The Miner Family Winery in Oakville, California, part of Napa Valley, is a true family winery in existence for the past twenty years. Dave Miner and his wife, Emily, founded the winery-possibly as an escape from the software life Dave Miner was living in the 1990s.. Two decades later, the winery has a cult following for its signature Oracle wine.

Queen of Basel transports Miss Julie from late 19th century Sweden to present-day Miami Beach. The Hilary Bettis play is a feminist take on August Strindberg's 1888 naturalistic tragedy. Technical elements are top notch

Carmen has arrived in all her glory at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Heralded by digital billboard signs on the highways and byways around the city, and topping off the PECO Building in downtown Philadelphia, the news is being broadcast. The Academy has been packed. This new production by Opera Philadelphia and its partners in Seattle and Ireland, is smashing.

For the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, Artist Michael Rakowitz has recreated the Lamassu. This winged bull and protective deity guarded the entrance to Nergal Gate of Nineveh (near modern day Mosul) from 700 BC until it was barbarically destroyed by ISIS in 2015. This wonderful reconstruction is made from recycled packaging from 10,500 empty Iraqi date syrup cans. This represents a once-renowned Iraqi industry now decimated by war. The piece's inscription is written in Cuneiform. Rebuilding the Lamassu in Trafalgar Square means it can continue to guard the people who live, visit and work in London. It is a layered artwork full of myth and tragic reality.

Tristan und Isolde is not an ordinary opera. Wagner's work stripped almost all the action and plot away from the legend of the medieval knight and the Irish queen and their illicit affair. Aside from one sword-thrust, there is very little action. Everything is internal in this mysterious opera, with turbulent swirls of chromatic orchestration bringing the psychological inner life of the characters to vivid life. In other words, as the Cleveland Orchestra proved on Thursday night, this is a perfect opera for the concert hall.

John Holiday, Andrew Ousley’s latest pick as an artist to perform in his Crypt Session series, sounds like an angel and looks like a linebacker. It’s more apt to note that while Holiday is billed as a counter tenor, he is truly a soprano, comfortable in the very unusual upper registers usually associated with the female voice. His is not a falsetto.

Wines from Alsace, an area that was French and German have history on their side. The regions culture and traditions have been preserved for centuries, just as the wines from Lucien Albrecht, who, started in 1425.

Lawrence Brownlee is a world class bel canto singer. He is also a daring artist who is moving out of his comfort zone to tell new truths in song. The New York premiere of Cycles of My Being by Tyshawn Sorey, was presented at Carnegie Hall.

Fun Home is a relatable, relevant, touching and funny piece. The prize-winning musical featured the first all female writing team to win a Tony award.

Philip Glass holds the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for this season. A concert honoring his work was performed by the splendid Pacific Symphony. Carl St. Clair conducted. He has been the music director of this symphony for decades. The performance made the benefits of consistent leadership over time clear

A good idea is a good idea. That might be the rationale between this weeks New York Philharmonic program which pairs Mozart’s charming Piano Concerto No. 22 with Anton Bruckner’s sprawling, ambitious and ultimately unfinished Symphony No. 9 under the baton of guest conductor Christopher Eschenbach. For New York’s Bruckner enthusiasts, this concert evoked memories of January 2017. Back then Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a cycle of Bruckner symphonies at Carnegie Hall, pairing the shorter works with the major Mozart piano concertos. (Barenboim paired the Ninth with Piano Concerto No. 23.)

Cendrillon is Massenet's fourteenth opera, written at the apex of his popularity as the last acknowledged master of the French romantic style. As conducted here by Bertrand de Billy, its score has the weight of fairy cake, high in sugary melodies and whipped by conductor Bertrand de Billy into an airy soufflé of sound. It's hard to believe it, but this run marked the Metropolitan Opera debut for an enchanting work.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre hits a high note with this powerful, intense play. It may not be quite as shocking as it was when the play first debuted (and this reviewer saw it in New York), but it remains topical in its insistence that the element of doubt can be as demonizing as certainty, depending on where the power exists. With this review we welcome American Theatre Critics Associaton member, Anne Siegel, as our Milwaukee correspondant.

Julia Bullock swept onto the stage in a long green dress whose full skirt was filled with white flowers reminiscent of the gardenias Billie Holiday always wore in her hair. After Schubert, Samuel Barber and Gabriel Faure, we dug into Holiday, Alberta Hunter and Nina Simone with the singer.

Nikolai Rimksy-Korsakov is one of the most important opera composers of 19th century Russia. A member of the "Mighty Handful", he revised works by Mussorgsky, taught Stravinsky and was a master of orchestration and melody. However, outside of a few concert works, the bulk of his music, most notably a long catalogue of operas, receives little attention. This made it all the more interesting that the Manhattan School of Music's Senior Opera Theater decided to mount The Snow Maiden, an enchanting fairy tale opera and the composer's personal favorite.

Aspect presents music in a new concert format, as engaging as it is thought-provoking. In a program at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, Stephen Johnson, a BBC broadcaster, spoke about Weimar, Germany as a cradle of musical talent. Listening to Bach, Mendelssohn and Liszt, there is no question about the talent. Each of these composers had formative experiences in Weimar.

Angels in America is one of the major theatrical events on Broadway this Spring. The highly acclaimed National Theatre Production is here for a limited run through June. The two parts Millennium Approaches and Perestrokia make for a marathon of theater going (well over 7 hours) but you will leave the theater dazed by what you have seen and heard.

There ought to be a law stating all British farces and comedies must be staged by British-trained directors in order to get the full impact of their special, zany, erudite, and/or silly brand of comedy. “How the Other Half Loves” by Sir ASlan Ayckbourn is blessed in having six talented actors who know their stuff; perform on NCRT’s stage and have fun in doing it.

The subject of ‘arranged marriage’ is still practiced in some places and cultures in the world. But in the West, and especially here, in America, one might have some difficulty finding small enclaves of religious separatists that still cling to the old ways of religious observance.

Douglas McGrath has taken Edith Wharton’s novel of constricted high society in New York City in the 1870s and condensed it to 100 minutes. By focusing on specific scenes with little connection between them, at times it feels episodic and lacks flow.

Glenn Loney’s massive resume in 2006 listed more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles, 530 reviews, 7 books, 6 unpublished plays, 2 detailed show program notes, editing or contributions to 22 books, and 39 in-depth interviews for Cue magazine. Among the books is a two-volume "20th Century Theatre," a day-by-day chronology of American, British, and Canadian Theatre activity from 1900 to 1980. He is rembered by William Hirschman, president of American Theatre Critics Association.

Congratulations to playwright, Martyna Majok, and Mandy Greenfield, artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival, Her harrowing play, Cost of Living, had its world premiere in Williamstown in July, 2016. The production moved to New York's Manhattan Theatre Club in 2017. The play has won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. We have reposted the review in Berkshire Fine Arts.

The new New York City Opera extends our horizons. Italo Montemezzi's highly successful Love of Three Kings is presented in its noir depth at the Rose Theater of Lincoln Center.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra played its third and final Carnegie Hall concert on Friday night. This venerable orchestra has found its passion and spark again under the baton of music director Andris Nelsons. As an ensemble, it is moving forward in a bold and forthright manner. And yet, some of its past tendencies appeared in this concert, resulting in a curious evening of variable quality.

A play about preserving Shakespeare's words honored with ATCA/Steinberg awards. The American Theatre Critics Association award goes to Lauren Gunderson for The Book of Will.