Music
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Introduction to Four Shows on The Great White Way
Liberation, Reunions, Romy & Michele, Six
By: - Nov 14th, 2025While at the American Theatre Critics Conference in NYC, I attended four shows. By coincidence, the common theme of revisiting or reunion emerged. Women's relationships and rights surfaced as another binding element. Reviews of each play will appear separately.
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Reunions
Two Stories of Revisiting Set to Music Off-Broadway
By: - Nov 17th, 2025In the first of these turn-of-the-20th-century stories, a typist in England is sent unawares on a job that happens to be for her ex-husband who is being knighted. In the other, two Spanish lovers in youth find one another in their 70s.
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Six: The Musical
Long Running Broadway Production
By: - Nov 17th, 2025In this high energy musical, the six deceased wives of Henry VIII compete to find who is the best singer among them. Verbal jabs punctuate heavy rock solos by the contestants.
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Romy & Michele: The Musical
The Movie Comes Alive Off-Broadway
By: - Nov 17th, 2025The two ditsy women who left Tucson for LA are invited to their 10th high school reunion. Wanting to appear successful, they hatch the plot that they invented Post-Its. Sounds plausible. Right?
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Madama Butterfly
One of Opera's Most Beloved by Opera San Jose
By: - Nov 18th, 2025Against social norms, the naive ingenue Cio Cio San marries the footloose U.S. Naval officer Pinkerton. On leaving, he promises to return to her before the robins nest. Some three years later, his return brings surprise and tragedy.
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The Monkey King
Spectacular World Premiere by San Francisco Opera
By: - Nov 21st, 2025Drawing from one of the four classic novels of Chinese literature, the opera tells the story of the Monkey King who claims to be more powerful than any being on earth other than the Buddha. Nonetheless, his story begins with 500 years of imprisonment but ends with his learning the ultimate lesson in life. It is hard to imagine an opera being more stunning visually.
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Berkshire Opera Festival
Announces 2026 Season
By: - Dec 02nd, 2025Berkshire Opera Festival (BOF) announces its 2026 summer season under the vision of Co-founders Brian Garman (William E. Briggs Artistic Director) and Jonathon Loy (Director of Production), and new President and CEO Natalie Johnsonius Neubert. In its 11th year, the company remains unique in the culturally rich Berkshires for producing opera at the highest level.
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Chess Revived on Broadway
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Irving Berlin White Christmas
At Goodspeed
By: - Dec 19th, 2025The highlight is the dancing. An early number, “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing,” sets up the expectations with a ballroom number by Phil and Judy. Act two opens with a perhaps over long but spectacular tap number, “I Love a Piano.” It stopped the show.
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Met Opera Chamber Ensemble at Weill Hall
Carnegie Hosts Erin Morley and Lawrence Brownlee
By: - Jan 13th, 2026A chamber ensemble, comprised of members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, performed a Brahms Trio and accompanied premiere singers in Schubert Lieder and a Donizetti duet. The intimate Weill Concert Hall, seating around 250 people, gave the audience a taste of the individual talents that come together in the grand opera house and rarely get a chance to display their solo skills. James Levine cooked up this idea, and it makes for an exciting and inviting evening.
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10 by Satch
New Black Eagle Jazz Band
By: - Jan 16th, 2026The New Black Eagle Jazz Band brings faithful recreations of Armstrong’s music to the Berkshires, performing ten of his most notable numbers in this cabaret concert (dancing optional; to some, it will be inevitable), on Friday evening, Feb. 20, 2026, 7:30pm. Part of Pittsfield’s 10x10 Upstreet Arts Festival.
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Tiergarten, a Cabaret at Prototype
Andrew Ousley Gives Decadent and Provocative Evening
By: - Jan 19th, 2026The Prototype Festival, founded by Beth Morrison and the producers of HERE twenty years ago, has been at the forefront of new opera since its inception. This season, a cabaret evening created by another new-performance impresario, Andrew Ousley, took a special place in Prototype.
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Cynthia Erivo at Tanglewood
To Perform with Pops
By: - Jan 21st, 2026Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning and three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, singer, author, and producer Cynthia Erivo joins the Boston Pops in the 2026 Tanglewood Popular Artist Series schedule.
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The Cleveland Orchestra Delivers Verdi's Requiem
Welser-Most Conducts at Carnegie Hall
By: - Jan 21st, 2026Franz Welser-Möst arrived at Carnegie Hall on January 20 with the Cleveland Orchestra and Verdi’s Requiem. Asmik Grigorian, well known for her dramatic operatic singing, took the soprano solo role. She was joined by Deniz Uzun (mezzo-soprano), Joshua Guerrero (tenor), and Tareq Nazmi (bass), all of whom added vocal pleasures. Lisa Wong directed the chorus.
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Hershey Felder: The Piano & Me
The King of Composer Bios Tells His Own Story
By: - Jan 25th, 2026Hershey Felder's career has been dominated by his creation of one-man plays in which he portrays a composer and performs the composer's works on piano. After Felder's constructing eight well received musical biographies, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley presents his autobiography set in the same format, with the artist performing works of his own preference and those which were important in his professional development.
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Tanglewood 2026
Music in the Berkshires
By: - Jan 29th, 2026Tanglewood—the famed music and learning campus and summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO)—announces details of its 2026 season, opening in late June and continuing to Labor Day weekend.
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Heartbeat Opera Gives Us Manon
Opera Lives in New York
By: - Feb 02nd, 2026Heartbeat Opera is offering a striking new Manon, cut and shaped into a taut hundred minutes, restoring much of the original wit and allowing it to sharpen—rather than soften—the opera’s tragic ending. This one-act chamber adaptation features a new English translation by Jacob Ashworth and Rory Pelsue. Directed by Pelsue with meticulous attention to detail and an unerring sense of pace. Conducted by the inimitable Dan Schlosberg, the production is terrific from start to finish
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The Hello Girls
Ross Valley Players' Homage to Brave Young Women in WW I
By: - Feb 02nd, 2026Building on true events and characters, the musical tells of the contributions made by a particular class of women in World War I. For vital battlefield communications in France, General Pershing needed personnel with both telephone operator and French language skills. The answer was ultimately over 200 staff members recruited from the U.S. They were all women. They were The Hello Girls.
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Paul Simon ar Tanglewood
His Berkshires Debut
By: - Feb 03rd, 2026Paul Simon, one of the most celebrated and beloved singer-songwriters of all time, is set to make his Tanglewood debut this summer as part of the festival’s Popular Artist Series. The 16-time GRAMMY® Award winner and two-time Rock & Rock Hall of Fame inductee brings his highly acclaimed “A Quiet Celebration” tour to the Koussevitzky Music Shed on Saturday, June 27, at 7:30 p.m.
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Keith Lockhart and Boston Pops
Spring Schedule
By: - Feb 05th, 2026This season of Pops presents a lineup of today’s most compelling stars from a range of musical traditions, including Jon Batiste, Ray Chen, Jacob Collier, Ben Folds, Pink Martini, Leslie Odom, Jr., and St. Vincent join the Pops for solo performances. Terence Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane perform a special Miles Davis and John Coltrane Centennial tribute, accompanied by a jazz ensemble.
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Love is Destiny at Frankfurt Opera
R.R.Schlater Directs Agostino Steffani
By: - Feb 08th, 2026Opera Frankfurt is mounting Amor Vien dal Destino (Love Is Destiny) by the late 17th-century composer Agostino Steffani. An Italian who masterfully blended bel canto lyricism with the German counterpoint tradition, Steffani was a major influence on Handel, who frequently glommed onto his work, sometimes quoting it directly.
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Weinberg's Passenger at Opera Frankfurt
We Must Not Forget
By: - Feb 10th, 2026Opera Frankfurt gives a commanding and deeply engaging performance of The Passenger by Mieczysaw Weinberg, with a libretto by Alexander Medvedev. Dmitri Shostakovich, a close friend of the composer, read Zofia Posmysz’s novel and immediately saw its potential as an opera. Weinberg agreed and went on to write what he considered the best of his seven operas. The Soviet government suppressed it
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Salome
West Bay Offers Solid Production of Strass's Classic
By: - Feb 16th, 2026In a psychopathic rage, Herod's adopted daughter, Salome, calls for the beheading of John the Baptist. Tense music underscores the tense drama.
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Hamilton Hip-Hops on Broadway
Game Changing Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda
By: - Nov 22nd, 2015Hamilton, the hip-hop opera by Lin-Manuel Miranda is the most refreshing, titubating, brilliant and exciting musical to grace Broadway in decades. It follows his earlier, award winning "In the Heights." Now in his mid thirties Miranda is an immense talent to be reckoned with for years to come. He is a force for change in American culture. This hit show is sure to run for years on Broadway followed by a national tour and tons of regional productions. Hamilton is the greatest invention since sliced bread.
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The Arts in Cuba
Music for Breakfast and Studio Visits
By: - Nov 22nd, 2015While in Cienfuegos, we had some interesting musical entertainment. After walking around the square, we climbed several flights of stairs to hear a special concert by the Choir of Cienfuegos, a chorus of about 24 local men and women, who performed a concert of Cuban and international songs and show tunes. One of them, incongruously, was the American folk song, “Shenandoah.”
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