ArteFact

Spanish singer and songwriter Rosalía released her fourth studio album, Lux, last fall. Lux is an ambitious work on two fronts: its sweeping spiritual theme, and the task of carrying that theme—the stories of female saints from across the world—to a modern audience. The sound alone is astonishing, in the best sort of way. Known for fusing flamenco, pop, reggaeton and hip-hop, Rosalía adds “classical” to the mix, recording with the London Symphony Orchestra to ultimately stunning effect. The blending of classical music into her already singular sound serves the album’s central claim—that what many might consider archaic is still relevant today.

Death has been a constant theme for Nick Cave over the six decades of his career. Take the vampiric look of the man himself: dressed in dark suits, shirt sans tie and open to mid-sternum, a build best described as skeletal, and long greased black hair coming out of a high-domed pallid pate. Cave’s appearance, combined with the distinctive baritone, and the backing of the Bad Seeds, makes for an emotive stage presence.

Commissioned for the opening of the 2024–25 Metropolitan Opera season, Grounded is an adaptation of George Brant’s widely acclaimed play of the same name. Created and composed by Jeanine Tesori, the opera was originally performed at the Washington National Opera in 2023 with Jess played by mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo and tenor Ben Bliss as Jess’s husband Eric. The opera serves as a powerful commentary on power and those who both wield it and are controlled by it in turn.

Music is an unfolding of time. Indeed, music is an art uniquely suited to the exploration of time. We experience time not as a series of disparate moments, loosely joined together by circumstance, but as a revealing, a gathering of life and knowledge together into an anticipable, symphonic whole. Through the unveiling of their music, composers uniquely speak to the mystery of our being in process, of our being accompanied in the movement toward an ultimate end.