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When it comes to culture, Berlin is always worth a trip. And a great trip it was, to experience the opening night of Barrie Kosky's interpretation of La Bohème, by Giacomo Puccini, on Sunday, January 27 at the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) in Berlin.

Andrew Ousley’s remarkable concert cocktail evenings at The Crypt presented Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. This most famous of Messiaen’s works had a moving performance in a setting that resonated with crystal liturgy.

As a junior at Boston University, John Sdoucous, worked with George Wein promoting the Newport Jazz Festival launched in 1954. By 1968 he was booking Summerthing for the City of Boston. He got Janis Joplin on stage at Harvard Stadium in 1969 and launched Concerts on the Common in 1970. He continues to book concerts and festivals all over America. For Sdoucos it all started in Boston.

Threads of Strindberg's Creditors are woven into later hostile relationship dramas from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Indeed, Strindberg publicly accused Ibsen of basing Hedda on Tekla

The conductor Cornelius Meister is a fast-rising star in Europe. Having just finished a lengthy run at the helm of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, he is now the music director o the State Opera and the State Orchestra in the German city of Stuttgart. On January 30, Mr. Meister will make his debut at the Met. His task: conducting one of Mozart's finest and darkest operas: the deliciously twisted Don Giovanni. This week, Superconductor found time to sit down with the maestro to talk all things dramma giocoso.

In Jeffrey Lo’s new comic farce, Spending the End of the World on OK Cupid, a prophet of doom named Alfred Winters had accurately predicted “The Vanishing” in which half of humanity recently disappeared at once without a trace. Now Winters has assured those who have survived that the world will end at midnight on the day that the action of the play takes place.

There will be four plays by Shakespeare. Contemporary plays include Pulitzer Prize finalist The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Tony Award nominated play The Children by Lucy Kirkwood; Pulitzer Prize winner Topdog/Underdog by MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient Suzan-Lori Parks; and Time Stands Still by Obie Award winner Donald Margulies.

Imagine Meeting You Here (Alister Spence Music, 2019) is the latest release by Alister Spence, a recognized leader in Australia’s new music directive and one of his country’s most original and distinctive jazz pianists and composers of orchestral pieces.

Communication is the theme of SongStudio. Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Master classes with Nico Muhly and Piotr Beczala provided assurances for the future of the song.

In 1970 I was hired to cover jazz and rock for the daily Boston Herald Traveler. To my dismay soon I was writing obituaries. It started with Al Wilson (July 4, 1943 – September 3, 1970) of the blues band Canned Heat. Then Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970). Not long after Janis Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970). That was the class of 1970 with an average age of 27-28. A year later we lost Jim Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971).

Renee Fleming has gone for the jugular in addressing the problem of song’s survival. How do singers communicate with an audience so people want to come and hear them? Her SongStudio took place in the Resnick Education Wing of Carnegie Hall.

In 1955 with funding from select patrons The American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut was launched. It was the third major Shakespeare festival conflated with the name Stratford, the home of the Bard. Initially there was less competition in the region for its season of summer and student oriented productions. Relying on a few with deep pockets the company failed to seek a broad base of support for its 1600 seat venue and lavish productions. When founding donors died in the 1970s decline set in with the company ceasing operations in 1989. The property was abandoned and decrepit when recently it went up in smoke.

Why do women make self-defeating decisions when virtually certain of the dark consequences? These are among the questions explored in Sarah Treem’s entertaining and sometimes surprising When We Were Young and Unafraid.

It’s pure Judith Chapman totally immersed and completely in command within the skin, body movement, quirks, and tics of Tallulah Bankhead that reaches out and grabs the audience turning them into acolytes of an actor who knows how to take the stage and perform her special magic.

Angelika Jansen was lucky enough to experience many aspects of the '100 jahre bauhaus' (100 Years of Bauhaus) celebrations, from January 16-24, as she writes in her following article. Architecture and culture in the 20th Century were greatly influenced by works and activities of many members of an 'institution' that only lasted 24 years - and the Bauhaus impact lives on.

Brothers Andrew and Tim Davis' appearance as siblings in True West inspired a film-making collaboration. Work is under way on a second feature film even while the first has experienced multiple showings. The Davis brothers have big plans for their One County Film Company.

Playwright Will Eno seems to want us to sympathize with these four people but none of them are fully drawn characters.

Dramas such as Frost/Nixon – modern history as theater – present challenges. Those who lived through whatever subject at hand may feel they remember the facts well enough that a rehash will offer little interest. Those who sense there will be a political tilt to the play that doesn’t conform with their own may resist attending. In the case of Frost/Nixon relatively little time is dedicated to the interviews that were on television as part of the public history.

Toscanini is the subject of Maestro, now playing at the Duke Theater in New York through February 6. Eve Wolf has staged Toscanini’s late life, mixing in live music that he often performed, now played by a quartet and pianist on stage. Director Donald T. Sanders has woven these elements together to provide the texture of Toscanini’s life.

Playwright Theresa Rebeck is a master of dialogue and never hesitates to portray the bad manners of her contemporaries. Her 2011 play, What We’re Up Against, just opened as the inaugural production of Compass Theatre, a new Chicago Equity company.

In Awake, K. Lorrel Manning has created a triumphant piece which shakes sensibilities, upturns stereotypes and makes us smile at the sheer conundrum of being human. This is an entertaining , smoothly written and directed script . Nine skits with fifteen players are like leaves in the book of everyday America's s social and political issues as they inhabit our lives.

Julia Bullock is a young soprano who is designing a career to her personal specifications. Peter Sellars was attracted to her voice and performance after a Julliard college appearance as the young Vixen in Leoš Janá?ek’s Cunning Little Vixen. He lured her to Teatro Real in Madrid to perform in Henry Purcell’s “The Indian Queen.” She has performed in his work in San Francisco, and this summer took on the role of Kitty in “Dr. Atomic” at the Santa Fe Opera. She is now Artist in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Each year, Piper-Heidsieck, the official Champagne of the Oscars, throws a party to celebrate the nominations. Attending the party is lots of fun. The highlight is always the Champagne.

Lope de Vega is considered Spain’s second most important author, following only Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. De Vega is said to have written 500 plays, 3000 sonnets, seven novels and novellas.

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) with Billy Ecskstine bandmates, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey, was an innovator of bop during the 1940s. There is evidence of his early playing on Dial and Savoy, three minute, 78 rpm recordings. Through addiction and incarceration his career languished in the 1950s. From 1962 to 1976 he lived primarily in Copenhagen. With his wife and manager Maxine, the author of a detailed biography, he staged a comback in 1976. That was capped by an Oscar nominated performance in the Bertrand Tavernier film Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986).