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.

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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.

Betsy Diaz, a 22-year-old singer from Miami, prepares herself for the Grand Finals of the Palm Beach Opera’s 42nd annual competition. She finished fourth overall:

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.

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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.

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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!”
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The Palm Beach Opera finishes its three-year survey of the operas Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte beginning tonight, as it mounts a production of Cosi fan Tutte.

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.

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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.
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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.