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ArtWeek Berkshires is a collaboration among Berkshire County’s five cultural districts (Great Barrington, Lenox, Pittsfield, North Adams, Williamstown), supported by 1Berkshire and the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, with media support from Berkshire Magazine and Lamar.  

It's the final lap for the summer season at Tanglewood with more great concerts to come.

Perhaps unique among performed operas, Francesco Cavalli’s 1667 “Eliogabalo”’s world premiere was delayed – by over three centuries – until 1999 to be precise.  Why, one might ask? 

The Boston artist, Kahlil Gibran, is best remembered for his welded steel and bronze sculptures. Recently the Ogunquit Museum of American Art presented an exhibition of small early paintings that make us reconsider the relationship to his teacher Karl Zerbe and the Boston Expressionists.

Harriet Harris has caught Eleanor’s mannerisms well, her physical motions exactly - living in the age of newsreels, her figure, her speech, her presence are indelible in public memory.

Our first outdoors headliner concert takes place on Sunday, Aug. 15, at newly-refurbished Gateways Inn in picturesque downtown Lenox.

The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) announces its first annual PEM Prize to celebrate creative expression and civic engagement. The inaugural recipient of the PEM Prize and its $25,000 award is multidisciplinary Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa. Over the next year, Garaicoa will lead a series of events and civic engagement initiatives with the museum to coincide with the reopening of Partitura (August 1, 2021–February 6, 2022).

Singer-songwriter Paul Beaubrun was born into Haitian musical royalty (his parents are lead singers in the Grammy nominated band Boukman Eksperyans, and his grandfather is Haiti's beloved actor/comedian Languichatte Debordus). He will perform at Hancock Shaker Village on July 31.

And Away We Stared is an inventive and theatrically imaginative production, using text from the works of writers Charles Mee, Gertrude Stein and Matei Visniec, a Romanian-French playwright frequently produced by Trap Door. The theater is committed to “seeking out challenging yet obscure works and bringing them to startling life on stage” and they’ve succeeded here.

In “Elizabeth Cree,” the eminent Pulitzer Prize winning team, composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, have crafted a score and a darkly comic libretto with Gothic atmosphere that is absolutely riveting.  West Edge Opera’s stellar new production at its wonderful outdoor venue channels the creepiness of the events even at a broad daylight matinee.  

The Munich State Opera is presenting Salome, the opera by Richard Strauss. The set is dark, yet in full view as we enter the opera house. A man is fidgeting over a desk deep in the set. On it sits a banker’s lamp with its classic green hood. A patent for this lamp was taken out in 1909. In a prologue to the opera, Mahler songs are being sung, another brief clue to date the monumental, elegant setting created by Malgorzata Szczesniak. 

With “Katya Kabavona”’s powerful score and intense drama, Janácek expressed his full maturity in the vocal genre.  It is a classic, and West Edge’s production is well worth seeing.

Wolf and Badger is a tight and intense drama receiving its world premiere production at Main Street Players in Miami Lakes. The drama by Michael John McGoldrick shows what can happen drug use becomes habitual. The play takes place in 2006 in a working class neighborhood of Syracuse, N.Y. Main Street Players' strong production runs through Aug. 29. People can watch the play virtually if they choose.

The National Academy of Design is pleased to announce the launch of the virtual Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné on July 29, in recognition of the anniversary of the artist’s birthday. In this first phase, the catalogue raisonné is focused on American artist Eastman Johnson’s paintings. Subsequent phases will include the artist’s drawings and prints.

“The Song of Summer” contains many stock situations, but they are written and performed with great flair, and the outcomes are not always as expected.  Importantly, the play’s subtext provides layers of depth that result in a thoughtful work.  Though the work doesn’t wallow in self-importance, this is not an episode of “Happy Days.”  

American journeyman playwright and author Jeremy Hatcher has fashioned a new version of Dr. Glas that takes into considerations the heart of the story set in 1905 Sweden, while creating a riveting psychological thriller, and a perfect vehicle for the talent of polished British actor Daniel Gerroll, in a solo tour-de-force performance that is smartly directed by NCRT artistic director David Ellenstein.

Blending several different theatrical genres and making it all work is a challenge. Murder for Two, which is reopening Ivoryton Playhouse combines elements of farce, murder mysteries and musicals.

GableStage in Coral Gables will open its 2021-22 season with Arthur Miller's The Price. The nonprofit, professional theater company near Miami had planned to produce Miller's drama last season, however, the pandemic closed theaters. GableStage's 2021-22 season will be the first under new producing artistic director Bari Newport. Newport succeeds Joe Adler, a South Florida theater icon who has died.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) recently announced awards for authors of new plays.Her Honor, Jayne Byrne received the 2021 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. SHIP, by Douglas Williams, takes home the 2021 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award. Runners-up for the ATCA/Steinberg honor were Khat Knotahaiku for Graveyard Shift as well as Jason Narducy and Brett Neveu for the musical Verboten.

The stunning matinee production of the monologue Becoming Othello: a Black Girl’s Journey at Shakespeare &Co. this July is set outside in the Roman Garden Theater. On a broiling hot summer day the air rippled with energy as the tall, imposing actor who wrote and conceived of the play, the award-winning Debra Ann Byrd, opened with a chaotic scene at a difficult time of her life, when options seemed blocked and things were not working out for her personally or professionally.

The production is currently being rehearsed at The Egg PAC, where the Manhattan based professional company has been resident every summer since 2000. “We could not be more excited to be in the theater everyday” says Artistic Director Chiara Ajkun “This long pause has forced us to reflect on the importance of the Arts and the way they shape us as People. I, for one, strongly believe the magic of ballet does not rest in the opulence of sceneries and large ensembles, rather on pure emotion, beauty and magic it creates”. 

Now available at opera box.tv, Boston Lyric Opera offers a mysterious, death-defying plunge into streaming opera. The eight part mini series stars Isabel Leonard and Talise Trevigne as a married lesbian couple who run a desert Inn, where people can be reunited with their dead loves, like a real world ouija board set in Palm Springs. The Inn sign is not missing a letter. The eerie Bates Motel missed some in the TV series. The kinky Chelsea, where traditional residents were like some of the characters in this series, also is distinguished by missing letters. What is not missing here is terrific music, drama and singing and not singing actors. James Darrah brings his film background and gifts to a wild opera moment.

James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim will talk during a digital event about Lapine's new book, Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park With George. This "intimate digital conversation event" will take place on the day of the book's release -- Aug. 3. Tickets are available at www.TheTownHall.org for the 7 p.m. EST, Aug. 3 event. Go to www.TheTownHall.org. Award-winning actress Christine Baranski will moderate the digital conversation.

Jacob’s Pillow will offer two weekends of free Pillow Pop-Up performances in Berkshire County during the last weekend in July and first weekend in August. Performances will happen on a uniquely designed portable stage and feature local performers, as well as the all-female intergenerational Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective (July 31 – Aug. 1) known for illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop, and Philadelphia-based Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble (Aug. 7-8), dedicated to preserving the traditional dance and music of West Africa and the African diaspora.

The Harvard Art Museums reopens to the public on Saturday, September 4, 2021. Advance reservations will be required for visitors and will be available up to three weeks in advance. Reservations can be made on the museum website beginning August 20. A limited number of tickets may also be available each day to walk-in visitors. In conjunction with the reopening plans, the museums are also pleased to announce a new “Free Sundays” initiative. The museums will offer preview days for members and supporters on Thursday and Friday, September 2–3, before opening to the general public on September 4.