Ballo is striking and the score compels from beginning to end with highly melodious arias, ensembles, and orchestral interludes. What it lacks is any “Top 40” type hits, but it really doesn’t matter because every element thrills without being overly familiar. Yet, highlights do exist, and they are spread widely among the roles.

The Verdi Requiem was James Levine's final performance at the Metropolitan Opera.

The Basque region of northern Spain stands out with its beautiful coastline and unique culture. In addition to being historic towns with notable architecture, the cities of Bilbao, Guernica, San Sebastian and Pamplona boast a vibrant contemporary life flavored with local charm. The network of ancient pilgramage routes, the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James) also stretches through this region.

For most of 1968 the then struggling Irish musician and composer, Van Morrison, was on the run from his mobbed up New York manager. Living on Green Street in Cambridge, with local musicians he performed gigs and worked on what became the iconic album Astral Weeks. This is the focus of an enthralling book by Ryan Walsh fleshed out in the context of a meticulously researched account of the vibrant counter culture of that year of living dangerously. Through what evolves as a page turner we learn about Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill Cult, their paper Avatar, founding of WBCN FM as the rock of Boston, the Boston Tea Party, the Bosstown Sound, and Boston After Dark/ Phoenix. Along the way we encounter films, The Boston Strangler and Titicut Follies,as well as LSD gurus Tim Leary and Baba Ram Dass. Long overdue this fiftieth anniversary book sets the record straight.

In case you don’t remember the plot, the mystery begins in Istanbul where in the mid-1920s, a number of passengers board the famed train, the Orient Express, for a trip to England. Surprisingly (it is winter) the first class carriage is full. One of the passengers is the famed Belgium detective Hercule Poirot returning to London from a vacation. The play begins with a brief scene of a little girl being abducted.

There is no question that the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is among the most innovative and forward thinking masters of the keyboard working today. Carnegie Hall was the stage for a recent performance.

Gyorgy Kepes opened in 1967 the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and it was officially inaugurated in 1968. An ardent proponent of collaborations between the arts, sciences and technology MIT was the right place to start such a Center. Since then, a number of museums, organizations and academic centers with similar mandates are flourishing in North America and Europe. Here's just an overview of work that was created at CAVS during 40 years of its existence. The program Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) has taken on the mantle at MIT of interdisciplinary work in the 21st Century.

For three Tuesdays at Joe's Pub at Public Theatre in New York the audience attends a rehearsal of a work in progress, The Girl Who Knew Much, by the performance artist Penny Arcade.

Gloucester Stage Company Artistic Director Robert Walsh and Managing Director Jeff Zinn, announce the six-play lineup for Gloucester Stage’s 39th Season of professional theater in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" is a bizarre hybrid, an opera-oratorio set to a text by Jean Cocteau. Emmanuel Music paired it with two works about Orpheus, another denizen of the land of the Green myths. In their works, both Matthew Aucoin and John Harrison, composers with local connections, showed their debt to Stravinsky.

The New York Philharmonic just went on tour. However, before the orchestra caught a Saturday flight to Japan last week, they played four evening concerts under its new music director Jaap van Zweden. The program, heard Friday night, eschewed the usual tripartite musical evening for a pairing of heavyweight favorites: the D minor Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms, and the Fifth Symphony of Serge Prokofiev.

Enda Walsh has often suggested that what interests him “is about me actually getting through the day.” And indeed, the three works of Walsh’s that I did see, Once, Lazarus (2015) which he co-wrote with David Bowie, and the 22-year-old Disco Pigs, which won awards at the Dublin Fringe Festival (1996) and the Edinburgh Festival (1997), follows these same ideas.

As a producer of new theatrical works, Central Works’ undertakings are always a crapshoot, but they usually beat the odds. In resident playwright Patricia Milton’s Bamboozled, they have tossed a winning number.

On the surface, Destiny of Desire can certainly be enjoyed as a frivolous cream puff and that alone. But the playwright is going for something more. Played in a campy style, the laughs cascade like a thundering waterfall, and the audience howls of recognition and appreciation make you think you’re in Guadalajara rather than Ashland, Oregon.

“This Random World”, written by prolific playwright Steven Dietz, draws from the idiosyncrasies of ‘American Millennials’ and ‘Generation X’ -ers on how they process information, situations, and unexpected opportunities in our digital age.

There comes a time in the career of an opera singer when they are the artist of the moment. For Christine Goerke, the American dramatic soprano who sang the title role of Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera, that time is now. Goerke has sung the role on other stages to great acclaim, both here and elsewhere. However Thursday night was a watershed: the dramatic soprano's long-awaited return to singing major Strauss roles on America's largest operatic stage.

A panel of critics has narrow down a list of new plays to receive the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Annual honor singles out most promising works which premiered professionally outside NYC during 2017. This year's crop of plays tackle topics from preserving Shakespeare's words to refugees fleeing wars

In the Jane Austen catalogue, Sense and Sensibility has always played poor sister to Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps it’s a marketing issue with the latter having the more powerful packaging (i.e.: its title). At the core of this story is a searing indictment of 19th century British laws, mores, and practices that contemporary feminists should cleave to in remembrance of the bad old days.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival has cleverly organized the productions of the three plays which involve King Henry V. Two were offered last summer – Henry IV – Part 1 and Henry IV – Part 2. In those plays, one of the main characters is Prince Harry, also known as Hal, who would become King Henry V. Despite being heir to the throne, Hal was a dissolute wastrel who consorted with Falstaff and his derelict followers.

In general, the 68th Berlinale may be defined as a quest of women attempting to be heard and seen. Seven of twelve prizes went to women, an astounding conclusion, especially since most of the contributions were more on the quiet side and not on the ‘#me too’ loudness. 385 films were screened and 300,000 moviegoers were counted, cold weather or not.

Recently, the medical journal, Springer, published an article dealing with the various types of bacteria found in bar ice. This article shares the results with you.

Eve Ensler is best known for The Vagina Monologues. In The Body of The World, a theatricalization of her 2013 book by the same name at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s New York City Center currently running through March 25, Ensler returns to the stage with a vengeance.

The Associated Chamber Music Players (ACMP) live streamed a master class from the Opera Center in New York. Aspiring chamber music performers across the globe were invited to watch, learn and participate by asking questions.

Sunday's matinee concert, the third of three this weekend at Carnegie Hall, the great Vienna Philharmonic eschewed the Mozart and Beethoven for a refreshing focus elsewhere. For this concert, the orchestra and current guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel agreed to play symphonies by Charles Ives and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose only common thread was the unconventional and innovative nature of their work.

In Intimate Apparel we see four women, three of whom have learned to abandon their fantasies and make choices based on the reality of the world. Each has made a “bargain” and each longs for what she has sacrificed.