Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, examines the continuing influence that master print maker Albrecht Dürer has had on generations of artists who have drawn inspiration from his incomparable body of work. This lecture will be presented live over Zoom and Facebook Live at 6 pm.    

Our visionary founder, Lola Jaffe, passed away on July 7, 2021. In 2002, Lola looked at a threatened and neglected historic theater and saw beauty, transcendent performances, transported audiences, and one show following straight on the heels of the next in perpetuity. Then she started calling her friends to help her make it happen.

The Munich Opera House may not be the house that Wagner built, but it was an important venue in his career, a place where he conducted, and where his works were premiered.  King Ludwig II insisted that the first two episodes of the Ring premiere here. Wagner had hoped to withhold them for his new Festival Theatre at Bayreuth.  Tannhäuser, whose 2017 production in being reprised in Munich’s annual festival, was an immediate favorite of Ludwig, Wagner’s sponsor and savior. 

The very mention of the New York City’s own wildly popular actress and comedian Jackie Hoffman – she of 1000 facial expressions, bodily quirks, a score of well-placed adlibs, and a mesmerizing voice that takes you prisoner with a waterfall of precisely enunciated words – signals that somewhere lurking around a corner is yet another not-to-missed Hoffman Happening.

Real Eyes Gallery in Adams is regarded by artists as one of the best gallery spaces in the Berkshires. The ample venue is well suited to showcase the colossal representational/ conceptual watercolors of Robert Morgan. His work is featured during August with the theme of Out of Context.

Award-winning South Florida actress Elena Maria Garcia will mount her hilarious, one-performer show for a third time. ¡FUÁCATA! or A Latina’s Guide to Surviving the Universe features more than 20 characters, mostly Hispanic women. ¡FUÁCATA in English basically means a backhanded slap.

The stunning matinee production of the monologue Becoming Othello: a Black Girl’s Journey at Shakespeare &Co. this July is set outside in the Roman Garden Theater. On a broiling hot summer day the air rippled with energy as the tall, imposing actor who wrote and conceived of the play, the award-winning Debra Ann Byrd, opened with a chaotic scene at a difficult time of her life, when options seemed blocked and things were not working out for her personally or professionally.

The Harvard Art Museums reopens to the public on Saturday, September 4, 2021. Advance reservations will be required for visitors and will be available up to three weeks in advance. Reservations can be made on the museum website beginning August 20. A limited number of tickets may also be available each day to walk-in visitors. In conjunction with the reopening plans, the museums are also pleased to announce a new “Free Sundays” initiative. The museums will offer preview days for members and supporters on Thursday and Friday, September 2–3, before opening to the general public on September 4.

Jacob’s Pillow will offer two weekends of free Pillow Pop-Up performances in Berkshire County during the last weekend in July and first weekend in August. Performances will happen on a uniquely designed portable stage and feature local performers, as well as the all-female intergenerational Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective (July 31 – Aug. 1) known for illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop, and Philadelphia-based Kulu Mele African Dance & Drum Ensemble (Aug. 7-8), dedicated to preserving the traditional dance and music of West Africa and the African diaspora.

Now available at opera box.tv, Boston Lyric Opera offers a mysterious, death-defying plunge into streaming opera. The eight part mini series stars Isabel Leonard and Talise Trevigne as a married lesbian couple who run a desert Inn, where people can be reunited with their dead loves, like a real world ouija board set in Palm Springs. The Inn sign is not missing a letter. The eerie Bates Motel missed some in the TV series. The kinky Chelsea, where traditional residents were like some of the characters in this series, also is distinguished by missing letters. What is not missing here is terrific music, drama and singing and not singing actors. James Darrah brings his film background and gifts to a wild opera moment.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) recently announced awards for authors of new plays.Her Honor, Jayne Byrne received the 2021 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award. SHIP, by Douglas Williams, takes home the 2021 M. Elizabeth Osborn Award. Runners-up for the ATCA/Steinberg honor were Khat Knotahaiku for Graveyard Shift as well as Jason Narducy and Brett Neveu for the musical Verboten.

Blending several different theatrical genres and making it all work is a challenge. Murder for Two, which is reopening Ivoryton Playhouse combines elements of farce, murder mysteries and musicals.

GableStage in Coral Gables will open its 2021-22 season with Arthur Miller's The Price. The nonprofit, professional theater company near Miami had planned to produce Miller's drama last season, however, the pandemic closed theaters. GableStage's 2021-22 season will be the first under new producing artistic director Bari Newport. Newport succeeds Joe Adler, a South Florida theater icon who has died.

“The Song of Summer” contains many stock situations, but they are written and performed with great flair, and the outcomes are not always as expected.  Importantly, the play’s subtext provides layers of depth that result in a thoughtful work.  Though the work doesn’t wallow in self-importance, this is not an episode of “Happy Days.”  

The National Academy of Design is pleased to announce the launch of the virtual Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné on July 29, in recognition of the anniversary of the artist’s birthday. In this first phase, the catalogue raisonné is focused on American artist Eastman Johnson’s paintings. Subsequent phases will include the artist’s drawings and prints.

With “Katya Kabavona”’s powerful score and intense drama, Janácek expressed his full maturity in the vocal genre.  It is a classic, and West Edge’s production is well worth seeing.

And Away We Stared is an inventive and theatrically imaginative production, using text from the works of writers Charles Mee, Gertrude Stein and Matei Visniec, a Romanian-French playwright frequently produced by Trap Door. The theater is committed to “seeking out challenging yet obscure works and bringing them to startling life on stage” and they’ve succeeded here.

Harriet Harris has caught Eleanor’s mannerisms well, her physical motions exactly - living in the age of newsreels, her figure, her speech, her presence are indelible in public memory.

It's the final lap for the summer season at Tanglewood with more great concerts to come.

Kingston Gallery members Jeesoo Lee and Jamal Thorne, with guest juror Lavaughan Jenkins, read James Baldwin’s interview with Studs Terkel. Then, with the interview fresh in their minds, the jurors focused on what it means to be disruptive and all the stories that people have to tell.

The Mount is open for guided tours through October 31. Tours can be booked online at EdithWharton.org. The grounds are open, dawn to dusk, unless otherwise posted.

The Irish Repertory Theatre has expanded our notion of performance in their streamed productions.  A company with a small theatre (146 seats in the main house), now offers its consistently superior productions to the wide audience they deserve.

Everyone has an absolute right to place their own lives in danger.   The Darwin Award was created to recognize such people posthumously.  But no one has the right to place anyone else’s life in danger.  To do so is selfish and ignorant.  Even freedom has its limits – – fire in a crowded theater, for instance.

For many, public art  conjures up images of bronze statues of a soldier on horseback, images of historically significant and/or forgotten politicians or leaders, or symbolic (often mythological) figures of metaphoric significance. But these days public art takes a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and forms. It can be temporary or permanent.

The final concert of the season on Sunday, September 5, features the all-female Cassatt String Quartet and celebrated pianist Ursula Oppens. Opening the program, Oppens will play selections from Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s intimate cycle of piano pieces, Das Jahr (“The Year”).