The Berkshires' premier wine & food festival was a hit to the 1,000 plus patrons who wined and dined on local food and international wine.

By all accounts from the audience to musicians and critics the BSO has never sounded better than under its young artistic director Andris Nelsons. The BSO has departed Tanglewood earlier than usual to start a European tour on August 22 through September 5. The BSO opens its fall season in October.

From August 20 to Septrember 10 the Italian born artist, Vico Fabbris, will exhibit Imaginalis at the Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown. The artist invents exotic species of flowers in watercolor and more recently also with paint on canvas.

Verdi's Rigoletto is a tragic masterpiece and one of the top ten most performed operas in the world. It can exist on a grand scale, but at Hubbard Hall you will witness the human side of this production. The audience can feel the moving power that sometimes is only delivered in the most intimate of spaces as an exquisite pianissimo whisper.

Hats off to the members of the Lenox Garden Club and the Berkshire Botanical Gardens for hosting the ever so popular 'Fete des Fleurs' event at the Gardens in Lenox,Massachusetts. Music was courtesy of luminary Mike Schiffer with hors d'ouvres from Kate Baldwin Caterering.

For their Jacob's Pillow debut The Sarasota Ballet presented three of the 123 ballets they perform. The company is best know for its commitment to the work of the British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton.

When playwright Martin Sherman came upon a reference to “pink triangles” in the 1976 play “As Time Goes By”, according to program notes written by American Theatre Magazine editor-in-chief Rob Weinert-Kendt, the eureka moment for Sherman was the key element in the creation of his play “Bent”, which went on to debut in London’s West End in 1979, and then on Broadway in 1980.

Three time Oliver Award winner Mike Bartlett's An Intervention is having its American premiere anchoring the Nikos Stage programming of the Williamstown Theater Festival. The clever and verbose two hander is being staged with two rotating casts. We saw it with Josh Hamilton and Justin Long.

John Douglas Thompson is astonishing in Lolita Chakrabarti's Red Velvet which continues until September 13 at Shakespeare & Company. It tells the true life story of Ira Aldridge the first artist of color to portray Othello on the London stage in 1833.

The list of vendors for the 10th Annual Tanglewood Wine & Food Classic is part of the slide show. For foodies this is August 15 event is eagerly anticipated.

After its smashing success at Aix-en-Provence, Written on Skin has been produced in London and Berlin and other European cities. Now it arrives in New York with 60 percent of the original cast, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra which originally performed under the composer. Alan Gilbert takes the podium and brings forth an at once daring and lovely performance.

For vintage screwball comedy the John Guare rewrite of His Girl Friday, directed for Barrington Stage by Julliane Boyd, is just awesomely hilarious. It stars Christpher Innvar as the veteran editor and master manipulator Walter Burns, and the wonderful Jane Pfitsch as his ex and star reporter Hildy Johnson. This is the side splitting hit of the Berkshire season,.

While director of the Williams College Museum of Art Tom Krens initiated plans for Mass MoCA. When he left for a 20 year career at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that project moved forward under Joe Thompson. Now Krens, a Williams graduate and Williamstown home owner, is proposing to create a for profit museum on leased land fronting the high traffic corridor between MoCA, Williams College and the newly expanded and renovated Clark Art Institute.

We meet Peter Allen as a dance-obsessed kid (played by Garrett Hershey) growing up in rural Australia, then forming a duo and performing in clubs. A chance meeting with Judy Garland (Nancy Hays) results in Allen opening for Garland in London and the U.S. and marrying her daughter, Liza Minnelli (Michelle Lauto).

The Garden comprises 140 acres and has more than 50,000 plants in its collection, including 139 rare, threatened, or endangered species. It focuses on plants adapted to desert conditions, including an Australian collection, a Baja California collection and a South American collection.

With the easing of decades long embargo we anticipate dramatic changes in the arts and culture of Cuba. With mixed results we got a glimpse of that with the Jacob's Pillow debut of Malpaso Dance Company with Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble.

Leon Botstein calls our attention to the music and art of Mexico. Mexico is under-represented in symphony halls across the world. Botstein, who heads Bard and extraordinary music programs, is introducing extensive important Mexican compositions of the last century. While Carlos Chavez is less well known than Silvestre Revueltas, he was the center of Mexico's music life during his lifetime and is its lynchpin.

This is the fourth time that Long Wharf artistic director, Gordon Edelstein, has worked with the Eugene O'Neill classic Moon for the Misbegotten. To keep it fresh he has changed the tenant farmer Hogan family from Irish immigrants to African Americans. That allowed for casting multiply Tony and Grammy winner Audra McDonald. She appears with her real life husband Will Swenson. The resultant charisma is scorching.

Mother of the Maid, by Emmy winner Joan Anderson, features Shakespeare & Company founding artistic director Tina Packer. She and her partner, Nigel Gore, have returned to Lenox from a national tour of the critically acclaimed Women of Will. The play, directed by Matthew Penn, is having its world premiere through September 6.

In the two hander by Terrence McNally, Frankie & Johnny in the clair de lune, directed by Karen Allen, the legendary tragic lovers have been transformed into a short order cook (Darren Pettie) and waitress (Angel Desai). It's 3 AM and following what she sees as a one night stand he refuses to leave harboring delusions of love and marriage.

Roberto Lugo, at 33, has emerged on the local art scene, thanks to Leslie Ferrin and her outreach program for artists in the ceramics, pottery world. His show opens on the Mass MoCA campus at Ferrin Contemporary on August 22.

Railroad Reality Week takes place at the Nevada Northern Railway Complex, the best preserved, least altered and most complete main yard remaining from the steam railroad era.

Most famous for his Tony Award-winning comedy/farce plays “Lend Me a Tenor” and “Moon Over Buffalo”, prolific playwright Ken Ludwig, once again scores with his latest inventive and zany comedy “Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.”

Recently Jack Lyons met with filmmaker Paul Davids after a screening of his new documentary film Marilyn Monroe Declassified. It is due for theatrical release later this year.

"Martha" is famous for two numbers, one of which, "The Last Rose of Summer," is actually an Irish folk song. But most contemporary opera lovers have not heard the entire work. Midsummer Opera's production suggests although the work has its pleasures, it is not soon to become an opera house staple.