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Few operas have been worked over as much as Bizet's Carmen. In the East Bay, where Berkeley West Edge Opera's Carmen Fixation opened Saturday night, the opera company offered a "different" version, with a standout performance by Buffy Baggott.

Last week’s Other Minds Festival showcased world musicians doing wild and crazy, and often enjoyable and inventive, things.

Eugene Chan’s resonant baritone voice and passionate delivery were the prize in a somewhat self-conscious Sunday recital.

In its upcoming concert set, Magnificat brings on the drama in a staging of Orazio Vecchi’s madrigal comedy L’Amfiparnaso (The Twin Peaks of Parnassus), a collaboration with three theater artists from the Dell’Arte Company for what’s sure to be a high-spirited affair.

Mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao, in the midst of an astounding series of performances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, performed as a substitute for the great mezzo Frederica von Stade (Flicka), singing beautifully and giving fully of her heart and soul.

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players ensemble continues to evolve and explore new music, as evidenced by its Monday concert that displayed rich variety.

It would have been hard to tell, observing the small, graying audience in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Saturday, that videos of the early-music band Voices of Music had received, as of this writing, 3,558,070 hits on YouTube. I suspect a good deal of those came from Web queries for the famous Pachelbel Canon, of which VOM has posted an excellent recording.

If your week will be made by a really fine performance of a Brandenburg Concerto, as well as music by other German luminaries like Telemann and Handel, then Cal Performances is the place to be on Friday.

Kui Dong is a composer who is just now getting the wider notice she deserves. The upcoming Volti concert includes her Painted Lights alongside works by David Lang, Tamar Diesendruck, and Ted Hearne.

The Jewish Music Festival kicks off in Berkeley with the Ger Mandolin Ensemble, a mandolin orchestra, inspired by a pre-World War II group that was destroyed during the Nazi occupation of Poland.