaks at a forum on minority-owned businesses and serves dinner at the Bowery Mission.

- Bill de Blasio will be on WPIX11 at 7:30 a.m. Maybe he’ll talk about his youthful support for Sandinistas, which Mr. Lhota criticized on Monday.

- President Obama addresses the United Nations General Assembly.

- A celebration on a pier on West 44th Street marks the 100th birthday of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Mario Batali will be there.

- Today could be your day to learn to juggle: classes in Bryant Park from noon to 1 p.m. and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- Listen to Haitian poetry (and eat Haitian food) at Kreyol Corner Poetry Night at La Caye restaurant opposite from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 8 to 10 p.m.

- For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- President Obama endorsed Mr. de Blasio for mayor. [New York Times]

- To cut down on texting while driving, new New York State highway signs will direct drivers to “text stops,” also know as rest areas. [Associated Press]

- Nicholas Brooks, son of the man who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” was sentenced to 25 years to life for strangling his girlfriend. [New York Times]

- The police want you to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 7. [Atlantic Cities]

- The New York branch of Toro, a Barcelona-style tapas spot that’s made it big in Boston, opened in West Chelsea last night. [Eater]

- About 100,000 baby oysters were relocated to the Bronx River over the weekend to help clean it up. [New York Times]

- Drivers may not be thrilled that the United Nations General Assembly is in town, but strippers are pretty psyched. [WPIX11 News]

- The Mets lost to the Reds, 3-2 in 10 innings.

AND FINALLY…

The Yankees might be all but eliminated from wild-card contention, but playoff fever is alive and well on Ticketmaster.

There, you can now buy seats in the Legends Suite for the Yanks’ American League Championship Series home opener for a mere $838.

If the Yankees somehow fail to make it that far â€" BaseballProspectus.com puts their odds of even making the playoffs at 0.4 percent â€" you can get a full refund, a Ticketmaster saleswoman said.

You can even keep the ticket as a souvenir.

Fantasy baseball, indeed.

Joseph Burgess and Kenneth Paul contributed reporting.

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