It’s a Wonderful Life is a quintessential American opera in its language, content, and social perspective. Composer Jake Heggie has never been intimidated by cutting-edge contemporary opera standards and has created work that unapologetically draws on past musical forms with warmth, emotion, and melody.

Holiday season is prime time for Broadway. Here is a tip sheet of six shows we saw during a recent week on the Great White Way.

American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown won Berkies for its premiere at Barrington Stage Company. It has transferred to Broadway starring Kerry Washington and Steve Pasquale. Kenny Leon, credited with many August Wilson plays, has done a fine job directing this.

No work by Puccini has suffered more neglect and critical ignorance than Il Trittico, his "triptych" of three single act operas that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera one hundred years ago. Part of what has hurt the reputation of this work- comprised of three operas designed to be performed together and in a certain sequence- is the unfortunate habit producers have of playing these works individually, or pairing them "Cav-Pag" style with operas by other composers.

An equity national touring production the recent Tony-winning revival of Hello, Dolly! is splendid. A superb Betty Buckley stars in the tour, which recently played in Miami and is marching its way north. Buckley's Dolly is modest, patient, friendly, joyful and vulnerable. .

Actor Brian Dennehy is currently presenting a Master Class in acting with his one-man presentation of two One Acts: Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s obtuse “Krapp’s Last Tape”.

Chuck Yates is one of the finest actors in the Coachella Valley winning many Desert Theatre League (DTL) Award trophies for excellence in theatre. In Rebeck's masterful The Understudy we have two male actor-candidates and one avenging female stage manager from Hell named Roxanne. She puts two male actors Harry and Jake auditioning for the role of the ‘understudy’ through their paces before giving them the okay to join the performing cast.

In Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, Gladys is the center of the story as her grandson, her daughter and son-in-law and a young artist she has befriended deal with this decline over a two year period. Elaine May is making a rare stage appearance.

Lauren M. Gunderson has been the most produced playwright in America for the last two years, and her work has won several awards, including the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics New Play Award for I and You. Gunderson’s conceit about four women ready for revolution is clever, and in act one, a bit too mannered, even coyly cute. But act two becomes more serious.

Handel’s Israel in Egypt was performed at Carnegie Hall by MasterVoices under Ted Sperling’s baton. The Oratorio planned for Easter and Passover is often presented at Christmas and Hanukkah.

The extraordinary history of the Second World War casts a long shadow on any art music written in Europe in the 1930s and '40s. This week, the New York Philharmonic paired two of these works in a program of extraordinary intensity under music director Jaap van Zweden: a program that seemed to ask the following. Can art music, created under the shadow of extraordinary political and human event, somehow manage to transcend its origins and remain relevant to the audiences of today?

Nathan Irving “Nat’ Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) passed at 91 some time ago. Why then, in the waning moments of 2018, write a review of a book written some 32 years ago? Reading a memoir by a legendary radical journalist and jazz critic resonated with my own memories of growing up as a Boston Boy.

During the busy summer season in the Berkshires we eat and run. Winter is for more elaborate, experimental meals. On every level it means putting more spice in your life. Since Labor Day we have been having fun experimenting in the kitchen.

The Cabot in Beverly, Mass. is gearing up for its Centennial in 2020. It escaped the wrecker's ball a few years ago and is now in the midst of renovation, Toward that end there was a gala, all star benefit tribute to a 1920s icon Bessie Smith The Empress of the Blues. It was a night to remember and indicator of the next chapter of a venerable venue.

We are in a neutral country, anywhere in the world where crimes are committed and people are punished. The question that pervades the quiet space of The Prisoner by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne concerns appropriate retribution.

For their last program before the annual dive into holiday season concerts, Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic gave their audience something unique: a song cycle created from the work of two composers and featuring the voice of Matthais Goerne, the German lieder specialist who sings Wotan on van Zweden's new recording of Wagner's Ring.

Stage Door Theatre's mounting of The Wiz is uneven. The production largely lacks magic and sound is a problem. However, the production improves in the second act, with strong singing and acting. Actress Nayomi Braaf makes a refreshingly bright-eyed, optimistic Dorothy.

Following his grandmothers footsteps, Giuseppe Maglione is the new generation of pizza makers that dot the Campania food scene. Pizza dough is his canvas and he is the artist. We visited recdently in Avellino.

Thomas Oliemans, a Dutch baritone, sang in the Officer's Room at the Park Avenue Armory. His first line evokes love's bite, suggesting a mix of pleasure and pain that would inform his program. The tall-full-voiced baritone was accompanied by Malcolm Martineau whose delight in the songs of Charles DuParc and Gustav Mahler was apparent.

The 2017 vintage from Bila-Haut is a very good value. Maybe its the Euro exchange rate,but, these two wines, especially the white are people and party friendly. Michael Chapoutier has a knack for growing the right grapes at the perfect slope. These wines illustrate his mastery.

Playwrights Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell have balanced the piece carefully. This is based on the essay and book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. They are the John and Jim of the story. But I suspect details have been changed, in fact it is billed as “a new play based on a true-ish story.” It is a tight 85 minutes enhanced by fine performances.

Jeremy Foss taught painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design during the 1970s and 80s. It was during the 70s, while Robert Ferrandini was a student at Mass Art, that he and Foss formed a friendship that has lasted to this day. Their exibition Foss & Ferrandini: A Fruitful Friendship will be on view January 4 to 26 at Boston's Gallery NAGA.

What is remarkable about this production directed by Peter Rothstein with music direction by Erick Lichte is both the simplicity and the complexity of the production. There is no set; the stage is a black box. No orchestra or piano accompanies the actors as they sing; it is a capella. The harmonies arranged by Lichte and Timothy C Takach are wonderful.

In flagrant violation of the will of Isabella Stewart Gardner the museum's greatest masterpiece Titian's "The Rape of Europa" has been cleaned for the first time and is about to be loaned for up to two years. She stipulated that “[I]f [the trustees] shall at any time change the general disposition or arrangement of any articles which shall have been placed in the first, second and third stories of said Museum at my death,” then the entire collection, the museum building and property would be given to Harvard University to be sold.

John Adams and his frequent collaborator, Peter Sellars, focused on the Nativity when they created El Nino, a Christmas Oratorio. Handel's Messiah, the most frequently performed music for Christmas, sprawls into Easter. Now we have marvelous seasonal music for our time.