Wolf Trap

Is there any star in Nashville more affable than Vince Gill? After years of watching him show off his relentless cheer and low-key humor as host of the Country Music Awards, it's tempting to think of him as the genre's Bing Crosby, a performer whose easygoing personality is as well-loved as his music.Still, expect plenty of music when Gill takes the stage at Wolf Trap this weekend, touring in support of his neo-traditional new album, "The Key."Gill and opening act Chely Wright perform at the Wolf Trap Filene Center, 1551 Trap Road, in Vienna, Va., on Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m. $18 lawn seating only.

Philadelphia International Flower Show With a theme based on the islands of Hawaii, this year's International Flower Show brings a taste of the tropics to Philadelphia. White sand, palm trees and hula dancers all have a role as the show, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Scoiety, salutes "Hawaii: Islands of Aloha. " Visitors can see a 25-foot waterfall, a beach wedding, floral volcanoes, surf shacks and traditional Hawaiian crops like pineapple and sugar cane.

In Irish step-dancing, the feet do all the work while the body and arms remain still and uninvolved. But if you think that's all there is to it, you need to see "Riverdance," a dazzling display of precision step-dancing that exploded on Broadway last year and is now on a national tour.The "Riverdance" company performs for two weeks, Wednesday through July 6, at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in northern Virginia. (Take the Capital Beltway, I-495, to the Dulles Toll Road, then take the Wolf Trap exit.

I love watching rehearsals, whether they be for dance concerts, dinner theater shows, neighborhood musicals or —during these early summer days — marching drum and bugle corps performances. Recent weeks have brought me the opportunity to sample and savor all of the above. No matter what the discipline, there is nothing phony about a rehearsal. The effort is real and raw, the flubs are painful and the moment of mastery is exhilarating. Rehearsals give you an inside view of art, something you never experience in a polished presentation.

San Francisco Ballet journeys from the Other Coast next week to our warm and humid climes, with a program that shows off classicism, diversity and brilliance.At the Wolf Trap Festival, the company will perform "Tuning Game," a showcase for a ballerina and a consort of men, choreographed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson to the oboe concerto of John Corigliano. (Hence the title: The oboe tunes the rest of the orchestra.)Two duets are at the center of the program: "Valses Poeticos," also by Tomasson, which traces the course of a relationship through a suite of waltzes by Enrique Granados; and the "Black Swan" pas de deux from "Swan Lake," which ends with a famous sequence of 32 fouette turns.

Wolf Trap Park in Vienna, Va., has announced a summer concert season that includes everything from the country music of Travis Tritt to the swinging pop of Natalie Cole. The park, at 1551 Trap Road off I-495, is about an hour's drive from Baltimore.May includes Tritt and the Charlie Daniels Band perform on May 24; and Seal and Des'ree on May 25. The Irish folk festival, with more than 150 performers, takes place on May 28.Shawn Colvin and Bruce Cockburn will appear on June 2, John Prine on June 10, the Louisiana Swamp Romp is June 11, Regina Belle on June 14, John Denver and the National Symphony Orchestra on June 15, John Michael Montgomery on June 18, Little Feat and Delbert McClinton on June 10 and Trisha Yearwood on June 21.June also will bring the Jazz and Blues Festival at Wolf Trap, with Al Jarreau performing on June 23, Grover Washington Jr. and Buddy Guy on June 24, and an all-day concert on June 25 featuring Joshua Redman, Poncho Sanchez, Keb' Mo' and others.

Miami City Ballet was in a retro mood when it opened its two-day Wolf Trap engagement Tuesday night. With well-groomed performances of ballets featuring the music of George Gershwin in George Balanchine's "Who Cares!" or The Andrews Sisters in Paul Taylor's "Company B," this attractive and talented dance company had audience members singing along or knowingly bobbing their heads to familiar tunes.But it was the world premiere of a work by the company's resident choreographer, Jimmy Gamonet De Los Heros, "The Big Band Supermegatroid," set to signature pieces of the 1940s, that capped off the troupe's performance and energized the audience.

A quaint, intimate, barn-like theater, nestled in a verdant grove; a mild evening in July; and a production of Benjamin Britten's 1960 opera A Midsummer Night's Dream, based on the Shakespeare play, with an eager young cast, an inventive director and a respected conductor. The conditions certainly looked dreamy Friday evening as Wolf Trap Opera's unveiled its staging of the brilliant Britten work at the Barns of Wolf Trap. Unfortunately, the reality did not quite measure up to the expectation.

A ranch hand in chaps trying to do rope tricks. A monied country girl in an Annie Oakley outfit. A sergeant who looks like a General Custer wannabe. A snake oil salesman whose accoutrements include a Victrola for occasional musical backup. And a spirited dash of good old-fashioned do-si-do-ing. Sure sounds like an Italian opera to me. Actually, it's not such a stretch, when the opera is Donizetti's eternal charmer, L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love). Early 19th-century Italian rusticity, the plot's original milieu, is hardly the only apt setting for a story about love, flirtation and hucksterism.

Folks should try to find a way to get along together," sings the suffering housewife Anna Maurrant in Kurt Weill's Street Scene, "a way to make the world a friendly, happy place full of laughter and kind words."

Wolf Trap Opera's final production of the season arrives at just the right time: Benjamin Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," a brilliantly crafted work from 1960 based on the Shakespeare play. Stage director Patrick Diamond's concept, based on his own experiences, "takes the idea of midsummer and dream literally," he says. "It's mostly about the idea of how we go outside during the summer and lose track of time, how the sun goes down, and it doesn't really register. That's the kind of world I feel these characters are in. " The opera has been given a contemporary look; Erhard Rom's scenic design includes fiber optics.

Mozart never finished "Zaide," a music-theater piece with spoken dialogue. What has come down to us is a colorful, rather dark story about a sultan named Soliman, who loves his slave Zaide, who loves fellow slave Gomatz. With the help of Allazim, a high-ranking slave, Zaide and Gomatz escape, only to be captured and threatened with death. At that point, the story ends. Wolf Trap Opera's presentation allows the audience to vote at intermission for one of three possibilities — happy, happier and downer.

If the Three Stooges stumbled into an oh-so-serious performance of Hamlet and carried on as usual alongside the uncomprehending actors, the result would be something akin to Ariadne auf Naxos, the musically and theatrically brilliant work by Richard Strauss that serves as an invigorating finale to Wolf Trap Opera's season. This company, devoted to the honing of emerging artists, routinely delivers smart, absorbing productions, among the most consistently satisfying to be found in the region.

ART PAINT AND SPARKLE -- 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday. Free. Gallery G at the Beveled Edge in the Rotunda, 711 W. 40th St. 410-235-9060. The recently relocated gallery and performance space at the Rotunda presents Guided Spirits, an exhibition of paintings by Hunt Slonem and jewelry by Phil and Sandye Jurus and Robyn Nuthall. New York-based painter Slonem creates colorful canvases filled with tropical birds, butterflies, ocelots and monkeys. The Baltimore-based Juruses are celebrated as jewelers for the exquisite gems, fossils and other artifacts they use in their one-of-a-kind works.

These days, talk of kidnappings or executions by hideous means usually refers to disturbing news from the Middle East. But, oddly enough, such topics also apply to a gem of a comic opera that manages to get laughs out of false imprisonment, a shooting and even an attempted impalement -- all set to deliciously tuneful, rhythmically buoyant music. If you go L'etoile will be performed at 8 p.m. tomorrow and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Barns at Wolf Trap, 1645 Trap Road, Vienna, Va. Tickets are $58. Call 877-965-3872 or go to wolftrap.

Looking for something different to do on your 39th birthday? How about having a total stranger executed by impalement during the party? What? Too macabre? Maybe you just need to develop a French sense of humor, the kind Emmanuel Chabrier had when he wrote his comic opera L'etoile in 1877. Yes, the prospect of a tortuous demise serves as a plot-driving device in this work. And one of the score's best numbers includes a description of just how the king's ordinary-looking armchair can, with the turn of a handle, provide the unsuspecting sitter with, um, a sticky experience.

If the Three Stooges stumbled into an oh-so-serious performance of Hamlet and carried on as usual alongside the uncomprehending actors, the result would be something akin to Ariadne auf Naxos, the musically and theatrically brilliant work by Richard Strauss that serves as an invigorating finale to Wolf Trap Opera's season. This company, devoted to the honing of emerging artists, routinely delivers smart, absorbing productions, among the most consistently satisfying to be found in the region.

Video-game music is making the leap from consoles to concert halls with PLAY! a video-game symphony world tour that comes to Wolf Trap tomorrow. With a full orchestra and choir, the concert presents symphonic scores adapted from such blockbuster games as Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Halo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Kingdom Hearts, World of Warcraft and more. "We're elevating the music of video gaming; it's not just a limited niche," said Jason Michael Paul, producer of PLAY!

Chris Botti Contemporary jazz artist Chris Botti, known for his romantic sound and trumpet improvisations, performs at Wolf Trap on Wednesday. Botti won a Grammy this year for the song "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" from the album To Love Again. The show is at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Wolf Trap's Filene Center, 1551 Trap Road in Vienna, Va. Tickets are $22 or $40. Call 410-481-6500 or 800-955-5566, or visit wolf-trap.org.