Music and Theater

In late 2010, The Royal Shakespeare Company (The Courtyard Theatre, Southern Lane, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 6BB, U.K.; phone 0844 800 1110) will return to performing in its original theater, which began a £112 million ($175m) renovation in March 2007.

The Art Deco building was refurbished and extended to include a rooftop restaurant, riverside terrace, exhibition space and a new auditorium with a stage that extends into the audience (as stages did in the Bard’s days).

In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Israeli Opera Company will present two sunrise performances of Verdi’s “Nabucco” on a stage at the foot of Masada, June 3-5, 2010, and a special concert with diva Jessye Norman atop Masada, June 4.

Limited one- to seven-night ticket/hotel packages (from $688 per person, double, one night) for Masada Opera Weekend may be purchased at www.nabuccoatmasada.com. For info on Israel, visit www.goisrael.com.

Available only online from VisitBritain (phone +44 020 7482 1500), the Theatre Passport offers savings on ticket prices in London for the best-available seats at participating musicals and plays like “Chicago” and “The Woman in Black.” 

This year, two New Year’s Eve events will take place at Sydney’s iconic Opera House.

In the Opera House’s Concert Hall, Australian and international singers and the Australian Opera & Ballet Orchestra will present a concert, with hits such as “Nessun Dorma” from “Turandot” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady.” At the same time, in the Joan Sutherland Opera Theatre, a production of “La Bohéme” will take place. Both events will end before a fireworks show over the harbor.

My wife and I cross the Atlantic yearly on the Queen Mary 2 of Cunard Line (800/728-6273), usually in both directions — an elegant and comfortable way to get to Europe to visit our daughter.

We take a balcony stateroom. We made our 12th voyage in July ’13, and the fare on the lower decks was $1,699 per person, double occupancy, but fares for inside cabins started at $1,199.

Travel often presents serendipitous moments that create their own special memories. While touring Venezuela in 2008, my group visited La Ceiba cacao plantation, located in San José. After our scheduled tour of the facility, five of the workers at the plantation entertained us with a performance of Afro-Venezuelan music.

JIM HENDRICKSON
Lynden WA

With our Adriatic cruise on the Celebrity Silhouette, May 20-June 3, 2013, sailing from Venice to Rome, with port calls in other cities in Italy as well as in Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Malta, my wife, Alma, and I completed our 64th cruise. The itinerary was great. 

However, during the first evening on board, we walked down to the atrium and found a live band playing at maximum amplification. The sound was so loud, it was almost at the pain threshold. 

The online printable map of the Leipzig Music Trail, which winds around five kilometers of downtown Leipzig, Germany, has been updated to include a selection of events in 2013/2014. 

The trail visits 23 places of interest where famous composers have lived and worked, passing such locations as the Leipzig Opera, the New Gewandhaus, the Bach Museum and the Schumann House. The map includes historical info for each stop.

My husband and I wish we’d known how easy it is to buy tickets for Russia’s Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters. We would have saved a lot of money on our Bolshoi tickets.

We booked a 17-day tour of Russia, May 15-June 1, 2012, through Kensington Tours. For tour members, the company offered to purchase theater tickets. As soon as the venue was announced, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, we asked for seats for the ballet “Giselle.” We were told the first-circle, first-row (box) seats cost $352 each. We gasped but paid, as we’d always wanted to experience the Bolshoi.

The 3-day 2014 Rainforest World Music Festival takes place June 20-22 in the Sarawak Cultural Village in Borneo, Malaysia. 

The 2013 festival featured concerts from 10 a.m. to midnight each day, with 21 groups performing, including local folk singing groups and groups from Jamaica, Korea, China, Australia and Japan. Throughout the festival, talks were given and workshops were offered in singing, dance, ethnomusicology and music — everything from gamelan playing to Irish dance.