At the 2023 Ojai music festival, Rhiannon Giddens, musical director, and a supremely talented group of musicians, presented a program that challenged the audience to take a musical journey with them around the world.  

Chinese American artist, advocate and director Phil Chan, whose book Final Bow for Yellowface altered the conversation about Asian representation on ballet stages around the country, turns his attention to opera this September, when he directs a new, Asian American take on "Madama Butterfly" for Boston Lyric Opera (BLO). 

For the eighth year, the performing arts centers at The Egg and the University at Albany have announced that they will present Dance in Albany, a joint dance series featuring eight offerings for the 2023-24 season.  Six of the performances will take place at The Egg at the Empire State Plaza with the remaining two at the UAlbany Performing Arts Center on the uptown University at Albany campus.  

In a co production with Chautauqua Theater Company, Barrington Stage Company is presenting a world premiere tiny father by Mike Lew and directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel. There is another production scheduled for Geffen Hall in Los Angeles.

Near the 60th anniversary of the movement’s founding, this exhibition highlights the contributions of four pioneering Japanese artists—Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015), Yoko Ono (b. 1933), Takako Saito (b. 1929), and Mieko Shiomi (b. 1938)—and contextualizes their role within Fluxus and the broader artistic movements of the 1960s and beyond.  

To make money Deborah Sampson told her story to Hermann Mann who published The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War of Revolution. To boost sales he played loose with the facts. Jan Lewis Nelson expresses Sampson’s anguish over fabrications. She saw action but did not fight in the Battle of Yorktown as Mann falsely claimed.

A powerful production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Yale Repertory Theatre and an exuberant production of “42nd Street” at Goodspeed Musicals took top honors at the 31st annual Connecticut Critics Circle Awards (ctcritics.org).

Jacob's Pillow launched its season with the Mark Morris Dance Group performing an hour long work Bacharach/ David's The Look of Love. During this soggy summer how apt that Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

Drawing from the collection of the late Leslie and Johanna Garfield, this exhibition focuses on the work of six artists: Ada Gilmore Chaffee, Maud Hunt Squire, Ethel Mars, Mildred McMillen, Juliette Nichols, and B. J. O. Nordfeldt—the first pioneering group that came together in Provincetown to practice color woodblock printing.

In response to an article The Disappeared of Cape Ann, posted to the Giuliano book site, Mary Ellen Lepionka, an authority on the subject sent a lengthy response. During the occasion of Gloucester 400th Plus much scholarly information is coming to light. Her research is presented here as a letter to the editor.

Roman officers, including Prince Tarquinius, who are in a military camp wager whether their wives have remained constant.  Investigations prove that the wives of all of the men in the discussion have had indiscretions, with one exception.  Lucretia has remained faithful.  Tarquinius is determined to corrupt her morals.  Returning to Rome, his amorous advances toward Lucretia are repelled, and he forces himself on her.  Although not dealt with in the opera, this incident was the crowning blow to the king’s reign, and his overthrow led to the period of the Republic of Rome.

The production uses elements from the original script as well as elements from the movie and subsequent Broadway revivals. This means that the two songs Richard Rodgers wrote for the film – “I Have Confidence in Me” and “Something Good” are included and the original “An Ordinary Couple” is omitted.

"Little Montgomery" is a touching comic-drama with relevant themes. New City Players' production runs through this Sunday. Performances take place at Island City Stage near Ft. Lauderdale.

Jacob's Pillow is pleased to announce programming for the eighth week of the 2023 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, when the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company will perform Graham’s Cave of the Heart and Errand Into the Maze, and Hofesh Shechter’s CAVE, in the Ted Shawn Theatre from Aug. 16-20.

Barrington Stage Company, as part of its Black Voices Matter initiative, is sponsoring the 3rd annual “Celebration of Black Voices” community festival.  For 2023, “Celebration of Black Voices” will take place over 4 days - from Thursday, August 10 through Sunday, August 13 on Pittsfield’s West Side.  The festival will feature six free events celebrating the local Black community through artistic engagement.

Tony Bennett who won 20 Grammys has died at 96. With a raspy voice that defied description he was a master of phrasing, swing, and insightful interpretation. I saw him upclose in a 1980s pairing with pianist Dave McKenna for PBS. Then more recently at Tanglewood.

Marina Carr has joined Lady Augusta Gregory in the pantheon of playwrights pictured on the walls of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Her new play "Girl on the Altar" is playing now.

Berkshire Opera Festival continues its 2023 summer season with a mainstage production of La Bohème on August 26, August 29, and September 1 at The Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, MA. One of the most beloved operatic love stories of all time, La Bohème is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, Scènes de la vie de Bohème, which follows the lives of young people living in the Latin Quarter of Paris

he advent of Freudianism somehow severed the mind from the body, but over the past decades, there has been a return to the wisdom of late 19th century philosopher William James who saw the body and mind as deeply interrelated.  

Noted for its Wax Works the Annisquam Seafair is now 178-years-old. We attended this past weekend.

A series of august jazz programming, is the upcoming month. With our friends at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute paying increased attention to jazz, two local dates by itinerant pianist Peggy Stern, and the second annual Bousquet Jazz Festival, there’s plenty to choose from.

The uniqueness of Santa Fe Opera's facility and setting make for a stunning visualization of Monteverdi's early masterpiece. With the back stagewall initially open to nature, the scenario begins in literal and figurative brightness; followed by a threatening storm in the mesas behind; leading to brutal darkness on stage with deliciously harsh lighting effects. Modern orchestration smooths the Baroque edges of the music.

The power of Fences derives from the mastery with which August Wilson conflated the mojo of the blues with the paradigms of Greek tragedy. This play is as intricately structured as works by Sophocles and Aeschylus. While rooted in the African American culture of Pittsburgh, Wilson was at heart every bit a classicist.

Claude Debussy sought a prospective opera libretto in which characters seemed out of place, out of time, and only half disclosed. For “Pelléas et Mélisande,” he found his soulmate in future Nobel Prize winner Maurice Maeterlinck, whose opaqueness suited Debussy so well that he adapted the playwright’s work almost verbatim. The result was a turn-of-the-century landmark - Debussy’s only completed opera.

Stravinsky's "The NIghtingale" sets a simple but thoughtful Hans Christian Anderson tale to music. Production values sizzle. With Schoenberg's "Erwartung," the setting of the psychologically-driven soliloquy is switched from forest to hospital. The use of dancers as mute characters adds depth and diversity to the narrative.