Author: NY TIMES

At a time when many orchestras are relying on entrenched repertoire and beloved artists to shore up their dwindling audiences, the New York Philharmonic on Thursday night offered three thrilling new perspectives — two from younger, female performers making their Philharmonic debuts, the third a world premiere.One of the debuting artists was the dynamic conductor Elim Chan. Born in Hong Kong, trained in the United States and already a sensation in Europe, Chan walked to the podium with confidence. Her physical ease was justified: She showed up to her first gig with the Philharmonic fully ready to harness its forces.She…

A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday, defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades later.The group, Palestine Action, said in a statement that the destruction of the portrait in Trinity College, Cambridge, was intended to call attention to “the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued,” particularly in light of the current conflict in Gaza.A…

A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to submit documents related to Prince Harry’s visa for the court to review after the department refused to release them to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, under the Freedom of Information Act.The Heritage Foundation has sued the department, contending that it has a right to see the documents as part of research into whether Prince Harry had been improperly allowed to reside in the United States given his admissions in his 2023 memoir and elsewhere that he had used cocaine and other drugs.The foundation had sought the documents…

Christopher Joseph Marazzo did the unthinkable one Friday evening in October 2019. He left his bowl of pasta unfinished, and walked over to Rose Angelina Teresa Minutaglio’s booth in the back room at Forlini’s Italian restaurant in Lower Manhattan.“She has this old world beauty, like a black-and-white photo,” said Mr. Marazzo, who turns 33 on Saturday. “She looks just like Sophia Loren.”He often wrangled five to 15 friends to join him in his regular booth two Fridays a month while the singer Angelo Ruggiero belted out ’50s and ’60s tunes and Italian songs. The restaurant closed in 2022. (The painting…

Max Hardy, who helped bring a new level of chef-driven yet accessible cuisine to his native Detroit, and who was widely considered among the most promising of a young generation of Black culinary stars, died on Monday. He was 40.His publicist, David E. Rudolph, announced the death but did not provide a cause or location. He said Mr. Hardy had been in good health as recently as the weekend.Though he was born in Detroit, Mr. Hardy moved with his family to South Florida when he was young. As a budding chef, he drew on the region’s Latin American influences, as…

Days after Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, complained publicly that Apple had blocked it from starting a competing app store in Europe, the technology companies said Apple had reversed course and would allow Epic to go ahead with its plan.The reversal highlights the way that Apple is changing its operations to comply with a new European tech competition law. That law, the Digital Markets Act, which went into effect on Thursday, requires Apple to give app makers alternatives for selling software to iPhone and iPad users, including the ability to use competing app stores and payment systems other than…

The Food and Drug Administration has decided to delay action on a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab, which the agency was widely expected to approve this month. The F.D.A. will instead require donanemab to undergo the scrutiny of a panel of independent experts, the drug’s maker, Eli Lilly and Company, said Friday.“The F.D.A. has informed Lilly it wants to further understand topics related to evaluating the safety and efficacy of donanemab, including the safety results in donanemab-treated patients and the efficacy implications of the unique trial design,” the company said in a statement.The decision is likely to surprise many Alzheimer’s…

In October 2022, Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune reviewed “The Notebook” when it played at the Goodman Theater, and raved that Michaelson had written “an absolutely gorgeous suite of songs.” But she knows that, given all the changes made in staging the story, fans of the book and movie might feel betrayed. “There are people who are unhappy that it’s not the movie,” Michaelson acknowledged. “Some people will come just to hate the show, because it’s another movie-to-musical adaptation. Others will come in expecting to see Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams look-alikes onstage. Whoops!“It’s not a big, bombastic musical,”…

A day after President Biden announced plans for maritime aid delivery to the Gaza Strip, European leaders said Friday they would deliver aid by ship as early as the weekend. But aid groups and Gaza officials criticized shipments by air or sea as too cumbersome, urging that vastly more food and medicine be supplied by trucks.The complications of delivering aid to the hungry residents of Gaza were underlined on Friday when the authorities in Gaza said at least five Palestinians were killed and several others were wounded after they were struck by packages of humanitarian aid that were dropped from…

The authorities in Gaza said at least five Palestinians were killed and several others were wounded on Friday after packages of humanitarian aid that had been airdropped fell on them in Gaza City.The report, put out by the government media office and the Palestinian civil defense force, could not be immediately verified by independent sources, but if confirmed, the deaths would underscore the dangers and difficulties of relying on airdrops to get food to people facing severe hunger in northern Gaza after five months of war.A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, said the United States had carried out…