Founded in 1138, the Abbye de Valmange, is still with us today, due to a miraculous idea. Save the monastery from destruction by using its large space for storing caskets of wine.

On Your Feet! opens in main characters' hometown of Miami. An energetic cast sizzles in first national tour of Broadway musical. The show's emotional core is not lost in vibrant dancing, dazzling choreography and spectacle.

Relying primarily on published sources Felix Salmon in the New Yorker has reported on the deaccessioning and New Vision of the Berkshire Museum. As Solomon states “The story of the Berkshire Museum is more than one about a second-tier local institution selling off some art. It’s a story about how fragile museum-industry norms are, how unaccountable a museum director can be, and how much destruction can be wrought during a single secret trustee meeting. (The museum’s new P.R. representative, Carol Bosco Baumann, declined repeated requests to make anyone from the museum available for an interview.)” This is consistent with the museum's bunker mentality of playing hard ball with the media.

The sound at David Geffen Hall during the fall and spring seasons is often awful. A six hundred million dollar plan, which would have brought the Hall to Lincoln Center Plaza level has been abandoned. Now there is talk of Mostly Mozart-ing the Hall.

Pinot Noir is a tough grape to grow. Rot and disease are enemies of this clone. Only cool climates, like Oregon, Washington and France, specifically Burgundy, have success with Pinot Noir. Now, cool climate Chile, mainly in the Casablanca region is tackling this grape with initial success.

It's not yet Holiday season and Barrington Stage is first out of the get with booking for the 2018 season It annouices. the world premiere of The Royal Family of Broadway, a new musical comedy based on The Royal Family by George S. Kaufman & Edna Ferber, by the Tony Award winning creators of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; and West Side Story, in honor of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbin’s 100th birthdays.

Cerise Lim Jacobs, whose "Ouroboros Trilogy" was so engaging last season returns with "Rev. 23," subtitled "A Farcial Hellish Opera!" that was less successful both thematically and musically. Is end-times and rebirth an appropriate subject for farce? The production was good to look at and the music-making was fine, but still.....

Hardly anyone leaves a performance of Stratford’s The Breathing Hole unaffected.

Artists committed to the continuing attraction of opera as a form that draws an audience are experimenting. A workshop of Bounce, an opera conceived by Grete Holby and her Ardea Arts in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, is performed in a park in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. With dribbles as drumming and heros like Flight and Future, the future of opera itself is secured. Now this opera goes to the University of Kentucky, collaborators on its creation.

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ 2005 play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a deliciously irreverent romp through a parade of history and fiction, including Judas’ imagined childhood.

Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale has only three things going for it – a sparkling score; a charming story of young love and old foolishness; and more humor than a barrel full of monkeys.

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is generally considered to be the best Star Wars film ever made. The dark middle chapter of the original trilogy came out in 1980 as the second movie released, and remains a firm fan favorite. It boasts an expanded universe, a complicated storyline alternating between the flight of Han Solo and Princess Leia from the evil and remorseless Darth Vader, and the Jedi training of Luke Skywalker at the hands of the diminutive but wise Yoda.

The science of time travel is not normally associated with the classical music business. And yet, one might argue that the finest time travel device in New York City stands not in some hidden laboratory but on the corner of 57th St. and Seventh Avenue. That's right, it's Carnegie Hall, whose 2017-18 season offers the intrepid listener a chance to travel between centuries and musical worlds.

Area stage Company shines in satire about race as An Octoroon's cast finds the right mixture of over-the-top theatricality and nuance. This unique play by an award-winning playwright is entertaining, yet disturbing.

The shoulder season play Lost Lake, by Tony and Pulitzer winner, David Auburn, is an enthralling and richly rewarding two hander. It would be difficult to image a more finely nuanced production of a skillful and clever play.

Alves de Sousa grows their own grapes and experiments with blends. Father Domingos is a wine legend. He has passed the reigns to son, Tiago, who holds family tradition in wine making sacred. The results are clear.

Last night we enjoyed a fabulous German dinner with 200 or so other celebrants at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsfield. For just $12 there was a traditional feast of hand rolled, beef rouladen with red cabbage, noodles, and a vegetable medley. That ended with delicious Black Forest cake.

John Heginbotham of DH Dance wanted to work with Maira Kalman after he read her books. They walked together, drank coffee, talked and decided they'd like to do something. They had no idea what. Jacob's Pillow premiered the result in August. Now it is playing at BAM in Brooklyn.

The Classic Stage Theater is celebrating its 50th Anniversary and Shakespeare seems a natural choice. Classic Stage always has an interesting take on playwrights in their productions. This is reflected as soon as you enter the theater area. For this production, it looks unlike any other production you’ve seen here.

After celebrating its record-breaking 85th Anniversary Season, Jacob’s Pillow announces new, expanded fall, winter, and spring programming as a main component of Vision ‘22, a strategic approach to the Pillow’s transformation into a year-round center for dance research and development and a civic partner in our region.

American Lyric Theater was founded in 2005. Lawrence Edelson, a tenor and stage director, wondered how best to develop national operas. When opera was first introduced to the US was intentionally European and elitist. That formula no longer works. New works are springing up all over the country, and the ALT and its composer librettist programs has trained and launched the careers of many of this generations' composers and librettists. At the heart of their program is a kind of master's degree in opera. It is based on mentorship, which subtly differs from teaching.

To launch A New Vision for the Berkshire Museum it plans to sell 40 key works for some $60 miillion. That's a pot of gold but comes at a terrible cost to the heritage, legacy and cultural branding of the Berkshires. Van Shiields and the museum board insist that there is no other option. That disrespect raises questions regarding stewardship of the 40,000 works in the collection including 2,395 fine art pieces.

This past weekend The Bennington Center for the Arts held an opening reception for two fall exhibitions, The Collective Members’ Show and the Artists for the New Century. Awards were announced for Artists for the New Century as well as for the outgoing Laumeister Fine Art Competition.

Dar Williams talks about her new book, 'What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician's Guide to Rebuilding America's Communities One Coffee Shop, Dog Run and Open-Mike Night at a Time.' BBQ, Bourbon and beer are on the menu at Hancock Shaker Village.

Playwright Robert Askins draws on his small town Texas upbringing in the Lutheran Church to craft this tale of perverse adults hiding behind conservative fabric and teens ill-suited to their community.