"Let me tell you, it’s crowded over here," says Areta Zhulla, a Greek-born violinist who moved to the Indiana city last year as a newlywed. But as it happens, Zhulla will be out of town for football’s big day. She’ll be in Boca Raton, performing the Violin Concerto (Op. 14) of Samuel Barber with the Boca Raton Symphonia.

Zhulla, 25, a native of the Greek city of Thessaloniki, where her father is a violin-maker, came to the United States at 13 to study for two years with Pinchas Zukerman. She then began working with Itzhak Perlman as part of his Perlman Music Program and then transferred to his studio at Juilliard, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 2010, she married bassoonist Oleksiy Zakharov, who now plays in the Indianapolis Symphony.

Her performance with the Symphonia comes at Perlman’s recommendation, and she can’t say enough good things about the legendary Israeli-American fiddle master.

"I always said when I was going to my lessons, ‘I’m going to church now.’ Because every time I came out of there, it’s like ‘,’" she said, singing that last syllable, choir-style.

Saturday night will mark the first time Zhulla has played the Barber concerto with an orchestra. It’s a piece she admires for its lyricism, and because Barber "shows off the orchestra as well as the soloist" in the concerto .

"And in the first and second movements, you can do so many nuances and different sounds," Zhulla said.

Saturday night, the conductor of the Symphonia will be the Argentine conductor Duilio Dobrin, and on Sunday, Palm Beach Symphony director Ramon Tebar steps in. The program includes the very first of Franz Joseph Haydn’s 106 symphonies (in D, Hob. I: 1), and the Symphony No. 2 (in D, Op. 36) of Beethoven.

The 8 p.m. Saturday concert will take place at the Pine Crest School’s Performing Arts Center in Boca Raton, while the 3 p.m. Sunday concert will convene at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca. Tickets range from $35-$62. Call (561) 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.

The Palm Beach Opera: The company’s second One Opera in One Hour presentation, planned for tonight, is an American work, Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land. First heard at New York City Opera in 1954, it was expanded and revised the following year, and tells the story of Laurie, a young farm girl in the 1930s Midwest who’s graduating from high school and facing the start of adult life.

The opera company’s abridged, one-hour version of The Tender Land will be presented at 8 tonight at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. Emily Duncan-Brown, who made a fine Semele in last month’s One Opera in One Hour staging of Handel’s opera, is Laurie, and tenor Evanivaldo Correa is Martin. Greg Ritchey accompanies at the piano, and the stage director is Andrew Nienaber.

Admission is free, though reserved seating is available for $15. Call (561) 833-7888 for more information.

At the Kravis: One of American pianism’s most respected Chopin interpreters, Garrick Ohlsson, comes to the Kravis this coming week for two performances with the Wroclaw Philharmonic of Poland.

Wednesday night, he performs Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (in F minor, Op. 21). The program, led by conductor Jacek Kaspszyk, also includes Arnold Schoenberg’s brilliant orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 (in G minor, Op. 25), and the Little Suite of Poland’s Witold Lutoslawski.

Thursday afternoon, Ohlsson solos in the Piano Concerto No. 4 (in G, Op. 58) of Beethoven, and the orchestra performs the Symphony No. 7 (in D minor, Op. 70) of Dvorak. The program opens with the Concert-Overture (in E, Op. 12) of the great early 20th-century Polish master Karol Szymanowski.

The concerts are set for 8 p.m. Wednesday and 2 p.m. Thursday at the Kravis Center. Tickets start at $25. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

Stradivari Quartet: The Swiss string quartet, all playing Stradivarius instruments, will play the String Quartet No. 9 (in G minor, D. 173) of Schubert, the Quartet No. 2 (in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2) of Brahms, and the Quartet No. 4 of Bela Bartok. The concert is set for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Flagler Museum. Tickets: $60. Call (561) 655-2833 or visit www.flagler museum.us.

Gareth Johnson: The Wellington-based violinist steps out for a recital Sunday on the St. Paul’s series with the busy pianist Tao Lin. Johnson will play the Violin Sonata of Francis Poulenc, the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso of Saint-Saens, and the Carmen Fantasy, a Sarasate-on-steroids excursion into Bizet’s opera by the film composer Franz Waxman. Johnson also has scheduled two of the Caprices (Nos. 1 and 5) of Paganini, and an arrangement of the posthumously published Nocturne in C-sharp minor of Chopin. The concert starts at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Delray Beach, and tickets are $15-$20. Call (561) 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.

Joshua Bell performs at the Kravis Center on Tuesday. (Photo by Chris Lee)

He’s in a cab on the way to the airport in New York, heading out to Vegas for a few days of much-needed R&R.

But Joshua Bell manages to juggle a round-robin call with eight reporters even as his voice cuts in and out while traveling through a tunnel or paying the fare.

It’s a peripatetic life, but someone’s got to do it, and Bell has been doing it as well or better than any other classical violinist of his generation, ever since his first appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra as a 14-year-old prodigy soloist.

Now 44 and a father of three boys, the Indiana native has just released an album of French sonatas, played on the soundtrack of Zhang Yimou’s movie Flowers of War, and is preparing this year for a tour in his new role as music director of London’s celebrated Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

But first, West Palm Beach will hear him Tuesday afternoon in a recital program with British pianist Sam Haywood at the Kravis Center. He’ll play sonatas by Brahms (No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108), Ravel and Mendelssohn (Sonata in F), plus the solo Sonata No. 3 (Op. 27, No. 3) of Eugene Ysaye and an arrangement of George Gershwin’s Three Preludes.

As usual with a Bell concert (for which most of the tickets already have been sold), there also will be short encores, the sort of pieces that Bell likes to call "bon-bons."

He is a player of exceptional ability and polish, a musician whose technique is gigantic, whose tone embodies all the emotive power of Romanticism without the excess, and whose eclectic tastes lead him to comfort in a variety of styles.

Bell’s program includes staples of the repertoire, but also a relative rarity in the Mendelssohn sonata, which was rediscovered late in the last century but has yet to make it to classic status.

"This particular sonata – he wrote three, two of them quite early – but this particular sonata I think he wrote at the ripe old age of 29, which was already late in his life. And so it’s really one of his mature pieces, and it’s remarkable that you don’t hear it that much, because I think it’s every bit as great as a Beethoven sonata, and deserves to be played as often as the Beethovens are," Bell said.

The Ysaye solo sonata, too, has a special connection for Bell, in that its composer, a legendary Belgian violin virtuoso, taught during the 1920s a young Russian player named Josef Gingold, who went on to concertmaster positions in the Detroit and Cleveland orchestras before moving to Indiana University in 1960 to teach. Bell’s father also taught there, and his son became one of Gingold’s best-known students.

"Everything I play, in a way, is for him. He was my biggest influence as a musician, and was like a grandfather to me," said Bell, whose eldest son, Josef, is named for Gingold, who died in 1995. "His sound is always sort of in my ear."

Bell has an extensive discography of 36 recordings, including not just recital programs and concerti, but also bluegrass (Short Trip Home) and movie soundtracks (he’s the violinist of The Red Violin). His newest disc, French Impressions, was released earlier this month and marks his first recording with longtime collaborator Jeremy Denk, a splendid pianist who makes frequent South Florida appearances.

"I’ve always felt very connected to French music, maybe partially through Gingold because he was connected to Ysaye and the French school, partially the way I play the instrument, even in a technical way. I tend to use a lot of bow, and somehow the way I approach the instrument suits French music," Bell said. "I’ve always felt that it felt like a language that was very natural to me."

Bell finishes his current tour in early February, then heads to Europe for concerts with the London Philharmonic in England, Spain and Germany, and two appearances back in the States, ending in New Orleans at the end of March. A week later, he’s back on the road with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields for a 15-date American tour (no concerts are scheduled in Florida).

The Academy, founded in 1958 by Neville Marriner, is one of the finest and most-recorded chamber orchestras of our time. Bell’s first orchestral recording, of concertos by Bruch and Mendelssohn, was made with Marriner and the Academy in 1986.

"I’m directing from the violin it’s sort of the way they started. When (Marriner) started the orchestra, he led from the violin as well," Bell said. "Playing the Beethoven Seventh Symphony without someone standing with a baton, but playing like chamber music, can be quite electric, because every single person is sitting on the edge of their seats and participating in a way that doesn’t always happen in a large orchestra with a conductor in front," he said.

Bell will lead the orchestra for three years, and he hastens to add that he’s not trying to "replace Neville Marriner," who turns 88 in April.

"I’m taking my own path with it, and we’ll see where it goes," he said.

"I decided in ’02 that I had 42 years of earning a living from singing, and 42 was a good number. And so I stopped," said Milnes, who was renowned for his work in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi.

Milnes, who just turned 77, will be the special guest host Friday, Jan. 20, and Sunday, Jan. 22, of two gala concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of Palm Beach Opera at the Karvis Center. Some of today’s best-known opera singers will share the stage with the company’s Young Artists in selections from beloved operas.

But don’t expect Milnes, who sang in two Palm Beach Opera productions during the time of artistic director Anton Guadagno, to sing at the Friday or Sunday concerts.

"I’ll be telling stories. I am now a raconteur," he says, relishing the r’s of that last word and giving it an impeccable French pronunciation.

Joining the celebration are sopranos Denyce Graves-Montgomery, Angela M. Brown, Sarah Joy Miller and Ruth Ann Swenson, mezzo Lauren McNeese, tenors Atalla Ayan and Brandon Jovanovich, and baritone Daniel Sutin. They’ll perform selections from Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida, Puccini’s La Boheme, Bizet’s Carmen, and Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus.

The jubilee performances, which will be accompanied by the Palm Beach Opera orchestra and conductor Bruno Aprea, are set for 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 20, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22. Tickets start at $20. Call (561) 832-7469, (561) 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.

At the Kravis: The Cleveland Orchestra, which has been doing a three-program residency in Miami for several years now, comes to the Kravis with Russian pianist Yefim Bronfman in tow.

Bronfman, a marvelous musician, will play the Piano Concerto No. 2 (in B-flat, Op. 83) of Brahms in the Wednesday evening, Jan. 25, concert, which also will feature the Symphony No. 6 (in B minor, Op. 54) of Shostakovich and Wanderlust, a three-part tone poem by the young American composer Sean Shepherd.

Cleveland officials say music director Franz Welser-Most, who will conduct the orchestra at the Kravis, is a passionate devotee of the Shostakovich symphony, which has not yet achieved regular repertory status. It’s an unusual but brilliant three-movement work that begins in gloom and ends with an exuberant finale, and perhaps Welser-Most’s advocacy will lead other conductors to take another look at it.

Also this coming week, the Tchaikovsky St. Petersburg State Orchestra arrives at the Kravis in a mostly Russian program featuring pianist Alexandre Pirozhenko.

Pirozhenko will play the Piano Concerto No. 1 (in D-flat, Op. 10) of Prokofiev, a cheeky work the composer crafted for his conservatory graduation piece. Conductor Roman Leontiev will lead the band in Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini (Op. 32) and the Serenade for Strings (in C, Op. 48), plus the second suite from Maurice Ravel’s score for the ballet Daphnis and Chloe.

The concert is 2 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24; tickets start at $25. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

Also upcoming:

Salzburg Chamber Soloists: The Society of the Four Arts welcomes back this remarkable chamber string orchestra, led by the brilliant violinist Lavard Skou-Larsen. Its previous appearance was one of the finest concerts I’ve ever seen at the Four Arts, and Wednesday night’s program looks like a gem. Soprano Karine Polverelli joins the band for Les Illuminations, a song cycle in French by British composer Benjamin Britten, while the orchestra will play Janacek’s Suite for String Orchestra, Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue (in C minor, K. 546), and an arrangement of Ravel’s sole String Quartet. 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25. Tickets: $40-$45. Call (561) 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.

Euclid String Quartet: Founded in 1998, this young American quartet will appear in the Flagler Museum series in quartets by Haydn (No. 54 in B-flat, Op. 71, No. 1), and Edvard Grieg (No. 1 in G minor, Op. 27), and Crisantemi, a miniature by Puccini. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 24. Tickets: $60. Call (561) 655-2833 or visit www.flaglermuseum.us.

Michael Klotz: The well-known area violist and member of Miami’s Amernet String Quartet steps out in solo garb for music of Shostakovich (the Viola Sonata, Op. 147), Brahms (Sonata in F minor, Op.120, No. 1) and Schumann (Adagio and Allegro, Op.70). Pianist Jose Lopez is his accompanist in the recital, set for 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach. Tickets: $15-$20. Call (561) 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.

And more opera: Jenny Kelly and Giorgio Lalov’s Teatro Lirico d’Europa brings two trunk-show performances of Puccini to the Eissey Campus Theatre at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, and to FAU’s Kaye Auditorium in Boca Raton on Wednesday, Jan. 25. Call (561) 278-7677 (Eissey) or (800) 564-9539 (FAU).

Violinist Hye-Jin Kim will wrap her program at the Kravis with sunnier pieces.

The Young Artists Series at the Kravis Center continues Monday, Jan. 9, with South Korea -born violinist Hye-Jin Kim, who has a long list of distinguished solo and chamber music performances relatively early in her career.

Kim, 26, a graduate of the Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory, grew up in Seoul and moved to Philadelphia at 14 for her Curtis studies. The daughter of a pediatrician father and a mother who studied psychology, she began studying the violin at age 8, and is the only musician in her family.

Her program at the Rinker Playhouse ranges widely, with sonatas by Richard Strauss and Leos Janacek, plus a sonatina by Schubert (in A minor, D. 385), and works by Jean Sibelius (from Five Pieces, Op. 81) and Bedrich Smetana (Aus der Heimat).

Kim wrote by email from Seoul this past weekend that she set up the program to contrast the more conflicted music by Schubert, Janacek and Smetana with the sunnier works of Strauss and Sibelius.

"If the first 45 minutes of the program reminds you of the reality of the world we live in, the last 30 minutes will put a hold on that thought for a bit and make you just enjoy a moment in music filled with beauty and exuberance," Kim wrote.

While the Strauss and Janacek sonatas have been championed by numerous violinists in the past decade, the same is not true of Sibelius, a violinist himself who is best known for his orchestral work.

"The Sibelius pieces are special. Even though they are such short pieces, they reflect the Sibelius we know who wrote the great Violin Concerto and symphonies," wrote Kim, who teaches music at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. "His writing of intimate violin and piano interactions, use of register, rhythmic figures, and silence make these pieces glisten and sparkle like falling snow."

Kim is at work on a solo album, with a release expected in the fall. In March, she’ll journey to California for the Music at Menlo festival, and in April will take part in the national tour of Musicians From Marlboro. The 2004 Menuhin Competition winner’s playing is beautiful and accomplished, and can be sampled at length on her website (http://hyejinkim.com/).

Pianist Amy Yang accompanies Kim for the recital, which is set for 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 9. Tickets are $30; call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org .

• Palm Beach Opera has announced that it has canceled its vocal competition and Grand Finals concert, which had been set for April 29, as part of an overhaul of its Young Artist Program.

Officials said the April competition date was too late for many of the most talented singers they hoped to hire for the program, and instead will host auditions Jan. 26-28 in New York for vocalists to take part in the 2012-13 season (interested singers can get details and an application on the company’s website). There will be eight to 10 singers in the upgraded program, and they will present a staged production in collaboration with Lynn University. That production will be Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, a 1954 opera based on the ghost story by Henry James.

Friday night, Jan. 6, this year’s group of seven young singers presents the first of its three One Opera in One Hour productions, when it mounts an abridged, piano-only version of Handel’s Semele, a 1744 opera about King Cadmus’ daughter, who’s having a fling with the very married Jupiter, king of the Gods. It’s got a libretto by William Congreve (The Way of the World) and a score that features Where’er You Walk, one of Handel’s best-known songs.

Soprano Emily Duncan-Brown will sing the role of Semele, tenor Evanivaldo Correa is Jupiter and mezzo Shirin Eskandani will sing Juno, Jupiter’s miffed wife. The production is directed by Andrew Nienaber, and Bruce Stasyna plays piano and directs the music.

The show starts at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. Admission is free, but reserved tickets can be bought for $15. The opera will be encored at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach (tickets: $20). Call (561) 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.

• The Flagler Museum opens its five-concert chamber music series Tuesday night, Jan. 10, with the Adaskin String Trio, a threesome of Canadian musicians that formed in Montreal in 1994.

On the program are string trios by Beethoven (No. 4 in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3), Haydn (the baryton trio No. 65 in G), Erno von Dohnanyi (Serenade, Op. 10) and the Op. 1 of the future film composer Miklos Rosza. The concert at the Whitehall mansion in Palm Beach begins at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10 . Tickets are $60. Call (561) 655-2833 or visit www.flaglermuseum.us.

The celebrated medieval-music trio Trefoil, led by countertenor Drew Minter, comes to Delray Beach on Sunday afternoon, Jan. 8, with a program called Christo e Nato (Christ Is Born), a collection of Florentine Christmas music from the 13th through 15th centuries. 3 p.m., St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Tickets: $15-$20, call (561) 278-6003.

The Society of the Four Arts gets its chamber music series going Sunday, Jan. 8, with the Brentano String Quartet, the longtime ensemble in residence at Princeton University. The quartet, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, will play the String Quartet of Debussy, Schubert’s Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703), and the Quartet No. 13 (in B-flat, Op. 130) of Beethoven. 3 p.m. at the society’s Gubelmann Auditorium. Tickets: $15. Call (561) 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.

Violinist Pinchas Zukerman is joined by Royal Philharmonic for two shows this week.

WEST PALM BEACH
A CLASSICAL LEGEND

Pinchas Zukerman leads the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Great Britain in two concerts at the Kravis, one Wednesday night, and the other Thursday afternoon. The Wednesday concert starts at 8 p.m., and Thursday’s begins at 2 p.m. Tickets start at $25. Information: (561) 832-7469 | Directions, invite a friend

WEST PALM BEACH
DRAMAWORKS’ LATEST
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play depicting a mentally unbalanced woman’s far-reaching effects on the lives of her two daughters, and a young girl’s struggle to keep her focus and dreams alive. It opens Jan. 6 and runs through Jan. 29, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Tickets: $55. (561) 514-4042 | Directions, invite a friend

BOYNTON BEACH
A SWINGING BAND
The Bob Roberts Society Orchestra has been around for ages. Jimmy Buffett even wrote a song sort of about them. The band plays 1:30-3:30 p.m. Fridays beginning Jan. 6, Boynton Beach Civic Center, 128 E. Ocean Ave. The full 16-piece big band performs a wide selection of orchestral music for foxtrot, two-step, swing, waltz and the very popular Latin styles of rumba, cha-cha, bossa-nova, $4 at the door. Info: (561) 742-6240 | Directions, invite a friend

PALM BEACH GARDENS
COLORFUL HAITIAN ART
“Art & Life: The Spirit of Haiti” opens Thursday at the Art Gallery at PBSC’s Eissey Campus, 3160 PGA Blvd., Palm Beach Gardens. Features a cross-section of 27 pieces of art and crafts created by nine artists of Haitian descent living in South Florida. Info: (561) 207-5015; www.palmbeachstate.edu/artgallerypbg.xml | Directions, invite a friend

PALM BEACH
LAST CHANCE TO GET ABOARD
“First Train To Paradise: The Railroad That Went To Sea” runs through Jan. 8, Flagler Museum, 1 Whitehall Way, Palm Beach. The exhibit tells the story of the construction of the Over-Sea Railroad to Key West, in honor of the 100th anniversary of its completion. The exhibition features numerous photographs, artifacts and documents, revealed for the first time to the public, from the extensive Flagler Museum archives, the repository for tens of thousands of documents. Info: (561) 655-2833; www.flaglermuseum.us. | Directions, invite a friend

Here’s a look at only a portion of the seasonal bounty:

Boca Symphonia: American violinist Tim Fain opens the Boca Raton orchestra’s new season Sunday afternoon with the Violin Concerto No. 2 (in G minor, Op. 63) of Sergei Prokofiev.

Fain, 35, a Southern Californian who studied at Curtis and Juilliard, is the winner of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was most recently heard on the soundtrack of the ballet movie Black Swan. He’s especially noted these days for his work with the composer Philip Glass, and his current project, Portals, features a new work by Glass (Partita for Solo Violin) at the center of a multimedia evening exploring the need for human connection in a culture now dominated by digital technology.

"I’ve put together so many different means of expression for the concert, while at the same time trying to bring it all into the age we live in," Fain said. "You see other musicians signing on, and then your hear their sound and see them playing on screen, and I’m performing live, along with them. It’s my hope that it brings the recital into a much more current place: the age we live in."

Fain is one of the current breed of classical musicians for whom genre barriers, and even traditional concert venues, no longer represent the only way to musical fulfillment. "I’ve always been drawn to music of all different types," he said, and in the near future he’ll be presenting Portals again (May 20 in Peekskill, N.Y.) and doing duo recitals with Glass this coming summer at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival.

That’s not to say the Prokofiev concerto he’s playing Sunday is a walk in the park. "Everything," he says, when asked what specific challenges the work presents for him. "If you could think of a challenge that could present itself on the violin, that piece probably has it. It’s an incredible piece."

Conductor Philippe Entremont also has scheduled Mozart’s early Serenata Notturna (K. 239) and the Schubert Symphony No. 2 (in B-flat, D. 125). The concert begins at 3 p.m. at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton. Tickets are $33-$59; call (561) 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.

Emerson String Quartet: Probably the best string quartet working today, the Grammy-winning Emersons come to the Kravis Tuesday night with a special holiday gift: The Florida premiere of Four Quarters, the second string quartet by the British composer Thomas Ades (pronounced ADD-is), which was commissioned for them by Carnegie Hall.

It premiered there in March to good reviews, following by a few weeks Ades’ Polaris, an orchestral work written for the grand opening of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach. Ades, 40, has been recognized as a major British composer since he was in his teens, and celebrated for his original, often eclectic style. "I’ll use anything I hear. If it lands on a fertile ground in my brain, it’ll come out," Ades told me back in January, just before the Polaris premiere.

Also on Tuesday’s program is the Quartet No. 67 (in F, Hob. : 82) of Haydn, one of the composer’s last such works, as is the final piece of the evening, the superb Quartet No. 14 (in C-sharp minor, Op. 131), of Beethoven. The concert starts at 8 p.m., and tickets start at $20. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

(If you don’t catch them this time, don’t despair. The Emersons will be back April 5 at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre, and on Feb. 26, two of its members, violinist Philip Setzer and cellist David Finckel, return with pianist Wu Han (Finckel’s wife) to the Society of the Four Arts on Palm Beach for an afternoon of Mendelssohn trios.)

Speaking of new music: Contemporary American music is on the agenda tonight for the Palm Beach Atlantic University Symphony, offering fresh work by the young Chris Rogerson (Oaken Sky), and two pieces by Baljinder Sekhon (Post and Ancient Dust), who teaches at the University of South Florida. Conductor David Jacobs also has programmed pieces by Carl Ruggles, John Corigliano and Alan Hovhaness. The free concert at the DeSantis Family Chapel at PBAU starts at 7:30 p.m.

Palm Beach Symphony: The orchestra opens its five-concert season Wednesday at the Society of the Four Arts with two works in the same key (C major) from the beginning and ends of their composer’s careers: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 (Op. 21) and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter, K. 551). Conductor Ramon Tebar pairs them with Mozart’s overture to his opera La Clemenza di Tito and the overture to Beethoven’s ballet score, The Creatures of Prometheus (Op. 43). The concert starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $40-$45. Call (561) 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.

Concerto winners: Four young musicians at Lynn University’s Conservatory of Music won the school’s concerto competition, and will appear on two successive days with the Lynn Philharmonia. On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., it’s pianist Heqing Huang in the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 (in C, Op. 15) and cellist Doniyor Zuparov in the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 (in E-flat, Op. 107). On Sunday at 4 p.m., percussionist Chun-Yu Tsai plays the Marimba Concerto of the contemporary French composer Emmanuel Sejourne, and pianist Anastasiya Timofeeva performs the beloved Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 (in B-flat minor, Op. 23). Tickets are $35-$50; call (561) 237-9000 for details.

Sing we Handel: Need your seasonal fix of Handel’s Messiah? Florida Atlantic University’s Chamber Singers perform the oratorio at 7 p.m. Sunday in the University Theatre ($10 donation suggested), and on Monday night, it’s the turn of the PBAU Oratorio Chorus (7:30 p.m. at the DeSantis Chapel; tickets: $15). If you just need a taste, the Delray Beach Chorale does choruses from the work, as well as from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, on a 30th-anniversary program that includes the world premiere of A Song of Singing, by Steve Danyew, commissioned expressly for the chorale at 3 p.m., First Presbyterian Church, Delray Beach; tickets: $20; call (800) 984-7282.

Before they start their residency at the Colony again, the Delray String Quartet plays a pre-season show at the Arts Garage.

It’s been eight years since former Fantasticks producer Don Thompson got the idea for the Delray String Quartet after hiring two musicians for a party he was throwing.

And since its debut in late 2004 at the Colony Hotel and Cabana Club on East Atlantic Avenue, the quartet has made an all-Dvorak disc, commissioned new quartets from composers Thomas Sleeper and Kenneth Fuchs, expanded its operations into Fort Lauderdale and Coconut Grove, and performed other concerts in West Palm Beach, Wellington and Naples.

This year, it has added an appearance at the Arts at St. Johns series in Miami Beach to its list of regular venues, and in late January will record the Fuchs work – his String Quartet No. 5 – for a Naxos disc featuring other works by the composer, including a piano piece performed by pianist Christopher O’Reilly, said the quartet’s violist, Richard Fleischman.

The quartet performs an informal pre-season concert Friday at Delray Beach’s Arts Garage, then returns to Delray’s Colony Hotel on Dec. 11.

Tonight’s concert begins at 7:30 p.m. and features the Clarinet Quintet of Carl Maria von Weber, with clarinetist Paul Green as soloist. The other works are considerably lighter: Astor Piazzolla’s Melody (in A minor), an arrangement of Franz Lehar’s overture to his operetta The Merry Widow, a group of Chinese folk songs compiled by Zhou Long, and a vintage arrangement of Jerome Kern’s Yesterdays and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

Fleischman said things are going well for the quartet, whose other members are violinists Mei Mei Luo and Tomas Cotik and cellist Claudio Jaffe.

"It’s going to be a pretty busy season, and we’re already in the planning stages for next year," Fleischman said.

Fleischman said the foursome recently had its first rehearsal for the new season .

"When we got back together last week, it was the easiest thing in the world," he said. "I’m really excited about the season."

Tickets for tonight’s concert are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Call (561) 450-6357 or visit www.artsgarage.eventbrite.com. For more information about the quartet, call (561) 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.

Masterworks does Rutter: I caught the second half of the Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches’ concert Sunday night at the Lake Osborne Presbyterian Church in Lake Worth, a program devoted to the music of British composer John Rutter. The composer’s Mass of the Children, performed in collaboration with girl choirs from St. Andrew’s School and The King’s Academy, came off reasonably well, with some good solo work by baritone Mark Aliapoulios and soprano Marie Ashley. One picky note: The children’s choirs in front had memorized the music and looked right at conductor Carl P. Ashley throughout, but several Masterworks members’ heads were buried in their scores as they sang, a long-standing choral no-no.

Firebird charms: At St. Gregory’s in Boca on Nov. 17, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra gave an excellent concert of string music, closing with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings (in C, Op. 48). The 14 players, recruited from around the country as well as South Florida, played a lovely version of the Tchaikovsky, but the real treat here was conductor Patrick Dupre Quigley’s choice of an early divertimento by Mozart (in D, K. 136) and the String Sinfonia No. 8 (in D), written by a 13-year-old Felix Mendelssohn in 1822. Marvelous music, engagingly played.

Kennedy debuts: Saturday night at the Wold Center at Lynn University, the Master Chorale of South Florida opened its ninth season with a mixed bag of music including the Magnificat (BWV 243) of J.S. Bach. The chorus sounded strong and well-drilled for the Bach; the soloists were decent, and so was the playing of a reduced-size Miami Symphony Orchestra. The second half had more for the choir to do, including a nice new carol medley by a graduate student of the chorale’s new director, Karen Kennedy, and the Carol Symphony of James Bassi. Indeed, the choir came off best on its own in the smaller works .

Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine has canceled his fall conducting engagements after reinjuring his back.

The Met announced Tuesday that Italian conductor Fabio Luisi has been named the Met’s principal conductor. He’s filling in for Levine, who has led performances at the nation’s premier opera house for four decades.

Levine was to start rehearsals Tuesday for the new season.

He was in Vermont recuperating from previous back surgery when he fell last week and damaged one of his vertebrae. The 68-year-old musician underwent surgery in New York on Thursday.

Luisi was appointed the Met’s principal guest conductor last year. He will conduct “Don Giovanni” and “Siegfried.”

Levine’s remaining shows will be led by Louis Langree and Derrick Inouye.

All of 11 years old, Jackie Evancho has already released an album that's gone platinum. (Mike Stobe / Getty Images)

We know her as a tiny, honey-haired girl with blue eyes and a mature-sounding soprano voice, carefully making her way through Puccini’s O mio babbino caro while dressed in her Sunday best, smiling sweetly to enthusiastic audience applause, and speaking intelligently and untiringly to various prying adults.

But sometimes, Jackie Evancho just wants to scream.

To music, that is: Rihanna, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and even Taylor Swift.

"Sometimes I think it would be fun to scream, at the top of my lungs, some of their pop songs, but I know that would be just terrible for my voice," Jackie wrote in an e-mail message. "My voice just happens to be inclined toward the classical crossover genre, which kinda lets me get a little of both worlds, with it being more often than not pop sung in a classical way."

Jackie Evancho (e-VANK-oh), who turns 11 in April, made a name for herself in August when she appeared on America’s Got Talent. She came in second in that competition, but it scarcely mattered. In mid-November, she released a Christmas album (O Holy Night) that became a platinum-seller less than a month later.

Jackie will be the headliner Saturday night for this year’s Festival of the Arts Boca, appearing with four young adult singers on a program called Young Stars of the Metropolitan Opera. Although it’s unusual to see someone so young doing this kind of singing, she does have some parallels in New Zealand’s Hayley Westenra and Britain’s Charlotte Church, both of whom began their careers as girls in popera and branched out into other kinds of music as they entered adulthood.

A resident of Richland Township, Pa., Jackie says she’s working on a new recording and "a small performing arts series" beginning in August. She answered some questions by e-mail late last month, to which we’ve added some punctuation for clarity.

Question: What is your typical day like? Could you walk us through it?

Answer: A typical day is get up for school, go to my brick and mortar school with my cyberschool laptop to keep up with lessons, come home from school and play with my friends, eat dinner, then practice the songs I need to know for whatever performance I have coming up. We usually go through the song list once, and then we’re done.

Q. Do you remember what you sang the first time you remember singing? Do you remember the first time anyone started to make a fuss about your singing? How did that make you feel?

A. The first time I sang was Think of Me from (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s) Phantom (of the Opera) during a talent competition. That’s when everyone started to make a fuss and it made me feel good and special that people liked me.

Q. How does it make you feel now, after all this rapid success?

A. I feel blessed that God has given me this gift, and [I] want to sing this Christmas for my church to show Him that I am thankful.

Q. Some of the things you sing, O Holy Night, for instance, are written for singers with adult lungs, which you don’t have yet. Do you find it hard to sing some of those things? Has your voice teacher talked about what changes might happen to your voice as you get older?

A. Yes, some of those things are hard to sing because I have to take more breaths in a line than an adult would. My voice teacher that I have only when I’m in the recording studio says that my voice will more than likely stay the same if I work at keeping my high notes, and that my middle and lower ranges will get stronger.

Q. I also hear you’re a big fan of Lady Gaga. What songs of hers do you like? I’m also wondering whether you like her sense of show business – her act, her style – as much as her catchy tunes. What is it about her that you like?

A. I really like Paparazzi, Bad Romance and Poker Face. I think she’s a great songwriter, but she seems a little wild in her videos. It’s not a style I think I’d like to do personally.

Q. Your Christmas album went platinum, so this may sound like a dumb question, but are you set on a career as a professional musician? Or is there something else you might be interested in doing?

A. I always want to be a musician, but I’d like to be a writer, veterinarian and fashionista, too.

Q. What other kinds of subjects are you interested in?

A. My favorite subject is writing.

Q. What other kinds of things do you like to do?

A. I love to read, play with my friends, play tennis, but I’m not very good at it. I also love to swim.

Q. What projects do you have coming up?

A. I guess I’ll begin to promote my new CD and begin a small performing arts concert series in August.

Q. Finally, what’s the best part about being a singer?

A. The best part about being a singer is when people clap for me after I sing a song, and I know that I did a good job.

Festival of the Arts Boca

When: Today and Saturday

Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater and Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center (second floor above ZED 451), Mizner Park, Boca Raton.

Information: Call (561) 368-8445 or (866) 571-2787 or festivaloftheartsboca.org

Today

7:30 p.m.: The Wizard of Oz with the Boca Raton Symphonia, Amphitheater

Saturday

4 p.m.: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Cultural Arts Center

7:30 p.m.: A Night at the Opera, Jackie Evancho, John Tessier, and Young Stars of the Metropolitan Opera with Boca Raton Symphonia, Amphitheater

The Gould Piano Trio will perform Wednesday at the Duncan Theatre's Classical Cafe series with clarinetist Bill Plane.

The Spanish conductor Ramon Tebar has been leading all of the Palm Beach Symphony concerts this season as its music director.

Next Thursday, March 17, he leads the group in a concert at the DeSantis Family Chapel on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach. The program, which begins at 7:30 p.m., includes the Reformation Symphony (No. 5 in D, Op. 107) of Felix Mendelssohn, the early Symphony No. 6 (in D, called Le Matin) of Haydn, and the Danses Concertantes of Igor Stravinsky.

Last week, Tebar picked up another job when he was named to the music directorship of Miami’s Florida Grand Opera. He conducted Puccini’s Turandot in November to open that company’s 70th season, and last season he led Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, drawing a virile, muscular sound out of the pit for both shows.

Tebar is a native of Valencia, Spain, and has worked for opera companies and orchestras around the world, including a recurring role at the Santo Domingo Music Festival in the capital city of the Dominican Republic.

Tickets to the Palm Beach Symphony concert Thursday, March 17, are $50. Call (561) 602-6720 or visit www.palmbeachsymphony.com. For tickets and information about the Florida Grand Opera season, call (800) 741-1010 or visit www.fgo.org.

Yoonjung Han: The South Korean-born pianist Yoonjung Han has been steadily building a nice career for herself after studies at Juilliard and Curtis, plus major awards at competitions such as the Gina Bachauer contest.

A doctoral student at the State University of New York-Stony Brook, Han has a busy year ahead, including a couple weeks next month in Bergamo, Italy, for the Bergamo Festival there, plus recitals in the New York Piano Festival, the prestigious Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago, and a performance of the Beethoven Fourth Piano Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic in November.

Han, who’s 26, is a very fine player, as you can see and hear for yourself on her YouTube channel (Yoonjung Han’s Channel), and she’ll be in town next week for two concerts of music by Granados, Haydn, Liszt, and Bach. On Thursday night, March 17, at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, she appears in the Piano Lovers series for a 7 p.m. recital. Tickets are $20 in advance, and $25 at the door. Call (561) 929-6633 for more information.

Two nights later ( March 19), she gives a recital as part of the Sylvia Parker Memorial Series at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, at 2601 St. Andrews Blvd. Tickets for the 8 p.m. concert are $18 in advance and $20 at the door. Call (561) 451-4212 for more information.

Han has a lot of the recognition and great training that make for a substantial career, so here might be a good chance to catch a pianist who might soon be making a bigger splash on the world concert scene.

Gould Piano Trio: The Duncan Theatre’s Classical Café series closes next week with an appearance by Britain’s Gould Piano Trio, joined by clarinetist Bill Plane.

The Gould and Plane have collaborated on a Naxos disc of music by the British composer Charles Villiers Stanford, among other records. On the Gould program Wednesday are the Clarinet Trio (in A minor, Op. 114) of Brahms, the big Piano Trio No. 2 (in E-flat, D. 929) of Schubert, and Contrasts, written for jazzman Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti in 1938 by the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok.

Tickets for the show at 3 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, are $25. Call (561) 868-3309 or visit www.palmbeach state.edu/x1794.xml.

The Classical Café series has focused on young artsists, and included concerts by The Links, the Amernet String Quartet and pianist Natasha Paremski, all of whom appeared in the Stage West theater at the Duncan.

James Galway: Another perennial visitor hereabouts each season is the Belfast-born flutist Sir James Galway, who brings his abundant charm and gold flute to the Kravis on Wednesday night, March 16, along with his wife, Lady Jeanne Galway, an American flutist.

Pianist Michael McHale will join the Galways for music by Faure (Fantasie, Op. 79), Debussy (En bateau and Clair de lune) and Franz Doppler (Andante and Rondo, Op. 25, and in collaboration with his brother Karl, the Rigoletto Fantasy, Op. 38), as well as pieces by Morlacchi, Briccialdi and Borne.

There will be Irish music as well, of course, including Hamilton Harty’s In Ireland, and a David Overton arrangement of four Irish folksongs – Spinning Wheel, She Moved Through the Fair, Star of the County Down, and Lanigan’s Ball.

The concert begins at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, at the Kravis Center. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

St. Lawrence String Quartet: Two seasons ago, the St. Lawrence String Quartet brought a superheated version of Mendelssohn’s final string quartet (No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80) to the stage of the Four Arts in Palm Beach in honor of the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth in 1809.

They return this weekend for another appearance, this time with the first Mendelssohn quartet (No. 1 in E-flat, Op. 12) on a program with quartets by Haydn (in D major, Op. 20, No. 4) and Ravel (the Quartet in F). Violinists Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John (brother of violinist Lara St. John), violist Lesley Robertson and cellist Christopher Costanza began the year with a tour of Europe that included stops in Estonia and Finland, and their stop in Palm Beach is a part of an American tour that takes them to Arizona, Colorado and California in the coming months.

Tickets for the 3 p.m. Sunday, March 13, show are $15 and can be had by calling (561) 655-7226 or visiting www.fourarts.org.

Itzhak Perlman performs at the Broward Center. (Howie Grapek / GPO)

Photos: Itzhak Perlman at the Broward Center | Visit this writer’s website

Itzhak Perlman returned to Fort Lauderdale on Monday night to the Broward Center stage accompanied by pianist Rohan De Silva as part of the Broward Center’s 2010-11 Classical Series with a solo recital of audience favorites.

Perlman and De Silva also perform Tuesday at the Kravis Center’s Dreyfoos Hall.

Perlman scootered himself on stage and with De Silva, started to perform with no words spoken. He opened the show with Mozart: Sonata for violin & piano in B-flat Major, K. 454 (Largo-Allegro; Andante; Allegretto). The audience applauded as they started and continued to listen as the masters filled the Broward Center with familiar classical music. Following the pieces from Mozart, they exited the stage with nothing said.

About 10 minutes later, Perlman wheeled back on stage and said he “received an urgent phone call from Mr. Beethoven.”

He added: “Beethoven said that he was upset at the pause between the movements and I should not just disappear again. I’ll work on that!”

Then he smiled and he and De Silva jumped right into the Sonata for violin & piano No. 7 in C minor (“Eroica”), Op. 30/2 (Allegro con brio; Adaigo cantabile; Scherzo, Allegro; Finale, Allegro). The Allegro con brio is built upon an initial theme that is simultaneously morbid, dramatic, and defiant. Contrast comes through a lighter but still minor march-like subject. All this drifts into a pianissimo development of primarily the first subject (Beethoven’s developments were often lopsided). This theme, in its original form, returns to launch a long coda that struggles to climb into C major before lapsing roughly back to C minor. As expected, Perlman and De Silva performed flawlessly with such emotion, audience members wouldn’t be blamed if there were tears.

Following the first intermission, the masters performed movements from Camille Saint-Saens: Sonata for violin & piano No. 1 in D. Minor, Op. 75 (Allegro agitato; Adagio; Allegretto moderato; Allegro molto). Almost Brahmsian in its scope, it was a romantic tour de force for a violin and piano duo. Its structure is unconventional: there are four movements, but they are grouped into two larger “movements” or sections. Within these larger sections, the movements elide (connect without a break). As one might expect from a pianist-composer like Saint-Saens, the piano part is not a mere accompaniment, but is a substantial and equal partner to that of the violin. Again, to meet everyone’s expectations, Perlman and De Silva came together for this in a way that was earthshaking. Naturally, at the completion of this, the audience jumped to their feet and gave the duo a standing ovation.

As this pair traditionally does, after the second intermission, a few additional works were announced from the stage. To the elation of the Broward Center’s patrons, an additional 4 movements were played by the duo. These included Robert Shumann’s first sonata for violin and piano; Variations on a Theme by Corelli (in the style of Tartini in the style of Kreisler); A variation on a work by Henryk Wieniawski, which combined two different violin pieces into one which allowed Perlman to demonstrate techniques such as left-hand pizzicato, harmonics, large leaps, and many double stops.

The final movement of the evening played by the duo was by violinist/composer Niccolò Paganini: Caprice No. 24 in A minor. This piece is widely considered one of the most difficult pieces written for the solo violin. It requires many highly advanced techniques such as parallel octaves and rapid shifting covering many intervals, extremely fast scales and arpeggios including minor scales in thirds and tenths, left hand pizzicato, high positions, and quick string crossing. As a result, many violinists after studying for many years still lack the virtuosity required for such a demanding piece. Well, after hearing and seeing Mr. Perlman and Mr. De Silva created their own variation by playing it together with acrobatic precision, the audience was literally out of breath just listening to it.

It is no wonder that Perlman is beloved the world over. What a show. Bravo!

The company presented a sparkling Le Nozze de Figaro two seasons ago, and a wildly controversial Don Giovanni last season. Cosi, first performed in 1790, is the story of two couples who are deeply in love with one another until an old cynic suggests to the two men that women (the opera’s title could loosely be translated as Women Are Like That, or even something like Women! Sheesh!) can’t be faithful, and he can prove it.

He gets them to pretend they’ve been called away to serve in the military, and they leave, to much heartbreak from their girls. But they soon return in disguise, and woo each other’s girlfriend, with surprising results, all of it set to splendid music.

In the first cast (tonight and Sunday afternoon) Slovenian soprano Sabina Cvilak, last year’s Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello, returns as Fiordiligi, and the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Jurgita Adamonyte is Dorabella. Tenor Norman Shankle, last year’s Cassio in Otello, is Ferrando, and baritone David Adam Moore is Guglielmo.

Those roles are taken by Caitlin Lynch, Patricia Risley (a terrific Cherubino in the Figaro two seasons ago), Joel Prieto and Andrew Schroeder in the second cast, which appears Saturday night and Monday afternoon. British director Stephen Lawless, whose credits include the Glyndebourne Festival and the Metropolitan Opera, stage-directs, and the conductor is Gianluca Martinenghi, an Italian musician with extensive opera experience.

Performances are set for 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday and Monday at the Kravis Center. Tickets start at $23. Call (561) 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.

Hilary Hahn: The great young American violinist Hilary Hahn is only 30, but she’s had a major career for at least half of those years. She began playing the violin before her fourth birthday in a Suzuki program at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory and by 10 was a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where she studied with Jascha Brodsky.

By 17, she had recorded her first disc for Sony Classics: an all-Bach record of some of the most challenging, profound music in the solo violin repertoire. Since then, she’s won two Grammy awards, released a dozen albums, and toured all over the world, much of which she writes about, winningly, in journal entries on her website (www.hilaryhahn.com).

Hahn has family ties on the Treasure Coast, and as a very young violinist used to make guest appearances with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra while she was in town. She returns to Stuart tonight for a recital at the Lyric Theatre, where she’ll be accompanied by the Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, a familiar face to area concertgoers.

On this recital tour, Hahn has been playing sonatas by Beethoven (Spring), Charles Ives and George Antheil. Hahn’s concert begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $75; call (772) 286-7827 or visit www.lyrictheatre.com.

Also coming up: Spain’s Cuarteto Casals stops by the Society of the Four Arts on Sunday afternoon with music by Boccherini (his Quartet in G minor, Op. 32, No. 5) and Gyorgy Ligeti (his String Quartet No. 1). Pianist Andreas Klein guests in the Schumann Piano Quintet (in E-flat, Op. 44). The concert is set for 3 p.m. at the venerable Palm Beach cultural institution. Tickets are $15. Call (561) 655-7226 for more information.

And it wouldn’t be the classical season in South Florida without violinist Itzhak Perlman, who can be counted on to draw a huge following wherever he plays. On Tuesday, the 15-time Grammy winner is at the Kravis Center at 8 p.m. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.com.

String quartet: The Delray String Quartet has one recording to its credit, a disc of well-known chamber music by Dvorak.

But when it goes back to the recording studio later this year, it will have a piece all its own to perform. The group announced this week that it has commissioned American composer Kenneth Fuchs to write a string quartet for the group, a work that would be the fifth such piece in Fuchs’ catalog.

Violist Richard Fleischman said in an e-mail message that the piece will be premiered in January 2012, and then recorded for a disc on the Naxos label devoted to the music of Fuchs. Two other artists, pianist Christopher O’Riley and chamber group Trio 21, will also be featured on the disc, he said.

Fleischman said the piece will likely last 22 to 25 minutes, "and will be a large-scale ‘American-sounding’ work."

The Delray Quartet began its seventh year this season with a performance of Fuchs’ Fourth Quartet, a short, sunny piece with wide-open textures and accessible, memorable thematic material that underwent clear transformations. Fuchs, a native of Fort Lauderdale, studied with several major American composers – Vincent Persichetti, David Diamond, and Milton Babbitt, who died earlier this month – at the Juilliard School. He teaches composition at the University of Connecticut.

This wouldn’t be the first premiere for the Delray foursome. Two seasons ago, it premiered the Third Quartet of Thomas Sleeper, a longtime professor at the University of Miami.

The group is in the midst of its third program of the season, which features the Third Quartet (in D, Op. 44, No. 1) of Mendelssohn, the Quartet No. 10 (in E-flat, Op. 51) of Dvorak, and an arrangement by Sandor Devich of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1. It will play this program at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove. For more information, call (561) 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.

Itzhak Perlman has been one of the world's foremost violinists since the 1960s. (Photo by Akira Kinoshita)

More: More on his Broward Center show | More on his Kravis Center show | View this writer’s website

Itzhak Perlman returns to Fort Lauderdale on Monday night to the Broward Center stage accompanied by pianist Rohan De Silva as part of the Broward Center’s 2010-11 Classical Series with a solo recital of audience favorites.

He will also be performing on Tuesday at the Kravis Center.

As a four-time Emmy and 15-time Grammy Award winner, as well as a recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Recording Arts, Perlman has come to enjoy superstar status rarely afforded by a classical musician. Known for his luxury of tone and visceral musicality, there is probably no more talented violinist in the world.

Perlman is beloved the world over for his virtuosity and humanity, in particular for his devotion to the causes of the disabled. He is treasured by audiences who respond not only to his remarkable artistry, but also to the irrepressible joy of making music, which he communicates. He moves classical music lovers and new audiences alike with an adventurous repertory which encompasses everything from baroque and classical to film scores, klezmer and jazz.

He has been praised by the general public as well as heads of state. President Ronald Reagan presented him the Medal of Liberty and President Bill Clinton presented him the National Medal of Art. In May 2007, he performed at the State Dinner for Queen Elizabeth II, hosted by President George W. Bush at the White House. He was honored to play with cellist Yo-Yo Ma just before President Barack Obama took the oath of office at his inauguration ceremony. His distinguished achievements and contributions to the cultural and educational life of the nation have also been recognized with a Kennedy Center Honor.

Born in Israel in 1945, Mr. Perlman completed his initial training at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. He came to New York and soon was propelled into the international arena with an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. Following his studies at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian and Dorothy DeLay, Perlman won the prestigious Leventritt Competition in 1964, which led to a burgeoning worldwide career. Since then, Perlman has appeared with every major orchestra and in recitals and festivals around the world.

Perlman’s 2010-11 season takes his performances as soloist to both new and familiar major centers throughout the world. In fall 2010, he traveled to Chile and Brazil, with orchestral performances in Santiago and recitals in Rio de Janeiro, Paulinha, and Sao Paulo. In October 2010, he thrilled audiences in Japan and South Korea with nine recitals in Tokyo, Osaka, Matsumoto, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Seoul with pianist and frequent collaborator, Rohan De Silva.

De Silva’s partnerships with violin virtuosos Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Joshua Bell, Benny Kim, Kyoko Takezawa, Vadim Repin, Gil Shaham, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Julian Rachlin have led to highly acclaimed performances at recital venues all over the world. He performs frequently with Perlman and was seen with Perlman on PBS’ Live from Lincoln Center broadcast in early January 2000.

The father of The 5 Browns musical group has pleaded guilty in Utah to sexually abusing his daughters when they were children.

With scratches on his face from a car crash, 55-year-old Keith Brown entered his plea Thursday to three felony counts in Fourth District Court in Provo.

Court records show Utah County prosecutors charged Brown with one first-degree felony count of sodomy on a child and two second-degree felony counts of sexual abuse of a child.

Brown’s daughters are part of the classical piano group whose albums have topped the classical music charts and who have appeared on “Oprah” and other shows.

Andrea Bocelli performs at the BankAtlantic Center on Feb. 14. (Veda Jo Jenkins / sflimages.com)

Photos: Andrea Bocelli at BankAtlantic Center

I am by no means a classical music or opera expert. That said, I’m a music fan and have an appreciation for those who can do what is impossible for me to fathom. I can’t tell you if Bocelli is as talented as other opera stars, or if his voice stands up to the Pavarottis of the world, but what I can say is that he has a way about him that made a hockey arena become small and intimate.

Bocelli became known to me in the mid to late 1990’s when an uncle of mine became a big fan of his. My uncle was like a second dad to me. We were very close. He died of cancer at the age of 48 in 1997. One of the memories I how much he loved Bocelli and his music. It soothed him and gave him peace of mind as he struggled with his health. For that reason, I became a supporter. Bocelli was able to give my uncle what no doctor or treatment could.

Bocelli was accompanied by a large orchestra and choir. Of course the theme of this Valentine’s Day evening was love. The show was a mix of opera and some of the pop songs for which Bocelli is known. One of the encores was perhaps his most popular song, “Con Te Partiro” or better known in translation as “Time to Say Goodbye.” It truly is a beautiful song especially when Bocelli’s female counterpart on the song is soprano Ana Maria Martinez, a woman with a voice that is nothing short of incredible. Bocelli also enlisted the voice of Heather Headley, a Trinidadian-born R&B and Soul singer who handled the non-opera Bocelli standards. Both women were terrific in their own right. The show was well put together with video screens and an inviting stage set up. As Bocelli sang, MTV-like videos played in accordance with the song.

As usual, the night belonged to Bocelli. His legions of followers adore him and the people at the BAC treated him like royalty.

Tenor Andrea Bocelli performs at the BankAtlantic Center on Valentine's Day for one of just two American dates. (Andreas Rentz / Getty Images)

UPDATE: Corrected descriptions of Bocelli’s LPs ‘Romanza’, ‘Amore’.

Very few artists have had the romantic side of music associated with them as closely as Andrea Bocelli.

The Italian tenor first began conquering the music world with his 1997 album Romanza, a compilation album of his more romantic songs, then in 2006 Bocelli released Amore, made up of popular, romantic songs from around the world. (Of course, Bocelli has a slew of albums, mostly of single operas.)

Bocelli, who performs on Valentine’s Day at Sunrise’s BankAtlantic Center, one of just two American dates he’s set to play at the moment, said in an e-mail interview that love is something he really enjoys to sing about.

"I like singing about feelings, and particularly love," Bocelli said, "and so I love the idea that my voice accompanies new loves or the ones that devote themselves to each other in the most beautiful gift that life offers us."

The singer is coming off an incredibly busy 2010: He performed at soccer’s World Cup in South Africa, received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and performed in Washington, D.C., for a holiday show, which were the mere highlights.

"Many years ago, I learned from my mentor that one cannot make serious plans more than 24 hours in advance," Bocelli said. "I have always followed this precious advice. That’s matched by the words of a famous Italian director who once said: ‘We have many plans for the future; it’s a pity that very often our future has such different plans for us.’"

Bocelli’s continued profile keeps making more and more people aware of opera thanks to his highly recognizable voice. Of his voice, conductor Zubin Mehta said: "Andrea’s voice is special in many ways. … He has a complete control from forte to pianissimo on any note."

"It’s a pleasure to share love for something," Bocelli said, "but I always loved and sang the opera above all, and mainly for myself, for an uncurbed need to give my humble contribution to a music that gave me and keeps on giving me so much."

Bocelli said that playing in South Florida on Monday, Valentine’s Day, means a lot to him.

"I really love the sun and the sea," he said. "I like the carefree atmosphere we live in Florida. Especially Miami – that in Italian means ‘Do you love me?’ and the answer is ‘Yes.’"

If you go

ANDREA BOCELLI: 7:30 p.m. Monday, BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise. Information: ticketmaster.com

Orchestra officials say Muti will have the surgery on Monday. Muti fainted during a double rehearsal Thursday and fell from the podium. President Deborah Rutter of the CSO Association said Friday that the 69-year-old Muti was undergoing tests to determine the underlying cause of his fall.

In October, Muti was hospitalized in Italy for extreme physical exhaustion. He withdrew from his fall CSO residency, but was cleared for the winter concert series, which began Thursday night and runs through Feb. 19.

Thinking fast, he borrowed a violin from one of the players in Lynn Philharmonia’s violin section, and was ready in time for his next cue, a move that delighted the crowd at the Roberts Theater in suburban Boca Raton.

"I said to the concertmaster, ‘Give me your violin now,’ " Johnson said, laughing at the memory.

Johnson, a fine, exciting player, finished his master’s in music performance at Lynn last year, where he studied with Elmar Oliveira, and now pursues a solo career from his home in Wellington.

Now 25, he won first place in the senior division in last year’s Sphinx Competition, a contest sponsored by the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization, which aims to increase the participation of African-Americans and Latinos in classical music.

This Sunday, Johnson is joined by pianist Tao Lin for a recital in the St. Paul’s Episcopal music series in Delray Beach. It’s a program of violin showpieces including two by the great Spanish violinist-composer Pablo de Sarasate – Zigeunerweisen and Zapateado – Ravel’s Tzigane, Ernest Chausson’s beautiful Poeme, and the familiar Meditation from Massenet’s opera Thais.

Johnson, who’s soloed with the Detroit, St. Louis, Atlanta and Seattle orchestras along with Miami Beach’s New World Symphony, says he’s enjoying being a jobbing musician these days.

"It’s a good life," Johnson said. "I’m just trying to make it, given the times we’re in now."

The concert is set for 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s, 188 Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $15 to $18. Call (561) 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.

Bernstein at the opera: Saturday at CityPlace, the Palm Beach Opera offers a workshop version of Leonard Bernstein’s opera Trouble in Tahiti, a one-act from 1952 that will be presented as part of the company’s Opera in One Hour series. It’s the first American opera the company has done since Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah in the 2001-02 season, and since it runs under an hour, it will be presented complete.

Trouble in Tahiti is a drama of a marriage on the rocks in the comfy suburbs, in which a couple named Sam and Dinah realize they are no longer communicating with each other, nor with their unseen son, Junior. There’s a Greek chorus of singers that offers commentary throughout as we see Sam at work and Dinah at her psychiatrist’s office, and the two of them at an uncomfortable dinner at home.

The great set piece of the opera (What a Movie!) goes to Dinah, who comes home from the cinema, where she’s seen a "terrible, awful movie" called Trouble in Tahiti. But as she tells the story, it becomes clear that she’s been swept away by the film’s depiction of a forbidden South Sea romance, and she shifts engagingly between the movie’s theme song, Island Magic, and one of those catchy jazz-inflected tunes that Bernstein was able to craft so effectively.

Starring are mezzo Brandy Lynn Hawkins as Dinah, and guest baritone Michael Mayes as Sam. Greta Ball, Kenneth Stavert and Evanivaldo Correa comprise the chorus, and chorus master Greg Ritchey accompanies at the piano. Matthew Ferraro is the stage director.

The opera will be presented at 9 p.m. at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace. Admission is free. For more information, call (561) 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.

Also upcoming: Philippe Entremont returns to town for two appearances at the Kravis Center with the Deutsche State Philharmonic of Ludwigshafen, Germany, coincidentally the town where Entremont made his professional debut as a pianist in 1950. At 8 p.m. Monday, Entremont conducts and plays the Beethoven Second Piano Concerto on a bill with the Brahms Fourth Symphony and Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, he’s joined by pianist Sebastian Knauer for the Two-Piano Concerto (K. 365) of Mozart, and leads the orchestra in Weber’s Oberon overture and the Mahler Fourth Symphony. The French soprano Julie Cherrier is the soloist in the final movement (Das himmlische Leben) of the Mahler. Tickets start at $25. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

And chamber music: Tuesday night’s concert at the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach features the Alianza String Quartet, which like the Enso Quartet earlier in the series was founded at the Yale School of Music. The group will play the String Quartet in F of Maurice Ravel, Haydn’s Joke Quartet, the Italian Serenade of Hugo Wolf, and the early Langsamer Satz by Anton Webern. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $60, which includes a reception with champagne. Call (561) 655-2833 or visit www.flaglermuseum.us.

The Fry Street Quartet will play this weekend at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.

Few pieces are as revered for their impact on the classical music world as the late string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven.

In these pieces, the great German composer went farther afield from what any contemporary musician of his time would have considered a normal string quartet, writing pieces of huge complexity, great power and unprecedented structure.

Earlier this week, the Ying Quartet tackled the String Quartet No. 13 (in B-flat, Op. 130), which originally ended with a gigantic, ferocious fugue that even today sounds 100 years ahead of its time. Beethoven’s publisher begged him to write a new finale, which he did, and the fugue was issued separately (as the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133). The Ying Quartet, in a performance Tuesday at the Flagler Museum, played the quartet with the Grosse Fuge where it was originally intended to be, at the end of the quartet.

This weekend at the Society of the Four Arts, another foursome, the Fry Street Quartet, plays the Quartet No. 14 (in C-sharp minor, Op. 131), a seven-movement piece that begins with a somber, beautiful slow unfolding that some devotees of this music consider some of the most sublime pages in all of Beethoven.

The Fry Street, which was founded in Chicago in 1997, is now based at Utah State University in Logan. They’ll also play Beethoven’s very first quartet (No. 1 in F, Op. 18, No. 1), a delightful, sunny work that also marked a big departure from the work of Beethoven’s one-time teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn. Rounding out the program is the lone String Quartet (in B minor, Op. 11) of the American composer Samuel Barber.

Everyone knows the slow movement of this quartet. As the Adagio for Strings it’s become our national funeral music, used on solemn state occasions from the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 to memorial concerts for the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Sunday’s Four Arts concert presents listeners with a chance to hear the original version of this music from 1936, as well as the rest of the quartet, which is a first-rate piece of chamber music that gets too few outings.

The concert is scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday at the Society of the Four Arts on Palm Beach. Tickets are $15. Call (561) 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.

Farther afield: One major South Florida classical music event should be noted this week, and that’s the opening of the New World Center on 17th Street in Miami Beach. It’s the new home of the New World Symphony, the orchestral academy founded more than 20 years ago by Michael Tilson Thomas, who leads it to this day. Designed by Frank Gehry, the New World Center is a sharp piece of architecture with a large-but-cozy concert hall (Tilson Thomas says he thinks of it as a "music meeting house") and numerous rehearsal and performance rooms throughout, all of them with advanced recording equipment.

The center opened Wednesday with the world premiere of Polaris, a work by the leading British composer Thomas Ades. This 12-minute "voyage for orchestra" was heard on a program with music by Copland (Third Symphony) and Wagner (the overture to The Flying Dutchman). The New World repeats that program at 7:30 p.m. today at the New World Center, and it’s worth the trip to hear brand-new music composed especially for South Florida by one of the world’s most important contemporary writers. Call (305) 673-3331 for more information or tickets.

Joshua Bell -- here in his 2009 White House appearance -- enthralled a crowd at the Lyric Theatre. (Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images)

By MARILYN BAUER

Grammy Award-winning virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell played for a full house at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre on Wednesday night. The well-coifed crowd sat mesmerized by the violinist’s masterful interpretation of works by Brahms, “Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano in A major, Op.100; Schubert’s “Fantasy in C major, Op 159, D. 934 and Grieg’s “Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano in G major, Op 13.”

Part of a 21-city tour of the U.S, this kick-off concert for the Lyric’s Ovation series (the mission of which is to bring Carnegie Hall to Stuart) has been sold out for weeks. Bell has recorded more than 35 CDs and played throughout the world both as a soloist with the world’s most acclaimed orchestras and as part of chamber music ensembles.

Bell took the stage Wednesday night with a signature smile and a salute with his Gibson Stradivarius (made in 1713). He is an elfish man, now 43, who maintains boyish good looks and nearly bursts with expression. His Beatle bangs shiver under the grand movements of his bow, which directs his full upper body.

He is rock-star handsome, or perhaps, handsome as a classical music superstar should be. He smiled openly at the heartfelt applause that followed his first selection.

Bell and the brilliant British pianist Sam Hayword worked in such close sync it was a wonder to behold. The grand piano stood at center stage with Hayword seated before the behemoth dressed in a black suit. Every time I have seen Bell (most recently at Carnegie Hall with the great Russian conductor Valery Gergiev) he is dressed in what looks a bit like a Cossack shirt in black silk with matching trousers.

Bell came to national attention at 14 when he played with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He recorded his first LP four years later. He was featured on the sound track for the critically-acclaimed film “The Red Violin” and appeared with Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart.”

Wednesday night’s concert was wonderful, inspirational and enjoyed by an audience that spanned the ages from high school students to grannies. This Lyric audience was simply more proof classical music is not dead.

Next stop for Bell is New York’s Lincoln Center.

Under an “affiliation” agreement announced Thursday, the opera will remain a separate nonprofit with its own board of trustees, but the Kennedy Center will take over its business, fundraising and marketing functions. The arrangement beginning July 1 ensures the opera’s survival amid several years of financial shortfalls.

Artistic programs will be developed jointly by the opera staff and Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser.

Placido Domingo, who has served as the opera’s general director since 2003, previously announced he will leave this year. He said in a statement that he supports the new arrangement.

At the Kravis Center on Sunday night, cellist Carter Brey, principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Christopher O’Riley, he of From the Top fame, will give the first public performance of Due per Due, by the American composer Justin Dello Joio.

Due per Due, Italian for "two for two," is a 12-minute, two-movement work whose opening section, Elegia, is dedicated to the memory of Justin’s father, Norman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer best-known for his Meditation on Ecclesiastes for string orchestra and numerous choral pieces.

Dello Joio, 55, who has taught composition at New York University for more than two decades, said his father tried to make sure his son had a chance to pursue his own stylistic path.

"We tried to keep things pretty separate, and not trade too much on his well-deserved and wonderful reputation and career as a composer," he said Monday from New York.

The younger Dello Joio’s music speaks a much more contemporary language, and Brey’s admiration for Dello Joio’s Music for Piano Trio led the composer to write a new piece for the cellist. The Barlow Endowment commissioned it.

Dello Joio will be on hand Sunday for the premiere, and he said the concert gives him "a great way to get to Florida and visit my brother," also named Norman, an Olympic medalist equestrian jumper who lives in Wellington. Dello Joio, who lives in New York with his wife and daughter, is currently working on a piano concerto for Garrick Ohlsson.

Also on the program Sunday are the Sonata in G minor, BWV 1029, of J.S. Bach (originally for viola da gamba), and the Cello Sonata (in A minor, Op. 36) of Edvard Grieg. The concert begins at 8 p.m., and tickets start at $20. Call (561) 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org .

Pint-sized star power: Say what you will, it’s hard to resist a child star, and the Festival of the Arts Boca understands this well.

The 10-year-old poperatic singer Jackie Evancho, who was a sensation this past summer on TV’s America’s Got Talent and who released a Christmas album (O Holy Night) in November which has become a bestseller, is one of the headliners for the fifth iteration of the Mizner Park arts festival, set for March 4-12.

She’ll appear on a program with the Young Stars of the Metropolitan Opera, a quartet of singers that includes tenor Adam Diegel, who just wrapped four performances as Ismaele in Verdi’s Nabucco for Palm Beach Opera.

More established acts for the festival include the fine Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero (March 10), and Canadian Brass (March 5). The house band for the festival will be the Boca Raton Symphonia, which will accompany a screening March 11 of The Wizard of Oz. For more information or to buy tickets, call (866) 571-2787 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org .

Opera redux: The Palm Beach Opera continues its adventurousness with its Opera in One Hour series at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace, offering another English-language opera as well as its first Spanish-language stage work.

The three-opera series opens with Handel’s Ariodante on Friday, Jan. 7, followed by Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti on Saturday, Feb. 5, and closes Friday, March 4 with Luisa Fernanda, a zarzuela written in 1932 by the Spanish composer Federico Moreno Torroba (1891-1982). The Bernstein work, a delicious piece from 1952, is in one act and can be given complete, while the other two will be abridged.

The one-hour operas feature supertitles, members of the company’s Young Artists program as the cast, and are streamed live on the Web. The operas begin at 9 p.m. More information is available at (561) 833-7888 or you can visit www.pbopera.org.

Singing in the holidays: Once again this weekend, families in their holiday best will gather at the Royal Poinciana Chapel on Palm Beach for the annual seasonal performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches.

This is always a festive occasion, not least because there’s always a live orchestra to accompany the chorus and soloists in this most durable of all oratorios. Soloists this year are soprano Amanda Yorke, mezzo Ceci Grasso Dadisman, tenor Albert Lee and bass Mark Aliapoulios.

As in past years, this is a sing-along Messiah, so you can take your score to the performance and join the choristers in special pews set aside for you. The performance begins at 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $20 ($10 for students) and can be obtained through www.masterworkschorusofthepalmbeaches.com .

A statement from the symphony Thursday says the deficit for the fiscal year ended in August included a $6.7 million operating shortfall and about $2 million in pension obligations and debt service on the Max M. Fisher Music Center.

The symphony had a $29.3 million operating budget.

CFO Rozanne Kokko tells The Detroit News the symphony needs to “get a balanced budget that’s fiscally responsible and sustainable.”

Musicians’ spokesman Hayden McKay said striking members urged attendees to press the board for answers about stalled negotiations. McKay said management “tried to put a good face on things, but it doesn’t add up.”

Mark Rucker plays the Babylonian monarch who ends the Jewish captivity.

After the fiasco of a comedy that closed after one performance, and which came at the end of a brutal personal period in which his two young children and his wife died, the young Giuseppe Verdi vowed to write no more operas.

But thanks to the encouragement of a canny impresario who gave him a libretto that had been turned down by another composer, Verdi found himself writing, “little by little,” as he recalled later, the opera that would make his name and establish his career: Nabucodonosor, shortened not long after to Nabucco.

It is this opera, drawn from the biblical story of King Nebuchadnezzar, with which the Palm Beach Opera will open its 49th season Friday, Dec. 10, at the Kravis Center. American baritone Mark Rucker plays the Babylonian monarch who ends the Jewish captivity, and the Italian soprano Paoletta Marrocu is Abigaille, the putative daughter of the king who attempts to seize the throne and later poisons herself out of remorse.

As usual with Palm Beach Opera, Nabucco will be sung by two casts. Rucker and Marrocu will sing Friday night and Sunday afternoon, with the Romanian-born baritone Sebastian Catana and the Hungarian soprano Csilla Boross, in her American debut, handling Nabucco and Abigaille, respectively, on Saturday night and Monday afternoon. The company’s artistic director, Bruno Aprea, conducts.

Nabucco boasts plenty of ancient Iraq pomp and pageantry, and a very tough part for Abigaille that has been the ruin of sopranos who try to sing it before their voices are ready. But Nabucco is distinguished most of all by its extensive choral singing, and one mass aria in particular: Va, pensiero, in which the captive Jews sing of their longing for their homeland. Instantly memorable, it became overnight the unofficial anthem of Italian resistance after the opera’s premiere in 1842.

Palm Beach Opera last performed Nabucco in 1985, and its return is the result of an audience survey that chose the work as the top preference, said David Blackburn, the company’s new director of artistic operations.

Nabucco marks a departure from the works written by the dominant opera composers of the time, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, Blackburn said. The music is fresher, more aggressive, more colorfully scored and more powerfully melodically.

“It created a sensation at the time,” he said. “It’s the beginning of great Italian Romantic opera.”

Rucker and Marrocu have been singing these roles regularly for years, said Blackburn, who is in charge of casting. Catana and Boross, on the other hand, are newer to the parts and both are “something of a discovery for this company,” he said.

Also in the cast are Ukrainian bass Dmitri Belosselskiy as Zaccaria, American tenor Adam Diegel as Ismaele and American soprano Laura Vlasak Nolan as Fenena. The stage director is Guy Montavon.

Palm Beach Symphony: Last week, the young Spanish conductor Ramon Tebar finished his stint in the pit for Puccini’s Turandot, the first production of the season for Miami’s Florida Grand Opera, and on Dec. 15 he takes over at the podium for the Palm Beach Symphony.

Tebar led each of the five performances of the orchestra last year as resident conductor and this year assumes the title of musical director. For his first concert, he’ll lead the Palm Beachers in an all-American program at the Society of the Four Arts.

Venezuelan pianist Kristhyan Benitez is the soloist for the Rhapsody in Blue of George Gershwin, probably the most extroverted work in a concert that also includes two works by Aaron Copland: the suite from his ballet score for Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring, and the Three Latin American Sketches.

Leonard Bernstein, a good Copland friend, is represented by his On the Town: Three Dance Episodes. Also on the program is Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and the concert closes with The Stars and Stripes Forever of the bandmaster John Philip Sousa.
The concert is at 8 p.m. Dec. 15. Tickets are $40-45. Call the Society of the Four Arts at (561) 655-7227 or go to www.fourarts.org.