Russell Oberlin, Handel Arias (DGG). Arias from Messiah, Israel in Egypt, Rodelinda, Radamisto, and Muzio Seevola, sung by the most perfect countertenor voice ever to be overheard by a microphone. Precious little of Oberlin’s priceless recorded legacy has made it to CD, and this amazing 1959 album is among the most glittering jewels (TT).

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (W.W. Norton, $35). An uncategorizable, unputdownable, utterly frank nine-hundred-page stroll through the bloody history of modernity, in which James serves up pithy, quote-driven miniature essays about key and not-so-key figures ranging from Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, skewering countless hypocrites along the way. A splendidly readable exercise in cultural reclamation (TT).

Songs of Ned Rorem (Other Minds). The fabulously rare 1964 Columbia LP of Rorem’s best songs, now on CD for the very first time. They’re all here: “Early in the Morning,” “My Papa’s Waltz,” “Visits to Saint Elizabeth’s,” “The Lordly Hudson,” and two dozen others, selected and accompanied by the composer and sung by Charles Bressler, Phyllis Curtin, Gianna d’Angelo, Donald Gramm, and Regina Sarfaty. Get this one right now (TT).

Talk Radio (Longacre, 220 W. 48). Eric Bogosian’s 1987 play about the coke-snorting host of a call-in show is now a period piece, but it remains an effective vehicle for a charismatic actor, and Liev Schreiber fills the bill to overflowing in this Broadway revival. His performance is slicker than the one Bogosian gave twenty years ago at the Public Theater, but it’s no less remarkable in its own polished way (TT).

Neil Young, Live at Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise). The oft-bootlegged 1971 concert, now available legitimately and in excellent sound. No band, just the man himself singing seventeen of his best early songs, including “Cowgirl in the Sand,” “Don’t Let It Bring You Down,” “Helpless,” “I Am a Child,” and “On the Way Home.” I’m not especially nostalgic about the late Sixties or early Seventies, but Young’s shivery voice and uncomplicated acoustic-guitar playing remain as mysteriously involving today as they were all those years ago (TT).

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PLAY: Room Service (SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam, extended through Mar. 25). An electrifyingly frenetic off-Broadway revival of the 1937 backstage farce about a fast-talking Broadway producer with a heart of brass who can’t raise enough cash to pay his hotel bill. Filmed by the Marx Brothers in 1938, Room Service works infinitely better on stage, and the Peccadillo Theater Company has given it a first-class production directed with zany aplomb by Dan Wackerman. If there’s a funnier show in New York, I haven’t seen it (TT).

DANCE: Mark Morris Dance Group (2 Lafayette St., Brooklyn, closes Jan. 24). A perfect mixed bill: Morris’ latest effort, a new work set to Bach’s Italian Concerto, plus three of his finest small-scale pieces, Love Song Waltzes (1989), The Argument (1999), and Sang-Froid (2000). All programs will be danced in the wonderfully intimate performance space of the Morris company’s Brooklyn headquarters. Not to be missed under any circumstances whatsoever (TT).

EXHIBITION: The Odyssey Continues: Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art and from Private New Orleans Collections (Wildenstein & Company, 19 E. 64, up through Feb. 9). One hundred works of art, including major pieces by Lotto, Tiepolo, Rodin, Bonnard, Redon, Braque, Kandinsky, Pollock, Cornell, and Diebenkorn. The $10 admission fee benefits NOMA, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and is nowhere near recovering. Do yourself–and NOMA–a favor and visit this memorable show (TT).

DVD: Ballets Russes (Zeitgeist). An enthralling 2005 documentary about the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, one of the most important dance companies of the Thirties and Forties, whose barnstorming tours helped to create an audience for dance in America. Interviews with surviving members are skillfully blended with vivid archival performance footage to tell an irresistibly nostalgic tale of life on the road. Great, great fun (TT).

CD: Erin McKeown, Sing You Sinners (Nettwerk). “About Last Night”‘s favorite pop singer-songwriter hangs up her pen (temporarily) to cut an album of old-time standards performed in a rough-hewn, bewitchingly unslick style that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the glammed-up slumming of Linda Ronstadt and her successors (TT).