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If there’s one thing Lamplighters Music Theatre knows, it’s Gilbert and Sullivan. So it’s not surprising that the lyricist-composer duo’s latest show — the one spoofing vampire-mania and the Twilight books and movies, not to mention San Francisco’s own Mayor Navin Gruesome — is receiving its premiere from them.

String quartet concerts customarily feature the old masters, or the medium-old masters, and apologetically stick small quantities of modern music in the corners of the program. At Sunday night’s concert at the Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, though, the opposite plan — feature the contemporary works, and stick the old masters in the corner — was enacted by the Lark Quartet.

Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir looks forward to a gig with the Marin Symphony and the opening of his new music recording studio — just a hint of the new projects he’s lining up involving classical orchestras.

Meeting face-to-face after an intense, six-hour rehearsal at S.F. Opera for her role debut as Emilia Marty in Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Case, soprano Karita Mattila no doubt would have preferred to luxuriate in a bubble bath. Nonetheless, the great singer-actress, who recently showed her all onstage in Salome, slowly revealed herself. Speaking in the opera house, the diva shared thoughts on her imminent debut, ill-prepared conductors, and life at 50.

This symphony orchestra is so old, Franz Schubert is one of the first violinists. So what can be learned from experiencing the first visit from the Dresden Staatskapelle in Davies Symphony Hall on Sunday, an ensemble rated as one of the top five in Europe, with a 462-year-old pedigree, and it lays before you a Schuman-Beethoven-Brahms program right from their sweet spot in musical history?

If you wanted to come up with a pairing of diametric opposites on a piano recital, you might choose the complete Ligeti Études and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, two monumental works that at first glance seem psychologically light years apart. This was Jeremy Denk’s Bay Area solo debut program. It promised to be an auspicious one, and I couldn’t wait to see if he would pull it off.

Conventional buzz has it that Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac is a second-rate opera that has been revived solely as a vehicle for 69-year-old tenor Plácido Domingo. While it is doubtful that anyone is going to walk down the street whistling one of the 1936 opera’s extended love duets, the combination of Théâtre du Châtelet’s gorgeous production and an extremely strong cast have created the indisputable highlight of San Francisco Opera’s fall season thus far.

James Conlon is one of the finest conductors around, and he is also a maverick presenter of unusual programs. And so it was expected that he would bring something different to his current appearances with the San Francisco Symphony (which he first led 32 years ago), and he did not disappoint.

“Relevance.” This is the confident answer of Volti’s artistic director, Robert Geary, when asked what people will like about the choral ensemble’s upcoming program. The weekend of Nov. 5-7 will see Volti’s 32nd season open.