Who cares about beer week?

I understand that everyone is amped up for beer week but there’s some great music lined up this week as well.

Point Loma Opera Theater is giving the San Diego premiere of Nino Rota’s The Italian Straw Hat. If the name Nino Rota seems familiar, it’s probably because he wrote the score for The Godfather.

This is an opera that is performed regularly in Italy but it hasn’t caught on in The States. You’d think that leveraging Rota’s film credits would make this a viable programing choice but that hasn’t been the case thus far.

There are four performances: November 11, 13, and 15 at 7:30 p.m. and November 14 at 2 p.m. The venue is the Crill Performance Hall on the Point Loma Nazarene campus.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, will be stopping by the Civic Theater as part of their eight city tour. Zubin Mehta has been a legend for decades and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is one of the busiest orchestras on the planet.

The program includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3: The Eroica and Ravel’s La Valse. There is only one performance at the Civic Theater, on November 12 at 8 p.m.

The San Diego Symphony will be screening E.T. at the Fox Theater aka Symphony Hall on Friday November 13 at 8 p.m. Here’s how this works — the movie is played on the big screen but the orchestra provides the soundtrack. This is a unique chance to see a great movie in a huge theater.

On Saturday night, the Symphony is performing The Art of Music, as part of the Balboa Park centennial, in collaboration with the San Diego Art Museum. The concert is composed of music which was inspired by art such as Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead, based on the Arnold Böcklin painting, and Debussy’s impressionistic La Mer. The concert is on November 14 at 8 p.m. in Symphony Hall.