Reviews

Elina Garanča sings perhaps too perfectly in her new CD, often reducing what should be emotional outpourings to lovely vocalises.

The S.F. Symphony beats the band, showing its idiosyncratic side in a terrific new release of scores by Cowell, Harrison, and Varèse.

As invasions go, it was a win-win. Sweeping into the golden glow of Weil Hall, just two nights after slaying her audience in Carnegie Hall, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato took no prisoners.

Music from south of the border highlights the latest outing in BluePrint’s new-music series at the S.F. Conservatory.

Patricia Racette, Mark Delavan, and Brian Jagde swept the War Memorial Opera House stage clean with a powerhouse performance of Tosca, offering audiences a pack of principals that might be the most engaging around.

Les Sirènes — in its West Coast debut for the S.F. Early Music Society — in name promises beauty and excitement, and the ensemble delivered both, if a little unequally.

After diva Angela Gheorghiu is stricken with terrible nausea and intestinal flu, SFO favorite Melody Moore steps in after Act 1 to make her role debut as Tosca in a production otherwise wanting for drama.

In Lost and Sound, an emotional new documentary film, we are invited to share the experience of hearing impaired musicians as they find new paths to music and testify to music’s transformative power.

On his second solo album for British label Avie, Still Falls the Rain, American tenor Nicholas Phan again turns to the music of Benjamin Britten.

Warsaw Philharmonic gets rapturous reception in Davies Symphony Hall, serenades audience with encores aplenty.