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Manfred Honeck, who was narrowly beaten out by Jaap van Zweden for the job of music director of the New York Philharmonic returned to the podium of America's oldest orchestra this week. He brought an ambitious program, featuring two of his own arrangements of orchestral music by Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, each drawn from fairy tale works by those great Romantic composers, and the evergreen Sibelius Violin Concerto as an ample and satisfying makeweight.

Through the end of May The Eclipse Mill Gallery launches its 2018 season with the first Berkshire solo show of abstract paintings by resident artist, Rick Harlow. In an artist's statement Harlow provides a context for what he describes as The Landscape of Energy. On May 26 in the gallery at 243 Union Street, North Adams, the group Aluna will create improvised music inspired by the paintings.

Bekah Brunstetter’s play shines in giving us insights on the thinking behind a baker’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Brunstetter helps us understand the thinking on both sides; this is not a leftwing harangue.

Howard Zinn’s celebrated play comes “home” to the Soho Playhouse, starring Bob Weick as Karl Marx. The theorist of communism engages in a passionate, funny and moving commentary about contemporary American politics and society. Come celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.

In the 1960's, after nearly extinction, the Sagrantino varietal was revived and has come back and is known as one of Italy's finest grapes. Montefalco, in Umbria, is where this bold,concentrated grape thrives. Huge tannins take years to cool down. With daytime summer temperatures near 100F, cool nights are needed for this grape to survive. And it has.

The arrival of the sensational conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic is always a cause for celebration at Lincoln Center. Dudamel remains the leading musical export of Venezuela, the proof that that country's El Sistema program is an entirely successful social experiment in producing quality musicians under difficult circumstances.

The Miner Family Winery in Oakville, California, part of Napa Valley, is a true family winery in existence for the past twenty years. Dave Miner and his wife, Emily, founded the winery-possibly as an escape from the software life Dave Miner was living in the 1990s.. Two decades later, the winery has a cult following for its signature Oracle wine.

Gerald Finley, in announcing his program at Alice Tully Hall, said that he and his collaborator on the piano, Julius Drake, had selected songs they loved. It is a measure of this consummate bass-baritone and superb piano partner that the songs were also among the most difficult in the literature. These masters of the form did not struggle as they displayed pyrotechnics on the keyboard and a wide-spreading musical and emotional range in the voice.

Queen of Basel transports Miss Julie from late 19th century Sweden to present-day Miami Beach. The Hilary Bettis play is a feminist take on August Strindberg's 1888 naturalistic tragedy. Technical elements are top notch

For the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, Artist Michael Rakowitz has recreated the Lamassu. This winged bull and protective deity guarded the entrance to Nergal Gate of Nineveh (near modern day Mosul) from 700 BC until it was barbarically destroyed by ISIS in 2015. This wonderful reconstruction is made from recycled packaging from 10,500 empty Iraqi date syrup cans. This represents a once-renowned Iraqi industry now decimated by war. The piece's inscription is written in Cuneiform. Rebuilding the Lamassu in Trafalgar Square means it can continue to guard the people who live, visit and work in London. It is a layered artwork full of myth and tragic reality.

Carmen has arrived in all her glory at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Heralded by digital billboard signs on the highways and byways around the city, and topping off the PECO Building in downtown Philadelphia, the news is being broadcast. The Academy has been packed. This new production by Opera Philadelphia and its partners in Seattle and Ireland, is smashing.

Antinori Winery from Tuscany is the oldest, active, wine producer in the world. In 1986, the company bought property in Napa Valley and founded the Antica Winery. After 30 years, the winery is well known for wines that maintain the same high quality as the wines from Antinori have done for their entire existence.

John Holiday, Andrew Ousley’s latest pick as an artist to perform in his Crypt Session series, sounds like an angel and looks like a linebacker. It’s more apt to note that while Holiday is billed as a counter tenor, he is truly a soprano, comfortable in the very unusual upper registers usually associated with the female voice. His is not a falsetto.

Tristan und Isolde is not an ordinary opera. Wagner's work stripped almost all the action and plot away from the legend of the medieval knight and the Irish queen and their illicit affair. Aside from one sword-thrust, there is very little action. Everything is internal in this mysterious opera, with turbulent swirls of chromatic orchestration bringing the psychological inner life of the characters to vivid life. In other words, as the Cleveland Orchestra proved on Thursday night, this is a perfect opera for the concert hall.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre hits a high note with this powerful, intense play. It may not be quite as shocking as it was when the play first debuted (and this reviewer saw it in New York), but it remains topical in its insistence that the element of doubt can be as demonizing as certainty, depending on where the power exists. With this review we welcome American Theatre Critics Associaton member, Anne Siegel, as our Milwaukee correspondant.

Lawrence Brownlee is a world class bel canto singer. He is also a daring artist who is moving out of his comfort zone to tell new truths in song. The New York premiere of Cycles of My Being by Tyshawn Sorey, was presented at Carnegie Hall.

Philip Glass holds the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for this season. A concert honoring his work was performed by the splendid Pacific Symphony. Carl St. Clair conducted. He has been the music director of this symphony for decades. The performance made the benefits of consistent leadership over time clear

Wines from Alsace, an area that was French and German have history on their side. The regions culture and traditions have been preserved for centuries, just as the wines from Lucien Albrecht, who, started in 1425.

A good idea is a good idea. That might be the rationale between this weeks New York Philharmonic program which pairs Mozart’s charming Piano Concerto No. 22 with Anton Bruckner’s sprawling, ambitious and ultimately unfinished Symphony No. 9 under the baton of guest conductor Christopher Eschenbach. For New York’s Bruckner enthusiasts, this concert evoked memories of January 2017. Back then Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a cycle of Bruckner symphonies at Carnegie Hall, pairing the shorter works with the major Mozart piano concertos. (Barenboim paired the Ninth with Piano Concerto No. 23.)

Fun Home is a relatable, relevant, touching and funny piece. The prize-winning musical featured the first all female writing team to win a Tony award.

Cendrillon is Massenet's fourteenth opera, written at the apex of his popularity as the last acknowledged master of the French romantic style. As conducted here by Bertrand de Billy, its score has the weight of fairy cake, high in sugary melodies and whipped by conductor Bertrand de Billy into an airy soufflé of sound. It's hard to believe it, but this run marked the Metropolitan Opera debut for an enchanting work.

Julia Bullock swept onto the stage in a long green dress whose full skirt was filled with white flowers reminiscent of the gardenias Billie Holiday always wore in her hair. After Schubert, Samuel Barber and Gabriel Faure, we dug into Holiday, Alberta Hunter and Nina Simone with the singer.

Angels in America is one of the major theatrical events on Broadway this Spring. The highly acclaimed National Theatre Production is here for a limited run through June. The two parts Millennium Approaches and Perestrokia make for a marathon of theater going (well over 7 hours) but you will leave the theater dazed by what you have seen and heard.

Nikolai Rimksy-Korsakov is one of the most important opera composers of 19th century Russia. A member of the "Mighty Handful", he revised works by Mussorgsky, taught Stravinsky and was a master of orchestration and melody. However, outside of a few concert works, the bulk of his music, most notably a long catalogue of operas, receives little attention. This made it all the more interesting that the Manhattan School of Music's Senior Opera Theater decided to mount The Snow Maiden, an enchanting fairy tale opera and the composer's personal favorite.

Aspect presents music in a new concert format, as engaging as it is thought-provoking. In a program at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, Stephen Johnson, a BBC broadcaster, spoke about Weimar, Germany as a cradle of musical talent. Listening to Bach, Mendelssohn and Liszt, there is no question about the talent. Each of these composers had formative experiences in Weimar.