Friday Happenings

C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Mařenka)

Opera

Bedřich Smetana's Bartered Bride calls for a dude cavorting in a bear costume, the most tuneful stuttering you'll ever hear, and the consumption of gallons of imaginary beer. Opera Boston places the 19th-century Czech comic opera in the Depression (the previous one), back when selling women was still hilarious. Pretty singing, with baseball. Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St, 7:30 pm. $29-$114.

Poetry, Film

Poet John Ashbery was just awarded the 2009 Harvard Arts Medal—which is more exciting when you find out that the medal apparently comes with the power to screen your favorite movies all weekend at the Harvard Film Archive. Ashbery gets started with Heart of the World (not the plural Hearts starring Lillian Gish, but Guy Maddin's singular Heart, a recent short that pays tribute to silent film), Footlight Parade (starring James Cagney and lots of underwater legs, choreographed by Busby Berkeley), and Adieu, Léonard (with a script by surrealist poet Jacques Prévert). HFA, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge, 7 pm. $10.

Poetry, Music

Tenured aging-hipster power couple Lou Reed & Laurie Anderson perform at a benefit for the Institute of Contemporary Art. Ticket prices range from $750 to $25,000 and include admission to the after-party, at which attendees will presumably high-five each other for being Patrons of the Arts. ICA, 100 Northern Ave., 8:30 pm. Hopefully tax-deductible.

Photograph by Clive Grainger.