The third Festival del Sole is set to return to the Napa Valley July 12-20. The 10-day schedule includes concerts,  visual art exhibitions, free community concerts and family events.

If I hadn’t seen and heard it myself I might not have believed it.

On Friday evening at the Napa Valley Opera House a large audience was about to be transported back in time to a simpler age, circa 19l0 to 1929. In those years, more than 20,000 cinemas operated across the U.S. and each “Nickelodeon” brought us the silent movies of early film legends, thanks to the genius of Thomas Edison and others who quickly followed.

For the first stop on his “Day Trip” album tour, Pat Metheny returns to the Opera House with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Antonio Sanchez for an evening of jazz.

The national touring company of one of America’s most highly-acclaimed operatic performance groups is on the road to the Napa Valley this week. Opera A La Carte will stage three performances of the crowd-pleasing Gilbert and Sullivan classic “The Mikado” Friday, Saturday and  Sunday at Lincoln Theater.

Doomed by cancer and counting his final days, Johannes Brahms locked himself in his study and destroyed countless manuscripts — a great deal of it chamber music. He did not want them to reach the world posthumously.

Watching a stage play about the tragedies of war, while a nation is actually at war, makes for a most poignant theatrical experience.

A kind of musical heaven is about to descend upon the Napa Valley in the form of 16 starry singers of opera fame, and a host of angelic musicians called the Napa Valley Youth Symphony. The occasion will be the first-ever fundraising benefit for the young ensemble, Feb. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Lincoln Theater in Yountville.

With the new season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival set to open Feb. 15, incoming Artistic Director Bill Rauch has created what he feels to be his “ideal” first season.

Photographers, sculptors and even a surgeon will speak in Napa during the Oxbow School Spring 2008 Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

Years ago, a few young college students began a vocal performance group in Providence, Rhode Island. That group, Rockapella, which soon moved to performing on New York City street corners with a tip hat at their feet, built from a collegiate hobby into an internationally known vocal powerhouse. They’ll be in the Napa Valley Thursday night to present their own valentine at the Lincoln Theater.

The internationally acclaimed Eroica Trio will bring a lively program of American classics to the Napa Valley Opera House on Feb. 16.

Attending the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is made easy for Napa theatrgoers who join the annual tour June 24-27, led by Susan Powers Kennelly.

“Romance without finance is a nuisance,” sang jazz guitarist Tiny Grimes in 1944, when gas was 21 cents a gallon and a couple of dollars could buy a hot meal or a round of cold drinks. Make that even more of a pain if you’re in the Napa Valley in 2008.

Need help choosing a sparking wine? Gregory Castells, head sommelier of the French Laundry, provided some tips for choosing and serving “the perfect bottle of bubbly” for Valentine’s Day 2008.

The Culinary Institute of America, Greystone, adapted from John Ash, ‘Earth to the Table’

Paul Franson

Pastry Chef Deanie Fox

From a distance it looks like a delicate, detailed watercolor painting of a Victorian woman in a colorful garden.

BELLINO — Lana M. Bellino vs. Todd J. Bellino, Feb. 4, 2008.

WALKER-MOYNAHAN — Richard Lee Walker, 58, Maclean Street, Napa to Marilyn Ann Moynahan, 54, Maclean Street, Napa.

QUEEN OF THE VALLEY

Education

Cabin fever? Kids complaining there’s nothing to do?

An optimistic tone was offered at the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento last week, with the announcement that more than 314 million cases of wine were sold in the U.S. last year, about 10 million cases more than a previous estimate.

There’s a drawing of a smiling cowgirl on the inaugural 2005 Phifer Pavitt “Date Night” Cabernet Sauvignon.