The superlative British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote will give her first solo recital in San Francisco tonight at Herbst theater, for SF Performances 30th anniversary season. The theme of the evening: English art songs. She impressed everyone in her SF debut at SF Opera in Alcina, and returned to great acclaim in Idomeneo, where the worst one could tell about her was that she impersonated her male character so well, she looked like Nicolas Sarkozy. Did we write that? Oops. She'll be back in September as Charlotte in Massenet's opera, Werther. more ›

One of the most effervescent, most joyously infectious things we heard last year, was Ian Bostridge and Kate Royal in a duet from Handel's Acis and Galatea, Happy We (excerpt here). We streamed it on-line from the BBC-Proms coverage, and it made us so fuzzy inside, that if it were legal, we totally would have installed a streaming audio capture software to make a copy on our computer (that and, oh say, John Adams' Dr Atomic symphony). more ›