Author: NY TIMES

The pianist Alice Sara Ott, barefoot and wearing a silver bracelet, was smiling and singing to herself the other day as she practiced a jazzy passage of Ravel at Steinway Hall in Midtown Manhattan. A Nintendo Switch, which she uses to warm up her hands, was by her side (another favored tool is a Rubik’s Cube). A shot of espresso sat untouched on the floor.“I feel I have finally found my voice,” Ott said during a break. “I feel I can finally be myself.”Ott, 35, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, has built a global career, recording…

The revival of Nicolas Joël’s Art Deco-inspired production of Puccini’s “La Rondine” at the Metropolitan Opera highlights a quality that Puccini is not necessarily known for: restraint.In his headline-making debut, the Chilean-born American singer Jonathan Tetelman, who has a Deutsche Grammophon recording contract and the potential to become the house’s next major Italian-opera tenor, didn’t necessarily arrive with a splash.His performance had the careful craft of an Olympic diver who breaks the water’s surface without generating ripples. His second assignment this month is another Puccini work, “Madama Butterfly,” and in a show of faith from the company, he will star…

Amateur golfers will line up on Thursday at the Trump National Doral near Miami, having agreed to pay more than $9,000 apiece to play a friendly round alongside some of the world’s top professionals.Rooms at the resort hotel will fill up with fans as a pro tournament featuring some of the biggest names in the sport gets underway on Friday. The resort’s restaurants and bars will pull in more business, and the Trump name will be beamed around the world on television and the internet.Behind this surge in business at one of former President Donald J. Trump’s properties is his…

For half a century, the Sernesi family lived in a storied villa overlooking Florence, in which the Renaissance artist Michelangelo was raised and later owned. The property came with several buildings, an orchard and a drawing of a muscular male nude etched on the wall of a former kitchen. Tradition has it that the work was drawn by a young Michelangelo, though scholars are not as sure.Last year, the Sernesi family sold the villa. Now they want to sell the mural drawing, which was detached from its original location in 1979 so that it could undergo a much-needed restoration. Etched…

PHILADELPHIA — Bryce Harper entered the on-deck circle as a potential tying run on Monday night with two outs in the 10th inning. With backup catcher Garrett Stubbs in the dugout, he found Whit Merrifield, one of the Phillies’ only rookies.”Man,” Stubbs said, “you’re going to want to see this.”Normally, when Harper hits, time stops at Citizens Bank Park. That’s an unfair expectation when the greatest in a sport has a 30% success rate. That’s what’s so special about Harper. Time and time again he has met the highest expectations.He ended Monday’s game with five strikeouts.”Obviously, that didn’t work out,”…

When Zach Horrall, a social media specialist at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Corlan McCollum, a children’s librarian, got engaged two years ago, they wanted to connect their wedding to a larger event. At first, they considered Halloween, but when they realized Indianapolis was in the path of totality for the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse, they changed course.The two are planning an outdoor wedding, with the ceremony timed to the approximately three minutes and 45 seconds of totality in the Indianapolis region. They hope their 75 guests will pay more attention to the eclipse than to them.“It takes a…

How Iger beat back Peltz It’s over. Disney fended off the activist investor Nelson Peltz for the second time in two years, as its shareholders rejected his effort to win two seats on its board.The House of Mouse claimed a “substantial” margin of victory, after a bitterly fought contest with Peltz and his major backer, the former Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter. Based on preliminary results from Wednesday’s annual investor meeting, Disney’s board candidates won the backing of 75 percent of individual shareholders, an outsize investor base.But like any good Disney tale, the board fight provided a series of lessons for…

The maker of the newest treatment approved for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis said Thursday that it would withdraw the drug from the market because a large clinical trial did not produce evidence that the treatment worked.The company, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement that it had started the process of withdrawing the drug in the United States, where it is called Relyvrio, and in Canada, where it is called Albrioza. As of Thursday, no new patients will be able to start the drug, while current patients who wish to continue taking the medication can be transitioned to a free drug program,…

The chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera has one of the company’s most demanding jobs. There are singers to corral, notes to correct and centuries-old scores to pore over.Donald Palumbo, who brought the chorus to new heights during his 17-year tenure as chorus master, announced last fall that he would step down in June. And on Wednesday, the Met announced his successor: the German conductor Tilman Michael, who has served as chorus master of the Frankfurt Opera for the past decade.Michael, 49, who will join the company at the start of the 2024-25 season in the role of chorus director,…

President Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in a strike by Israeli forces, strongly condemning the attack just hours after Israel’s top military commander acknowledged its military had made a “grave mistake.”Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi made a rare admission of fault by Israel in the six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip as he accepted responsibility for the deaths of the aid workers.“It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night, during the war, in a very complex condition,” he said, adding, “It shouldn’t have happened.”General Halevi’s mea culpa was a…