Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll meet an English horn player who is appearing onstage at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time. We’ll also find out what’s coming back to the Staten Island Ferry today after an absence of almost seven years.
When Pedro R. Diaz was in eighth grade, not long after he had started playing the English horn, a schoolmate brought an LP to a sleepover and said he should learn one of the pieces on the album, the plaintive solo from Act III of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” It’s also long, as such things go.
Diaz grew up to be the English horn player in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and is not only playing that solo in the Met’s new production of “Tristan”; he is playing it onstage. That is a departure from past productions of “Tristan” at the Met, which put the English horn player in the wings, unseen.
It’s a change from his usual place in the orchestra pit. “Even as a guest soloist with other orchestras like the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I start to feel self-conscious when I know people can see me play, not just hear me,” he said. “In the pit, it’s just you and your sound — the audience is focused on the singers.”
In “Tristan,” he starts playing in a tunnel at the back of the stage. “As I walk over, playing, I can see 4,000 people” — the audience, “which I try not to focus on.”
But the audience knows who he is. His name is listed on the same page in the Met’s program book as the singers, including the soprano Lise Davidsen, who sings Isolde, and the tenor Michael Spyres, who sings Tristan and is onstage with him. Joshua Barone, reviewing “Tristan” for The New York Times, said that the production was “the event of the season at the Met.” (Three more performances are scheduled, on Sunday, on April 2 and on April 4.)
‘I am the bringer of doom and gloom’
It falls to Diaz to open Act III with a minor-key melody that the conductor Colin Davis once called “one of the most powerful” that Wagner ever composed.
“I am the bringer of doom and gloom, which is basically the role of the English horn in all of opera,” Diaz said. The solo repeats several times — Tristan, onstage with him, says to play something happy if a ship appears in the distance. It does, but that melody is played by a holztrompete, a wooden horn made to Wagner’s specifications, and serves as Diaz’s cue to go back to the orchestra pit.
First, though, there is the costume to change out of. He wore a white cap in rehearsal, then a black cap on opening night “that sort of made me look like a cosmonaut,” then only hair spray at the next performance. “I thought they were going to give me spiky hair,” he said. “They just made it look nice.”
The robe he wears is comfortable, he said. The Met’s wardrobe department built in a concession to why he is there: a pocket he can carry his reeds in. A conversation with an English horn player inevitably turns to how he manages his reeds, which are delicate, finicky and handmade.
Choosing the one
“I really don’t know what reed I’m going to play” until shortly before he goes on, he said. “I try my reeds during the second act and choose the finalist, the winner.” Before that, “I use about five different reeds. At the end of Act II, I have some solos, and I play them with whatever reed I think I’m going to play in the tunnel.”
So far, he has not had to reach into the pocket and change reeds as Act III begins.
And when Act III ends — “as soon as the applause starts,” he said — he runs up a staircase, where his dresser is waiting to help him back into the costume so he can join the cast for the curtain call.
Actually, though, he can get a jump on the applause: The Met’s program notes point out that the last chord of “Tristan” is played by every instrument in the orchestra except the English horn.
Weather
Expect showers with temperatures falling to around 50. The night will be mostly cloudy with a low around 33.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Thursday (Holy Thursday, Passover).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“For me, this wasn’t about the money. It was about the continuity of this legacy, so important to me. This has been my life.” — Max Klimavicius, who has owned the restaurant Sardi’s since the mid-1970s and is selling its name and contents to the Shubert Organization, the theater district giant that is also his landlord.
The latest New York news
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The fight to freeze the rent: The Rent Guidelines Board, a panel of nine board members that decides on increases, will hear testimonies from landlords, tenants, city officials and others before taking a final vote on whether Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze will be enacted.
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LaGuardia is now fully operational: LaGuardia Airport returned to full operations after repairs to its damaged runway were completed. The airport had been operating at about half of its usual capacity since the fatal crash on Sunday.
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A sharp decrease in international migration: Census data shows that from June 2024 to July 2025, the number of residents New York City gained from international migration dropped by 70 percent compared with the year before.
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Addressing the budget gap: Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposed a list of savings, including canceling contracts with private companies, as he grapples with balancing the city’s budget. He is also scaling back programs he endorsed during his campaign.
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Protest buffer zones: The City Council speaker, Julie Menin, watered down a bill she had proposed in January that would have required the Police Department to secure protest buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside of houses of worship.
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The push to ban a contentious police unit: Chi Ossé, a Brooklyn councilman, introduced a bill to curtail deployment of the Police Department’s Strategic Response Group, which has been criticized for using military-style tactics to control protests.
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What we’re watching: On “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts,” Jeffery C. Mays, who covers politics for the Metro desk, talks with his colleagues Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Benjamin Oreskes about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s budget agenda as the city faces a $5.4 billion deficit. The program is broadcast on CUNY TV at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Booze makes a comeback on the Staten Island Ferry
Starting today, they can drink like it’s 2019 again on the Staten Island Ferry. Alcoholic beverages, which disappeared from the city’s fleet of big orange boats nearly seven years ago, will be back — 15 brands of beer, along with hard seltzers and canned cocktails.
For now the drinks will be sold on only one ferryboat, the Staff Sergeant Michael H. Ollis, which was named for a Staten Islander who was killed in Afghanistan in 2013 and who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously on March 2.
Two city agencies involved with the ferries and the contract with Dunkin’ — the chain that started serving coffee and doughnuts on ferries in 2024 — said that the alcoholic beverages would eventually be available on two other boats, the Dorothy Day and the Sandy Ground. They are the newest boats in the fleet.
“It is great to see the return of full concessions on the Staten Island Ferry,” City Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks, a Democrat whose district includes the St. George ferry terminal, said in a statement. “These were longstanding amenities that were part of the ferry experience.”
The fleet’s snack bars once served hot dogs, nachos, beer, soda and coffee on the passage between Staten Island and Manhattan. But the counters were shut in 2019 when the concessionaire’s contract ran out. The pandemic delayed the city’s search for potential replacements, and after Dunkin’ was chosen, it had to get a liquor license. The city said it was Dunkin’s decision to start the alcohol flowing on only the Ollis.
“After a long week, there’s nothing that tastes quite as good as that first Friday night beer on the way home,” said City Councilman Frank Morano, a Republican from Staten Island. “It doesn’t just taste like beer; it tastes like the weekend.”
“I’d be lying,” he added, “if I said this won’t factor into my decision the next time I’m choosing between the ferry and the express bus.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Elevator encounter
Dear Diary:
I stepped onto the elevator of my Upper West Side building after an early morning run to Staples. I was carrying four large rolls of paper towel wrapped in plastic.
An older woman I didn’t recognize got on with a fluffy white dog.
As soon as the door closed, the dog began to growl and bark at me.
“Something I did?” I asked.
“It’s not you,” the woman said. “It’s the paper towels. He hates them.”
— Jeremy Estabrooks
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
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