I’ll never look at paper dolls the same again.  That’s because I recently befriended the greatest living creator of the art form, 83-year old Tom Tierney. Now I certainly didn’t go looking to chat up a paper doll artist, which made the whole experience all the more special.  Here’s the story… My boyfriend Doug and I were driving from Houston to Austin last Sunday, and stopped in the little town of Smithville, population...

Within moments after the curtain rises on Jorge Martin’s “Before Night Falls,” the hero collapses into his deathbed.  It’s an obvious allusion to all those consumptive operatic heroines of the romantic era and reinforces why the memoir of Cuban writer Renaldo Arenas was such a good choice for a staged adaptation. The Fort Worth Opera premiered the work in two performances at Bass Hall, as part of an early summer...

Fort Worth Texas might be the most conservative area of the country after Orange County California. Last June one of its few gay bars, the Rainbow Lounge, was raided by members of the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission. Seven people were arrested for drunkenness, though numerous reports say that the individuals were pulled from the crowd randomly and violently.  A 26-year old man was hospitalized...

With its ever growing arts district, the City of Dallas continues to think big. The same can be said for the Dallas Opera and its new Winspear Opera House. For the second half of its first season in the new house, the company commissioned and premiered Jack Heggie’s “Moby-Dick.” I attended the performance on Saturday May 8. The massive scale and varied themes of Melville’s classic novel have flummoxed many who’ve...

In 1980 Darren K. Woods was a tenor in the chorus of the Houston Grand Opera with visions of heading to Broadway before starring in his own television sitcom. Fate and the music world had other things in store. Following recommendations of friends, he spent that summer in the young artists program at the Seagle Music Colony outside the little Adirondack village of Schroon Lake in Essex County about 90 miles north of Albany. ...