The New Zealand International Film Festival opens this week in Auckland and then in a number of centres across the country. It features films from Cannes, kiwi documentaries and films that have interesting warnings, including one set on a mountain that’s not suitable for those with vertigo. NZIFF head Bill Gosden gives us a run down on what not to miss this festival season.

A re-imagining of the Ibsen classic A Doll’s House by Emily Perkins will be staged at Circa Theatre next month. This modern take on Ibsen’s nineteenth century play which provoked a storm of controversy by examining how marriage deprived women of their rights, drops the plot into present-day New Zealand. Director Katherine McRae was inspired to stage the play by the continued relevance of the domestic politics at the heart of Ibsen’s play. The team includes sound designer Pete Edge who returns to theatre after fifteen years.

Peter Hoar reviews Manon Lescaut, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s Opera in Concert led by Music Director Giordano Bellincampi. This was Puccini’s break through opera with all the ingredients of a smash hit.  Upbeat reviewer Peter Hoar describes how the stage was used to suggest various spaces and settings and says the singing and playing were of such a high calibre it was just as moving and powerful an experience as if it had been staged.

Singing to babies strengthens the attachment between mother and infant and encourages children to self-regulate. It can also help mothers with postnatal depression and benefit babies with Down's Syndrome, says a music therapy professor.

Patricia Barker is the latest overseas appointment to the job of Artisitic Director at the Royal New Zealand Ballet company. Before moving into leadership roles she was a dancer for 27 years with roles in many of the great classical ballets and contemporary works, as well as appearing on screen. In recent years Patricia headed both the Detroit based Grand Rapids Ballet Company, and its accompanying school.

The orchestra is like a family, and when a family member is unwell everyone wants to help. Violinist Slava Fainitski has been a member of Orchestra Wellington for over 25 years. He recently had a stroke and is having specialist rehabilitation. Orchestra Wellington has a fundraising concert Saturday night for Slava. His friends cellist Brenton Veitch and double bassist Alexander Gunchenko discuss how much Slava has contributed to OW since he first arrived from Ukraine.

Dunedin playwright and writing mentor Emily Duncan likes to go to dark places. For her PhD in Theatre Studies thesis she wrote a play about a former tuberculosis sanatorium and borstal in Otago. Most of her stories revolve around dysfunctional relationships. Her script for the Young and Hungry festival is about a TV reality show host who gets more than he bargained for when two of his show’s former contestants invade his celebrity perfect home to take their revenge on him.

NZSO National Youth Orchestra Composers-in-Residence Celeste Oram and Reuben Jelleyman will have their commissioned works played by the NZSO Youth Orchestra tonight in Wellington and tomorrow in Auckland. The National Youth Orchestra is led by Sir James MacMillan the programme also includes Veni, Veni, Emmanuel featuring percussionist Colin Currie with the NYO and Benjamin Britten’s Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

Te Kōkī Trio from New Zealand School of Music in Wellington has just put out its first release on the Rattle label, a CD of Debussy sonatas and Piano Trio. Violinist Martin Riseley, cellist Inbal Megiddo and pianist Jian Liu have been totally egalitarian: each gets their moment in the spotlight as the three play a Debussy violin sonata, a cello sonata and a piano trio. The trio discuss their music choices and their collaborative work at the New Zealand School of Music.

The Road that Wasn’t There, by Trick of the Light Theatre Company, is heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after performances in Auckland and Wellington. The play has its roots in the magic realism of writers like Margaret Mahy. The story follows a young woman who strays from the beaten track and finds herself in a paper world. It seems a land of possibilities but she soon discovers what happens in the fictional world can have frighteningly real consequences.