The Classical Music Agenda has been missing in action for several weeks now, but there just has not been that much to hear. My weekly recommendations will return at the end of this month, as the September schedule heats up. For now, you will have to content yourselves with the following concerts, few and far between.
This coming weekend (August 18 and 19, 8 p.m.), the Wolf Trap Opera Company concludes its season with a staging of Mozart’s classic opera The Marriage of Figaro. This performance will be in the Filene Center, the indoor-outdoor theater at Wolf Trap. I have heard almost all of the singers in the cast, and they are quite good. Seats in the theater go up to $56, but tickets on the lawn are only $18. If the weather is good, it’s a nice place to have a picnic and hear some opera. Take along your mosquito repellent.
The U.S. Army Field Band is celebrating its 60th anniversary with a free concert in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall this Sunday (August 20, 3 p.m.). You will need a ticket, but you may obtain up to four of them for no charge by contacting the Kennedy Center box office.
Summer is the time for fun and light-spirited programs. A week from Friday (August 25, 8 p.m.) the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra will give a concert it is calling Our ’70s Show. Joined by singer Liz Callaway, conductor Keith Lockhart will lead performances of music from movies made in the 1970s (Star Wars, The Exorcist, and so on), as well as selections from Jesus Christ Superstar and a medley of pop songs and television theme music from that funkadelic decade. Hilarity will ensue.
For those looking ahead to more serious fare when fall arrives, the Smithsonian Chamber Players will give a concert on the last Sunday in August (August 27, 3 p.m.) at the newly reopened Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture. James Stern (violin), Kenneth Slowik (cello), and Audrey Andrist (piano) will play piano trios by Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn.