Today is Wednesday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2007. There are 82 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Oct. 10, 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy was established in Annapolis, Md.On this date:In 1813, composer Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy.In...

Hank Aaron has only faint recollections of the bat boy who would become a composer and write a composition about the home run king and two other towering black baseball heroes _ Jackie Robinson and Josh Gibson.Richard Danielpour's "Pastime" had its world premiere in January...

For decades here, there was little mention of the rich culture of the descendants of black slaves, many of whom lived as farmers and fisherfolk on the nearby sea islands.Euphemisms used by whites helped obscure their history. The Civil War was sometimes referred to as...

By all accounts—most notably the amusingly disenchanted commentaries by Caryn James, David Carr and Paula Schwartz in The New York Times—this year’s Oscars will be considerably less uncertainty-laden than usual, particularly in the four acting categories. This is to say that Helen Mirren (in The...

In the following review, Sayler assesses the stage version of Porgy, lauding the "rhythmic" qualities of the production and declaring it superior to the novel on which it was based.

In the following review, the critic comments favorably on Porgy, focusing on the quality of Heyward's characterization in the work.