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      It’s Touring Season: Chappell, Sabrina and Mk.gee Hit the Stage

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicGrand-sized tours are everywhere you look right now. Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, young pop stars who’ve experienced sudden jolts of attention that reshaped their careers this year, are playing arenas and amphitheaters. In rooms slightly smaller, you can see the rising guitar hero Mk.gee, who’s become one of this year’s most unlikely breakout successes. Vampire Weekend, Cash Cobain, Bleachers and more are all on the road.On this week’s Popcast, a roundup of some of the bigger tours making their way around the country at the moment, and a discussion of what it takes, creatively, to fill up a very large room, and how some musicians demonstrate parts of their personalities onstage that their albums can’t fully capture.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Soon, you’ll need a subscription to keep full access to this show, and to other New York Times podcasts, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Don’t miss out on exploring all of our shows, featuring everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Is Set for May 5

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      The music mogul, wearing tan jail clothes at a court hearing, waved and smiled at six of his children and his mother in the gallery.Sean Combs, the embattled music mogul, is scheduled to stand trial next May in New York, a federal judge said at a hearing on Thursday.Judge Arun Subramanian of Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, who was recently assigned to the case, set May 5 as the start of Mr. Combs’s trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.Mr. Combs, 54, has been held in a federal detention center in Brooklyn for the past three weeks after being arrested at a New York hotel and then twice denied bail. He will remain in jail until the trial, pending another appeal that his lawyers filed this week.Mr. Combs was present at the hearing on Thursday. Wearing tan jail clothes, he walked into the courtroom waving and smiling at his family assembled in the gallery, including his mother and six of his children, and he embraced some of his lawyers.The hearing had been set as a routine scheduling matter. But it came one day after Mr. Combs’s lawyers filed a motion in which they accused government agents of leaking footage of Mr. Combs assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie to CNN. Without citing direct evidence, the lawyers theorized in court papers that the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that raided Mr. Combs’s homes in March, had been behind the leak. They said they might ask for the video to be barred as evidence at the trial.Emily A. Johnson, one of the prosecutors, commented briefly at the hearing about the defense’s accusation of leaks, saying, “The government believes the motion is baseless and it is simply a means to exclude a damning piece of evidence.” She said the government would be filing a response to the defense’s motion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With a ‘Ring,’ the Dallas Symphony Becomes a Wagner Destination

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      Fabio Luisi, a seasoned “Ring” conductor, will lead Wagner’s four-opera epic over a week in concert, breaking new ground for American orchestras.Richard Wagner conceived his four-opera “Ring” as a Gesamtkunstwerk: a marriage of poetry and music, for voices and orchestra, with coordinated sets, costumes and action. It’s a huge, expensive challenge even for top opera companies, calling for powerful singers, an accomplished conductor and orchestra, and a stage director and designer who can enliven a convoluted epic of family dysfunction, greed, destruction and rebirth.How much of Wagner’s impact remains if you subtract scenery and costumes, and most of the action — with neither water nor fire, sword nor spear, celestial palace nor subterranean smithy?Those questions will be put to the test by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which is alone in the American classical music and opera scene this season by presenting a complete “Ring,” over four evenings at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center beginning on Sunday.At the podium will be Fabio Luisi, the orchestra’s music director since 2020, who led the “Ring” at the Metropolitan Opera a dozen years ago. In Dallas, he began to roll out the cycle last spring, presenting “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre”; “Siegfried” and “Götterdämmerung” followed earlier this month, semi-staged by Alberto Triola, who collaborated with Luisi and the Dallas symphony on “Salome” and “Eugene Onegin.”A concert staging of the “Ring,” Luisi said in a video interview from his home near Zurich, does not compromise the work.“In Wagner’s time the acting was extremely reduced,” he said. “We cannot compare the acting in the ’60s and ’70s of the 19th century with acting now. Even after the war, in Bayreuth, the stagings by Wieland Wagner were pretty much static.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Viral Choreographer Changing the Way Women Move

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      In February 2023, Rihanna took the field during the Super Bowl LVII halftime show for her first performance in five years. As the opening notes of “Rude Boy” played, a group of dancers in identical puffy white suits and sunglasses gathered in the middle of the stage, moving with forceful precision, gathering speed as the […] More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Lawyers Accuse Government of Leaking Cassie Assault Video

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      The hip-hop mogul’s legal team said in a filing on Wednesday that it may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Lawyers for Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who is battling federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, accused the government on Wednesday of leaking hotel surveillance footage of him brutally beating his former girlfriend to CNN, saying that they may ask for the widely published video to be barred from his trial.Prosecutors have made clear in court papers that the video — which shows Mr. Combs assaulting the singer Cassie in a hotel hallway in 2016 — is a key piece of evidence in their case. The surveillance footage was published by CNN in May, prompting Mr. Combs to apologize publicly for “inexcusable” behavior.It has never been clear how the footage made its way to the news organization, but in the court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty and has vehemently denied the criminal charges, accused the Department of Homeland Security, which executed raids of the defendant’s homes in March, of being responsible for the leak.“The videotape was leaked to CNN for one reason alone: to mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself against these allegations,” the lawyers, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, wrote.The court filing cited a federal rule of criminal procedure that prohibits prosecutors or government agents from disclosing matters occurring before a grand jury.The lawyers did not cite direct evidence that Homeland Security officials had leaked the tape. But they accused the agency of a series of leaks, including in anonymous comments to The New York Post, that they said “all but ensured” that the grand jury and a potential trial jury would be tainted. The lawyers asked for a hearing to determine the government’s culpability in the leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Patrick Summers, Veteran Opera Conductor, to Step Down in Houston

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      Summers, who has helped introduce new operas into the American canon, will leave his role at Houston Grand Opera in 2026.Patrick Summers, a veteran conductor who over the past 26 years has helped turn Houston Grand Opera into one of most innovative companies in the United States, will leave his post in 2026, the company announced on Wednesday.Summers, 61, Houston Grand Opera’s artistic and music director, said he was eager for a change and felt he was leaving the organization in a strong position.“I love the company and the work that we’ve done here,” he said. “But I realized it’s time to make space for a new generation.”Summers has played an important role in introducing new operas into the American canon.He has premiered 11 works in Houston, including Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Carlisle Floyd’s “Cold Sassy Tree.” He has recorded new and recent operas, including Daniel Catán’s “Florencia en el Amazonas.” And, as a guest conductor, he has led major premieres at other companies: He was on the podium, for example, when Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” had its debut at San Francisco Opera in 2000.The star soprano Renée Fleming called Summers a “consummate musician” and a “natural educator.”“His effect has been to maintain a high standard of quality and hire great singers and have wonderful productions,” she said. “The whole ecosystem has benefited from his long tenure there.”Summers joined Houston Grand Opera as music director in 1998. He was recruited by David Gockley, the company’s general director from 1972 to 2005, who made it a hub for experimentation, commissioning dozens of new works. Summers became artistic and music director in 2011.Khori Dastoor, Houston’s general director and chief executive since 2021, said Summers’s creative drive had transformed the company.“He lives in the future; he lives in commissions,” she said. “He lives in the support of talent at the beginning, when it’s most needed.”Dastoor said that the company had not yet begun searching for a successor but that she hoped there would not be a long gap between Summers and his replacement.“We’re united and ready to make an ambitious and bold choice when the time comes,” she said.For his next chapter, Summers said, he did not anticipate taking on another major director role, hoping to focus on performance. He will be given the title of music director emeritus at Houston Grand Opera and continue to appear there. This season, he is leading a new production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and performances of Missy Mazzoli’s “Breaking the Waves.”Since the pandemic, Houston Grand Opera has been in a relatively strong position compared to its peers, with strong ticket sales and fund-raising.Summers said he was proud of the company. “We’re one of the real success stories in the arts in the United States,” he said. “How could I have any regrets?” More

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      Garth Brooks Names Woman Who Accused Him of Rape

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      In a court filing, lawyers for the country superstar portrayed him as “the victim of a shakedown” and asked for compensatory and punitive damages.Garth Brooks, the country superstar, has named the woman who, as Jane Roe, accused him of rape and sexual assault in a bombshell lawsuit last week.In a court filing in Mississippi on Tuesday, lawyers for Mr. Brooks portrayed the star as “the victim of a shakedown” and said the woman’s lawyers had “flouted” the authority of a judge in a related case.Litigation over the woman’s accusations began last month with a lawsuit that was filed anonymously — as John Doe v. Jane Roe — in federal court in Mississippi. The plaintiff, identified only as “a celebrity and public figure who resides in Tennessee,” said that lawyers for a woman had approached him in July with what he described as false allegations of sexual assault, and that they would sue Mr. Brooks unless he gave the woman “a multimillion-dollar payment.” The man asked the Mississippi judge to preserve the parties’ anonymity and declare that the woman’s accusations were false.In a response, lawyers for the woman said they intended to sue the man in California, saying that “Ms. Roe respectfully requests that she may commence her California action as she intended to do, and use Mr. Doe’s name, absent objection from this Honorable Court.”The court did not act, and two days later the woman filed her lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, naming Mr. Brooks but not herself. The suit accused Mr. Brooks of raping her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2019, and of subjecting her to repeated unwanted sexual advances for about two years. The woman described herself as a hair and makeup stylist who had worked with Mr. Brooks’s wife, the country singer Trisha Yearwood, since 1999, and had begun working regularly for Mr. Brooks in 2017.The suit drew wide coverage in the news media, and its portrayal of Mr. Brooks ran counter to the positive public image he had cultivated for decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More