Music

Virgin Stores in France filing for bankruptcy
The Virgin Stores chain in France, which includes the flagship Megastore on Paris' famed Champs-Elysees, plans to file for bankruptcy. Virgin Stores, ...
Montreux Jazz founder in coma from ski fall
The Montreux Jazz Festival says its founder and general manager Claude Nobs has been hospitalized in a coma due to a cross-country skiing injury over ...
Rare color photos of The Beatles to go up for sale
Unpublished early color photographs of The Beatles' first U.S. tour will be sold at a U.K. auction. The photos were taken during the rock band's 1964 ...
Whale of a tale: Pakistani fishmonger now pop star
Muhammad Shahid Nazir is a testament to the age-old adage that if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if you teach a man to sing about ...
Communist palace draws pop stars and presidents
Twenty-three years after communism collapsed, the Palace of the Parliament, a gargantuan Stalinist symbol and the most concrete legacy of ex-dictator ...
Witch burns, audience on fire at Vienna opera show
At the end of the evening, the witch was toast Sunday — or more precisely a gingerbread cookie — and the audience at Vienna's Volksoper loved it.
Hillsborough charity single tops British chart
A charity single devoted to the victims of Britain's worst-ever sporting disaster has topped the U.K. singles chart to become a Christmas No. 1.
Renowned opera singer in Vienna going strong at 95
It was 1947 in post-war Vienna, and Hilde Zadek remembers taking a deep breath behind the curtain. A rookie on her first opera gig, she was about to ...
La Scala chorus strike forces ballet cancellation
La Scala has canceled the inaugural ballet of its season because of a strike by the chorus. The opera house announced "with regret" that the Wednesday ...
Switzerland sends Salvation Army to Eurovision gig
Switzerland is putting its faith in the Salvation Army to win the Eurovision Song Contest when it is staged in Malmo, Sweden, next year.
Billboard: Adele dominates another year with '21'
It's another year and another Adele domination on the music charts: The British singer is Billboard's top artist of 2012. Billboard said Friday that ...
Pennies over patriotism? Stars move to tax havens
France's Socialist government is introducing a 75-percent income tax on those earning over €1 million ($1.3 million), leading some of the country's ...
Review: Meyerbeer's rare 'Robert' staged in London
Degas painted it. Chopin wrote variations on it. Balzac and Dumas mentioned it in their fiction. The Paris Opera performed it 100 times in just three ...
Review: Kaufmann triumphs as La Scala's Lohengrin
This Lohengrin is no knight in shining armor, confidently riding in on a swan to defend a beautiful maiden. No, the barefoot hero on view at La Scala ...
Russian opera diva Vishnevskaya dies at 86
World-renowned Russian opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya, who with her husband defied the Soviet regime to give shelter to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn ...
Springsteen, Lady Gaga join Stones concert in US
Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and The Black Keys will join the Rolling Stones on Saturday for the final concert marking the band's 50th anniversary.
Review: Terfel shines in Zurich's odd 'Dutchman'
There's scarcely a ship or a sailor to be seen in the wildly revisionist, weirdly anti-colonialist new production of Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" ...
Wagner wins over La Scala's ardent Verdi fans
Richard Wagner won over La Scala's ardent Verdi followers during the gala season premiere on Friday with a production of "Lohengrin" that packed ...
Trapped in 2 worlds: 'Pelleas et Melisande'
In Claus Guth's haunting new production of Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande," the characters move as if in a trance between two worlds — both of them ...
British composer Jonathan Harvey dies at 73
Jonathan Harvey, a British modernist composer whose operas and other works reflected a deep engagement with spirituality, has died at age 73.
Metal band's singer charged in Czech fan death
The manager of a heavy metal band says its lead singer will vigorously defend himself against a charge that he caused a fan's death at a concert in ...
La Scala: Verdi-Wagner polemics 'ridiculous'
The dual bicentennial of the births of composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner is turning into a dueling bicentennial. La Scala general manager ...
Court bans video of Pussy Riot's performance
The video of punk band Pussy Riot's performance in Russia's main cathedral is extremist and must be removed from the web, a Moscow court ruled ...
Rolling Stones mark 50th year with London show
The Rolling Stones made a triumphant return to the London stage on Sunday night in the first of five concerts to mark the 50th anniversary of their ...
Grammy-winning bassist injured in Swiss bus crash
Grammy-winning jazz bassist Marcus Miller and several members of his band were injured when their bus overturned Sunday on a busy highway in ...