Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Handel wrote his first opera, "Almira," when he was only 19. Although it is no masterpiece, it shows at an early stage his gift for melody and his love of the high female voice. The renowned musical event comes to the Berkshires and Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center June 21-23.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington announces spring 2013. Highlights include a talk by author and illustrator Brian Selznick followed by a screening of Hugo, Masters of the Fiddle with Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, humorist David Sedaris , singer/mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau , Cirque Shanghai: Bai Xi, Paul Taylor Dance Company , "Live in HD" broadcasts by the Metropolitan Opera, London's National Theatre, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!, as well as classic movies.

Close Encounters With Music introduces grand prize winners of the Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition and Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in their Berkshire debuts; presents one of the preeminent Baroque ensembles, Tragicomedia, to usher in the holiday season; and adds another notch on its belt of successful commissioning projects with a new work by American composer Robert Beaser, who has written for Glimmerglass and New York City Opera.

While not exactly an overhaul, Mark Volpe appears to be tweaking the programming at Tanglewood. Sticking with the mantra of Tanglewood as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra means facing the reality or an eroding, senior audience. The annual season ending Tanglewood Jazz Festival has been scrapped replaced by booking A list jazz artists Wynton Marsalis and Christain McBride in Ozawa Hall and Pops in the Shed for a boldy revamped Labor Day weekend. And that's not all.

Berkshire Playwrights Lab will present the Berkshire Playwrights Lab 5th Season Gala Celebration on June 9 and staged readings of new plays on July 11, July 23, August 8, and August 22 at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center (14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, Mass.). In addition to a new short piece by David Mamet and performances by actors Jay Thomas, Treat Williams, and other plays and actors TBA, the Gala will include the premiere of Food for Thought, a short film.

Highlights include comedic evenings with the Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music (July 14) and Freddie Roman's Friars Club Comedy Festival (July 15), performances by legendary modern dance troupes MOMIX (July 6 and 7) and Paul Taylor Dance Company (July 26, 27, and 28), musical concerts by Tony winner Faith Prince (July 21), Kennedy Center Honors recipient Barbara Cook and Grammy nominee John Pizzarelli (August 4), and by Grammy Award winners Judy Collins and Jimmy Webb (August 26)

When Rocco Landesman, the head of the NEA, suggested that there are too many arts organizations with supply outweighing demand there was a response of outrage in the arts community. Here in the Berkshires it begs the question of sufficient audience and patrons to support four major theatre companies. It also begs the question of the role of critics? Are we just providers of consumer information for ticket buyers?

Tommy sold out at the Colonial for the VIP opening on Saturday night. The reviews are staggering in, partly because some critics opted for an offer of better seats on Monday night. That doesn't give much time to promote an expensive show with a short run that ends on Saturday. We asked artistic director, Kate Maguire, about that during the opening night party.

The Boston Early Music Festival North American premiere piece de resistance is the long-forgotten 17th century opera “Niobe, Regina de Tebe”. It travels from Boston to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington on June 24 and 25. The rarely produced early opera is not to be missed.

Michael Cassin, Director, Center for Education in the Visual Arts at The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute will present a free lecture on the Clark's major summer exhibition Pissarro's People on Thursday, July 7 at 7:00 pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center. In this special lecture, Cassin will introduce the people in Pissarro’s paintings.

Lucky residents of the Berkshires “Acis and Galatea” is coming your way with two opportunities to hear it. Be prepared for the singing of a lifetime and to pound your hands together until they’re raw. The BEMF’s production of Handel “pastoral entertainment” – he didn’t call it an opera – was the best I have ever seen.

Sleek early music superstar Philippe Jaroussky stars in operatic rarity as King of Thebes; foxy Amantha Forsythe calls up Joan Collins as his duplicitous wife Niobe. Great singing and staging can't safe dramatically inert work. The opera will be staged at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington on June 24 and 25.

Early music groups from around the globe converge on Beantown. Exciting French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky stars in opera centerpiece, "Niobe, Regina di Tebe." Festival reprises 2009 hit, Handel's "Acis and Galatea. Plus more!

The Berkshire International Film Festival announced the winners of the annual BIFF Juried Prize Award and the BIFF Audience Award. In the Juried documentary category, the winner was CRIME AFTER CRIME directed by Yoav Potash, the powerful documentary film on the legal battle to free Debbie Peagler, a woman imprisoned for over a quarter century due to her connection to the murder of the man who abused her.

Three great acting singers, Joyce Di Donato, Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flores provide the most elevated operatic singing in a story as silly and fun as anything you've seen, including a threesome in bed singing trios.

Even while the current season continues through late spring, Boston’s two leading opera companies have announced their schedules for the 2011/2012 season. Opera Boston will offer three productions and Boston Lyric Opera will offer three main stage productions in addition to an off-site Opera Annex production for the third year in a row.

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington will present an eclectic array of April and May programming, including some of the world's top bluegrass, reggae, stand-up comedy, modern dance, flamenco, opera, theater, and movies.

The Cantilena Chamber Choir will present a concert, “Emily Dickinson in Words & Song" on Sunday, Oct. 10, at 5 p.m. The performance at Trinity Church will feature music by Aaron Copland: “Emily Dickinson Songs” and Eliot Carter: “Musicians Wrestle Everywhere,” “Heart Not So Heavy. Also on the program is Samuel Barber’s "Let Down the Bars O Death," and Alice Parker’s Emily Dickinson songs and music by Libby Larsen.

In a bit of musical chairs, Tony award winner Barbara Cook replaces a scheduled appearance by Elaine Stritch at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. The much anticipated concert will occur on August 15. The Stritch appearance has been postponed because she is joining the Broadway cast of Sondheim's A Little Night Music. This season Cook appeared on Broadway in Sondheim on Sondheim.

The Jury for Berkshire International Film Festival had 8 films in competition; 4 films in the feature documentary category and 4 in the narrative feature category. In the documentary category were AHEAD OF TIME, CLIMATE REFUGEES, FAMILY AFFAIR, and THE OATH. ATLETU, GAIA, MAD SAD & BAD, and MY YEAR WITHOUT SEX were in competition for best feature.

Based on the classic 1936 Yiddish film musical comedy Yidl Mitn Fidl starring the irrepressible Molly Picon, this new English-language adaptation was written by screenwriter and author Stephen Glantz and will be directed by Susan Merson.

Producers Tony Ponturo and Fran Kirmser announced that LOMBARDI, a new American play from Academy Award-winning playwright Eric Simonson, directed by Tony Award nominee Thomas Kail, will preview at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Mass. July 22-28, before moving to the Circle in the Square Theatre on Broadway this fall (previews begin September 23, opening night is October 21). Starring Dan Lauria and Judith Light, LOMBARDI is based on the best-selling biography When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss.

On Saturday, March 13, at 4:00 p.m., The Mount will present a special performance of Edith Wharton's Parisian salon, featuring the Cantilena Chamber Choir. The concert is similar to those given by Edith Wharton in her Parisian salon to raise money for the Belgian war relief effort in World War I.

Seeing a visibly aged McCoy Tyner recently at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center made me reach into the vault for notes and images of an afternoon together in October, 1979. It evoked memories of a life in the arts.

McCoy Tyner was barely twenty when for four years he played piano in "The Classic" John Coltrane Quartet. He appeared last night at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. It was a powerful but too brief set by his trio that left the audience hungry for more.