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Mark Morris, whose association with Cal Performances spans more than a decade, is bringing something completely different to Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley this week.Mozart Dances, unlike last year's King Arthur, and of course also unlike The Hard Nut, which returns in December

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.

With autumn upon us, the Bay Area's classical music groups are tuning up for hundreds of intriguing events. San Francisco Classical Voice asked several of our critics and editors to comb through the performance announcements available to date and pick their favorite choices for September through December.

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.

Newcomers to the job market often quickly become aware of the Catch-22 phenomenon: You can't embark upon your dream career unless you're experienced, and you can't become experienced unless you can get experience. Nowhere is this truer or more impossible than among aspiring conductors. You not only have to have the chops to conduct the orchestra, you have to have the orchestra.

From Oakland, drive 40 miles south on 880, that overcrowded, dangerous highway, paved like hell, and not with good intentions. Then, 10 miles north of San Jose, hang a left on Auto Mall Parkway, in search of Ohlone College. You are now in Fremont, formerly rural, now a mixed industrial-residential city of 200,000, with the largest number of expatriate Afghanistanis in the U.S.

Napa Valley's Music in the Vineyards summer festival draws a devoted group of enthusiasts to its 17 concerts, often held in small winery spaces. Friday's concert was no exception. Three disparate works were heard by 65 people in a barrel-aging cave at the Stag's Leap Winery on Silverado Trail. Fanny Mendelssohn's first published work, Songs (Op. 1), got things off well.