San Francisco Ballet’s current revival of “Giselle” is of a 12-year-old production, and it’s aging well. The performance by the Sunday matinee cast was a formidable presentation of one the greatest “white ballets” of all time. The original 1841 Jean Coralli-Jules Perrot choreography, in Marius Petipa’s 1884 version, has survived all this time and is still produced today around the world. But San Francisco has something different. Read More

“People don’t come to the theater to feel good,” Libby Appel says. “They come to feel.”As with all of Anton Chekhov’s plays, “The Seagull” has a lot of feelings: hope, ambition, failure, pain, persistence. Not a melodrama, it’s a masterpiece of subtle, indirect communication, much of it in subtext.Appel’s new English version of the play gets its professional world premiere, called “Seagull,” at Marin Theatre Co. this week in a production directed by Jasson Minadakis.Last year, it was performed at UC Santa Barbara, directed by Irwin Appel, the translator’s son. Read More

With simultaneous premieres today in India and the U.S., “Mumbai Diaries” (“Dhobi Ghat”) is screening at the Balboa Theater in The City. Gary Meyer, owner of the Balboa and co-director of the Telluride Film Festival, made special efforts to secure the film — originally scheduled only in specialized theaters catering to Indian audiences — for his venue. Read More

Ask San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley what is new about the upcoming season and he answers that it is the fact there is a season at all.Under pressure from the continuing negative impact of the recession, Gockley is fighting to uphold the opera’s tradition of varied repertory, new works and world-renowned singers. Read More

Gustav Mahler’s music is exciting and beautiful, but also filled with angst and neuroticism. The dark spirits contribute to the works’ unique value and appeal, but were hard on the composer himself. To deal with tragedy and psychological problems, he turned to a Vienna neighbor, the granddaddy of psychoanalysis.That Mahler was treated by Sigmund Freud is a historic fact and the subject of a new film, “Mahler on the Couch” — which opens German Gems, a festival of new films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland opening at 7 p.m. Friday at the Castro Theatre.   Read More

Arthur Szyk, a Jewish artist born in Poland who achieved fame in France and the U.S., is finally receiving his due with a solo exhibit at the Legion of Honor — 70 years after a show of his watercolors here.“Arthur Szyk: Miniature Paintings and Modern Illuminations” is more than an art display. It is like a stroll down historical lanes.   Beginning with little-known aspects of the American Revolutionary War, the exhibit showcases two decades of news-magazine covers Szyk created for Collier in the 1930s and ’40s.   Read More

Few ballet companies, even large troupes, schedule more than one or two full-length works per season. Mostly they present repertories of dance pieces usually running between 20 and 30 minutes. With large casts and elaborate sets and costumes, evening-long works are difficult and expensive to produce; they are what opera is to chamber music. Yet San Francisco Ballet offers three big story ballets for its 78th season, which opens with a gala Jan. 26. Read More