David Lomeli, singer
Nemorino, The Elixir of Love
New York City Opera
March 22 to April 9
In this production of Donizetti's Elixir of Love, the action is transported, illogically but (perhaps) inventively, from Europe to the American Southwest in the 1950s. Think soda jerks, a convertible, a roadside diner. The young Mexican tenor David Lomeli makes his debut with the company as something of the ersatz cowboy on the scene. He'll get to sing one of opera's great show-stoppers, "Una furtive lagrima (One furtive tear)," a soaring aria that rarely fails to bring down the house. Mr. Lomeli was born in Mexico City and won notice for taking first prize in Plácido Domingo's 2006 Operalia competition. He's the latest tenor--in the tradition of opera-geek idols Rolando Villazón or Juan Diego Florez, not to mention Domingo himself--to bring Latin ardor to the stage.

Holliday Grainger, actress
Lucrezia Borgia, The Borgias
Begins April 3, Showtime
Lucrezia Borgia. Beloved femme fatale of history and a strategic poisoner long before Connie Corleone, she's played by the demure-looking Holliday Grainger in cable's upcoming bloody historical thriller. Showtime had a hit presenting a sexed-up version of Henry VIII and his wives with The Tudors, so imagine what it will do with the infamous and even more dastardly Borgia clan of Renaissance Italy. The series chronicles the rise and corrupt papacy of Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons). But the whole family is on hand, including Rodrigo's illegitimate daughter, played by Ms. Grainger. She stars with--and pursues in the show--Robert Pattinson, best known as brooding vampire Edward Cullen of the sadly un-killable Twilight franchise.

Seth Numrich, actor
Albert, War Horse
Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater
Opens April 14
Few actors get steady work, never mind right out of school. On that front, Seth Numrich is downright annoying. He plays Albert, the young boy who's the owner of a battle-tested horse in the new play War Horse, at Lincoln Center Theater. He's pretty fresh out of Juilliard, and he comes directly to War Horse from The Merchant of Venice, where he played Lorenzo, opposite Al Pacino. Heady company. War Horse, which begins previews at the Vivian Beaumont March 15, was a massive critical hit in Britain. It's about a beloved horse sold to the cavalry and shipped to France in World War I, and the young boy (Mr. Numrich) who follows him blindly to the front. And, oh, for "Lion King" fans, the horses are played by giant puppets....

Cory Arcangel, artist
"Pro Tools"
The Whitney Museum of American Art
May 26 to Sept. 11
The generation of people who grew up on video games, where a constantly shifting landscape is the only landscape, see the world differently from ones with views shaped by movies and television. Digital artist Cory Arcangel, whose art work and performances use machines, the Internet and games, is one of the former. The popular and playful artist, who showed at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, is back at the museum again this spring, this time with a show, "Pro Tools." Mr. Arcangel is an interactive artist--he allows people to access his code, he leaves bread crumbs of himself on the Internet--and one who's immersed himself in an immersive game, creating art that reflects back our own obsessions. Recent sculptures include humidifiers filled with Coke Zero and an installation featuring the entire history of video bowling games, from Atari 2600 to Playstation II.  

Joyce Yang, pianist
Alice Tully Hall
May 5 
When pianist Joyce Yang stepped in for the superstar pianist Lang Lang, who had fallen ill before a concert in Buffalo, N.Y., at the end of January, she had one of those "star is born" moments. Buffalo Philharmonic conductor JoAnn Falletta dubbed her "the real deal," and usually persnickety reviewers praised her muscular power and charisma, plus her playing of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto (a toughie, and a Lang Lang specialty). Born and raised in Seoul, Korea, but now living here, she is known for crediting her teachers, including her (Tiger?) aunt, with much of her success. A pianist since age 4, and winner of the Silver Medal in the 12th Van Cliburn International Competition, she makes her New York solo recital debut May 5.

Paul Appleby, tenor
Brighella, Ariadne auf Naxos
The Metropolitan Opera, 
May 7, 10 and 13
The world is always on the lookout for the next tenor. Well, the opera world, anyway. Paul Appleby may be it. The young Indiana native, already something of a heartthrob to the Mozart set, won the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, and is making his Met debut in May. He's Brighella in Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss' brilliant combination of opera spoof and operatic sublimity. (The plot goes something like this: At the home of Vienna's wealthiest man, an opera and a burlesque show are staged simultaneously.) New Yorkers have seen and heard Mr. Appleby before--he recently made his recital debut at Alice Tully Hall, singing Shubert's "Die Schöne Mullerin" to excellent reviews. The tenor has a rich, beautiful voice that's both commanding and intimate, and he is at the beginning of a possibly brilliant career.

Jez Butterworth, playwright, Jerusalem
Music Box Theatre
Opens April 21
Johnny "Rooster" Byron, the lead character in this Jez Butterworth play, is a washed-up daredevil motorcyclist who lives in a trailer in the woods, drinking and drugging heavily and ranting about the world. American audiences might not know the work of playwright Mr. Butterworth, unless they caught his Parlor Song, which eviscerated suburbia, in New York a couple of years ago. But this comedy was a smash success in London when it opened in 2009 (winning three "Best Play of the Year" awards and the accolade "A Bucolic Noir" from the Sunday Times). The magnetic actor Mark Rylance is repeating on Broadway the Olivier Award-winning role he played in London, of a ferocious, angry antihero on speed.

Kristina Hanna, dancer
Keigwin + Company, EXIT
The Joyce Theater
March 8-13
If this dance company sounds familiar, perhaps it's because it is best known for staging Fashion Week 2010's sparkly opening extravaganza around the Lincoln Center Fountain. Director Larry Keigwin hired one of the company stars, Kristina Hanna, right out of Juilliard a couple of years ago, and since then she's become known for intelligent and vibrant performances with his contemporary dance troupe. She has the ability to stand out in a crowd--no small feat among dancers, though she has said that Mr. Keigwin encourages his dancers to be "individual movers." She's appearing, in black leather, in Mr. Keigwin's new evening-length work, EXIT (which, until recently, had the more tempting title Dark Habits). It's inspired by the worlds of fashion and drama, and features music by Chris Lancaster and Jerome Begin, played live at the Joyce Theater.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau,
actor
Jaime Lannister, Game of Thrones
Begins April 17, HBO
Villain alert. Epic-fantasy fans are juiced for the premiere of Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of the best-selling A Song of Fire and Ice novels by George R.R. Martin. The lush big-budget series features kingdoms vying for power in an enchanted land, and was adapted by David Benioff (a novelist who wrote the screenplay for The Kite Runner, among others) and D.B. Weiss. The cast includes some known actors, but it's Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who's likely to make a splash, as the impulsive, arrogant and, best of all for cable, amoral knight Jaime Lannister. Coster-Waldau, a Danish actor, starred in the short-lived Fox series New Amsterdam. As HBO knows, it's the bad guys fans remember most.

Freida Pinto, actress
Miral, directed by Julian Schnabel
Opens March 25
So, far Freida Pinto has been the definition of a one-hit wonder. Of course, that one hit was the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, in which she was one of the three actresses to play urchin-turned-bombshell Latika. It was her first major movie; she was previously known for foreign television roles and for her years as a model in India. But since Slumdog, she's filmed several movies, and the first one, Miral, opens this month; in it, she stars as an orphaned Palestinian girl pulled into the Arab-Israeli conflict. Miral is directed by artist Mr. Schnabel, based on the book of the same name by Rula Jebreal, the woman he left his wife for in a recent art-world scandal. Ms. Pinto has a fighting chance of going two-for-two: Mr. Schnabel's last film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, was nominated for Best Picture, and Miral is produced by kingmaker (or queenmaker) Harvey Weinstein.

Kate Royal, soprano
Euridice, Orfeo ed Euridice
Metropolitan Opera, April 29 to May 14
Carnegie Hall, May 20 
The English lyric soprano Kate Royal has had her Beatles moment: She sang for Paul McCartney (on the recording of his "Ecce Cor Meum"). But now she's getting her New  York moment with her Metropolitan Opera debut as Euridice in the beautiful Gluck opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Although the opera stage--in particular, the Met--marks the big leagues for rising singers, Royal is also keeping her schedule busy with recitals. She dedicates about five months a year to the more intimate performance form, and is singing at Carnegie Hall in May, in a wide-ranging recital of songs by Schumann, Ravel and many others. It's drawn from her new recording, A Lesson in Love, out March 8.

Maira Kalman, artist
The Jewish Museum
March 11 to July 31
Ms. Kalman has already been quite successful, in some arenas. Her covers for The New Yorker magazine and her line of bags and rain gear for Kate Spade have made her style more recognizable than her name. This survey may change that. The Israeli-born "narrative illustrator" presents 100 original paintings, featuring her trademark quizzical people and pets, plus her magazine covers ("Reading, Riting and Ritalin" and "NewYorkistan," among them), in an installation that includes piles of objects she collects. It's titled "Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)."

Athina Rachel Tsangari, director
The Museum of Modern Art Cinema
March 31
Ms. Tsangari's debut feature, The Slow Business of Going, a sci-fi road movie filmed in nine cities around the world, had a curious distinction: It was voted one of "the best undistributed films" in a Village Voice poll. Her newest, Attenberg, is featured in the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films series this spring (And will be shown April 2 there). It's the story of an ill architect who's come home to a dismal industrial town to die, and his daughter, who is busy exploring her sexual orientation. The film has been controversial in the director's native Greece for its frank discussion of sex, death and parenthood.