Every week, WGBH Arts Editor Jared Bowen sums up the exhibitions, theater, movies and music you should check out in and around Boston.

Carmen, presented by the Boston Lyric Opera at the Boston Opera House until October 2

Boston Lyric Opera's Synopsis: "BLO’s 40th Anniversary Season launches with the East Coast premiere of Calixto Bieito’s Carmen in a co-production with San Francisco Opera – marking the director’s long-awaited U.S. opera debut. Set in the arid earthiness of 1970’s post-Franco Spanish North Africa, this raw and cinematic vision is a powerful account of the defiantly free-spirited woman and her obsessive lover, set to Bizet’s intoxicating score. Jennifer Johnson Cano, critically acclaimed for her star turn in BLO’s 2015 production of Don Giovanni, returns to Boston as the fiery, seductive gypsy who destroys the naïve soldier Don José, played by Roger Honeywell."

The run marks the company’s debut at the Boston Opera House. Carmen will be the first professional opera produced at the theater since 1991.

Jared Says: "Jennifer Johnson Cano (Carmen)... is absolutely fantastic."

UH-OH: Frances Stark 1991 - 2015, on display at the Museum of Fine Arts through January 29, 2017

MFA's Synopsis: "The most comprehensive survey to date of Los Angeles-based artist and writer Frances Stark (born 1967), 'UH-OH' tracks her 25-year career from early carbon copy drawings and text-based works to more recent video installations, digital slide shows, and projects that shape fleeting engagements with social media into art. Featuring more than 100 works, 'UH-OH' provides an in-depth exploration of Stark’s singular artistic practice and voice, as she shares her knowledge of cultural topics high and low, including dissections of art history, the Internet, and her creative contemporaries."

Jared Says: "Frances Stark is a very, very interesting artist. Very, very thoughtful."

Beyond Words, a collaborative exhibition, on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The McMullen Museum, and the Harvard Art Museum's Houghton Library through January 16, 2017

ISG's Synopsis: "Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections ... is the largest ever exhibition of medieval and Renaissance books held in North America. The Gardner joins Harvard University’s Houghton Library and Boston College’s McMullen Museum as one of three venues which will simultaneously display 260 outstanding painted and printed books selected by a team of local experts from 18 Boston-area institutions."

Jared Says: "This is a very interesting exhibition, especially for book lovers."

Alan Cumming, author of “You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures” in stores now!

Synopsis: Emmy and Golden Globe nominated actor Alan Cumming sat down this week with Jared to talk about his new book You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures. The book delves into Cumming’s life in a series of selfies and photographs. In his interview, Cumming talks about everything from Gore Vidal, to photography, to Helen Mirren’s crocs, to Oprah! His current performance series Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, will also be featured on the PBS Fall Arts Festival on October 31.

Jared Says: "Through these pictures and stories, you really get a sense of Alan Cumming's life." 

Can't get enough of the arts this Fall? » Tell Jared about it on Facebook or Twitter

This post has been updated.