The Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace is something of a home away from home for the Palm Beach Opera, and on Tuesday, July 20, the converted church will play host to an evening of music from the company’s upcoming season.

Presented under the rubric of the Music for the Mind series, sponsored by Kretzer Piano, the 7 p.m. concert will feature soprano Wendy Jones, mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts and baritone Graham Fandrei in music from the four operas that will take the Kravis Center stage beginning in December: Verdi’s Nabucco, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Mozart’s Cos fan Tutte, and Puccini’s Tosca. Bruce Stasyna, director of the company’s Young Artists Program, will accompany at the piano.

Tickets for the concert are $10 and go to support Palm Beach Opera education and outreach programs. There will be a pre-concert mixer beginning at 5:30 p.m. at City Cellar at CityPlace, hosted by Overtures, the opera’s fan group for younger adults and professionals, and a post-concert dinner and reception at Pistache on Clematis Street (tickets: $125; RSVP to 835-7566 ). For tickets or more information, call (561) 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org .

Chamber music fest continues: The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival opens its second week Friday, July 16, with the sextet for wind quintet and piano of Francis Poulenc, and Arioso, a sextet for trumpet and wind quintet by Jerzy Sapieyevski, a Polish-born composer and educator who’s been a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., for years.

Also on the program are two string quartets: the so-called Harp Quartet (String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat, Op. 74) of Beethoven, and the familiar Bullfighter’s Prayer (La oración del torero, Op. 34) of the Spanish composer Joaquin Turina.

The festival’s first program, heard in three concerts last week, was demanding and nourishing in equal measure, with no concession to the usual summer music tradition of light offerings. Chief among the things musical were important follow-up performances of Kenneth Frazelle’s Gee’s Bend Pieces, which had its world premiere at Lynn University in January, and a welcome reading of a rarely heard Schubert string trio (in B-flat, D. 581). The Frazelle, in particular, received a blazing performance at the hands of pianist Lisa Leonard, trumpeter Mark Reese and marimbist Michael Launius, and Leonard’s advocacy of this work, and this composer, is commendable.

The concerts also presented two works from what can only be called the festival’s core repertory, pieces that the group has performed and recorded previously and now are revisiting: a suite for oboe, clarinet and viola by Randall Thompson, and a nonet for string trio, wind quintet and bass by Martinu. Both received excellent renditions, and the Thompson was a clear audience favorite.

Tickets ($22) for the second program of the festival are available by calling (800) 330-6874 or visiting www.pbcmf.org .

Worth noting: The young Serbian-born pianist Misha Daci is a familiar figure to area fans of good piano playing, a player usually described as a throwback to the recent age of heroic Romantic pianism personified by the likes of Vladimir Horowitz.

Earlier this month, Daci, a graduate of the University of Miami, appeared in recital at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton under the rubric of Abram Kreeger’s valuable Piano Lovers series.

His program included the complete Préludes of Chopin (the 24 pieces in the Op. 28 collection) and the Humoreske (Op. 20) of Schumann.

Playing all of the Préludes back to back is a tour de force, and Daci handled it with mastery.

I didn’t agree with all of his choices: He rushed through several of the pieces (Nos. 17 in A-flat and 24 in D minor in particular), which shortchanged the drama of the music, and he tried to play all of these miniatures continuously, barely pausing between them, and that also cost the music a good deal of distinction.

But Daci has his own conception of these pieces, and in some cases (No. 22 in G minor) his interpretations were quite novel and supplied much food for post-concert musical reflection.

Visit www.pianolovers.org or call (561) 929-6633 for information on upcoming shows.