Picture a small town in the south (southern Italy in the 1950s, as it happens) where people talk slow and not much happens until the sun goes down and the church bells ring. (Think Faulkner, Song of the South, Porgy and Bess.) Then a travelling circus comes to town, a whole troupe of clowns (those irrespressible pagliacci), squeezed into a real clown car, a tiny black Fiat 500. You can guess what happens next: sex,......

Gluck's operatic masterpiece, the much-neglected Iphigenia In Tauris, premiered this weekend at Seattle Opera. Inexplicably, it's only been staged once at the New York Met, and that was some 90 years ago. In Seattle, never. But it's suddenly hot: San Francisco and Chicago did a co-production with Covent Garden last year, and the Met, looking to spread the cost and risk of staging new productions, asked Seattle to co-sponsor a new Iphigenia, enlisting the......

Here's a 220-year-old opera whose anti-hero exhibits reckless behavior and cynical indifference to real-world consequences. (Sound like the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?) Yet the "moral" that's tacked on to Don Giovanni, that he who lives a wicked life dies a wicked death, is a sham; it's delivered by the opera's six suvivors as a tacked-on ending, in the theatrical equivalent of a wink-wink, with house lights up. Yes, the Don goes to hell......

Monday AUTHOR, AUTHOR: Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her book Dancing in the Streets, in which she explores the desire for collective joy (see photo), historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. 7:30pm // Town Hall // Tickets $5 Tuesday MANUSCRIPT READING: Frances McCue, former artistic director and co-founder of Richard Hugo House, reads from "Chasing Richard Hugo" and presents a short film shot in Montana with Charles D'Ambrosio, Bill Kittredge and......

Tuesday, January 9 >>> Fred Gianelli at Baltic Room. Fred Gianelli has worked under a number of pseudonyms over the years, first as part of Psychic TV, then later as Acid Didj, Giannelli, Deneuve, Mazdaratti, and most famously as The Kooky Scientist. He's weathered a few trends in the world of techno, gathering a reputation as a gearhead and quality producer. Will he feature a stripped down setup this time around, or will he......

All right, so Seattlest hasn’t yet seen Così fan Tutte, which is playing right now at Seattle Opera. In fact, tonight, Friday night and Saturday night are your last chances to see it, with Friday and Saturday being your best bet for seats. Since we haven’t seen it, we can’t review it, but we can tell you a few things. The production updates Mozart’s 18th century opera to the 21st century, which, if you’re a......