Following a successful season in Puerto Vallarta and a one-off performance at the city’s Teatro Diana, the popular Fandango theater show has arrived for good in the Guadalajara suburb of Santa Anita.

The New York Metropolitan Opera’s 2011-12 season of live Saturday midday transmissions starts October 15 at Guadalajara’s Teatro Diana. The sixth season features 11 live HD broadcasts. Tickets run from 80 to 275 pesos. You can buy a season ticket for all 11 shows (including five in 2012) and pay for ten. For purchasing information see the box to the left.

Here is a list of the six operas scheduled in 2011.

Film fans south of the border are eagerly awaiting the debut feature of director Tom Gustafson, “Mariachi Gringo,” which stars Shawn Ashmore (he played Iceman in two X-Men movies), Martha Higareda and Kate Burton.

Author Fernando Vallejo has won the 150,000-dollar Romantic Language Literary Prize (formerly Juan Rulfo Prize) awarded by the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL).

Despite the rain and recent violence in Monterrey, spirits were high for the colorful and lively opening parade of Guadalajara's International Mariachi Festival.

Rising from humble roots in the highlands of west central Mexico, mariachi music has evolved over five centuries to become the emblematic sound that articulates the very soul of the nation. Historians say the country's signature musical ensemble derived from the Colonial era Spanish theatrical orchestra, evolving most prominently in the area of Cocula, Jalisco, which self-proclaims itself as the "Cradle of Mariachi." The genre first emerged from sonorous expressions of spirituality, a fusion of primitive instrumental accompaniment to rituals practiced by the region's indigenous people and European sacred music introduced in the 16th century by Franciscan missionaries.