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Art

Europe

Montpellier "Color Again: Homage to Jean Fournier, Art Dealer in Paris" at the Fabre Museum (through May 6). The jewel of provincial French museums, with particular strengths in 19th- and 20th-century art (Courbet, Bazille), has reopened after a four-year renovation with an homage to art dealer Jean Fournier, who championed the advance of postwar abstraction (Joan Mitchell, Simon Hantaï, Daniel Buren) in France.

Madrid "Tintoretto" at the Prado Museum (through May 13). Paintings, drawing, and sculpture by the Venetian artist have been brought together for the first major retrospective devoted to the Renaissance master in 70 years. Elsewhere in Madrid, "The Mirror and the Mask: Portraiture in the Age of Picasso," an exhibition presented jointly at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Caja Madrid Foundation (through May 20) assembles more than 150 portraits and sculptures from 60 artists, including Van Gogh, Munch, Kokoschka, Warhol, and Hockney and considers the striking evolution of the portrait genre in the 20th century against the marked effects of the advances and cataclysms of the age.

Moscow The new "Galleries of European and American Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries" at the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (ongoing). These greatly enlarged galleries pay tribute to Russian private collectors like Sergei Shchukin and their brilliant patronage of the European avant-garde, including Monet to Matisse, Chagall, and Kandinsky. Also, "Modigliani" (Mar. 20–May 20) assembles 20 paintings, alongside drawings, photographs, and written materials, documenting the life of the original peintre maudit.

United States

Dallas "Balenciaga and His Legacy" and "Boleros y Mantillas" Meadows Museum (Feb. 4–May 27). The master of Parisian haute couture returns to his Spanish roots via the adulation of three Texan women, an oil heiress, a socialite, and a buyer for Neiman Marcus, with these two related exhibitions: the first, of creations by Balenciaga and his protégées; the second, of icons of Iberian fashion in Spanish paintings drawn from the museum's extensive collection.

Santa Barbara "Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted" Santa Barbara Museum of Art (through May 27). Seven decades of work by this leading Mexican modernist, whose unique fusion of indigenous motifs, existentialist themes, and the formal preoccupations of the European avant-garde fueled controversy in his lifetime. —Leslie Camhi

Architecture

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (mcasd.org) recently inaugurated a 30,000-square-foot outpost, designed by Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects, in downtown San Diego. A far cry from MCASD's original La Jolla home, a Robert Venturi renovation of a genteel Irving Gill–designed Spanish Revival manse, the new downtown facility combines two buildings: the baggage wing of the still-functioning Santa Fe Depot rail station, an arched brick-and-stucco Mission Style 1915 landmark that has been renovated into four expansive, light-filled galleries, and a new three-story structure wrapped in corrugated metal, concrete, and translucent glass, which houses educational facilities and offers a rooftop terrace with views of San Diego Harbor. Both wings will be filled with artworks commissioned from Richard Serra, Jenny Holzer, and Brazilian sculptor Ernesto Neto, among others. The museum inaugurates its new digs with "Modern American Masters," an exhibition of canvases by Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Barnett Newman, all drawn from a local collection, and smaller exhibitions of work by Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Glenn Kaino, and Amy Adler. —Raul Barreneche

Theater

Europe

London Big White Fog Almeida Theatre (May 11–June 30; 44-207/359-4404; www.almeida.co.uk). Michael Attenborough stages the European premiere of the American drama by Theodore Ward, set in Depression-era Chicago, which follows the struggle of its protagonist, his allegiance to the Back to Africa separatist movement, and the resulting tension with his family's pursuit of the American dream.

United States

New York The Pirate Queen Hilton Theatre (opens April 5; 212/307-4100; www.thepiratequeen.com). For their latest musical, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (Les Misérables and Miss Saigon) take inspiration from a 16th-century historical figure, the Irish chieftain Grace O'Malley who defends her country, at the time when England and Spain were on a collision course and Ireland was in play. Frank Galati directs and choreographer Graciela Daniele creates the musical staging. Frost/Nixon Bernard B Jacobs Theatre (opens Apr. 22; 212/239-6200; www.frostnixononbroadway.com). Actors Frank Langella and Michael Sheen re-create their roles in the smash hit of the London fall season about David Frost's celebrated interviews with Richard Nixon in the aftermath of the president's resignation. The lacerating study of 1970's American politics, media manipulation, and competing prerogatives is by Peter Morgan, author of film The Queen. Legally Blonde Palace Theatre (opens Apr. 29; www.legallyblondethemusical.com). Based on the movie of the same name, the new musical comedy is adapated by Heather Hach, Laurence O'Keefe, and Nell Benjamin, directed by Jerry Mitchell, with sets by David Rockwell.

Chicago The Oedipus Complex Goodman Theatre (Apr. 28–June 3; 312/443-3800; www.goodmantheatre.org). In time for Mother's Day comes The Oedipus Complex by director and playwright Frank Galati, his adaptation of the Sophocles trilogy with interpolations from the writings of Sigmund Freud.

Los Angeles Sleeping Beauty Wakes Kirk Douglas Theatre (Apr. 7–May 13; 213/628-2772; www.centertheatregroup.org). A collaboration between the innovative Deaf West Theatre and the Center Theatre Group, the cast of the new musical includes deaf actors and the indie rock band GrooveLily, in a freewheeling treatment of the Grimm classic. —Bill Rosenfield

Music

Europe

Paris St. John Passion Théâtre du Châtelet (Mar. 28–Apr. 6; 33-1/40-28-28-40; www.chatelet-theatre.com). Director Robert Wilson's brand of intense and otherworldly movement, coupled with Lucinda Childs's choreography, should bring an extra dimension to Bach's great religious oratorio, and with the Baroque specialist Emmanuelle Haïm leading her own ensemble, the Concert d'Astrée, and soloists like countertenor Andreas Scholl, the musical standard is guaranteed to be high.

Berlin Festtage: Mahler Cycle Deutsche Staatsoper (Apr. 1–12; 49-30/2035-4555; www.staatsoper-berlin.de). Mahler's sprawling symphonies are an apogee of the symphonic tradition: romantic sensibility tumbling messily into the 20th century. Echoing the expansive scale of these works, conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin orchestra has programmed all 10 symphonies plus the song cycle Das Lied von der Erde), with help from Pierre Boulez and soloists like the expressive baritone Thomas Quasthoff.

United States

New York La Donna del Lago New York City Opera (Mar. 22–Apr. 7; 212/721-6500; www.nycopera.com). Rossini, remembered for comic opera, had ambitions for grander works, and City Opera, always ready to explore lesser-known repertory, is following its successful production of the composer's Ermione with another of his tragedies. Alexandrina Pendatchanska, a dramatically compelling soprano, and Barry Banks, one of the better Rossini tenors around, will be directed by the witty Chas Rader-Shieber.

Chicago Dialogues of the Carmelites Lyric Opera of Chicago (through Mar. 17; 312/332-2244; www.lyricopera.org). As powerful as it is understated, Poulenc's opera about faith—set in a Carmelite convent torn apart by the French revolution—arrives for the first time at the Lyric Opera in Robert Carsen's spare and beautiful production, from the Netherlands Opera, with some wonderful singers: Isabel Bayrakdarian, Patricia Racette, and Felicity Palmer. —Anne Midgette

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