Story: Lukas and Vendulka have loved each other since childhood, but his parents wanted him to marry another woman. Years later, wealthy farmer Lukas, now a widower with an infant, renews his affection for Vendulka, even smiling at her at his late wife’s wake.

Story: Charley Wykeham, an undergraduate at Oxford, is in love with Amy Spettigue, niece of the officious Stephen Spettigue. Jack Chesney, Charley’s pal and another Oxford undergraduate, is in love with Spettigue’s ward, KittyVerdun. The young men long to express their feelings to their respective heart-throbs, and use the excuse of a visit by Charley’s aunt, Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez, a wealthy widow in Brazil who plans to see her nephew for the first time, so that Donna Lucia can serve as the young ladies’ chaperone.

Story: Ruby has decided to live her life by experimenting with polyphasic sleep, a term coined by early 20th century psychologist J.S. Szymanski. Instead of sleeping eight hours straight, otherwise known as monophasic sleep, she is determined to sleep just 20 minutes at a time, six times per day.

Thirty shows. Five venues. Five days. Em Piro, founder of the St. Lou Fringe Festival, has upped the ante for the second annual extravaganza in midtown St. Louis, which will occur from Thursday, June 20 through Monday, June 24.

ALTON BROWN, popular Iron Chef host and all-around food TV personality, will be coming to the Fox Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014, with a new show entitled Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable. That date might seem like a ways off, but tickets have gone on sale already and are going quickly. Prices are $60.50, $50.50, $45.50 and $35.50, with a limited number of Gold Circle seats also available. Tickets are available at the Fox box office, online at metrotix.com or by phone at 534-1111.

LN’s 2013 Charity Awards had something new this year: an online system that offered readers the opportunity to nominate individuals and organizations for their community service. Congratulations to our winners!

Story: Bishop Alfred Bridgenorth and his wife, Alice, are preparing for the marriage of still another of their many daughters, this time the nuptials of young Edith. This morning, their Chelsea home is overflowing with guests, including the bishop’s military bachelor brother Boxer and Alice’s friend, Lesbia Grantham.

Story: Novelist George Schneider has recently returned from a vacation to Europe, which he had taken to help ease the grief he experienced at the death of his wife. George hasn’t yet come to terms with that death, which followed what he considered an idyllic 12-year marriage.

Story: Wealthy art dealers Flanders and Ouisa Kittredge have invited an important contact named Geoffrey to their swank New York City apartment to hopefully make a tidy $2 million profit on a Cezanne they’re selling. While the three of them converse, a young black man knocks at the door. He tells Flan and Ouisa that he is a classmate of their children at Harvard and that he’s in town awaiting the arrival of his dad, noted actor Sidney Poitier, who will be directing the film version of Cats.

Story: Louise Seger, a Houston homemaker with a husband and two children, becomes an instant fan of rising young country singer Patsy Cline when she hears the latter perform on The Arthur Godfrey Talent Show on CBS in 1957. She soon pesters the local disk jockey regularly with requests for tunes by Cline. In 1961, when she learns that Cline will be performing at Houston’s Esquire Ballroom, she and her husband and boss arrive 90 minutes early for the concert.

June

Marsha Mason’s horizons have expanded significantly from her childhood in St. Louis. The one-time Catholic schoolgirl attended Holy Rosary grade school in North St. Louis and later Mary Queen of Peace when her family moved to Crestwood. She became interested in theater while attending Nerinx Hall High School and the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University before embarking on her illustrious stage and film career.

THROUGH 6/16 TWELFTH NIGHT Shakespeare Festival St. Louis presents its 13th annual play, Twelfth Night—an intimate, romantic performance set to live music—at Forest Park. Free. 8 p.m. nightly, except Tuesdays. 531-9800 or sfstl.com.

Stories: In Il Tabarro, barge owner Michele works his small crew hard but also shows compassion. He could get by with one fewer stevedore, but doesn’t want to put Luigi out of work. Michele deeply loves his wife Giorgetta, but feels that a distance has grown between them since the death of their child a year earlier. He suspects that Giorgetta is taking comfort in the arms of another man, and vows revenge when he finds out who that alleged lover is.

Story: Dorothy, an impressionable and idealistic girl growing up with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry on a farm in Kansas, finds her life turned upside down, literally, when she is swept away by a tornado. She ends up in a magical kingdom where her house has landed on and killed the Wicked Witch of the East.

Story: Writer Charles Bukowski (1920-94) lived most of his life in Los Angeles, and derived inspiration for many of his works from the City of Angels. He wrote during the same period as many of the Beat Generation writers, including poet Allen Ginsberg and novelists Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.

Story: Fledgling Wall Street stockbroker Billy Crocker is entrusted by his boss, Yale man Elisha Whitney, to sell Whitney’s vast number of shares in a company he’s been tipped is going to tank. When Whitney boards the S.S. American for a luxury cruise to London, Billy decides to stow away aboard the vessel in order to be near the woman he loves, Hope Harcourt, even though Hope is engaged to be married to Lord Evelyn Oakleigh.

Aubrey Allicock will lift his voice for those touched by cancer at the annual Sing for Siteman concert. Through Stevie Wonder’s If It’s Magic, the Opera Theatre performer will honor his father, a colon cancer survivor, as well as event founder Carol Wong’s father, who lost his battle with cancer. “I don’t know one person who hasn’t been affected by cancer, and it’s such a wonderful gift to be able to help,” Allicock says. 

Story: Young Frederic is turning 21, which means that his apprenticeship with the jovial band of brigands known as The Pirates of Penzance is about to end. He warns the genial Pirate King and his men that he will, naturally, work to eradicate them once he is a free man. That’s the noble thing to do, says Frederic, even though his pals all are orphans and have a reputation for letting their captives go once their defeated foes inform them of their own orphaned status.

Ladue’s own GRANT WEBER will be featured on the Lifetime Television show, The Balancing Act. Weber is the CEO of Riley’s Premium Pet Products, a local manufacturer of healthy dog treats that are good enough even for humans to eat. In fact, we’re told that most of the Lifetime crew sampled the treats during filming! Weber’s segment on the show will air on Lifetime June 4 and 11 (6 a.m. St. Louis time).

Story: Shlemiel is a simple beadle (minor official) in the town of Chelm, a “village of fools” located between Everywhere and Elsewhere “a long, long time ago.” Shlemiel is exasperating to his wife, who has tolerated his imperfections for 20 years as he goes about his humdrum existence, and she needs to supplement his income in order to have food for their two surviving children.

Audiences will be in the middle of the action during this year’s Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’ performances of Twelfth Night in Forest Park. New stage-side seating will place patrons amid the live music, romance and comedy in Shakespeare Glen. Executive director Rick Dildine recently gave LN a sneak peek into the much-anticipated 13th installment of the free annual event, running this spring from May 24 to June 16, with preview plays May 22 and 23.

With a loyal local following and rave reviews from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis continues to draw adoring audiences from throughout the world. And its new season is set to be no exception. General director Tim O’Leary recently filled us in on the company’s worldwide impact and its four new shows, to feature classic and modern opera, jazz, romance and comedy.