One can’t help but enjoy the sparkling and inventive on-stage musical comedy machinations of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’ in one of the Ahmanson’s slickest and audience-pleasing productions this season. The musical runs in LA through May 1.

Jacqueline S. Salit and Fred Newman’s new take on a Clinton Presidential candidacy struggles to define itself. Is it a play? A musical? A satire? A serious morality play? It ends with a distasteful and irresponsible message.

Back in the '70s, David Del Tredici was the hottest composer in town. Then he and the movement he led, neo-Romanticism, faded from view. His obsessive, rapturous works based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice" deserve to be heard. Gil Rose and his Boston Modern Orchestra Project obliges. The result - two and a half hours of lush music - was largely satisfactory. We want to hear more.

Alexandre Tharaud is more than a musician's musician. His heart-rending performance of the Bach Goldberg variations put him at the same pinnacle of pianists as the Bach work is for music afficiandos. In a concert series performed in an intimate acoustic marvel, the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in upper Manhattan, Tharaud delivered a mesmerizing take on this crown jewel of compositions.

Charlie Parker ended up an unknown in Bellevue's morgue. While the opera Yardbird is set in the jazz club Birdland then on 52nd Street, affectionately named after the genius of bebop, Bird himself is in purgatory, not yet buried, writing a final symphonic work and plagued by memories of the women in his life. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee makes an indelible impression in the title role.

Since 1935, the Sorbillo family tradition of making Neapolitan pizza has followed the rules that guide pizza making for the pizza parlors in Naples. ‘Integrity to tradition’ is key.

The Mount in Lenox announces its schedule of events for the 2016 season.

The accessibility of contemporary music was never in question at a superb evening with the ACJW Ensemble at Nation Sawdust in Brooklyn.

Gragnano's wide street was laid out to catch the sea breeze from the Adriatic to dry pasta. Exploring the incredible food of Italy.

With a 150 year old recipe, the Alberti family tradition of distilling Strega is in full gear in 2016. Over 70 herbs and spices are used to make this digestive beverage.

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival (TWP Fest) announces that the multi-award-winning actor Brian Dennehy, recognized for his interpretation of many of Eugene O’Neill’s complex characters, will be the guest of honor at their annual dinner. The gala is to support this fall’s 11th festival, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams: Beyond Success with performances from theaters around the world throughout the charming seaside town from Sept 22 – 25, 2016. The Gala will take place on June 4.

If Eugene O’Neill is the master of dysfunctional family plays, then Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the masterpiece of the genre. Recognized as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, the play won the Tony for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1957. Currently it is being produced by Court Theatre in Chicago through April 10.

Lexington is in the heart of the Bluegrass Region , the second largest city in Kentucky and Horse Capital of the World. It is famous for horses, bourbon, tobacco and Southern Hospitality. The Bluegrass region is renowned as the world’s largest equine “nursery”. Hundreds of horse farms surround Lexington , giving this modern city a park-like setting.

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announces that Jonathan Norton has won its 2016 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright. The award will be presented at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville on April 9.

We began our visit to Hampton, Virginia with a tour of the Hampton History Museum. This museum recounts the history of America’s oldest, continuous English-speaking settlement from its inhabitance by Kecoughtan Indians to its role as original home of NASA and the U.S. space program.

Writers Theatre opened its spectacular new theater in Glencoe this week with an appropriately spectacular production of a play by Tom Stoppard one of today’s greatest playwrights, smartly directed by Michael Halberstam. It was almost a four-star evening.

April is National Poetry Month. Berkshire Fine Arts, LLC announces the publication of two books Shards of a Life and Total Gonzo Poems by Berkshire poet and arts critic Charles Giuliano. In July, 1970 he coined the word gonzo while telling an outrageous story. He was the first to publish gonzo in a rock review that summer for the former daily Boston Herald Traveler. With these two books and a third nearing completion Giuliano has morphed gonzo journalism into a vibrant, hip, compelling form of cutting edge poetry.

This is the third year of one of the best wine and food festivals on the Northeast. Over 700 wines will be poured, educational seminars will take place and chefs will entertain the audience. All at Mohonk Mountain House.

Based on the Goethe novel, which set off a plague of copy-cat suicides in 18th century Europe, the late Romantic opera is arguably Massenet's masterpiece - at least it still speaks to us today. Lyrical throughout, it becomes intensely dramatic in Act III and IV. The BLO cast was not ideal, but they did the best they could and had many affecting moments.

Did you know that 40% of all Italian trains pass through Campania? It is the hub for overseas business, thanks to two ports, a large manufacturing community, numerous pasta factories and water buffalo mozzarella farms.

The combination of Michelle Williams (Una) and Jeff Daniels (Ray) should have been Broadway gold. When the curtain went down at the Belasco Theatre my companion’s comment was “well there was a whole lot of garbage on the stage.” Indeed the entire play takes place in a lunchroom strewn with leftover food wrappers and empty paper cups. For a play about the damaging relationship between a 40+ man and the woman he had sex with when she was a girl of 14, there were no surprises and little character development. The play was a disappointment given such a potentially explosive topic and talented cast.

Writer/Lyricist Bill Russell has brought us some of the best of on and off Broadway – yet many do not recognize his name. Creator of the moving and critically acclaimed Side Show, Russell recently staged a benefit performance of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens (for Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS) at the Birdland Jazz Club in NYC which was spectacular. 2016 will be a big year for Russell, with world premieres and revivals of three of his shows (Side Show, Pageant, and premieres of both Brave New World and Unexpected Joy) in London and across the U.S. from Cape Cod to the Carolina's and the Black Hills of South Dakota!

Country music icon Dolly Parton makes her Tanglewood debut with a season-opening performance Friday, June 17, at 7 p.m. in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, joining the Tanglewood 2016 Popular Artist line-up. Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops Swing Orchestra will also perform in the Shed on Saturday, September 3, at 8 p.m.

“Disney’s The Little Mermaid” is one of the most ambitious productions Theatre 29 has tackled. And they have succeeded admirably. The California production continues through April 9.

“Endangered Species” written and directed by Tony Padilla stars Bonnie Gilgallon as Tina, a suburban Chicago housewife married to David a successful businessman played by Alan Berry. The couple married over twenty years are in New York on a holiday where they plan to relax and recharge their romantic batteries.