Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Pal Joey” is an unusual 1940 musical with an antihero who changes not a whit and a quiet, inconclusive ending featuring protagonist Joey alone onstage, quite lost. Unlike many shows presented by San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon — whose mission is to revive forgotten Broadway productions — “Pal Joey” has a recognizable title and well-known song, “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” Read More

High-definition live transmissions beamed from New York’s Metropolitan Opera and other major houses to movie theaters across the country are becoming the new normal for enjoying the genre. The seventh season of “Met: Live in HD” is showing in 1,900 theaters in 60 countries. In the Bay Area, presentations are being held at select Cinemark, Regal and AMC theaters, with live showings at 9:55 a.m. Saturdays for most operas. Encore presentations are on Wednesdays, typically several weeks after the live openings.  Read More

An ensemble of young, acclaimed Czech musicians returns to the Herbst Theatre tonight with the intent to keep conquering San Francisco Performances audiences. Prague’s Pavel Haas String Quartet — featuring violist Pavel Nikl, violinist Veronika Jarušková, cellist Peter Jarušek and violinist Marek Zwiebel — made a big splash here last year at its local debut. Read More

One of the best things about “A Late Quartet” is that director Yaron Zilberman (and his cinematographers and audio engineers) makes the audience believe that actors Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Mark Ivanir are seasoned professional musicians. Yet it’s the Brentano Quartet gloriously playing the piece referenced in the  film’s title: Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C Minor, Op. 131, an apex of chamber music written just a year before the composer’s death. Read More

“Lohengrin,” Richard Wagner’s ultra-romantic 1850 work, has returned to the War Memorial Opera House with a production that illustrates the very idea of “grand opera.” At Saturday’s premiere, an outstanding cast, Nicola Luisotti’s orchestra and Ian Robertson’s chorus filled the big hall with music of the kind of intensity usually experienced at rock concerts. Read More

With the presidential election just days away, San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon hits the jackpot with its 20th season opener “Of Thee I Sing.” George and Ira Gershwin’s 1931 gem, a semi-forgotten glory of American musical theater, is hilarious, supremely melodic and particularly timely: It’s about the cockeyed adventures of a political campaign. Read More

Calligraphy, admired as the ultimate art form by China’s educated elite for more than 2,000 years, has evolved with a complex set of rules and conventions that affect every aspect of the calligrapher’s practice. That history is on view in “Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy,” an exhibit curated by Michael Knight opening Friday at the Asian Art Museum in The City. Knight, the museum’s senior curator of Chinese art, and Joseph Chang, senior research fellow at the museum’s Research Institute for Asian Art, have put together an unprecedented exhibition of 40 masterpi Read More