TALKIN’ OPERA: The Dallas Opera has posted the video (above) from its latest Cosi and Koozies summer panel series. This one is titled “Multiculturalism: At the Heart of Moby-Dick and Madam Butterfly” and is moderated by Chris Shull, who writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. If you like what you see, the next discussion – “Twenty-First Century Affairs – Dating and Relationships Today” – takes place on Thursday.

TEXAS BOOKS: When you see the name Mark Oristano, it’s normally either in a theater program or in a credit line of a theater-related photograph he’s taken. But now you can add the cover of a book to the list. Oristano has looked back on his many years working on football broadcasting teams for the Cowboys and Oilers to write A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football. If you’ve been itching for the season to start, this will help get you ready. You can read more about it at theaterjones.com. … Meanwhile, Austin author Mike Cox has written the text for Historic Photos of Texas Oil. The book compiles more than 200 photos that span the 1800s to today. If you recently read Brian Burrough’s The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes, this could serve as a handy companion.

STICKY ON STAGE: I’m not telling the theater vets out there anything they don’t know when I say if something can go wrong during a show, it often will. And as you also know, it’s how you deal with it on stage that makes all the difference. The New York Times has noticed a number of mishaps at this year’s New York International Fringe Festival, and the consensus seems to be that it’s better to acknowledge the blunder in some graceful (or at least interesting) manner rather than to ignore it. The thinking is: the audience clearly isn’t ignoring it, so why should you? But it got me wondering about the stories there must be locally about on stage blunders and how they were handled. If you’ve been in that situation and lived to tell about it, drop us a comment here.