Previews

Every seat should be taken for a production that delivers the unbeatable combination of Susan Graham and David Daniels. Potentially as rewarding are the San Francisco debut of soprano Lisette Oropesa and the return of early-music specialist and contralto Sonia Prina.

If you’ve been avoiding “modern” music like the plague, you may not realize that fashion has brought new music back into audience-pleasing land. One of the more attractive young exponents of this trend is Kenji Bunch, the Oregon-born, multistylistic composer whose Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra brings back the glory days of melody.

Tragedy and comedy vie for attention in Richard Strauss’ technically demanding, gorgeous score and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s fascinating play-within-a-play libretto.

A respected church music director is being celebrated for his six decades of excellence and inspiration.

Nicola Luisotti takes the San Francisco Opera Orchestra across the Bay Bridge, to Cal Performances on Oct. 28 and talks candidly about his passion for conducting the orchestra.

The Cashore Marionettes will come to life at Cal Performances on Oct. 23. They are in no way a simple puppet show, but characters alive on stage.

The first Chinese classical guitarist to launch an international career, Xuefei Yang was so accomplished as a teen that John Williams gave two of his own Smallman guitars to the Beijing Conservatory so she would have excellent instruments to play.

The men's choir Clerestory, originally a splinter group from Chanticleer, is one of the less-known Bay Area treasures. If you've never looked in on them, here is a wonderful-sounding program about the music of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, presented in conjunction with Humanities West's seminar weekend.

Should anyone not be tired of Farinelli’s repertoire after the Philharmonia Baroque set, here is Philippe Jaroussky, among the most recent of the countertenor superstars, singing Handel and Vivaldi arias with Jeannette Sorrell’s Cleveland-based ensemble Apollo’s Fire.

“Body music is the oldest music,” says International Body Music Festival (IBMF) Founder Keith Terry. His fourth annual festival, features six days filled with over 20 presentations of traditional and contemporary Body Music styles from all over the world.