Author: NY TIMES

Will this UNESCO distinction help protect it in the future?I certainly hope so. Opera can often be stereotyped as this archaic museum piece. We think of it as very elitist nowadays. But it was originally a people’s art form. Just a few generations ago, it was in cartoons: The youngest of the young were learning about characters such as the Barber of Seville.Nowadays, a lot of young people when first exposed to opera say, “This is so pompous and old-fashioned, and it doesn’t speak to me.” What is your response?I believe opera doesn’t get marketed properly. I don’t think there…

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel doubled down on his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state this weekend, again rebuffing pressure from President Biden to agree to that path after the war in Gaza is over.“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement in Hebrew on Sunday. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”The statement reiterated comments he made on social media the previous day, when…

The police in South Africa said on Wednesday that they had arrested a man who confessed to starting a fire in a derelict Johannesburg building last August that killed dozens of people, some of whom leaped to their deaths or were trapped behind locked security gates.The 29-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday on 76 counts of murder and 120 counts of attempted murder, said Col. Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi, a spokeswoman for the police in Gauteng Province, which includes Johannesburg. The man’s name has not been released.Officials originally said that the fire, which tore through an overcrowded four-story building in the early…

The men’s fashion weeks in Milan and Paris offered a look at how originals dress.By Simbarashe ChaSimbarashe Cha wrote the text and made these photographs and videos for Style Outside, a visual column that explores street style around the world. card:1 of 12Simbarashe ChaReporting from Milan and ParisThe men’s fashion weeks in Europe, which were held this month, offered a look at how originals dress.Double-breasted overcoats — some cropped, others long — were some of the most popular outerwear.Embellishments like big safety pins, bows on earrings and blossoming boutonnieres gave looks personal flair.Lots of jeans were ripped, shredded, layered, creased,…

HBO is renting out one of its most valuable series to Netflix.Every season of “Sex and the City,” the HBO comedy that aired from 1998 to 2004, will begin streaming on Netflix for the first time in early April, according to three people familiar with the deal.HBO had a longstanding policy of not licensing its shows to Netflix until last year, when it sent over titles including “Six Feet Under,” “Insecure,” “Band of Brothers,” “The Pacific” and “Ballers.” Several of these older series quickly leaped into Top 10 most-watched streaming lists after they began appearing on Netflix.Now “Sex and the…

Praising a return to form is a barbed compliment at best. It implies recent missteps, a decline, the waning of youthful inspiration, the toll of a long career — perhaps all of them at once. It suggests that the sensible way forward is to double back. Still, “Saviors,” Green Day’s new album, is a decisive, even overdetermined return to form.Ever since its beginnings in the late 1980s, Green Day has stayed contentious. Billie Joe Armstrong has sung about personal grievances — including struggles with himself — as well as the ways they intersect with larger political currents, most ambitiously on…

The United States struck two Houthi anti-ship missiles in Yemen, the military’s Central Command said on Tuesday, resuming what U.S. officials said were short-notice attacks against the Iran-backed militia’s imminent threats to merchant vessels, as well as Navy ships in the Red Sea and nearby waters.The U.S. strikes — the ninth in two weeks — came a day after the United States and Britain carried out much larger military salvos against nine sites in Yemen controlled by the Houthis. Those strikes against multiple targets at each location hit radars, as well as drone and missile sites, and underground weapons storage…

Soon after the journalist and historian Valérie Igounet heard about the killing of Samuel Paty, the schoolteacher whose 2020 murder by an Islamist extremist shocked France, she knew she wanted to write a book about him.Paty, who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to students during a class on freedom of expression, was murdered near the middle school where he taught in a Paris suburb. “I absolutely wanted Samuel Paty’s students to be able to read this book,” Igounet said, “and it was obvious that a 300-page book with footnotes would be reserved for a different kind of readership.”Instead,…

Toward the end of World War II, Ms. Irvine met a naval officer at Delmonico’s restaurant when he was on leave; they married in 1947. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Sullivan, Ms. Irvine is survived by a son, who requested anonymity for himself and his father, whose name he shares, and two grandchildren. Ms. Irvine’s husband died in 1994.When her daughter was born in 1957, Ms. Irvine left Elizabeth Arden and became a freelance makeup artist, working for photographers like Mr. Avedon, Irving Penn, John Rawlings and Harold Krieger. She did commercial work, too, notably coating the actors who…

The Los Angeles Times said on Tuesday that it would lay off about 115 journalists, slashing its newsroom by more than 20 percent after a tumultuous few weeks that saw top editors depart and workers walk off the job.Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, said in an interview with his paper that it was losing $30 million to $40 million a year and needed to make more progress in building a larger audience.“It is indeed difficult to reflect upon the recent tumultuous years, during which our business faced significant challenges, including losses that surpassed $100…