This is a tasting menu of the kinds of music the theater plans to offer in upcoming seasons. You’ll get heaping portions of Brahms, Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Schubert and Donizetti as well as Bay Area composer Shinji Eshima.

To welcome Mercury Theater to the world, our performers from throughout the Bay Area are donating their time and talent. We are beyond grateful.

Local legend Marilyn Thompson joins with clarinettist Larry London and cellist Judyaba to bring our audience the first movement of Brahms’ Op. 114, moody, shifting and exciting. Larry and Marilyn join soprano Eileen Morris for Schubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock,” full of laughing, longing (and yodeling).

Opera and musical theater pros Joe Meyer and Krista Wigle provide excerpts from “La Boheme,” and Joe sings every tenor’s ultimate favorite: “Una Furtiva Lagrima” from Donizetti’s “The Elixir of Love.”

The hits keep coming with excerpts from “Carmen,” featuring Phoebe Dinga, Drew Bollander, Joe Meyer, Krista Wigle and Eileen Morris. Stay tuned for Phoebe’s seductive “Seguidilla.”

Rossini provides all the drama of opera distilled to 12 minutes, two instrumentalists and NO singers when Gwyneth Davis and Mark Wallace play Rossini’s duet for cello and bass.

Gwyneth and Judyaba perform a work written for them by Shinji Eshima, “Judyabadabaduo.” Yaba hints that we may hear a television theme.

As we inaugurate our new theater and the holiday season, we’ll close with Verdi’s “Libiamo,” or, as we’d say, “Let’s Drink!”