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.

The Olympic Look of the Games is the visual and environmental expression of a particular Olympic Games. At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, the designers not only created a Korean signature, but a more elegant statement of the Winter celebration of athletic achievement.

The Vienna Orchestra's horns and low brass displayed their customary control in the opening phrases before the strings took the lyric theme. They were answered by the horns, which, true to their conservative manifesto, still play the narrow-bore instruments in F with the antique pumpenvalve system, invented (like the Vienna Philharmonic itself) in the 1840s. Gustavo Dudamel led the piece dutifully, knowing full well that the Vienna players are the masters of this music.

Anna Caterina Antonacci is a chanteuse supreme who rarely performs in New York. Michael Capasso, the General Director of the New York City Opera, induced Antonacci to give two concerts at Carnegie Hall. Perhaps she will come here to perform in an opera soon.

An obsession with the Jerry Springer show grew into Jerry Springer, the Opera. The show was a smash hit on London’s West End over a decade go. Tentative stabs at transfer across the pond are now fixed in a production by The New Group. Scott Elliott, artistic director of The New Group sensed that the time was now. After all, we have a reality show host in the White House.

Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate is a world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater. The play’s long title might mislead you into thinking you’re going to see a different sort of play. Lisa Portes directs a solid cast of five in this funny, moving, but somewhat predictable play by Antoinette Nwandu.

Suffering on a tumultuous ocean voyage, Wagner conceived of an opera based on a man eternally condemned to the sea. Eternal punishment as a literary theme is broadly established, but the libretto for The Flying Dutchman drew largely on Memoirs of Mr. von Schnabelwopski, by Heinrich Heine, who in turn had adapted folk tales of the Wandering Jew.

Check it out. , San Diego’s The Old Globe Theatre is presenting a new translation and a new way of staging Anton Chekhov’s masterpiece dramedy “Uncle Vanya”.

The Burn by terrific Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins. I think you'll be hearing that name again. It is a tense and smoothly choreographed play, directed by Devon de Mayo. All five characters are on stage at all times in the 90-minute production.

Imagine over 170 wineries from nine different countries following stringent rules to achieve their goal of pesticide-free wines. The project was spearheaded by Angiolino Maule and has grown to a movement throughout the world.

What is it like to be a black man in America? Lawrence Brownlee was haunted by this question. He wanted to answer it in his art form, the classical song and aria. Joining forces with two MacArthur fellows, composer Tyshawn Sorey and poet Terrance Hayes, Brownlee, the artistic advisor to Opera Philadelphia, developed six songs, "Cycles of My Being." Its stunning world premiere was on stage at the Kimmel Center this week.

As stories not written with each other or the stage in mind, Lucia Berlin: Stories lacks the cohesiveness and unswerving trajectory that you would expect in a good play. But this production delivers the sharp-eyed insights of an empathetic and accomplished story teller in a well-crafted, entertaining manner.

Is there a point, in the creation of art for the entertainment of others, where the value of that creative act has to be weighed against the limitations that the human body can endure? That question applies to both the audience and performers attending Friday night's concert at Carnegie Hall featuring the first New York concert performance in 38 years of Philip Glass' 1970 composition Music With Changing Parts.

Thought-provoking themes will keep If I Forget in your mind. A relateable Steven Levenson play will make you laugh and cry at suburban Miami's GableStage.

Printing four decades of images for, Heads and Tales, an exhibit at Gallery 51 in North Adams this summer has kicked up a treasure trove of memories. A series of photos of Carol Channing with Craig Russel who impersonated her evoked the ambiance of a fabulous night at Boston's jazz club Lulu White's.

Sustainability, with the goal of 60% of the wine region following safe environmental practices is the two year goal of the Consorzio Tutelage Vini Valpolicella, the unified body of the appellation.

Nadine Sierra has won the prestigious Marilyn Horne Foundation Vocal Competition and recently the Richard Tucker Award. It is said she will soon become a fixture on the international music stage. She certainly fits in with the beautiful, warm fixtures of the Officers’ Room at the Park Avenue Armory.

The North Adams Winter Arts Festival was launched in December with a holiday celebration at the Eclipse Mill Gallery. It resumes with four events starting with Kathline Carr Wednesday, February 28. It continues with Mark Miller, Wednesday, March 7, then Charles Giuliano and Astrid Hiemer, Wednesday, March 14 concluding with Sarah Sutro on Wednesday, March 28. Speaking well for the depth of the creative community all of the authors live and work in North Adams.

Two great wines were dropped off at my front door. They proved to a pleasant surprise. We share a taste test of affordable wines at under $20 a bottle.

Harriet’s Return, written and performed by Karen Jones Meadows, is presented by the New Federal Theatre through March 4 in New York. Harriet Tubman was recently suggested to replace Alexander Hamilton on the US twenty dollar bill, but this honor has been delayed. We are left to remember, even more significantly the life of a remarkable woman.

When Jaap van Zweden was announced as the new music director of the Philharmonic, he was seen by pundits and punters alike as a firm, conservative voice designed to return America's oldest orchestra to its role as guardian of the standard European repertory of the 19th and 20th centuries. This week, he confirms that hope with a performance of Act I of Wagner's Die Walküre.

Tonya Harding’s story just won’t go away. Surrounded by media frenzy that fanned the fires around OJ Simpson's trial, which occurred at about the same time, it is a big, ugly, fascinating tale. Harding’s main competitor in figure skating competition got whacked in the leg. There enough images and tales to last for a long time. Toe Pick by Zachary Grady, who also plays Tonya, creates the frenzy in video images.

The always innovative Opera Parallèle has taken Leonard Bernstein’s modest one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti from 1952 and framed it with complementary wrapper to produce an exciting entertainment. This evening of opera is not traditional in many ways, but it is delightfully sophisticated and well executed