With Michael Tilson Thomas' last season at San Francisco Symphony opening on Wednesday and a full schedule at the San Francisco Opera including Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Britten's Billy Budd, and Opera in the Park, the galas are upon us. For those looking for something more intimate (and with a better-behaved audience), pianist and composer…

* Notes * Ars Minerva was back at ODC with Giovanni Porta's Ifigenia in Aulide last weekend. This opera, premiered in 1738 at Shrovetide in Munich, is in many ways the typical Baroque opera with an elaborate plot based on a classical subject. The music certainly is beautiful and was vibrantly performed here. The most famous…

* Notes *  The Merola Opera Program‘s second opera this year is The Rake’s Progress, performed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on August 2 and 4. The singers (pictured left, photograph by Kristen Loken) gamely performed this challenging music in a sleek Baroque meets modern production that suits Stravinsky’s music. The stage is…

Slavyanka Russian Chorus, an a cappella chorus based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is presenting a festival of Russian choral music starting next Sunday in Berkeley. The festival highlights Russian music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and includes works by Tchaikovsky, Sergei Taneyev, Rachmaninov, and Pavel Chesnokov. Most notably there will…

For the first time in more than a decade, I am going to skip to San Francisco Opera's opening weekend, as Ars Minerva presents the modern premiere of La Circe, an obscure Baroque opera this Friday and Saturday. I, of course, have a soft spot for Baroque operas and am not particularly interested in Turandot…