This Weekend and Next

A ton of good stuff happening, some of which I'll get to. Benjamin Bagby recites a big chunk of Beowulf and plays the harp at Cal Performances, tonight and tomorrow night...San Francisco Symphony has the Shostakovich 12th and a Kurtag piece on its program....Urban Opera performs Purcell's The Witch of Endor both Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. in San Francisco....Pacific Collegium sings the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610; Sunday's concert is part of a Vespers service and is free....Next week, Volti has a typically great program of new and recent music....Cyrano de Bergerac, a rarity, is playing at San Francisco Opera. It's returns and standing room only at this point, but it is likely to be your last chance to see the world's most multitasking tenor/baritone/intendant on stage locally...The St. David of Wales Festival Chorus is performing a Lassus program in Richmond on Nov. 7...Also on the 7th, French contemporary music group Ensemble Zellig, on its first U.S. tour, hits Cal Performances with a program of works by Edmund Campion, Philippe Leroux, Don Freund, Philippe Hersant, and Gerald Shapiro. Four of the works to be performed are West Coast premieres, and Edmund Campion is an excellent composer who teaches at UC Berkeley.