Arts & Culture » Music
Queen Elizabeth lights up the stage
Gaetano Donizetti's lyric drama "Roberto Devereux" lights up the War Memorial stage with a semi-historical pageant that triumphantly combines stellar musical artistry with colorful showmanship.
"Forever Changes" (Rhino/Elektra) by Love remains one of the most highly regarded albums of the 1960s.
Out music scholar Paul Kildea, author of a brilliant biography of Benjamin Britten, has looked deeply into Chopin's Op. 28 Preludes in "Chopin's Piano: A Journey Through Romanticism" (W.W. Norton).
The pairing of Italian operas "Cavalleria Rusticana" ("Rustic Chivalry") and "Pagliacci" ("Clowns") has been famously successful for more than a century.
Yes, San Francisco Bay Area socialites have long called the week after Labor Day "Hell Week," but really it's a type of cultural heaven.
The San Francisco Symphony's 107th season opened last week with typical flair and excitement.
With little lag time between a hectic summer and new fall season, San Francisco Opera is launching the first productions fully programmed (with one exception) by the administration of General Director Matthew Shilvock.
More arts events are coming to the Bay Area this fall! Let's list some.
For American lovers of singing, late summer can be a dry spell, best deployed to clear the ears from the extreme singing that is opera, since more is coming.
For the next two issues, we'll be bringing you B.A.R. arts writers' brief previews of what to look out for in the Fall 2018 season.
Over the past few years, Betsy Wolfe has played major roles in four Broadway musicals: "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," "Bullets Over Broadway," "Falsettos," and "Waitress."
The San Francisco Symphony's 2018-19 season starts next week, marking the next-to-last year of Michael Tilson Thomas' historical term as Music Director.
San Francisco's Merola Opera Program, known for selecting and intensively training some of the most promising young talent in the world, recently finished its 2018 Summer Festival with a Grand Finale at the War Memorial Opera House.
Berkeley-based West Edge Opera has wrapped its summer Festival 2018 at its new digs in Craneway Conference Center on the Richmond waterfront.
Author Don Shewey is a therapist whose work with gay men concerns issues of sex and intimacy. He has a lot of wisdom and experience to share in his new book "The Paradox of Porn - Notes on Gay Male Sexual Culture" (Joybody Books).
Of the Gilbert & Sullivan "big three," which include "H.M.S. Pinafore" and "The Mikado," "The Pirates of Penzance" or "The Slave of Duty" arguably remains the most popular.
Nonesuch has just released the first recording of "Doctor Atomic," composer John Adams' opera about the Manhattan Project, which had its world premiere from San Francisco Opera in 2005.
Carole Cook, still quite active in cabaret, is one of more than a dozen performers who will be taking to the stage of the Herbst Theatre on Sun., Aug. 19 for "Help Is on the Way 24," the latest fundraising variety show for Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation.
When revolutionary 20th-century composer Igor Stravinsky teamed with co-librettists W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman to write "The Rake's Progress" in 1951, he was finally moving past his "neoclassic" period.
For all we've written about two great gay keyboard artists, pianist Stephen Hough and harpsichordist Christophe Rousset, the fact is that we've skated over their recorded output.
For Bay Area opera-lovers or anyone curious about the state of the art, August is full of promise. Whether your taste runs to the traditional or contemporary cutting-edge, local companies are offering an exciting variety of musical events.
At 81, Philip Glass may never escape the label of minimalist composer.
Like the members of The Beatles who sought spiritual enlightenment via Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Pete Townshend of The Who trod a similar path through his interactions with Meher Baba.
Melissa Etheridge will rock the Bay Area this month with two outdoor evening concerts on the weekend of July 21 and 22.
"Summer with the Symphony" concerts, the all-purpose two-month fix for staycationing Bay Area music-lovers, continues at Davies Symphony Hall through Aug. 3.
There isn't much joy to be found on Current Joys' debut visual album "A Different Age" (Danger Collective).
In the good old summertime, San Francisco music-lovers can always rely on the Merola Opera program to uphold a celebrated tradition, selecting, training and showcasing young singers.
A deeply felt, finely balanced account of being Leonard Bernstein's oldest daughter captures the madness of life in the orbit of one of the last century's most influential, larger-than-life musicians with equal parts candor and compassion.
"Hollow Ground" (Jagjaguwar), the first full-length album by Cut Worms (aka Max Clarke), will make some listeners nostalgic for a time they're not old enough to remember.
It's 23 years and counting as Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas wrapped another memorable season with the San Francisco Symphony last week in concerts devoted entirely to Gustav Mahler's glorious Symphony No. 3.
Beguiled local audiences and international visitors embarked on the journey on three separate opening nights as the San Francisco Opera devoted its summer season to a freshly-tweaked revival of director Francesca Zambello's so-called "American Ring."