August Addendum

This is what I get for thinking I could knock off two months at once! Here’s some extra stuff for August:

As noted earlier, Festival Opera in Walnut Creek is presenting Lucia di Lammermoor on August 7, 10, 13, and 15 (matinee), with an excellent cast: Angela Cadelago, Thomas Glenn, Brian Leerhuber, and Kirk Eichelberger. The Walnut Creek audiences can be badly behaved, but it’s sometimes worth it to hear exciting voices in a nice smaller house, as opposed to the bellowing in a barn these favorite operas usually receive.

This one is already underway: Cal Shakes (in Orinda, but accessible by shuttle from BART, though I must admit I’ve never tried it myself) is presenting the very talented Rick Miller in his hilarious MacHomer, in which he acts out Macbeth using the voices of various Simpsons characters. I saw this in Berkeley last time it came around and recommend it highly, and not just for laughs – honestly, this was a better version of Macbeth than the touring production I saw in Boston years ago with Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. (I know!)

Shotgun Players presents Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy, The Norman Conquests, starting this Friday, August 6.

And thanks to Lisa for mentioning the following, which I would have missed otherwise: The Hot Air Music Festival presents Elliott Carter’s A Mirror on Which to Dwell and new pieces by Wolfgang Thompson and Matthew Cmiel on August 21 and 22 (7:30 both days), at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. You can buy tickets and read more details at Brown Paper Tickets.