The "innovative, clever and thoroughly professional" BERKSHIRE OPERA FESTIVAL (BOF) announces its 2023 season in Great Barrington and Pittsfield, MA, and for the first time in New York City. The only company of its kind in the Berkshire region, BOF produces opera at the highest level under the vision of esteemed co-founders Brian Garman (Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production). The festival has "destination" status. Others write: "No longer need we confine our opera-going to HD films—now we have the highest quality productions and performers in our own backyard." 

For all of human history and eons before, Mount Everest has stood as steady as a rock – literally. In its eight years, the opera “Everest: An Immersive Experience” has had three very different realizations, even though under the baton of Nicole Paiement for each version. The genesis of the opera’s narrative is a real-life tragedy about three members on an Everest expedition in 1996, two of whom never came back.

In one smashing performance, Opera Philadelphia presented two Credos, statements of belief by composers who lived and worked at about the same time, in strikingly different circumstances. Carl Orff survived the Nazi regime in Germany by not protesting. Margaret Bonds grew up in a thriving Chicago art community.

Valentines Day is drawing near and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Germany, seems to bow to this occasion with its new production 'Amore' under the direction of Aram Tafreshian.

The play interweaves three elements – the life and works of the Yiddish author Sholem Asch, the history of productions of his play The God of Vengeance, and the stories of the people involved in a Broadway production of the show in the 1920s. It may sound confusing, but it isn’t.

The playwright Christine Quintana makes an interesting point about communication in the program of Hartford Stage’s production of Espejos:Clean. She says, “Every interaction we have with one another is an act of translation.”

No small theatrical space is better used than the Irish Repertory Theatre's W. Scott Lucas Studio. The stage fills the room, inviting the audience in. Selections are always apt. Ronan Noone’s  The Smuggler is no exception.

Dominique Morisseau has written a sometimes funny but always tense noirish drama which Director Dawn Monique Williams plumbs for all its nuance. The actors find the essence of each character and deliver a gripping entertainment.

“Cashed Out” takes place on the Gila River Reservation in southern Arizona, home to the Pima tribe, traditionally noted for their finely woven baskets – tightly twined bowls with crisp angular patterns.  While the compelling narrative gives interesting insights into the culture of the native people, universal themes abound – the power of love in family and friendship; internal struggle and external conflict; forgiveness and redemption.  The production is striking and highly appealing.

"Rotterdam" is an emotionally-rich play receiving a strong production at Island City Stage. The production runs through Feb. 19 at the company in Wilton Manors, near Ft. Lauderdale. "Rotterdam" opens Island City Stage's 2022-23 season.

Theatre Lab in Boca Raton is producing a fine world premiere of "Last Night in Inwood" byu Alix Sobler. The production runs through Feb. 12. Theatre Lab, Florida Atlantic University's resident professional theater company, is dedicated solely to new work.

Barrington Stage Company (BSC), under the leadership of Artistic Director Alan Paul, will produce a 2023 season that will feature two major musical revivals, two world premiere plays, and two modern classic play revivals.

Anyone who says they never got caught telling a fib is probably telling a fib.  But what is worse is covering the tracks of the first lie with another, and then another, until the wheels finally come off.  Often, the result is loss of respect from others, compounded by loss of self-respect.  If there is a road back, it is an arduous one.

Rhiannon Giddens talks often of being comfortable in the crossroads of her art. The new configuration of Zankel Hall in Carnegie looks like a crossroads. The audience comes from every direction to focus on the world being presented. The stage is a hybrid space where different music from different times can exist side by side.

The realist painter Alfred Leslie had a major impact on the Boston Art World. In 1976 he had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. He also commuted to teach at the Boston University School of Fine Arts.

In the hands of some, a sandwich may be a most humble joining of Wonder Bread with a plain and prosaic filler of any sort. In another, it can be a sublime assemblage of aspiration and dreams. Such is the aesthetic divide between most of the truckers who patronize Clyde’s Sandwich Shop in Reading, PA, and the unseen kitchen staff who fill their orders. The Berkeley Rep production exceeds every standard the script demands.

Opera’s legendary femme fatale returns to Lyric Opera of Chicago with Bizet’s Carmen — March 11 – April 7, 2023 — starring J’Nai Bridges, a leading interpreter of the famous title role and a singer with deep Chicago roots.

“Mah nishtanah, ha-laylah ha-zeh,mi-kol ha-leylot” (Why is this night different from all other nights?). This invocation, spoken by the youngest capable person at the dinner table at seder, is perhaps the most famous and evocative sentence in Judaism. Not only does the ritual that follows those words reflect on the traumatic history of the Jewish people, but it speaks to their very existence.

The exhibition highlights Behind Blue Eyes, a project started by Dima Zubkov and Artem Skorohodko, volunteers who distribute food and supplies to residents in liberated Ukrainian villages.

The Clark Art Institute continues its art in public spaces program in 2023 with a year-long installation presenting the work of contemporary artist Elizabeth Atterbury (b. 1982, West Palm Beach, Florida; lives and works in Portland, Maine). Elizabeth Atterbury: Oracle Bones is a free exhibition on view in the Clark Center’s lower level and in the reading room of  the Manton Research Center through January 21, 2024.

 Front Porch Arts Collective and The Huntington announce the cast and creative team of K-I-S-S-I-N-G, their co-production of the world premiere play written by Massachusetts playwright and Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lenelle Moïse and directed by The Porch’s Co-Producing Artistic Director Dawn M. Simmons. Front Porch Arts Collective is in residence at The Huntington as part of a multi-year strategic partnership.

All of us have had that restaurant experience in which we thought the food would never come. In this case, the cause is not a lost order or long prep time or overtaxed restaurant staff. It is willful delay by the server from hell.

The 90th birthday of composer Pauline Oliveros was celebrated on Saturday at the newly reconfigured Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall.  The steeply raked seating on two sides of the hall, leading to a central stage area embedded in seats on all four sides, felt like an Oliveros’ creation.  We are brought to the hall to listen, deeply.

Berkshire fans will recall seeing Crosby Stills and Nash at Tanglewood, September 2, 2010. Crosby known for a crash and burn lifestyle, as well as an angelic voice that made gorgeous harmonies, has died at 81. I first heard him with the Byrds at Soundblast '66 at Yankee Stadium.

This major exhibition is the first dedicated to Hopper’s formative development on Cape Ann, marking the centennial of the pivotal summer of 1923 when Edward Hopper and his future wife, Josephine “Jo” Nivison, visited Gloucester. Edward Hopper & Cape Ann opens on Hopper’s birthday, July 22, 2023, and runs through October 16, 2023, and is presented in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, the major repository of the Hoppers’ work.