VIENNA — Last Monday in the imposing Ephrussi Palace, Edmund de Waal presided over a family reunion. For the first time since World War II, 41 relatives from around Europe, the United States and Mexico toured the neo-Renaissance building that had been home to the Ephrussi family, European Jews whose wealth once rivaled that of the Rothschilds.
When the Hungarian State Opera’s white cast of singers came together in Budapest earlier this month to revive a production of George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess,” they received letters carrying an unusual request: to declare themselves African-American.
The president of the European Parliament apologized Thursday after he said that Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist former leader, had done positive things despite leading his country into war and installing a totalitarian regime.
LONDON — Nancy Wigginton, better known as Nan Winton, who was the first woman to read the national news on BBC television, died on May 11 in Dorset, England. She was 93.
LONDON — “Coronation Street,” Britain’s (and the world’s) longest-running soap opera, which has chronicled working-class life near Manchester, England, since 1960, is introducing the first black family in the history of the series.
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