Classical music has come back from summer vacation, and that means you actually have a choice of concerts this week. Most importantly, many of the city's leading groups are opening the season with glittering events. Look for reviews next week. >> Washington National Opera is opening its fall season with one of the most popular operas in the repertoire, Puccini's La Bohème (September 15 to 30). For all its audience-pleasing qualities, this opera is a......

The 2006-07 season of the Washington National Opera comes to a close next week, with a concert appearance by several of its singers at the Music Center at Strathmore (May 31, 8 p.m.) and the last performance of its final production, Macbeth (June 2, 7 p.m.). It is time to take stock of the company's achievements this season and look forward to what it will offer the city next year. Four productions this season were......

This week, the free concerts are at the top of my classical music picks, because everyone loves to hear music for free, especially when it promises to be of such high quality as most of these concerts. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: >> It is finally time to go hear excellent chamber music at the Library of Congress again. This Wednesday (October 11, 8 p.m.), one of the finest chamber groups around, the Beaux Arts Trio, will......

In addition to having a vibrant classical music concert scene, Washington is home to a number of classical performers and composers, like Nicholas Maw, composer of Sophie's Choice, who now makes his home in the Maryland suburbs. When a great performer dies, classical music fans everywhere mourn the loss of a favorite voice or sound, but when such a performer also happens to be a fellow Washingtonian, it hits closer to home for us here.......

For reasons that I understand but dislike, new operas are the hardest tickets for most American companies to sell. For Washington National Opera, whose audience is largely allergic to anything outside the familiar repertory, it must be difficult to reconcile what a major American opera company should be doing — performing recent operas and commissioning new ones — with the overwhelming concern for the bottom line. All the more reason, then, to praise WNO for......

On Monday, one of the great modernist composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, would have been 100 years old. All around the world, classical musicians and audiences will be celebrating with performances of his music. The major Washington concerts in honor of the Shostakovich centennial, with the National Symphony Orchestra, are scheduled for November. However, there are a few concerts, Shostakovich and otherwise, to tell you about this week. DSCH: >> If you really love Shostakovich, you might......

The Washington National Opera, because of the "national" in its new name, is supposed to stage at least one American opera per season. It is apparently fulfilling that obligation this year with a recent opera by Nicholas Maw, a British composer who has for several years been living here in the Washington area and teaching at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. This new production of Maw's tragic opera, Sophie's Choice, is the American premiere of......

In last week's agenda, I led with picks for modern and contemporary music (some reviews to come this week), and I am happy to do so again this week. September seems to be the month for hearing classical music composed in the 20th and 21st centuries, so get out there and listen, Washingtonians. NEW, SOMETIMES STRANGE: >> Modernist composers often write for new and unconventional instruments. Isabel Ettenauer will give a free concert at the......