MUSIC

Cellos and double--basses get individual seats on commercial airlines fairly often, but their smaller relative, the violin, rarely does--unless the violin in question belonged to early 19th-Century Italian virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. A business-class seat has been booked for the violin, which will be accompanied by Genoa Mayor Cesare Campart for a flight from Italy to Buenos Aires on Aug. 21, despite protests by some experts that the trip to Argentina might damage the instrument. Carlo Chiarappa will play the precious violin--built in 1742 by Giuseppe Guarneri--in a concert on Aug. 24 in Buenos Aires’ Coliseum theater.