Jaime Robles

It's often remarked that Benjamin Britten was fascinated by innocence, and especially the fall of innocence, yet it's seldom noted that he was also fascinated by the supernatural. Maybe it's more accurate to say that his music often evokes the supernatural — shimmering through strange dissonances and ethereal harmonies.

When experience comes to us in fragments, we often set about building them into a pattern that can be easily and neatly understood. That’s part of our human effort to understand the world: the need to find an interpretive key to a confusing set of experiences, but what if?

The libretto of Gaetano Donizetti's 1832 opera L'elisir d'amore (The elixir of love) has wide appeal. Many of us have suffered the torture of being in love with someone who doesn't know we exist, and worse, wouldn't be interested if they did.

Sunday's gray skies and icy wind marked the planet's tilt toward winter but, inside San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El, the Bay Area's first "Chamber Music Day—Live + Free" created an oasis of warmth as 16 local chamber groups performed for those who were brave — and wise — enough to venture out in the cold. The day was bountiful in sound, and the audience was treated to a diverse and expansive serie

When the curtain opened at Zellerbach Auditorium on Wednesday night, the painted backdrop revealed stone archways through which we could see blurs of forest green and brick red, and, centrally, a pathway leading to a vaguely shaped castle in the distance.