Author: NY TIMES

His opera “Thomas,” which premiered in May 2013, encapsulates that feeling of suffocation. Based on a libretto by Händl Klaus, the work focuses on the title character, whose boyfriend, Matthias, has just died in a hospital. Thomas grieves but must interact with the businesslike functionaries of death. The instrumental music is often skeletal, with an ensemble consisting almost entirely of plucked instruments, their quick decays a reminder of transience. The opera expresses an existential loneliness eased only by the gentle shimmer of its microtonal harmonies.Once Haas began teaching at Columbia, his life changed rapidly. He met Mollena Williams, a writer,…

Iran hit its neighbors Pakistan and Iraq with missile strikes on Tuesday, prompting strong denunciations from both countries and raising fears that upheaval in the Middle East could spiral out of control.Since the war in Gaza began in October, Iran has used its proxy forces against Israel and its allies. But on Tuesday, it said its latest missile strikes had been in response to terrorist attacks within its borders.The missile strikes, nevertheless, raised tensions in a region where conflict has now touched at least five nations.“They are contributing to the escalation of regional tensions — and it must stop,” the…

Greenland’s expansive ice sheet is known to be shrinking, especially since the 1990s, because of warming from climate change. It’s a fate shared by the Antarctic Ice Sheet as well as glaciers around the world. Now, a new study reveals that about 20 percent more of the Greenland ice sheet has disappeared than previous estimates show.The missing ice has been breaking and melting from the ends of glaciers around Greenland’s perimeter. The new research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides a detailed accounting of a process that scientists knew was happening but had struggled to measure comprehensively.“Almost every glacier…

On Alexandria Angco’s 28th birthday in September 2022, she declared that she would not date anyone for a whole year. Dating wasn’t going so well for her, and she wanted to focus on herself instead.Twelve days later, she met Christian Chai Chua in person for the first time. And five months later, they were engaged.“I failed,” she said of her goal. But ultimately, that turned out to be a good thing.The two first met on Zoom in August 2020 at an annual conference organized by Singles for Christ, a group for young Catholic adults.Ms. Angco, who is from Toronto and…

At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.“We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns.Cuicui was one in a group of eight women I followed last week…

Synopsys, a key Silicon Valley supplier to the chip industry, said on Tuesday that it had agreed to pay $35 billion for Ansys, a Pennsylvania company that makes software used to simulate and analyze product designs for electronics manufacturers, car makers, defense contractors and others.The deal, which was struck for a combination of cash and stock, follows a $14 billion deal this month by Hewlett Packard Enterprise to buy Juniper Networks, uniting a big computer maker with a specialist in networking gear. It was the latest sign of changing times in the technology sector, which is experiencing slow sales for…

“Stereophonic,” an acclaimed behind-the-music play about a disputatious band recording a studio album, will transfer to Broadway this spring following a buzzy and sold-out Off Broadway run.The play, written by David Adjmi, is set mostly inside a Sausalito, Calif., recording studio, and follows five musicians and two sound engineers through a year in the 1970s. The story — featuring romance, infighting, drug use and a solo-star-in-the-making — resembles that of Fleetwood Mac, but Adjmi says he had many inspirations for the play.The 14-week Broadway production is expected to begin previews April 3 and to open April 19 at the Golden…

When Capt. Amit Busi gets a chance to sleep, she does so with her boots on — and in a shared tent in an improvised Israeli military post in northern Gaza.There she commands a company of 83 soldiers, nearly half of them men. It is one of several mixed-gender units fighting in Gaza, where female combat soldiers and officers are serving on the front line for the first time since the war surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.Captain Busi is responsible not just for the lives of her subordinates — search-and-rescue engineers whose specialized training and tools help infantry…

The political ideology known as “Macronism” has always been about action, even agitation, at least in verbal form. Emmanuel Macron burst onto the scene in 2017 promising a “revolution.” Since then, over more than six years as France’s president, he has embraced a “refoundation” and renamed his political party “Renaissance.” Now, he’s calling for civic “rearmament.”It is perhaps not evident from this re-energizing lexicon of a restless man that in many ways Mr. Macron, 46, has moved in a conservative direction. The other word beginning with “R” that characterizes a president whose roots lie in the Socialist Party is “rightward.”Mr.…

Julia Kate Tiller and Eric Daniel Graves didn’t meet at her older brother’s graduation in 2019, although they both attended (Mr. Graves is Ms. Tiller’s brother’s friend). They didn’t fall in love at church in the summer of 2021, although that’s where they met.The two became fast friends thanks to social media. “He used Facebook Messenger to slide into my DMs,” Ms. Tiller said. Around that same time, Ms. Tiller had moved to Austin in June, just after graduating college, and began fostering cats. Her first was Atlas, a two-year-old ringworm-infected cat.In early October 2021, Ms. Tiller and Mr. Graves…