Poor Nemorino is in love with his employer, Adina, but she has other things in mind. Along comes Dr. Dulcamara, an itinerant snake oil salesman, who has just the love potion that will make Nemorino irresistible to Adina. Of course, it's really red wine. Frivolity ensues and all live happily ever after.

You can see why this show had a respectable run on Broadway in 1962; you can also understand why it didn’t run longer.

As part of the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere program, The Berlin Diaries is experiencing its stage debut as an impressive fully-staged production at Theatre Lab, the professional resident company of Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton. "The Berlin Diaries," by Andrea Stolowitz, is not just another Holocaust play. Instead, it has an unorthodox structure and seems almost like a detective story.

Americans are fascinated by the filthy rich. Audiences lapped up five seasons of Downton Abbey. Now Julian Fellowes has moved the franchise from PBS to HBO. We follow the robber barons and their social climbing wives on the sumptuous but smarmy Gilded Age. This grand but shallow soap opera is lavish and entertaining. It is worth watching for costumes and spectacle. We are enthralled by a sit down dinner for 60 set in a Newport Cottage. We recommend Becky Libourel Diamond's cook book with recipes to emulate the fine dining seen in the series.

Presenting over 150 photographs of, by, and for Indigenous people, “In Our Hands” welcomes all to see through the lens held by Native photographers.

This landmark donation of over 300 exemplary pieces of American art brings new genres and masterworks to the Museum’s holdings, including pivotal pieces by Winslow Homer, George Aarons, Cecilia Beaux, Stuart Davis, Adolph Gottlieb, Marsden Hartley, Eric Hudson, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Paul Manship and Jane Peterson amongst numerous others. 

We meet a diverse group of young teens bound by a common skill – spelling - and a common goal – winning.  Spelling excellence is a grinding and lonely pursuit.  All who compete in this Bee are nerds, but each in their own way, and each is motivated by a different set of circumstances.  The audience will recall kids they’ve known and enjoy a light-hearted and entertaining look at growing up.

The Clark Art Institute will offer free admission for all visitors from January through March 2024. In its second year, the “Free for Three” program is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to expand awareness of its programming and to welcome new visitors.  

In the lobby of the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, you hear griping about management. Yet it is hard to imagine what people are talking about when you watch and hear the fall production of Gaetano Donizetti’s "Daughter of the Regiment. " A perfect production. 

HallSpace presents Cross-Pollination, a collection of new work by Deborah Kamy Hull. Many of the cut, sewn, and painted textile works completed from 2020 to 2023 are constructed from old, used drop cloths and other repurposed materials. Deborah Kamy Hull has developed a vocabulary of graphic symbols using botanical and geometric forms. The garden as metaphor is a theme that flows through the work. Like memories, coded histories and other stories lie below the surface.

In a compact manner, the libretto demonstrates the idealism of Einstein contrasted with the pragmatism of the women around him, while the story line covers political and social commentary; God and existence; the enormity of the creation of the atomic bomb; and more. Light touches and excerpts from other composers brighten the proceedings.

Victoria Bond is a composer who has experimented with many styles.  Over the years she has worked with Dr. Paul Barnes, a pianist and Greek Orthodox chanter, developing Illuminations on Byzantine Chant. Barnes had hoped to capture the wide emotional range and spiritual message of Orthodox Christianity,  Bond is captivated by this mystical world.

Dreamgirls features a predictable show biz story about the career of a successful entertainer, in this case, a girl singing group, first called the Dreamettes.  It is also the story of a ruthless young man (Curtis) who will control, lie, manipulate, and cheat to achieve his aims. When he hurts or destroys someone, his response “It’s business.”

As the New York Times reported on December 17, “When (Romy) Golan arrived at Koons’s 10th Avenue studio in New York last winter for her interview, she said she was asked to sign a filming release giving the artist the right to “view and approve any footage, still images and/or promotional material that are proposed for use.” Golan had no plans to film her interview or take photographs but signed the release." Koons effectively killed the story in Brooklyn Rail.

On the cusp of WWII David Smith created a series of fifteen, dinner plate scaled, bronze relief sculptures. A gift from his estate fourteen bronzes and one on extended loan have been donated to the Harvard Art Museums. There is irony that Medals of Dishonor are displayed on a campus engulfed in responses to inappropriate remarks by its President, Dr Claudine Gay, before Congress. Under pressure she has resigned. Because of war, and atrocities on both sides in Israel and Gaza, both Jewish and Islamic students proclaim that they do not feel safe on college campuses.

The film Maestro reminds us that classical music can be accessible to a wide audience. This is not because the film makes the music accessible. In fact, Bradley Cooper conducting is a bad joke. You wonder what Yannick  Nezet-Seguin, credited with teaching the actor to conduct, was doing.

Plagiarism has been very much in the news.  Even the recent president of Harvard has been under the gun. And yet there seems to be no firm guidelines to instruct non-academics and even academics as to how to spot evidence of plagiarism.  What follows is a meditation on plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Elle, a shallow but genuine and smart fashionista obsessed with the color pink, is dumped by her status seeking boyfriend who is off to Harvard Law School. Surprisingly (and true, except the law school was Stanford in real life), Elle insinuates an acceptance as well. Her presence provides humorous contrast to the staid environment.

Doomed by progeria, a condition that ages the carrier at 4 1/2 times the normal rate, Kimberly turns 16. Her chronological age corresponds to age 72 given this condition, meaning that she probably has little time left in her life. Nonetheless, she attends to daily activities like any other school kid. But her working class parents are loose cannons, and a grifter aunt who insinuates herself into the household develops a get-rich-quick scheme that is anything but normal.

The Dahls raised their children in the "Christian way," and Christmas homecoming celebrated by food and song is a great family tradition. But as adults the four offspring have deviated from the parents' hopes - among them a lesbian, a pathological believer, a recovering addict, and a lost sheep. When singing together, they seem the idyllic family, but when the music stops, the fractures appear. Despite the holiday setting, this is not a Christmas play.

With great sorrow, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announces the death of its beloved Music Director Laureate, Seiji Ozawa. The Boston Symphony Orchestra’s longest-serving conductor, holding the title of Music Director for 29 years (1973–2002), Maestro Ozawa died February 6, 2024, in Tokyo. He was 88 years old.

Harry Bartnick is a realist painter whose modernist aesthetic is deeply rooted in traditions of classicism. He refreshes and refines his vision through annual visits to Europe particularly the ruins of Italy. In recent years that has evolved into aerial depictions of nature ravaged by industrial and residential development. While framed as environmental commentary the works have an uncanny beauty that evoke a range of responses. Following a template, the artist has launched a website for his extensive and unique oeuvre.

Barrington Stage Company’s Black Voices Matter Program is proud to present “Black History: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future” on Monday, February 26 at 6:00pm at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center (36 Linden St.)  

The Boston Pops’ 138th season opens on May 10 and 11 with one of the great entertainers of our time, Harry Connick Jr., singing American Songbook classics. Returning to the Pops for the first time since 2001, Connick performs in what will be the 35th anniversary year of the release of the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack that earned him his first Grammy Award and went multi-platinum. He joins Maestro Lockhart, who is in his 29th year leading the Pops, making him its second longest-serving conductor since the Pops was founded in 1885, after Arthur Fiedler. 

The playwright points out that sanitation people often feel “invisible” to the people whose garbage they pick up. In the same way, both Marlowe and Danny feel they have become invisible.