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Evgeny Kissin delights an overwhelmingly enthusiastic San Francisco audience with Chopin and Shostakovich, but his Bach is less convincing. 

Seeing Frankenstein in its 2025 incarnation feels worthy and redemptive. It’s as vivid and cinematic as ballet gets.

Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Manon is an unforgettable, stunning production – a classic well worth seeing.

Sayaka Shoji and Salonen remain in close dialogue in a riveting performance of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto. 

An excellent cast and smart, engaged direction make for an auspicious season launch in San Francisco Opera’s production of one of Verdi’s most sophisticated creations.  

John Fulljames directs a new production of Poul Ruders' uncompromising operatic take on Margaret Atwood’s celebrated novel. 

On a tour of the United States, Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields perform Mendelssohn, Schumann and Vince Mendoza in Davies Symphony Hall. 

Annabel Lopez Ochoa's Broken Wings is a ballet you’ll want to see again and again, one that illuminates, empowers and soars.

Dexterity, beauty, technical prowess and mastery, most expectations were met: most expectations were met in this duo recital in Davies Symphony Hall. 

As the news breaks that Esa-Pekka Salonen will be leaving at the end of his San Francisco Symphony tenure, he conducts the music of his fellow Finn, Jean Sibelius. 

Mere Mortals, an immersive sensory-experience ballet that merges dance, lights, visuals and sound, is clever.

After 50 years of performances with the San Francisco Symphony, including a quarter-century tenure as Music Director, Michael Tilson Thomas chooses Mahler’s Fifth Symphony for his final subscription concert. 

A shimmering smorgasbord of some of today’s most exciting international dancers, who performed pristine works by Petipa.

There’s much to love in Helgi Tomasson’s production of Romeo & Juliet, starting with Prokofiev’s sumptuous score.

The ballet’s second act, following Giselle’s death, is set in a spooky, mystical realm, precisely the kind of thing that so intrigued its 19th century audiences and made this ballet an instant classic.

This irresistible Nutcracker is a reliable delight in an increasingly unreliable world.

Great vocal performances from Amina Edris and Gerald Finley grace John Adams' new opera, which opens San Francisco Opera’s centennial season.

Swan Lake is the last program of the San Francisco Ballet’s season and of the 37-year tenure of retiring artistic director Helgi Tomasson.

Helgi Tomasson and Yuri Possokhov's restaging of the 1869 Petipa classic brings a sunny smile to faces in San Francisco. 

With Tchaikovsky’s dear, familiar overture, the reassuring sameness of Wendall K Harrington’s slide show projecting 1915 San Francisco scenes onto the curtains, we were all, most decisively, back. 

The ballet culminates with fouettés, bravura leaps from the oversized ensemble and a rousing finish with all 44 dancers onstage. It was an exuberant end to an intelligent, satisfying production, both of thought and movement.

“Your love affair with ballet, your time with ballet, is short,” explains Welsh about his ballet Bespoke, “Eventually you lay down, and dance keeps moving. It’s a bittersweet thing.”

Wheeldon’s Cinderella is the kind of production that so enthralls, you immediately want to make plans to see it again.

In Helgi Tomasson's production, Michael Yeargan’s scenic design and the late Martin Pakledinaz’ sumptuous costumes create a scene so charming, you just want to climb inside and stay in that world all evening and beyond.

Both vocally and instrumentally the performance  was a high-class one

The evening’s most revelatory performance came from the young countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Medoro. 

Ulrich Birkkjaer presented an affecting portrait of a tormented Shostakovich, as he paced, leapt, slumped, was propped back to standing, and relentlessly propelled forward.

A projection of green sky above shadowy mountains hovered behind their duet, and the curved bodies of the other dancers moved, barely visible, in the darkness of downstage.

There is a kind of purity to Your Flesh Shall Be a Great Poem, and a very human sense of longing and loss.

In this era that venerates the contemporary, it’s rewarding to see the classics faring so well, and San Francisco Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty is a winner for all.

Lang’s choreography lacks the hectic drollness and biting originality of Tharp’s, and while accessible it is also sweeter and blander.

An exquisite rendition of Mendelssohn's Lobgesang makes one wonder why the work is not part of the regular repertoire.

San Francisco Ballet's Don Quixote is ultimately a winning production with surprising warmth and heart.

Among the standouts at the San Francisco Ballet gala evening performance were Ana Sophia Scheller in Rubies, Sasha De Sola in Études, Benjamin Freemantle in Agon, and Misa Kuranaga and Angelo Greco in Handel-A Celebration.

San Francisco Ballet returns to the War Memorial Opera House with the beloved holiday classic that had its North American debut here.

A wonderfully realized production at San Francisco Opera of Jake Heggie's operatic version of a holiday classic. 

Abstract ballet always asks the question of meaning, and Alonzo King Lines Ballet is one of the few companies that answers that question with existential exactness. 

Tenor-turned-director José Cura transplants the action from southern Italy to Buenos Aires. 

In a program including both modernist and neoclassical works, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFO emphasized the common traits characterizing Stravinsky's entire ouevre.

Michael Tilson Thomas, Sasha Cooke, and choristers from the Pacific Boychoir and San Francisco Chorus come together in a phenomenal performance of Mahler's all-encompassing Third Symphony. 

The world is gloriously redeemed in the gripping final installment of San Francisco Opera's Ring cycle.

Both the technical effects and the singing impress in San Francisco Opera's dark Siegfried.

San Francisco Opera's Die Walküre overcame a disappointing first act, winning the audience over with excellent singing and playing and impressive stage effects.

At San Francisco Opera, conductor Donald Runnicles and a top-notch cast deliver a delicious Rheingold in Francesca Zambello's colorful production.

Most of the pieces were choreographed at a similarly demanding level, with speed, precision and immaculate timing as necessities.

Benjamin Freemantle danced the opening solo, gorgeously, in the role of the grandfather as a dreamy young Adonis. 

Unbound by restrictions, they’ve been given free rein to create, implement and demonstrate to the world what contemporary ballet looks like. Hint: it looks great.

Sneakers gave even the most challenging of balletic steps a freer, looser quality, as if the dancers were about to step into flight.

Neumeier has a real talent for stepping easily between the interior world of individual fantasy and the exterior world of reality.