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We know how I love old theaters. . . .

And walking out of the Radisson Hotel, if you turn left, a three minute walk takes you to the Opera House, which has certainly housed many stellar attractions, but I guess I was in a Ballet Russe frame of mind and mood, because what I specifically tied the theater to is the Diaghilev Ballet visit in November, 1928.

And if you turn right as you leave the Radisson’s front door, a ten-minute walk take you to the Palace, where Tallulah Bankhead and Leslie Howard tried out Her Cardboard Lover in August of that same year.  Later that month they brought it to the Lyric in London.

I certainly wanted to see both of those theaters and I did.  It was matinee time or I might have asked the house manager if I could have a look around backstage.

A week ago Saturday I was in Manchester, UK, after finishing up a walking tour through Yorkshire and the Lake District.  I was flying back to NYC early the following morning.  I’d spent an afternoon in Manchester a week earlier, prior to training north to begin the walk.

This Saturday I arrived at my hotel two hours before 2:00 p.m. check in time, so I revisited the Catheral, 18th century St. Ann’s church, which on Saturdays has a lovely snack buffet, the Victorian Barton Arcade.

And then, after  checking into the Radisson, I remedied my shameful omission of the week before!

Over the past decade, screenings by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Museum of Modern Art have supplied a fascinating exposure to the annals of Soviet cinema. For Capital New York, I review MOMA’s salute to  Moscow’s Mezhrabprom studio, which wraps up this week.

City Arts coined a much better one than what I’d thought of for my Sylvie Guillem review!

Pina Bausch is on the cover; inside you’ll find my interview with great ex-New York City Ballet ballerina Patricia Wilde.  This first installment covers the period prior to the time she joined City Ballet in 1950, aged twenty-two.  As she describes, Wilde had already had almost a full career and an extraordinary one.

You’ve only got two more days to catch the “Youthquake” exhibit, which I reviewed for City Arts.

Ib Andersen doesn’t like it.  Neither do I.

That would be the work of Noël Coward.  Read my lean and sinewy review for Capital New York of the Library for the Performing Arts’ exhibit, “Star Quality.”   He had it.

Well I think there is.   And I said some things for Capital New York.

What with Gerald Finley’s Don Giovanni at the Met, (not to mention the recital he gave Feb. 27 at Alice Tully) and Olga Borodina on the same stage taking up her career-defining role of Marfa in Khovanshchina, New York right now is a holiday of great singers and singing.  Here’s the interview I did with Finley for City Arts on line a few days prior to his recital.  And here’s my review of the Mussorgsky for Capital New York.