February 6 – Contralto Kathleen Ferrier, already terminally ill with cancer, leaves Covent Garden Opera House in London on a stretcher after being taken ill on the second night of her run in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice.[1]
October 19 – Opening of the Covent Garden opera season in London, with a production of Wagner's Die Walküre.
October 30 – Ernst Marboe is announced as the new administrator of the Vienna State Opera and Burg Theater, replacing Egon Hilbert.
November 2 – the Metropolitan Opera announces that a new two-year contract has been agreed with the musicians' union, averting a threatened strike by the orchestra.
November 17 – Carl Ebert is announced as the new Intendant of the Städtische Oper, (West) Berlin.
American singer Frankie Laine sets the all-time United Kingdom record for weeks at Number One in a given year on the UK Singles Chart, when his hit singles "Answer Me," "Hey Joe!" and "I Believe" hold the top slot for 27 weeks: a little over half a year. "I Believe", Number One for 18 weeks, also holds the all-time record for a single. Over 50 years later, both records will still hold.
Eddie Fisher becomes "The Coca-Cola Kid" on the television show Coke Time at a salary of one million dollars a year.
US 1940s 1 – Jun 1953, US 1 for 11 weeks Aug 1953, Italy 2 of 1954, US BB 3 of 1953, POP 3 of 1953, UK 7 – Nov 1953, RYM 24 of 1953, Europe 97 of the 1950s
The Boy Friend (Sandy Wilson) commenced at London's Players Club on April 14 and reopened in an expanded version on October 13 before moving to the West End proper in 1954.
^Morawska-Büngeler, Marietta (1988). Schwingende Elektronen: Eine Dokumentation über das Studio für Elektronische Musik des Westdeutschen Rundfunks in Köln 1951–1986. Cologne-Rodenkirchen: P. J. Tonger Verlag. pp. 11–12.
^New York Journal-American (see the photograph of Serry's signature inscribed with signatures of other members of the cast on the stage door of the Empire Theatre at the closing of the play The Time of the Cuckoo), May 25, 1953, p. 15
^Martin Iddon, New Music at Darmstadt: Nono, Stockhausen, Cage, and Boulez, Music since 1900 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press): 69. ISBN9781107033290.
^David P. Appleby, Heitor Villa-Lobos: A Bio-Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies in Music 9 (New York, Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 1988): 114. However, Lisa Peppercorn, "Villa-Lobos's Last Years", translated from the German by Robert L. Jacobs, The Music Review 40, no. 4 (November 1979): 285–99, reprinted with corrigenda/addenda in Villa-Lobos: Collected Studies (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1992): 89–105, gives the date of the first performance as 23 January 1954, by the Louisville Orchestra and Whitney, but for the recording later issued by First Edition Records and not in a public concert (pp. 293 / 97, respectively, and corrigenda 105).