Reviews

Judging by the small audience in attendance, you probably weren't in Old First Church on Friday evening as mezzo-soprano Miriam Abramowitsch and pianist George Barth presented a program of early 20th-century art songs. If you were, you witnessed one of the major intellectual events of the season.

Every so often, a Russian performing group rides through town and brings out what seems to be the entire Russian émigré community, filling one of the largest halls to capacity. Its program typically offers a serious or traditional first half followed by arrangements of favorite tunes from the war years or Soviet cinema.

One of the downsides of living and listening in a place so attractive to visiting artists as the Bay Area is that even the best musicians who actually live here have a hard time attracting notice among the touring stars.

In a celebration of its 30th anniversary, Chanticleer is singing a concert titled "My Spirit Sang All Day," all this week. The program starts in the Renaissance, where Chanticleer began 30 years ago, then skips to the 20th and 21st centuries. There was no Schubert this time, but still plenty of variety.

All the requisite glamour and excitement animated this year's opening night celebration at the San Francisco Opera. A superabundance of red and pink roses packed tightly into intricate patterns decorated both the foyer and the auditorium, which itself was festooned with rose-encrusted swags draped around the dress circle.

In an increasingly crowded field of Bay Area choral ensembles, the three-year-old Artists' Vocal Ensemble (AVE) manages to stand out from the pack. One of its distinctions is director Jonathan Dimmock's commitment to social justice, as demonstrated by his latest concert set, a benefit for the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance.

Making her debut with Opera San José last Sunday afternoon, Khori Dastoor dominated the stage in the coloratura title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, blazing through her shrewdly conceived mad scene with theatrical abandon and scenery-chewing panache.

Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd is a big musical — large in passion and in production values. It originally opened in 1979 at one of Broadway's biggest theaters, in Harold Prince's hugely operatic production, and went on to be performed by opera companies as well as in theaters around the world.

The San Francisco Lyric Chorus and its director, Robert Gurney, have a history of presenting programs both ambitious and unusual, so Saturday night's concert at San Francisco's Trinity Episcopal Church was unexpected only in specifics, not in quality.