To "get" a parody, you have to be familiar with what's being parodied, right?Usually. The annual drag shows from Heartbeat Opera are exceptions – hilarious, harmonious, happy ones. This year's extravaganza will cruise on camp, costumes, and kookiness right into your crooked little heart.

When music is so baldly programmatic we should listen in two ways: with the context in mind, and purely musically.

Cobb introduces us to the figure of the Black woman employee whom companies keep on "to give the work you don't want to give to more important people."

Spiky and overflowing, 'Dimension Zero' whips its traditions and influences into a cheeky gumbo, its earnest anti-capitalist message wrapped in cosmic-psychedelic paraphernalia and unstoppable hijinks.

Violinist Chloé Kiffer's rich-toned, elegant, note-perfect playing took Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 to a high level rivaling the weightiness of his final two symphonies at MOO's latest NYC concert.

This hard-to-categorize show employs an innovative technology called the "BodyMouth" in a dance-theater-opera performance that references mythological female forest creatures from Balkan folklore, commenting on the othering and suppression of women and the female voice.

Can art make you a better person? Ian Niederhoffer and his chamber orchestra Parlando posed the question thoughtfully at the ensemble's season-opening concert.

"We couldn't do this show in some places. Even opera, with some people not wanting to perform 'The Marriage of Figaro!'…But we're thankful that we're here in New York and for the moment we're able to do this in its full glory."

A newly unemployed husband and father finds himself discarded by his family as a no-longer-needed "commodity." Now he's a perfect candidate for a government-sponsored virtual-reality coma. But is the Bliss Option as blissful as advertised?

Naomi Wallace's magical-realist fable about a strike at a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant receives a long-overdue New York premiere.