Reviews

Conductors matter. This week, Vladimir Jurowski made his SFS debut, and under his baton the orchestra and Ragnar Bohlin's SFS Chorus were as powerful as Siberian tigers, as majestic as the Volga flooding at springtime.

Times Bones, termed a "preview" by its creator, is already luxuriously full of everything you might expect from the master choreographer Margaret Jenkins.

The Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra features the prodigy-pianist/emerging-composer Conrad Tao in a memorable program.

Whether taking listeners on a pilgrimage or in a funeral march, pianist Cecile Licad plays to the heart of Liszt and Chopin.

True to form, West Bay Opera delivers a spirited, inviting production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann.

The great Cecilia Bartoli breathes new life into arias by a nearly unknown 17th-century Italian composer, Agostino Steffani, and triumphs in the process.

A pairing of French works delivered delights at S.F. Chamber Orchestra’s season opener.

Russell Maliphant Company’s AfterLight is a one-hour meditation on Vaslav Nijinsky, an extended composition lovely to look at, yet ultimately disappointing.

If you want to see a literal corps de ballet, or body of the ballet, you have to see the Mariinsky; the company has returned to Cal Performances with a Swan Lake.

If the prolonged cheers and standing ovation of the opening-night audience
are any indications, the outlook for Jake Heggie’s latest opera Moby
Dick is smooth sailing.