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      ‘Diddy Parties’ Became a Meme. The Combs Case Was About Something Else.

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      The sweep of graphic lawsuits accusing Sean Combs of sex abuse led to a sense that his criminal case might examine celebrity debauchery in the music industry. It did not.Before the music mogul Sean Combs went to trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges this year, an avalanche of lawsuits had already cast him as a brazen, A-list supervillain, capable of almost anything.In dozens of cases, many filed anonymously, Mr. Combs was accused of sexual assaults across decades, some of them said to have involved druggings at well-attended, star-studded parties and industry events. The accusers included men and women, and more than a dozen said they were minors at the time they were assaulted.Mr. Combs’s lawyers have vehemently denied the abuses alleged in the suits, most of which are still working their way through the civil court system. But the sheer volume of complaints fueled speculation that the criminal prosecution of Mr. Combs could expose a shadowy underworld of celebrity depravity, and perhaps the enabling behavior of music industry executives.The trial of Mr. Combs, 55, turned out to be something else entirely.While filled with graphic details of explicit sex, the case that ended last week centered on a narrow, private sphere of Mr. Combs’s life. The sexual encounters at issue took place on small stages: isolated hotel rooms and homes. These were not orgies where Mr. Combs interacted openly with celebrities and music honchos, but discrete encounters with long-term girlfriends and typically a single male escort.That these sessions involved voyeuristic sex that stretched over hours, even days, while Mr. Combs watched, masturbated and filmed, was without question salacious. But given the length of the investigation, the intensity of the federal raids on his mansions and the government’s interview of a man who said he had seen sex tapes involving minors (such tapes never materialized and the accusation did not lead to charges), the scope of what prosecutors were pursuing seemed broader than the resulting indictment.“I think we were all expecting something very different,” said Mara S. Campo, a journalist who covered the case against Mr. Combs and had worked previously as an anchor at Revolt, his former television network. “I think that he’s been helped tremendously by the expectation that this was going to be very different than what it turned out to be. This didn’t look like what most people think of when they think of sex trafficking.”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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      Peter Sellars Is Still Living His Life Through Art

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      The director, one of the most influential in opera, is staging new productions in New York, France and Austria this summer.Peter Sellars watched the rehearsal and wept in the dark.It was a recent afternoon at Purchase College, north of New York City, and an ensemble was going over a soft yet cataclysmic passage in Matthew Aucoin’s “Music for New Bodies.”A group of singers was almost wailing the word “down,” over and over, as an instrumental undertow seemed to stretch time into a yawning void. The music made plain the terror in the text — Jorie Graham’s poetry of cancer treatments and climate change — and the cheeks of Sellars, the production’s director and one of the most revered figures in the performing arts, grew wet with tears.Among his collaborators, Sellars is cherished for this openness with his feelings. He wraps anyone and everyone in a bear hug. He releases sudden honks of laughter. He cries.“He allows himself to be impacted,” said the soprano Julia Bullock, “and releases his emotions very easily.”“Music for New Bodies” arrives at David Geffen Hall on Thursday as part of the American Modern Opera Company’s summer residency at Lincoln Center. Sellars’s production is in the pared-down, nearly ritualistic style for which he’s become known. With barely any set or props, the singers and instrumentalists are the focus, onstage together under moody lighting, in shifting formations that have the charged drama of Baroque paintings.“I made the staging, but staging is too fancy a word,” he said in an interview. “It’s just — you can see the music.”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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      Valery Gergiev, Shunned in West Over Putin Support, Will Conduct in Italy

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      Valery Gergiev, an ally of Vladimir V. Putin, is set to conduct in Western Europe for the first time since institutions there cut ties over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Valery Gergiev, the star Russian maestro who has been shunned in the West because of his close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, will appear this month at a festival in Italy, his first engagement in Western Europe since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Mr. Gergiev, a staunch ally of Mr. Putin who has helped promote the president’s policies, is set to conduct on July 27 at the Royal Palace of Caserta, a historic site north of Naples, the Un’Estate da RE festival announced last week. He will lead an orchestra from Salerno, Italy, in a program featuring performers from the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which Mr. Gergiev leads.The announcement drew protests from Italian politicians and activists, who expressed concern that Mr. Gergiev was being allowed to perform again in the West. Mr. Gergiev, whose extensive international career once made him one of the busiest maestros in the world, has been declared unwelcome in the United States and Europe since the Russian invasion.Mr. Gergiev did not respond to a request for comment.The decision to engage Mr. Gergiev also drew criticism because the festival is bankrolled by the European Union. Its funding flows, via Italy’s national government, to a company owned by the Campania region, where the festival takes place. The company funds several cultural events throughout the region, including Un’Estate da RE.Pina Picierno, a left-leaning Italian politician who serves as a vice president of the European Parliament, said that it was “unacceptable that European funds are being used to finance the performance of a Kremlin supporter.” In a post on X, she called on the festival and on regional officials “to take immediate action to prevent Valery Gergiev’s participation and ensure that taxpayers’ money does not end up in the pockets of a supporter of a criminal regime.”Vincenzo De Luca, the center-left president of the Campania region, defended the festival’s decision to engage Mr. Gergiev in a statement. He said the invitation showed that “dialogue between people can grow and the values of human solidarity can develop.”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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      Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath Play Final Shows in Birmingham, England

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      Heavy metal fans crossed continents to converge on Birmingham, England, and throw devil horns in honor of the Prince of Darkness and Black Sabbath.They came by the thousands.They dressed in black, with T-shirts featuring crucifixes, dragons and demons.They gathered on Saturday in Birmingham, England, to pay their respects to a figure of almost religious significance in the heavy metal world: Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness.Since Osbourne and his bandmates Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler, formed Black Sabbath in Birmingham in 1968, they have been regarded as the fathers of heavy metal.On Saturday, Osbourne, 76, was at the center of “Back to the Beginning,” a 10-hour concert at the Villa Park soccer stadium that he had said would culminate in Black Sabbath’s final stage appearance.Chris Hopkins from Birmingham showing his Black Sabbath tribute tattoo.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesOzzy Osbourne masks.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesAnshul Doshi, center with beard, who lives in England, and an entourage that traveled from India for the concert.Ellie Smith for The New York TimesWe 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 Hunt for a 316-Year-Old Stradivarius Stolen in the Fog of War

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      The violin by the famed Italian luthier was plundered at the end of World War II and presumed lost or destroyed. Now experts say they believe it has resurfaced.As Germany devolved into chaos at the end of World War II, a rare violin from the famed shop of the Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari was plundered from a bank safe in Berlin.The instrument, crafted in 1709 during the golden age of violin-making, had been deposited there years earlier by the Mendelssohn-Bohnke family as Nazi persecution put assets owned by Jews in jeopardy.For decades after the war, the family searched to no avail for the violin, known as the Mendelssohn, placing ads in magazines and filing reports with the German authorities. The violin, valued at millions of dollars, was presumed lost or destroyed.The Mendelssohn Stradivarius is shown here in black-and-white photos before it was stolen. It bears striking similarities to an instrument that passed through a New York auction house in 2000, shown here in color.Carla Shapreau; Mendelssohn-Bohnke Papers; TarisioNow, the Mendelssohn may have resurfaced. An eagle-eyed cultural property scholar, Carla Shapreau, recently came across photos from a 2018 exhibition of Stradivarius instruments in Tokyo. She spotted a violin that bore striking similarities to the Mendelssohn, though it has a different name — Stella — and creation date — 1707 instead of 1709.“My jaw dropped,” said Shapreau, a senior fellow with the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who had been searching for the instrument for more than 15 years.

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      Ozzy Osbourne Plays His ‘Final Song’ With Black Sabbath

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      The metal luminary, 76, took the stage with his original bandmates at a farewell festival in his Birmingham, England, hometown on Saturday night.“Look at all this love for heavy metal.”James Hetfield, the guitarist and lead vocalist for Metallica, gazed out at the crowd at Villa Park, a football stadium in Birmingham, England, on Saturday. His band was the last of a slew of headliner-caliber metal acts and seasoned pros in and around the genre to perform ahead of the night’s honoree and hometown hero: Ozzy Osbourne.The gathering, a daylong festival called Back to the Beginning, was designed as both a tribute and a farewell. Osbourne, who has stepped back from live performance amid health issues including Parkinson’s disease and emphysema, played solo for the first time in nearly seven years and then, for the first time since 2005, reunited with all three other original members of his pathbreaking 1970s band Black Sabbath — the guitarist Tony Iommi; the bassist Terence Butler, known as Geezer; and the drummer Bill Ward — for a four-song set.Both performances were billed as career finales at the event, which was organized by Osbourne’s wife, Sharon, along with the Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and streamed worldwide with a two-hour delay.“Metallica is so grateful to be invited here to see all your beautiful faces and celebrate the band Black Sabbath, because without Sabbath there would be no Metallica,” Hetfield continued. “Thank you, boys, for giving us a purpose in life; thank you, Black Sabbath.”Gratitude was a theme throughout the concert, where artists didn’t simply cite Black Sabbath for inspiring them musically, but often credited the group with fostering an entire global subculture.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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      Stuart Burrows, Welsh Lyric Tenor Who Straddled the Atlantic, Dies at 92

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      He was a mainstay at both the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House, winning acclaim for his full tenor range and a rich, unforced tone, notably singing Mozart. Stuart Burrows, a Welsh lyric tenor prized by conductors on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1970s and ’80s for his agile singing in Mozart, becoming a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera and at Covent Garden in London, died on Sunday in Cardiff, Wales. He was 92.His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son, Mark.Mr. Burrows was a coal miner’s son who was schooled in the chapels of Cilfynydd, the village where he was born. His clear voice and attention to detail would make him an ideal Ottavio in “Don Giovanni” and Tamino in “The Magic Flute.”His control was effortless throughout the full tenor range, his tone rich and unforced, as in his role as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.” In Georg Solti’s 1974 recording of that opera, Mr. Burrows’s voice was “most beautiful and sensitive,” the critic John Warrack wrote in a review in the magazine Gramophone.Mr. Burrows nearly opted for a professional rugby career as a young man in the early 1950s — he turned down a contract with the club in Leeds at the last minute — but he knew he had a gift that he could not ignore, though his career wouldn’t blossom for another decade.“I knew I could sing,” he told the BBC in 1972. Yet, he added, “I never had ambition to be a singer.” Singing was merely part of the landscape in bardic Wales; the renowned baritone Geraint Evans was born in the same village — and even on the same street — as Mr. Burrows.He had settled happily into a role as a schoolteacher in nearby Bargoed, teaching woodworking and music, “a job which he enjoyed immensely,” Roger Wimbush wrote in a biographical sketch in Gramophone in 1971. But then Mr. Burrows sang “Il Mio Tesoro” from “Don Giovanni,” in Welsh, in a singing competition in 1959 at the age-old national Eisteddfod festival, and won. 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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      Oasis Live Review: The Gallaghers Reunite, Their Songs Still Stomping and Wounds Still Healing

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      The British band, a showcase for the intoxicating but toxic chemistry of the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, performed for the first time in 16 years.It was a few songs into Oasis’s first concert in 16 years and — despite the heavy anticipation, the rabid fan attention, the relief of simply seeing the Gallagher brothers walk onstage together, Liam’s left arm draped over Noel’s shoulder — there was something still tentative in the air at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, on Friday night. A crowd of 62,000 fans was vibrating, and cheering and singing along, but still waiting for license to rage.Liam, the band’s frontman and the punchier of the two brothers — Noel, the songwriter and guitarist, is far more dour — seemed to sense the dryness.Turn around, he told the audience. Find someone and throw your arms around them. Hold them tight, he said. Then the band finally located its detonator.That was “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” from its mighty, snarling 1994 debut album, “Definitely Maybe.” The guitars started at maximum sleaze, and Liam began singing the lyrics — about all the fun ways to tune out when life gets boring — with real brio. The crowd, especially down on the stadium floor, began ecstatically hopping in place in little rugby scrums, then erupted out of them as the band peaked at the chorus. Finally, everyone had shaken off their nerves.The New York TimesFor around two hours, Oasis — perhaps the most meaningful and popular British band of the 1990s, and certainly the rowdiest and most fun — toggled back and forth between masculinist ecstasy and a sometimes fumbling search for it in a frills-free and dogged performance. At times, it was pure triumph, the grandest pub singalong fathomable. At other moments, it was a ramble in the dark.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