Walnut Creek’s esteemed Festival Opera does an about-face, to present an innovative opera experience that evokes issues of judgment and kindness and acceptance.
Anyone who doesn’t yet know that Kansas-bred former Merolina Joyce DiDonato is a treasurable and highly versatile artist can join her throngs of devotees for “Drama Queens”.
The Brasil Duo is equally at home on a classical or a world music series, and its innovative programming features a seamless blend of traditional and Brazilian works.
Always a seasonal highlight, the annual joint holiday concert of the Stanford Symphonic Chorus and the Peninsula Symphony, will this year feature a typically vivid pairing.
Joshua Bell shows up a fair amount in the Bay Area, but let’s not get blasé about that. A Bellconcert is still a good reason to bestir yourself to get tickets and make a trip.
The second mainstay opera of SFO’s season to feature equally strong alternating casts, this Tosca, thanks to the company’s shrewd General Director David Gockley, gives us the dueling divas Angela Gheorghiu and Patricia Racette.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, the composer/conductor who until recent years led the Los Angeles Philharmonic, brings to the Pacific shore the same Philharmonia Orchestra whose many recordings with some of the greatest conductors of the latter 20th century have achieved legendary status.
