“I paint the American scene,” said the artist Jacob Lawrence. That dramatic story encompassed the American Revolution, the building of the Erie Canal, the Civil War, Sacagawea, Paul Revere, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown. It also included the Great Migration north from the Jim Crow South, the lives of everyday New Yorkers, and Lawrence’s stint, during W.W. II, in the first fully racially integrated U.S. Coast Guard crew. READ ON

When Arturo Toscanini, that most exacting of maestros, spoke the words “the voice of an angel,” he had in mind the matchless Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi. These days, wordsmiths are lavishing the same compliment on the Frenchman Philippe Jaroussky, a countertenor currently on tour with the pianist Jérôme Ducros, stopping next at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, in Valencia. Might Toscanini, who died in 1957, ever have encountered the likes of such a beast? READ ON