TALK Michael Alexander, author of Jazz Age and the Jews, will discuss Jewish life in the roaring 20s, including performer Al Jolson, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and mobster Arnold Rothstein in the lecture “‘Mammy, Don’t You Know Me?’: Al Jolson and the Jews.” He’ll discuss the 1920s as a heyday of Jewish culture, but why many identified with groups that remained marginalized. Book signing and dessert reception will follow. 7 pm // Davidson Conference......

"I think people can be very territorial about opera and musical theatre and what they want from the respective genres. A lot of music theater people want their musicals to be in the standard form of Damn Yankees or a Rodgers and Hammerstein type musical. But if you really think about it, the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows were extremely risky and daring and are as close to being American operas as you got in......