Author: NY TIMES

Jaap, we hardly knew ye.On Thursday at David Geffen Hall, Jaap van Zweden, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, conducted a lean, driven rendition of Mahler’s sprawling Second Symphony. After two more performances through Saturday, he will leave his Lincoln Center podium, a mere six years after stepping onto it.No Philharmonic artistic leader has been less present in front of its players and audience since Mahler himself, who died two years into his tenure, in 1911. There was barely enough time to meet van Zweden, let alone get a full sense of him, as man or maestro.He had…

The Israeli military pushed ahead with its offensive in central Gaza on Friday, saying it had killed dozens of militants, including some who had holed up in the premises of a former United Nations school that had been converted into a shelter in the area.The military said it targeted Hamas fighters at a school compound in Shati, a coastal neighborhood northwest of Gaza City’s downtown. The number of casualties was unclear.“Hamas systematically, intentionally and strategically places its infrastructure and operates from within civilian areas in full violation of international law and while putting the lives of Gazan civilians at risk,”…

If there was ever any question of what a Three Tenors concert on steroids might look like, the hundreds of performers belting out operatic greatest hits at the Arena of Verona on Friday night could offer a good answer.Under a starry sky, there were sweeping overtures, including crowd-pleasers like the “William Tell Overture,” heart-wrenching arias, and an oversize orchestra and choir backing A-list soloists in what was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime concert to mark the addition last December of “the practice of opera singing in Italy” to the United Nations cultural organization’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of…

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — When Oklahoma State’s Kelly Maxwell jogged out of the bullpen, fans in the outfield turned their attention to left field. With the Sooners four games away from the national championship, Maxwell’s arrival was met with enthusiasm and a collective deep breath.The Sooners already felt like their destiny was in their own hands, but coach Patty Gasso used her ace up her sleeve to end the championship series against top-ranked Texas. Maxwell, who was later named the Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player, did just that, helping the Sooners win 8-4 to sweep the championship series…

“It’s a miracle on the water,” the actress Candice Bergen said, gazing at a grove of trees on Thursday evening as she took shelter from the sun beneath a canopy.It was the opening night of the summer performance season at Little Island, the three-year-old floating park built on a reconstructed pier in the Hudson River.Despite thunderstorms earlier in the afternoon, around 700 actors, designers and media moguls turned up under a smattering of canopies near the island’s amphitheater, among them Andy Cohen, the Bravo host and executive producer; Annie Leibovitz, the photographer; Fran Lebowitz, the writer; Natasha Lyonne, the actress;…

To soccer’s new generation of superrich investors — risk-friendly billionaires, American hedge funds, wealthy gulf states — the appeal of a new model for team ownership lay in its simple strategy.By sweeping up not just a single team but multiple squads and hundreds of players into expansive multiclub networks, these rich new owners believed they could leverage efficiency, best practices and volume into success on the field.Red Bull, the energy drink maker, pioneered the model. Manchester City, the English champion financed by the wealth of the United Arab Emirates, supersized it through its City Football Group. Jim Ratcliffe, the chairman…

The American Cancer Society has begun an ambitious, far-reaching study focusing on a population that has long been overlooked, despite high rates of cancer and cancer-related deaths: Black women.The initiative, called VOICES of Black Women, is believed to be the first long-term population study of its size to zero in specifically on the factors driving cancer prevalence and deaths among Black women.Researchers plan to enroll 100,000 Black women without cancer, ages 25 to 55, in Washington, D.C., and 20 states where most Black American women reside. The subjects will be surveyed twice a year about their behaviors, environmental exposures and…

Limato died two years later, leaving Powell without an advocate.It was a rough time for the young Texan, who supported himself through coaching community sports and small acting jobs (a Dockers commercial, an episode of “The Lying Game,” a cable series). The William Morris Endeavor talent agency had dropped him, and he began to question whether superstardom was even achievable anymore. Hollywood, undercut by video games and YouTube, has long wondered the same thing itself.Michael B. Jordan might say yes. But Garrett Hedlund, Taylor Kitsch, Taylor Lautner, Ansel Elgort, Ryan Phillippe, Zac Efron, Alex Pettyfer, Eric Bana, Ben Barnes, Armie…

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanese border since the start of the war in Gaza, with more than 150,000 people on both sides of the boundary forced to flee their homes. But the intensity of the attacks has increased in recent days, leading to fears of a full-scale war on another front.This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened further military action to ensure the return of civilians to communities in northern Israel. Here are some key questions about the conflict and where it might be heading:Why are the two sides fighting?Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia…

Photographs by David GuttenfelderWritten by Peter RobinsDavid Guttenfelder traveled along Ukraine’s northeastern border twice in the months before Russian troops again poured through.June 7, 2024The invaders had not returned. Not yet. But along about 600 miles of Ukraine’s northeastern border territory that The New York Times visited late last year and again in the early spring, the war has never left.Much of this area, in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, was farmland once. Now a farmhouse hosted a counter-saboteur unit — made up of anti-Putin Russians, to avoid sending Ukrainian troops into Russia — preparing before dawn for a cross-border…