A ‘Thoroughly American Opera’ and More: The Week in Reporter Reads

This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Written and narrated by Zachary Woolfe

“He has created an entirely new phase of musical art and has produced a thoroughly American opera.”

The anonymous critic who wrote these bold words didn’t have a performance of Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha” to evaluate, or a recording. In June 1911, all the reviewer had to go on was Joplin’s 230-page piano-vocal score.

“Its production would prove an interesting and potent achievement,” the critic added, “and it is to be hoped that sooner or later, it will be thus honored.”

It turned out to be decidedly later.

More than half a century passed before the opera finally premiered. When it did, its brilliance, shortcomings and unfinished aspects made it a work begging to be completed — giving creative artists room to experiment boldly with this “new phase of musical art.”

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Written and narrated by John Leland

In March 2022, Mark Herman, a dog walker and recreational drug enthusiast in Upper Manhattan, came into possession of a dog, a painting and a story.

The dog was Phillipe, a 17-year-old toy poodle that belonged to Mr. Herman’s only client, an 87-year-old retired law professor named Isidore Silver.

The painting, which belonged to Mr. Silver, may be a lost work by the artist Chuck Close, whose canvases once sold for as much as $4.8 million. Or it may not.

Therein lies the story. On a recent afternoon, Mr. Herman offered the Times reporter John Leland a broken chair in his cluttered apartment and began a circuitous account of friendship, loss and a commercial art market not meant for people like him.

Much is transient about New York City real estate. Buildings are demolished, cafes turn into Duane Reades and rents go up. But for the last 50 years, there was a constant — Yoko Ono lived in the Dakota. She stayed even after that tragic December day in 1980 when John Lennon was fatally shot right outside the building.

For years, tourists and New Yorkers alike trekked uptown, hoping to catch a glimpse or have the chance to meet Ms. Ono. Her presence sustained the mystique of the Dakota — already well known as the coveted quarters for celebrities and artists when she and Mr. Lennon moved into the Upper West Side apartment complex in 1973.

After half a century of eccentricity, opulence and tragedy, Ms. Ono has moved out of New York City. For many, it signals that yet another link to old New York — the one filled with grit and glamour, run by artists and musicians — is missing.

The thought of New York without Ms. Ono is a New York with a little less magic.

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Written and narrated by Jill Cowan

Adrianne Peterson, the manager of the Rancho Peñasquitos branch of the San Diego Public Library, was actually a little embarrassed by the modest size of her Pride Month display in June. Between staff vacations and organizing workshops for graduating high school students, it had fallen through the cracks and fell short of what she had hoped to offer.

Yet the kiosk across from the checkout counter, marked by a Progress Pride rainbow flag, was enough to thrust the suburban library onto the front lines of the nation’s culture wars.

Ms. Peterson, who has run the library branch since 2012 and has highlighted books for Pride Month for the better part of a decade, was taken aback when she read an email last month from two neighborhood residents. They informed her that they had checked out nearly all of the books on the Pride display and would not return them unless the library permanently removed what they considered “inappropriate content.”

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Written and narrated by Cora Engelbrecht

One rainy spring evening, a young Iranian mother with a mangled arm, her husband and their 3-year-old daughter met a smuggler near the Iraqi border who gave them a stern ultimatum: Ensure the child’s silence or leave her behind.

The mother, Sima Moradbeigi, 26, recalled that she had dashed to a pharmacy for a bottle of cough syrup to drug her daughter into a stupor.

Under the cover of night, the family followed the smuggler out of Iran along mountain paths, sometimes crouching or crawling through muddy scrubland to avoid border guards stalking their route with flashlights. Hours later, Ms. Moradbeigi and her husband said, they arrived safely at a mosque outside the city of Sulaimaniya in the northern Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Their daughter, Juan, barely stirred.

Some mothers have concluded that it is better to risk their lives fleeing Iran to spare their daughters a lifetime under the authoritarian regime. These are the stories of three women who made that difficult choice.

Our Reporter Reads are produced by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Adrienne Hurst and Kate Winslett.

Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Isabella Anderson.