The Waterbury Symphony Orchestra continues its spring season with a program titled “Metamorphosis.” The 74-year-old group under the direction of Leif Bjaland will open with the famed “Adagio for Strings” by American composer Samuel Barber. American pianist William Wolfram, a bronze medalist in the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, will join the WSO for two piano concertos: Liszt’s first and Tchaikovsky’s third. The Liszt was a groundbreaking work of its time, now the prototypical grand Romantic concerto. The program finishes with Hindemith’s delightful “Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber,” a quartet of energetic and entirely accessible 20th-century movements. The performance is May 12, at 8 p.m. at the Naugatuck Valley Community College Fine Arts Center in Waterbury. For tickets, go to www.waterburysymphony.org, or call 203-574-4283. If you have never seen a Wagner opera, the coming weekends offer a chance to take in the entire Ring Cycle in HD at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, MA. This is a rebroadcast of earlier performances in the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series. “The Ring Cycle” is a set of four epic operatic works, what Wagner called musical dramas, in which the composer achieved an unparalleled synthesis of theater, music and spectacle. Mythic in scope, drawing on Norse legend and elements of fairy tales, “The Ring Cycle” encompasses four operas: “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walkure,” “Siegfried” and “Gotterdamerung,” with a combined running time of roughly 16 hours. “Die Walkure” is usually considered the masterpiece of the cycle, and includes the endlessly quoted Ride of the Valkyries. Overuse may have nearly trivialized this thrilling excerpt; yet in the context of the opera, it is breathtaking as much for the drama as the music. Brunhilde, the god Wotan’s favorite among eight Valkyrie daughters, has just defied her father’s orders and tried to save the mortal hero Siegmund. Now she is fleeing on her magic horse Grane, carrying the widow Sieglinde, to seek her sisters’ protection from her father’s wrath. Spoiler alert: She doesn’t totally succeed, and is put into a deep sleep in a ring of fire, to be woken by a hero who knows no fear. It is the stuff of dreams, psychology and human frailty. Even if you catch but one, it is well worth it. At the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, MA: “Das Rheingold,” May 9; “Die Walkure,” May 14; “Siegfried,” May 16, all at 6:30 p.m; and “Gotterdammerung,” May 20 at noon.For tickets, go to www.mahaiwe.org, or call 413-528-0100.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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