ASK AIDA: On Friday, the Dallas Opera opens its new season with Aida. And playing the title role is Latonia Moore, a Houston native who studied at UNT. Moore actually made her debut at the Met in the same role as a last-minute fill-in for a performance that would be televised. Needless to say she was nervous – especially considering she didn’t even have time to rehearse. “The Met made a curtain announcement and I made my entrance. I could feel that the audience was in my corner from the first notes and that made all the difference,” she tells theaterjones.com. “I messed up the staging here and there, but there so much positive energy coming from the audience and the cast that I felt completely supported. I think they knew that something exciting was happening.”

NORAH’S RETURN: Norah Jones, the prize of Booker T., was back in Dallas Monday night playing a hometown show at McFarlin Auditorium. And while selling more than 10 million albums has certainly placed her in select company, Mario Tarradell writes that in performance, Jones excels at remaining part of the band. “Nobody overpowered anybody, and whether she was on the piano, electric keyboards or strumming a guitar, Jones treated her musicality as part of the ensemble. She was never the star player,” he writes on dallasnews.com.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST: On Thursday, the Dallas Museum of Art will host Dr. Philip Freeman for a lecture on his book How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians. And when he says ancient, he means it – the book recounts the Marcus Cicero’s successful campaign to rule Rome way back in 64 B.C. But in researching the book, he says he’s found that the more things change, the more they stay the same. “I’ve learned that nothing has really changed in 2,000 years,” he tells the museum’s Uncrated blog. “Politicians are still using the same techniques and making the same mistakes.”