The Festival del Sole concert Thursday in Napa’s Castello di Amorosa was an exception to the conventional structure of a concert. It consisted of two unrelated sections, each featuring a big star, and felt like two separate musical events. The two featured performers could not have been more different, not that there is anything wrong with that, but the concert was indeed unusual.
Chronologically and in many other ways, it’s a long way from Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) to Pierre Jalbert (born in 1967), but Music at Menlo will bring the two together.
John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony is an orchestral reduction, the soundtrack in a sense of his 2005 opera. The work presents episodes from the opera, with three movements titled “The Laboratory,” “Panic,” and “Trinity.”
Although Friday was July 10, the evening presented a Lucky 13 at Herbst Theatre as exactly one-third of the San Francisco Opera Merola Program's 39 participants made their debut here.