Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela returned to the Bay Area this week, generating the kind of goodwill for music education and excitement for symphonic music that can turn even the most hardened cynic into a true believer.
As invasions go, it was a win-win. Sweeping into the golden glow of Weil Hall, just two nights after slaying her audience in Carnegie Hall, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato took no prisoners.
Patricia Racette, Mark Delavan, and Brian Jagde swept the War Memorial Opera House stage clean with a powerhouse performance of Tosca, offering audiences a pack of principals that might be the most engaging around.
Les Sirènes — in its West Coast debut for the S.F. Early Music Society — in name promises beauty and excitement, and the ensemble delivered both, if a little unequally.
After diva Angela Gheorghiu is stricken with terrible nausea and intestinal flu, SFO favorite Melody Moore steps in after Act 1 to make her role debut as Tosca in a production otherwise wanting for drama.
In Lost and Sound, an emotional new documentary film, we are invited to share the experience of hearing impaired musicians as they find new paths to music and testify to music’s transformative power.
