BSC will produce the Tony Award-winning musical La Cage aux Folles, and the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, Next to Normal, which will be directed by Alan Paul, in a co-production with Round House Theatre, Bethesda, MD.

The Transcontinental Railroad connected the Eastern and Western United States the same way that the Silk Road of Asia connected the Orient to Europe. Upon completion of the railroad, goods that would take six months to travel by boat around the Horn from the West to East Coast now were transported across the country in days. Most importantly, ideas and culture were transported. This crisscrossing changed the United States and made it the superpower it is today.

The captivating photographs in the exhibition draw on an important archive of an estimated one million photographs, a recent acquisition donated to the Museum by the North of Boston Media Group, owners of the Gloucester Daily Times. Through the photographs and personal accounts of more than one dozen GDT photographers, the exhibition reflects the people and stories of Cape Ann and shares the integral role that local photojournalism plays in documenting the community.

From May 17 to September 29, 2024, the Guggenheim Museum will present the solo exhibition Jenny Holzer: Light Line, a reimagining of Holzer’s 1989 landmark installation.

Shakespeare & Company announces the first four titles of the 2024 season, including a World Premiere and a musical exploration of Shakespeare’s language and music.  In addition to titles yet to be announced, Shakespeare & Company's 47th Season includes: 

The English Concert led by Harry Bickett performs an annual Baroque opera, semi-staged at Carnegie Hall.  These performances are highly anticipated, for good reason.  This year's was no exception.

Directed by Wallace Worsley, Universal’s largest-scale silent film played a large part in making Lon Chaney a legend. It paved the way for the rest of their enduring legacy of gothic horror from the golden age of film. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923; 2 hours, 13 minutes), Quasimodo (an inarticulate, deformed human being, who is the bellringer of the Cathedral of Notre Dame) sacrifices his life to save Esmeralda (a Gypsy girl who once befriended him) from Jehan, the hunchback's evil master and brother to Dom Claude, chief priest of the cathedral.

Dining with my Sicilian Dad, at home or out and about, was always a culinary adventure. From him I learned to eat anything that didn't eat me first.

Paintings by Mark Rothko, with evaluations reaching $80 million, are out of range for museums to borrow and insure. Currently there are two, once-in-a lifetime exhibitions of his work. Through April 2, 2024, more than a hundred paintings are on display at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.  Through March the National Galley has Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper with a hundred works drawn from all phases of his career.

50 Years and Forward: Works on Paper Acquisitions (through March 10, 2024) marks the 50th anniversary of the Manton Research Center — the home of the works on paper collection — with a selection of prints, drawings, and photographs acquired between 1973 and 2023. The Clark has free admission from January through March.

The continuing evolution of Esther Solondz’s fascination with portraits and transformative materials is expressed in her new work. For the past 20 years, she’s worked with suggestive half-here, half-there images made with substances that evolve over time. In her current exhibition, Solondz is using ink, which she drops onto wet paper. This allows for a certain amount of control but also happy accidents as the ink moves and pools in unforeseen ways. 

This exhibition embodies the notion of uniting diverse artistic styles and techniques to honor the abundance and variety of creative expression within the Galatea membership.

Highlights include residency with new Jazz Studies co-chair Anna Webber; concert of music by David Bowie; celebrations of Duke Ellington, Max Roach, Wayne Shorter, Mahalia Jackson, and Chris Connor; and a special appearance by the NEC Jazz Orchestra at Cambridge's Regattabar

I don’t do a ten-best list; instead, I like to recall some of my favorite shows of the past year.

While Jeff Weaver is among America’s elite realist painters his work is not widely known beyond Gloucester. During Gloucester 400th Plus an exhibition, This Unique Place: Paintings and Drawings of Jeff Weaver, was featured at the Cape Ann Museum. His remarkable work preceded the blockbuster show of Josephine and Edward Hopper who met in Gloucester during the summer of 1923.

“Museums are not simply repositories of art. They humanize the landscape of human events. They connect us to life’s most enduring themes. I have long felt this way about the Gardner, and feel it particularly keenly about a work that will be specially presented at the Museum January 20–February 4, 2024.”

Foraging through the belongings of their recently deceased mother, two middle-aged, somewhat estranged sisters learn more about their birth father and stepfather from a trove of letters and other documents. They also learn more about each other as they clash and bond over historical events that they either did not share or had seen from different perspectives.

Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts mounted a comical and believable production of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park." The production ran through Jan. 28. "Barefoot in the Park" takes place in New York City during the 1960s.

Barrie Kosky, former director at the Komische Oper, Berlin, directed Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera "Der Goldene Hahn" (The Golden Cockerel) at the Schiller Theater, the temporary house of the Komische Oper during its renovation.

A month of dining on the road has its ups and downs. Mostly when turning off for the night there is a range of chains. Now and then we got lucky with diners, drive-ins and dives.

Since 1975 Raindancer Steak House in West Palm Beach has been serving the Florida clan of the rich and elegant. With a fabulous vintage jazz soundtrack we enjoyed exquisite fine dining. The more so as we arrived in time for the Early Bird special menu.

Berkshires Jazz got a jump on the centennial phenomenon last April, presenting the remarkable pianist Ted Rosenthal with the equally remarkable advanced strings ensemble from Kids 4 Harmony.  

During our epic road trip to and from Florida we sniffed out barbecue. By default, we enjoyed many Mexican restaurants. In a hamlet off 1-95 we enjoyed authentic North Carolina grub at Stormin Norman's Barbecue.

Christopher Demos-Brown's suspenseful play, "The Cancellation of Lauren Fein" is experiencing a riveting world premiere production at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach. The production runs through Feb. 25. Demand for tickets was high, so Palm Beach Dramaworks extended the production of the timely and layered play by a few performances.

The jester Rigoletto's life is dedicated to the care and safety of his daughter, Gilda. When she is kidnapped and compromised by his employer, the Duke of Mantua, he plans revenge but is also cursed by the father of another victim of the Duke's lechery. His plans backfire catastrophically. The glorious opera receives a powerful treatment.