Danielle De Niese

YANNICK NEZET-SEGUIN AN IMPRESSIVE CANADIAN On a weekend in mid-March, Martha Argerich is supposed to play Ravel's Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and that is all most ticket buyers need to know to mob the box office. The conductor could be Joe Blow. In fact, the conductor has a much more difficult name.

YANNICK NEZET-SEGUIN AN IMPRESSIVE CANADIAN On a weekend in mid-March, Martha Argerich is supposed to play Ravel's Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and that is all most ticket buyers need to know to mob the box office. The conductor could be Joe Blow. In fact, the conductor has a much more difficult name.

Four Westside students are among 71 semifinalists in the 1994 Southern California Performing Arts Competition coordinated by the Music Center. The semifinalists are flutist Ben Schwartz of Beverly Hills High School, pop vocalist Danielle de Niese of Crossroads School, and, in the opera category, Kristen Barret and Sara Hershkowitz of Santa Monica High School. Performers are to audition for the finals Friday through March 5.

Two Crossroads School students received top honors in the opera and classical instrumental divisions at the Los Angeles Music Center's Music Spotlight Awards. They are Danielle de Niese, 15, and Eric Huebner, 17. De Niese, who placed first in the opera division for her performance of "Batti, Batti" from "Don Giovanni" by Mozart, is a sophomore at Crossroads School. She has been studying classical voice at the Colburn School for Performing Arts for five years.

"Liberation 1945-1995," Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, was not just a musical event. It couldn't be, with speeches and a proclamation given in person by Mayor Richard Riordan, with a letter of good wishes to the organizers of the concert written by Yitzhak Rabin and read posthumously by the consul general of Israel, with a moment of silence observed by a standing audience in honor of the prime minister assassinated a little more than a week ago.

A touring project about the magic of travel, "Journey to Cordoba," arrived at Cal State Los Angeles on Saturday for a premiere full of promise. Here, in a week when L.A. Music Center Opera announced the most conservative season in its history, the company was launching a new work drawn from the local community. Some critics might consider this experiment in outreach by an ivory tower cultural institution to be mere tokenism.

In her Los Angeles recital debut Tuesday night at the Broad Stage, Danielle de Niese did everything she could to seem impossibly cute. And coy. This perky, enormously gifted young soprano who is beginning to beguile the opera world batted her lashes and opened her eyes seductively wide. She regularly flung her arms out welcomingly wide as well. She laced any lyrics she could with layer upon layer of irony. She began the evening with a tone of self-conscious silliness, singing of endless pleasure and self-adoration in arias from Handel's "Semele."

Los Angeles Opera closes its 2001-02 season with a rarity of a double bill: two acknowledged masterpieces from the 20th century, Bela Bartok's "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" and Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi." Bartok's single opera and Puccini's single comedy, both first produced in 1918, are different stage animals but are complementary. The former is mysterious, allusive, symbolic and ambiguous; the latter, accessible, beautifully crafted and easy to love.

Live opera on DVD Rossini: "La Gazzetta" (Opus Arte) A production of a seldom encountered Rossini comic opera directed by Nobel laureate Dario Fo as hilarious, anarchic vaudeville with effective, if little-known singers. Handel: "Giulio Cesare" (Opus Arte) A Glyndebourne production of Handel's great opera brilliantly conducted by William Christie, with a first-rate cast including a riveting young soprano from Los Angeles, Danielle de Niese, as a decidedly sexy Cleopatra.

Reporting from Lewes, England — It's summer on the Sussex Downs, 50 miles south of London. As the taxi makes its way from the village train station, ancient houses give way to rolling hills, sheep and, rarely for England, lots of trees. Down the hill under the arbor and then, on the left, a charming country house appears. Aside from a few discreet signs, it's only when you're coming up the drive, spot the flywall peeking out over the 700-year-old roofline and catch snippets of singers warming up that you realize the back garden is home to one of the world's finest opera houses.