Five family performances worth checking out: the SF Opera Community Open House tomorrow, the collision of the SF Chamber Orchestra with the Circus Bella, the Peter and the Wolf with the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra, and, behind us, the Day of the Dead celebration with the SF Symphony.

Open House at the Opera November 9th: come catch a glimpse backstage at the War Memorial Opera House. We recall as a kid accompanying our siblings who were singing in the children chorus of Carmen, or the Queen of Spade at our local opera house, a marvelous 18th century building full of secret passageways and mysterious corridors. There, regular looking people would metamorphose with make-up and costumes into epic heroes and fairy tale characters, and the serious looking (if not invisible) musicians when in the pit would let lose and crack jokes while warming up. We can recreate the emotion tomorrow at the SF Opera, who hosts an open to the public Community Day. Come check where the phantom is hiding. Or just come look at the hidden machinery which makes the magic on stage happen: all the lights and pulleys and trapdoors that you're not supposed to see otherwise. Young and upcoming stars (and Adler fellows) Laura Krumm and Joo Won Kangwill perform, because a opera house without singers is as incomplete as breakfast without bacon, or a tech start-up without operating deficits.