Flying is a nightmare, especially if you have a 19th-century violin

Abrami, 27, tried and failed Tuesday to take her Vuillaume, which have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, aboard Ryanair Flight No. 3389 from her home in Marseille, France, to Berlin where she was scheduled to record her third studio album for Sony Classical. Despite having flown with Ryanair hundreds of times over more than a decade, nearly all of them with a violin, Abrami said a gate agent told her the instrument was too big to carry on and would need to be checked. After missing her flight,...