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Rogovoy Report For July 18, 2014

There’s so much going on in mid-July in the greater Berkshire region in theater, music, performance and art, we can only touch briefly upon a few highlights. Here they are:

World-renowned soprano Renée Fleming stars in the world premiere of Joe DiPietro’s “Living on Love,” based on the play “Peccadillo” by Garson Kanin, at Williamstown Theatre Festival, running on the Main Stage now through Saturday, July 26.

“Breaking the Code,” Hugh Whitemore’s biographical drama of Alan Turing, the famed mathematician and computer science pioneer who solved the German Enigma code during World War II, runs at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield now through Saturday, August 2.

“High Dive,” a one-woman comedy by Leslie Ayvazian that relies on audience participation, will get a special three-night run from Tuesday, July 22 through Thursday, July 24 at Chester Theatre Company, as part of the organization’s 25th anniversary celebration.

"Love in the Wars," a theatrical adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s romantic drama, "Penthesilea," by Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, receives its world premiere at Bard SummerScape 2014 now through Sunday at the Fisher Center at Bard College.

Actors Kate Burton, Jane Curtin, and Campbell Scott will read stories by Louise Erdrich, Robert Coover, and Maile Meloy in a live taping of the hit public radio series Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on Saturday at 8 pm. This “Wishes and Dreams” edition marks the seventh time Selected Shorts has been performed at the Mahaiwe, which has become the series unofficial home away from home.

Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas” will get a semi-staged concert performance at PS 21 in Chatham on Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 2 pm. The production features a live chamber orchestra, which will also perform selections from Purcell’s music for “The Fairy Queen,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s wedding comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Beethoven Love Elegies,” a dramatic program interweaving a script drawn from Beethoven’s letters and diaries and accounts by his contemporaries, with renditions of some of his greatest known works, will be performed by the Ensemble for the Romantic Century as a fully staged theatrical concert at The Mount in Lenox, now through Sunday, August 3.

Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Netsayi performs her unique brand of “Chimurenga soul” at MASS MoCA on Saturday, at 8 pm. Netsayi’s music boasts a jazzy, rhythmic pulse that blends Afropop and folk-rock, connecting the dots between Joan Armatrading and Angélique Kidjo.

The Baseball Project, a rock ‘n’ roll super group featuring members of R.E.M., Dream Syndicate, Hindu Love Gods and Young Fresh Fellows, bring their growing body of songs about America’s national pastime to Club Helsinki Hudson on Wednesday, July 23, at 8 pm.

Yidstock 2014: the Festival of New Yiddish Music is already underway at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. The festival kicked off last night with a rousing, sold out concert by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. It continues throughout the day today with lectures and workshops, culminating with a late afternoon concert by the Nigunim Trio. Saturday night’s show by the Klezmatics is sold out, but there are tickets still available for Sunday’s concerts, which include Basya Schaechter’s "Songs of Wonder" at 4 pm and the festival-closing dance bash by Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars, featuring world-renowned Yiddish actress and vocalist Eleanor Reissa, on Sunday at 7 pm.

Finally, Willie Nelson’s son Lukas Nelson as well as Replacements co founder Tommy Stinson, and his daughter Ruby Stinson will perform in "FarmOn! Hoedown," an all-star roots-rock benefit concert for the FarmOn! Foundation at Club Helsinki Hudson tonight at 7 pm.

I’m Seth Rogovoy, and that’s the Rogovoy Report for this weekend.

Seth Rogovoy is editor of Berkshire Daily and the Rogovoy Report, available online at rogovoyreport.com

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