Bay Area arts: 9 great Bay Area shows and concerts to catch this week

From one of pop music’s biggest stars to an opera about Mount Everest and a music festival inspired by Leonard Cohen, there is a lot to see and do in the Bay Area this weekend. Here is a partial roundup. Sabrina Carpenter wasn’t supposed to play the 2024 Outside Lands Festival.

What turned into her headlining set originally belonged to Tyler, The Creator. But then the massive hip-hop star took himself off the lineup, calling Outside Lands “a commitment that (he) no longer could keep.” Fortunately, Carpenter was willing to fill the void and ended up making her festival headlining debut at the three-day event in August at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.



And she did a fantastic job, wowing a massive gathering of exuberant fans with a dizzying pop music spectacle that featured equal amounts of hits and star power. That performance came just prior to the vocalist releasing her sixth full-length album, “Short n’ Sweet,” on Aug. 23, which has propelled the 25-year-old Pennsylvania native into the ranks of the top pop stars on the planet.

The album, featuring the multiplatinum No. 1 hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” helps explain why the Short N’ Sweet Tour has turned into one of the year’s toughest tickets. Expect to see a very full house when Carpenter returns to San Francisco for a gig on Nov.

9 at Chase Center. 7 p.m.

; tickets are $475 and up (through resale markets, subject to change); ticketmaster.com. The last time San Francisco had snow that stuck was 1976.

So you can forget about making snowmen, unless you take the kids up into the mountains. But there is one perennial tradition that conjures winter wonderment just as well: ice skating in the city’s Union Square. The 17th season of outdoor skating, which opened this week, runs through Jan.

20 at the Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square. It’s a fine opportunity to learn how to strap on skates and wobble like a newborn calf, then glide like a pro over the urban version of a frozen lake. There are a number of events running concurrently with the skate rink, including Flashback Fridays with Classic Hits 103.

7 radio station personalities playing hits from the 1980s; classical music on lazy Sunday mornings and a Black Friday dance party to burn off those Thanksgiving calories. On Dec. 5, there will be a Drag on Ice show featuring some of the city’s top drag queens and kings dominating this icy runway.

Then on Jan. 1, you can ring in the New Year — Canadian style — by showing up in your skimpiest beach attire for a Polar Bear Skate. 10 a.

m.-11 p.m.

daily through Jan. 20; 333 Post St., San Francisco; admission including skate rental is $20, $15 for kids under 8; unionsquareicerink.

com This week’s classical music attractions include the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s tribute to Vivaldi, a Berkeley Symphony concert featuring Barber and Bernstein, and another chance to see Opera Parallele’s immersive production of “Everest.” Join the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale in a celebration of Vivaldi’s music, with mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital leading a program of works by the heralded composer and some of his contemporaries. Expect traditional Venetian songs, and an appearance by soprano Estelí Gomez, who joins the ensemble in a performance of an aria from “L’Olimpiade.

” 7:30 p.m. today at Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 7:30 p.

m. Friday at Bing Hall, Stanford University, 2:30 p.m.

Saturday at First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $40-$132; philharmonia.org. The Berkeley Symphony opens its 2024 Symphonic Series with a program featuring soprano Lisa Delan as soloist in Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.

” Conducted by music director Joseph Young, the event also includes Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story,” Silvestre Revueltas’ “Redes Suite,” and the Bay Area premiere of Kris Bowers’ “For a Younger Self,” with Grammy Award-winning violinist Charles Yang as soloist. 4 p.m.

Sunday; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $25-$85; berkeleysymphony.org. For opera lovers who still haven’t seen Opera Parallele’s production of “Everest,” now’s a good time to head to the California Academy of Sciences.

Based on a true story of astonishing courage and featuring performances by tenor Nathan Granner and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, the 68-minute “graphic novel opera” by composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer is breathtaking, and this showing in the Morrison Planetarium lends a fresh sense of drama to the opera’s already intensely immersive experience. Friday through Nov. 17; Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; $35-$56; cityboxoffice.

com. 7:30 p.m.

Friday at Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma ($25; ); 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday at Stanford University’s The Studio, presented by Stanford Live ($15-$50; ).