First Night is the most affordable, accessible, family-friendly, safe and exciting way to spend New Year's Eve in the region. On Saturday, December 31st join over 15,000 revelers as Saratoga Art’s presents one of the oldest and largest First Night celebrations in the country. Starting with the 5k roadrace at Skidmore College at 5:30pm, culminating with fireworks in Congress Park at midnight and packed full of live music, dance, comedy and magic in between, this event will be a highlight of your outgoing year.

Conductor Iván Fischer led the New York Philharmonic in a startling program, not because Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major or Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony in G Major are unfamiliar. Yet they sounded particularly new and fresh in this performance. Fischer characteristically releases phrases in a swell and dares to experiment with dynamic extremes, particularly in the Beethoven, where both the soloist and the orchestra often whisper.

The holiday season comes early this year. From December 1 through 21, MASS MoCA opens its doors and waives admission to all Berkshire County residents. MASS MoCA hopes to welcome as many friends and neighbors as possible with its first-ever Free Berkshire County program.

A friend wrote of spending Thanksgiving in the kitchen and concern that I had passed mine contemplating the pending decline and fall of an American empire. The response set forth some concerns for the new era of social and political commentary. The end is near and starts now.

"Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Art" by author Judith E. Stein has fleshed out an essential and enigmatic chapter in contemporary art. While entirely absorbed with the artists he discovered and exhibited Bellamy had an oddly contrarian indifference to making sales. When the artists he championed soared in the red hot art market he was nowhere to be seen. Reflecting his Eurasian heritage Bellamy was more a monk with a begging bowl than an aggressive gallerist.

When you put 4 couples and 3 bedrooms on one witty night, Alan Ayckbourn creates marital mishegoss with a British accent. Trevor and Susannah, with their marriage on the rocks, invade the bedrooms of their family and friends over the course of an evening, spreading chaos in their wake. Director Maria Aitken (The 39 Steps, Private Lives) returns to the Huntington Theatre for this light comedy of marital misunderstandings.

Mark-Anthony Turnage created the kind of scandal the arts love when in 1988 he premiered his first opera "Greek." A punkish provocation, it set the hoary myth of Oedipus, he who killed his father and married his mother, in a declining Thatcherite Britain. In choosing it, the BLO, in a dynamic production, asks whether it is still relevant.

The elegant, exquisitely designed and printed book "Captured by Light: Black and White Photographs-Fifty Years" summarizes a lifetime of work by Eric Myrvaagnes.

The leadership of the multi-award winning Island City Stage, a bold and daring Wilton company near Ft. Lauderdale is dedicated to “producing theatrical experiences that positively impact the LGBT and general community,." “Perfect Arrangement” by Topher Payne centers on an effort to track down and fire homosexuals who worked for the U.S. government in the 1950s. .

Jonathan Dove's Flight is given a near perfect mounting this fall at the Juilliard School. Juilliard's neighbor across the way could take a page on opera production from the young artists whose talent and sensibility bodes well for the future of the opera form.

This is a thoughtful drama (with comic lines) about the nature of law and constitutionality and father-son relationships. Director Gary Griffin takes Mike Bartlett’s carefully shaped story and brings out its drama, compassion and relevance to the day’s events.

The Polonsky Shakespeare Center mounts a charming production of Carlo Goldoni's famous play. Improvisation abounds. You'll hear about Flatbush and election night mares.

The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1931 and opened its first of several venues in 1931. Initially American art was viewed as inferior to the School of Paris. That shifted after WWII with the ascent of the New York School. Early on the museum mounted Annuals which eventually evolved into Biennials. They have long been regarded as reflecting the latest developments in the field. With 63 participating artists the 2017 Whitney Biennial (March 17 to June 1) continues that tradition.

Mike Grgich emigrated to America after World War II. He moved to California following an American Dream. Today, he is a legendary winemaker who just turned 93.

When Edward Albee died, the social networks were inundated with spontaneous comments. One admirer reminisced about the exquisite instructions on preparing the perfect crème brulee in Counting the Ways and made me realize how many such excerpts have stayed in my mind over the years. I’ve been thinking about them like memorializing snapshots – all those stimulating tricks with words, like Agnes wondering whether she can say “I dropped upstairs” and Jerry asking about saying “A dog I knew.”

Now that it is assured of ongoing financial stability The Mount, a landmark in the Berkshires, is moving toward increased winter programming., Here is a schedule of upcoming events.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time closed on Broadway in September after 800 performances (including 23 previews) and won five Tony Awards, including Best Play and garnering a host of other honors. Our correspondent reports on the touring company that performed briefly in Palm Beach, Florida.

Chateau de La Dauphine in Bordeaux offers wine tourism possibilities for all visitors, year round. Marion Merker heads the operation of this beautiful estate.

In his most significant commitment yet to Tanglewood, Andris Nelsons will lead both the opening and closing BSO concerts, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, and Beethoven Symphony No. 9; Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 with Kristine Opolais; an opera gala with Ms. Opolais and Dmitri Hvorostovsky performing excerpts from Simon Boccanegra, La traviata, and Eugene Onegin; the world premiere of John Williams’s Markings with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; and the first-ever BSO and festival concert performance of the complete Das Rheingold, a tour de force milestone in the history of the festival.

Claudio Monteverdi is considered the first major composer of an opera. The richness of his talent is on abundant display in William Kentridge’s direction of The Return of Ulysses.

“Vicuna” is comedy rich in innuendo and roman à clef portrayals. I’ve seen several of Jon Robin Baitz’s plays in the past, but this one is a little different from his usually serious efforts as a dramatist.

The Eastman Philharmonia under the brilliant Neil Varon, performed Maurice Ravel, Kevin Puts and Serge Prokofiev at Alice Tully Hall.

The brutally honest play From Silence by Anne Marilyn Lucas is based on her observations of second generation Holocaust survivors and their families. The piece centers on a Jewish Holocaust survivor who, as a coping mechanism, has remained silent about her experiences in detention.

Any theatre company, group, or person who wants to do a reading of my feminist political comedy, The Taming, on Inauguration Day 2017 can do so for free, with thanks to Playscripts.

Located in the 'Basque' country, the Navarra region is gaining recognition for producing superb wines at reasonable costs.