Dorothy Marcic’s This One’s for the Girls evidences the changes in a nostalgic journey through selections from the music catalogue of pop songs performed by women since 1900.

La Rondine is an outlier in the Puccini canon. If we dismiss his failed first full-length opera Edgar from consideration,

The playwright T racy Letts,, who can be depended upon for complexity, turns a small town city council meeting into a modern morality play. The Minutes is having i ts world Premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

Ft. Lauderdale area theater company scores a triumph with its season-opening production of the wacky play HIR. The production is marked by first-rate acting HIR is a meaty play, with suggestions of absurd realism and Greek Tragedy.

The lights in the corridor outside the Veterans Room in the Park Avenue Armory, dimmed to black and down the hallway proceeded the featured artist, Barbara Hannigan, bearing a candle.

Memorable music seduces in Love Never Dies. A fine cast is up to the task of singing with flair Andrew Lloyd Webber's soaring songs. The book is not a strong point

At Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night, the Mariinsky Orchestra and pianist Daniil Trifonov offered the New York premiere of the artist's first Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. Now 26, Trifonov has made a name for himself as a young and respected virtuoso, the leading example of a new generation of piano-slingers thrilling listeners around the world. This concerto, which received its New York premiere at this concert, is his shot at a whole new kind of legitimacy.

In one fell swoop, Jesse Bloomberg, the artistic director for the 5 Boroughs Music Festival, brings together a sampling of composers who are tucked into the nooks and crannies of our city. Assigning them the subject of the city unleashes their spirited take on New York. Songs ranged from poetic evocation to the tiny drama about a struggling barista which was inspired by Monteverdi.

Composer William Bolcom and librettist Sanda Seaton have drawn a complex and moving picture of Sally Heings in an 18 song cycle. Soprano Alyson Cambridge is Sally and her performances evokes the slave/mistress of Thomas Jefferson.

The Philadelphia Orchestra's relationship with music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a model of modern artistic collaboration. The Quebecois conductor has brought a much-needed dose of enthusiasm and artistic integrity to the band on Broad Street, and the orchestra has responded according to its gifts with full, rich performances that remain deeply satisfying.

If you visit the Zeni Winery in Bardolino (Veneto) you will have the opportunity to visit a museum dedicated to the winemaking history of the region, plus, if you are adventurous, you can take an aromatic test to identify what you smell. Its all a lot of fun.

The oldest, continuously operating pottery along the Pottery Highway is Owens Pottery of North Carolina, also known as Original Owens Pottery. The Owens family has been involved in pottery since the early 1800s.

There were protests when Dana Shutz exhibited a painting of the mutilated black youth Emmet Till in his coffin. It was a controversial inclusion in the Whitney Biennial. It is not a part of a large overview of her work at Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. There the curators have over expained the work with excessively detailed wall labels. It conveys the notion that the work in a kitchy, ersatz Cubist manner cannot speak for itself. Activists have petiitioned the ICA to shut down the exhibition.

The Band's Visit restores faith in the goodness of humanity. The new musical adaptation features tender, heartfelt songs. Show is well acted and sung by a talented cast

Howard L. Craft has crafted a superb play in Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green. What was it like to be a young black man in America throughout the 20th century and on into our own? Minstrel, preacher, panther, sub-prime mortgage salesman, Abel Green has tried them all. J. Alphonse Nicholson makes his efforts palpably moving.

A highlight of the American Theatre Critics Association’s New York conference is a now traditional lunch at Sardi’s with stars of current Broadway shows. Cast members of seven shows were represented.

Musicals are the specialty of the Palm Canyon Theatre (PCT) where they are sensationally produced and performed. PCT is now in its twenty-first year of providing quality entertainment to the Coachella Valley, presenting thirteen productions a year that include comedies, dramas, and special events as well as their signature musicals.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Dominick Argento, celebrated his 90th birthday at Carnegie Hall. New York City Opera in its wonderful new incarnation mounted two of the composer's one act monologues in dramatic productions.

Our correspondant, Nancy Bishop, in NY for the ATCA conference regrets that " I’m a huge Bruce Springsteen fan—I’ve seen him in concert dozens of times, but I thought the tickets to his Springsteen on Broadway show were too expensive. I was able to buy tickets for these off-Broadway plays and pay for dinner as well for the price of one Springsteen ticket." She offers an overview of affordable shows that will be up through the Holidays.

A woman in a man's wine making world in the early 80's has been recognized as one of Lake Garda's best winemakers. The journey began in the 15th century in the Lake Garda region of Italy, only forty minutes from Verona.

A human actor shines in a show about Lee Harvey Oswald featuring marionettes.Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre revisits tragedies in The Life and Times of Lee Harvey Oswald The production's rather tedious at times, lacking dramatic punch

Prepare for belly laughs during The Play That Goes Wrong, now on Broadway. Impeccable comic timing is key to delivering abundant laughs. The unexpected is common in this play-within-a-murder-mystery-farce

A stylish, relatable musical adaptation of A Bronx Tale is now on Broadway. A tough and tender tale makes us consider our role models

During last year's NY conference of American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) there was a panel on the development of the musical, then in previews, of what went on to be the Tony winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. Predicting that lightning will stike twice the team for The Band's Visit discussed the transitions from film, to Off Broadway, and now a production at Broadway's Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The smart money is on running the table during the awards season.

It’s a woman’s play, about an era when women’s physical and emotional needs and desires were not only misunderstood, but completely ignored. Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play is a charming and titillating look at life in the bad old 19th century. In the playwright's home town it is currently on stage at Chicago's Timeline Theatre.