ABT is also unveiling a production of John Neumeier’s full-evening The Lady of the Camellias from 1978. It’s not up my alley, but it may be up yours. Other full-evenings: La Bayadèere, The Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote and—surprise!—Swan Lake. If these are your meat, remember: Check casting. Among the ballerinas to look for are Diana Vishneva, Natalia Osipova and Alina Cojocaru, from the Royal Ballet, in her one performance of the season—a matinee of Sleeping Beauty. Now that’s peculiar! More appealing for some of us will be the season’s two mixed bills. One is all-Ashton, including his ravishing The Dream and Birthday Offering; the other brings together a Ratmansky (On the Dnieper), a Robbins (the ever-happy Fancy Free) and a particularly welcome return, Twyla Tharp’s impressive Brahms-Haydn Variations.

New York City Ballet is boasting seven—count ’em, seven—new ballets. First, and most highly anticipated, a new Ratmansky. There are premieres by England’s much admired Wayne McGregor, Benjamin Millepied (yes, yet another one), Christopher Wheeldon, Melissa Barak, Mauro Bigonzetti and Peter Martins. It sounds exciting, but don’t get your hopes too high: History suggests that not that many new ballets turn out to be keepers. It will certainly be interesting to see which ones of these seven make it. City Ballet is also honoring the retirement of four of its principal dancers at successive Sunday matinees: Yvonne Borree on June 6, Philip Neal on June 13, Albert Evans on June 20 and Darci Kistler on June 27. (To some of us it was only yesterday when that glorious girl first appeared, in 1980.)

Otherwise, it’s repertory as usual—some great (and a few not-so-great) Balanchine works and a bunch of Robbins (you’ll be able to compare City Ballet’s Fancy Free to ABT’s, and last season’s The Lady With the Little Dog—a dog). But Serenade? Symphony in Three Movements? The Four Temperaments? They don’t make them like those anymore.

We can only single out a few of the countless other dance possibilities coming up. For some of us, there’s special resonance in the centenary celebration of Alwin Nikolais at the Joyce (starting May 4) in the return of the Martha Graham company, also at the Joyce (starting June 8) and of course the 40th anniversary Trisha Brown season at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, starting April 7 and featuring her Opal Loop/Cloud Installation #72503. (For more of Trisha Brown, there’s a completely different program up the river at Bard, beginning July 8.)

The Richmond Ballet, Taylor II, Ailey II, ABT II, Amy Marshall, Avi Scher, Nacho Suato, Pam Tamowitz, an Eiko & Koma retrospective (at Dance at St. Marks), Dance Africa, Molissa Fenley—there’s something for everyone; just track down your favorites. And don’t forget the most anticipated event of all, at least for dance critics: The School of American Ballet workshop weekend at Juilliard, the weekend of June 5.

rgottlieb@observer.com

"Which one of them's poisoned?" her publicist joked, as Ms. Weilerstein, with her long dark hair, a knit dress and chunky black boots, hung up her outfit for the concert that evening, a flowing gown several shades of red brighter than the apples.

"I'm very optimistic about the future of classical music," Ms. Weilerstein told The Observer. And she has reason to be: She stars in it! Already 15 years into her professional career, though she's only 27, Ms. Weilerstein is poised to pass the border that separates "up-and-coming" from "renowned." She plays everywhere, with the world's finest orchestras. Composers write pieces for her. Last November, she performed for President Obama.

Yet she's still small-scale enough to get away with one of the treats--at least for the underemployed--of the spring: Three intimate lunchtime recitals on April 19, 20 and 21, in which she'll perform the final three of Bach's cello suites. But not at Carnegie (2,800 seats) or Avery Fisher (2,700). No, she's returning to the cozy, unassuming reading room at Philosophy Hall, which houses the English department at Columbia University, her alma mater.

"It's a wonderful space," said Ms. Weilerstein. "I take playing Bach in public extremely seriously. I did the first three suites in the fall, and it was actually one of the nicest atmospheres to play Bach in. It was a very informal, friendly atmosphere, because playing Bach is quite intense."

Ms. Weilerstein, too, is extremely serious and quite intense. At the age of 4, she demanded a cello, but her parents, both accomplished musicians, were
reluctant. Instead, she started playing on an instrument her grandmother made for her out of cereal boxes. When her parents finally bought her a real cello, it was only six months before she performed in public for the first time.

Her performances have a dramatic but unaffected physicality. During the Orpheus concert, she finished a phrase and her left hand launched into a long, slow arc down to her side. This physical abandon, as well as the fact that there are too few women in the top ranks of cellists, have led some to compare her to the legendary, epically passionate Jacqueline du Pré.

"She was a huge influence on me when I was a kid," said Ms. Weilerstein. "I listened to four cellists: Casals, her, Piatigorsky and Rostropovich. I love them all, but she was it for me. I saw every bit of video footage, listened to every recording. I was about maybe 12 or 13. Most people describe me as an intense person, and I was also very intense when I was a kid. Believe me, I really listened to it."

If Ms. Weilerstein needs one more push to enter the realm of Yo-Yo Ma, it may come by taking du Pré's mantle on April 27, when she performs Elgar's wrenchingly emotional Cello Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. This is the biggest of the big leagues: Not only will it be televised live and released on DVD, not only is it the Berlin Phil, but Mr. Barenboim was married to du Pré, the Elgar concerto's greatest champion, who died in 1987 at the age of 42. The couple's 1970 live recording of the work is a landmark.

Mr. Barenboim's blessing came, as it happens, in the Maestro Suite. "He was doing Mahler and he was here, he was at Carnegie," Ms. Weilerstein recalled,
"and he asked me to come see him, and I played the Elgar concerto for him, which is the hardest thing I've done for anyone in my life, to play that piece for him, with all of the connotations and all that that implies, so it was here that he asked me to play it with him. I remember it was a gorgeous day in May, almost a year ago, and I walked for half an hour and I ended up in Sheep's Meadow." She laughed. "I don't know how I got there!"

As Ms. Weilerstein settles into the kind of career she's always dreamed of, the only problem is one of balance. Indeed, she's spent only three weeks total in the one-bedroom on 146th and Riverside that she bought a year and a half ago.

"Right now, I'm finding out what my limit is," she said. "It's very hard to find a middle ground between not having enough and having too much. I have the luxury of being selective now. I hope that lasts."

THE LIST

Hyper Hyped
Valery Gergiev's "The Russian Stravinsky" festival at the New York Philharmonic (4/21-5/8)

Maurizio Pollini, pianist, in three Chopin Recitals at Carnegie Hall (4/18, 4/29, 5/9)

Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Lincoln Center (5/20-5/22)

But Don't Forget About...

The reopening of ISSUE Project Room in its new downtown Brooklyn space (4/11)

Eighth Blackbird at People's Symphony (5/8)

John Adams conducting Andriessen's De Staat at Carnegie (5/10)

SLIDESHOW: 10 Shows Not to Miss This Spring >

"I like darker beer," said the actor, just before ordering an Ithaca Nut Brown Ale and a bowl of nuts to go with it. He sat beneath an elaborate wall fixture consisting of nine black rotary telephones, dressed in a blue, pinstriped button-down tucked into tailored gray pants. His hair was close-cropped, his sideburns neat and his face delicately creased with age.

"I took a tour of the Guinness factory in Dublin," Mr. Cranston continued. "They give you a little eyedrop of Guinness encased in, uh, like a plastic -- almost like a paperweight. And you can keep it as a souvenir on your desk. It's really fun."

Mr. Cranston, who recently turned 54, was in town on an epic press junket to promote Breaking Bad, AMC's twisted black comedy, which has earned him two Emmy Awards for his leading role as Walter White, a terminally ill, midlife-crisising high-school chemistry teacher-turned-meth manufacturer living in Albuquerque. The show was created by Vince Gilligan, formerly a producer on The X-Files.

Breaking Bad, the third season of which premiered on March 21, is disturbing, hilarious, touching, taboo, nauseating, edifying, awkward, anxiety-filled and, above all, masterfully written and directed, as is evidenced by the various awards and critical acclaim it has received. It is not, however, nearly as massive a hit as many of its peers (at least not yet) -- zeitgeisty, water-cooler-chatter shows like The Sopranos, Lost, True Blood and, of course, Mad Men, Breaking Bad's extraordinarily popular network-mate (widely perceived as the reason AMC has become relevant). Walter White is no Don Draper, and Mr. Cranston himself is perhaps still more well known as the fumbling father from Malcolm in the Middle, the Fox sitcom in which he appeared in 151 episodes between 2000 and 2006.

"Breaking Bad is not a sexy show," said Mr. Cranston. "It's a gritty show. It's not going to be on the cover of Vogue. Mad Men, you have the dashing Jon Hamm and all these beautiful women. The Sopranos, we're enthralled with mobsters. You know, the goombah, the goodfellas, the godfather. That's totally magazine-cover-sexy. A guy in his underwear [cooking meth] out in the middle of the desert in an RV? Not sexy."

In the season-three opener, which begins after Walter has just confessed his secret profession to his wife, Skyler, who subsequently leaves him, we first see Mr. Cranston slouched on some patio furniture in his backyard, wearing a brown robe over tighty-whities, slowly flicking lit matches into his swimming pool. With one match left in the book, he gets up, strikes it and tosses it onto a charcoal grille with the intention of burning the $500,000 in cash he'd just made off a recent meth sale -- money he needed only so that Skyler, his newborn baby and his handicapped teenage son wouldn't be left penniless when he eventually succumbed to lung cancer. As Walter gazes at the burning bills, he suddenly thrusts himself onto the flames, catches on fire, and jumps into the pool, with the grill, to salvage his fortune. You just don’t know whether to feel bad or call him an asshole.

For Mr. Cranston, the most intense moment of the entire series thus far occurred in season two, when Walter lets his young business partner’s girlfriend die in her sleep, watching idly as she chokes on her own vomit during a heroin overdose. Good times!

“What we’re doing on the show has never been done in the history of television, and that’s not hyperbole,” said Mr. Cranston. “[Vince] told me, he wants to do a series where, at the beginning, the guy is Mr. Chips. Good guy. Smart guy. Provides for his family. Never got a ticket in his life. And by the end of the series, he’s Scarface. He’s a killer. And that’s never been done before. I mean, gone are the days of Magnum P.I. He was great-looking, great car, never drank too much, never cheated on his girlfriend. It’s like, ‘What a guy!’ We don’t have that. Those days are over. So we’re in uncharted waters here, and that’s what so exciting about this era of television. It’s going places that really haven’t been discovered. I think it’s, dare I say, another golden age of television.”

Whether Breaking Bad ever gets to Mad Men proportions, Mr. Cranston is not concerned. “That’s not what I do this for anyway,” he said. But: “I think we could easily do two more years, to do a total of five seasons. We might be able to do six. I hope we’re on for as long as it takes to thoroughly examine this journey, and no longer.”

SLIDESHOW: 10 Shows Not to Miss This Spring >

jpompeo@observer.com

Mr. Sands' latest role, the rebellious teen-turned-soldier Tunny in the new Broadway adaptation of Green Day's 2004 album American Idiot, is a different sort of military man. "They wanted it to be a very angry, very angst-fueled sort of middle-class kid who's lost and doesn't know what he's looking for-and I always play the boy next door, the sort of earnest innocent," Mr. Sands said over lunch, on the day of American Idiot's first preview (the show officially opens April 20 at the St. James Theater). "I really had to convince them that I could do it. The tattoos help."

Ah yes, the tattoos: For the past three weeks, Mr. Sands-an otherwise freshly scrubbed-looking fellow-has had 10 of them scattered across his torso and arms. "They're all fake, all of them," he explained, before cataloging them: There are the fairly standard ones-a skull, a snake, a wolf, a symbol of the punk band Black Flag-while others are more personal. "This is my girlfriend's name," Mr. Sands said, gesturing to the word "Gemma" written in elegant script on his left bicep. "I specifically was like, 'If I'm going to make my girlfriend put up with 10 tattoos for however long I do this, I've got to get her name.'" (He and Gemma, a British journalist, met cute: "I was in London on holiday," Mr. Sands said. "That's a very British term, 'on holiday.' Also a Green Day term, incidentally!")

American Idiot's plot, the brainchild of director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), follows the general outline introduced by the album-a dissatisfied youth, "Jesus of Suburbia" (John Gallagher), ditches the suburbs for the city, discovering girls and drugs but failing to find fulfillment. Mr. Sands' character, Tunny, is not featured on the album but was introduced for the show. The angriest of the three leads, Tunny accompanies Jesus of Suburbia to the city but soon enlists in the Army, where he eventually loses a limb and gains a sexy nurse girlfriend. American Idiot's heavy dependence on its source material ensures that it will likely find more appeal with Green Day fans than theater snobs; luckily, Stark Sands is both. "When I heard that there was going to be a Green Day musical," Mr. Sands said, "I was like, 'Sweet.' I have been [a fan] since Dookie, since my teenage years. I identify with this music from when I was a teenager," he said, and then paused. "And I'm not a teenager anymore."

In fact, it's been 13 years since Mr. Sands' acting career began. He credits his mother's sister with stoking his interest in performing; the summer before he started high school, his aunt suggested he try out for a talented-and-gifted theater class. "My mom was like, 'You should go in and audition for this. All you have to do is read a monologue.' And I was like, 'Monologue? What's that?'" Mr. Sands said. "I couldn't think of what to do, because I had never read a play before. So I brought in the back of a cereal box and I read that."

To hear Mr. Sands tell it, his first role, in The Sound of Music, was not a success. "I was little Kurt, the youngest boy, who's supposed to be like, 'I'm incorrigible!'" Mr. Sands said. "But I'd hit puberty, so I'm a little bit taller than the girls who are supposed to be older than me and I'm all-" he said, gesturing to his face with a painful look, "-pubescent."

Mr. Sands went on to pursue a B.F.A. in acting from USC, and began acting professionally soon after graduation, when he landed a role in Six Feet Under. Though he worked steadily for the next five years, he considers Journey's End to have been his real break in the business. "The show was about four soldiers, and I'm one of the four," Mr. Sands said of the experience, "and the other three are Tony winners and movie stars, and they've become my best friends." He added that he still crashes on Boyd Gaines' couch occasionally.

Having played military men on so many occasions has had an effect on Mr. Sands: "It's definitely crossed my mind," he said when asked whether he'd consider joining the armed forces himself. "I wonder sometimes. I don't think of myself as a tough guy," he said, before pausing thoughtfully. "I have to play one in this, so we'll see. Hopefully I can be convincing."

SLIDESHOW: The Eight Essential Albums of the Season >

With nothing more than a handful of homemade demos under their belts, Sleigh Bells have blasted a reputation for themselves out of the quiet ether of Brooklyn lo-fi. They were among the breakout acts of last year's CMJ Music Festival, and generated even more buzz earlier this month when they played South by Southwest in Austin. A few days before that, news broke that Mom + Pop records would release the group's debut album, Treats, on May 11 in collaboration with N.E.E.T., the label owned by Grammy-nominated hip-hop auteur and Brooklyn resident M.I.A. (Mr. Miller also contributed some production work to M.I.A's forthcoming third studio album.)

But first, "I did disaster relief, I waited tables. I was writing and recording and throwing everything away," said Mr. Miller in a phone interview. "I did that for six years until I met Alexis."

Mr. Miller, however, is no novice. He previously played guitar for the Florida hard-core band Poison the Well. Nor is Ms. Krauss a newcomer. She got her start in a kitschy girl group called Rubyblue before becoming a public-school teacher in the Bronx. The two met in 2008 at a Brazilian restaurant in Williamsburg, where Ms. Krauss was eating dinner with her mother. Mr. Miller was their waiter.

"We just started talking," he recalled.

The band's sound is sugary bubblegum pop from hell. Ms. Krauss alternates between a sweet, soulful croon and a screeching yelp, and Mr. Miller's guitar is even heavier than it was during his hard-core days. Their music is ambitious yet agreeable. One song, "Crown on the Ground," sounds like golden-age hip-hop played by some combination of the Buzzcocks and Meat Loaf. On another, "Ring Ring," the group samples Funkadelic's "Can You Get to That?" infusing it with an even funkier beat and an icy edge from Ms. Krauss' panting vocals. "Have a heart," she moans like a more vicious Debbie Harry before bringing it back to her sugar-pop roots: "Ring ring, call him up / Tell him 'bout the new trends."

Sleigh Bells is now on a U.S. tour that will take them to Webster Hall on May 4, a week before the album comes out. Mr. Miller is pretty laid back about it all.

"There's no pressure from anyone," he said. "It's just about liking music and playing it."

SLIDESHOW: The Eight Essential Albums of the Season >

mmiller@observer.com

He loves to talk about the things he likes: distance-learning technology, Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail, Alex Ross’ advocacy of the composer Charles Ives, the second and third (but not the fifth) acts of Ambroise Thomas’ opera Hamlet, the restaurant-delivery Web site SeamlessWeb. And he loves to talk about the things he doesn’t like: Fresh Direct (wasteful amounts of packaging), watching old clips of himself on YouTube (“they’re coming up with shit that I’d forgotten I’d even done”), the concept of the “Verdi baritone,” singers who arrive late to rehearsals.

If it were not for a rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera, where he is singing Germont in La Traviata, Mr. Hampson, fueled by periodic coffee refills, seemed like he would have been delighted to talk all afternoon. We were at his favorite diner, the Olympic Flame at 60th and Amsterdam, around the corner from the apartment he rents and, conveniently, a few blocks from Lincoln Center.

Mr. Hampson will be spending a lot of time in the area this month. In addition to the Traviata, which runs through April 24, he is finishing his season as the first-ever New York Philharmonic Artist-in-Residence with recitals at Alice Tully Hall on April 11, featuring Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Barber songs, and Symphony Space on April 16. The latter concert, part of CONTACT!, the orchestra’s new music series, will feature the world premiere of a Philharmonic commission written especially for Mr. Hampson, Matthias Pintscher’s Songs from Solomon’s Garden.

“It is truly the New York Philharmonic and [music director] Alan [Gilbert] rethinking how they work,” Mr. Hampson said of inviting a vocalist to take such a prominent role in the orchestra’s season. “Everybody belongs here. Dance belongs here, movement belongs here, color belongs here, opera belongs here, singers belong here, instrumentalists belong here.”

He’ll also be delivering his third and final “Insights Series” lecture for the orchestra on April 5, on one of his favorite topics, German romantic poetry and its reverberations in the 19th-century song literature. Manhattan School of Music has devised an application that will live-broadcast his master class there to anyone with an iPhone. “Just call me Eric Schmidt,” Mr. Hampson said. “Well, actually, don’t.”

Like Mr. Schmidt and another Hampson idol, Steve Jobs, Mr. Hampson is a Big Thinker. “I don’t mean to be a cultural philosopher here,” he said.  “Is it the art forms that need to adapt to technology,” he wondered aloud, “or will in fact the technology manipulate, metamorphosize and, in consequence, adapt or change the art form itself?”

On occasion his thoughtfulness takes him down darker paths. On the Web site for the Hampsong Foundation he has the rather eerie formulation, “In fact, should our civilization, all of our culture, be destroyed and taken from us--it would be singing, this most personal and natural form of musical expression, that would first reappear.” And at the diner, contemplating his beloved distance-learning initiatives, he confessed some doubts. “Are we alienating kids? Are we actually tearing down their ability to communicate one on one?” He sighed. “I tend to think that in the evolution of man every generation asks those questions.”

With his rich voice and trademark sweep of hair. Mr. Hampson has a calming air, like a cool dad. His intellectualism, the foundation and his fascination with the deeper issues of education, technology and the arts would all seem to point Mr. Hampson toward an administrative post. Placido Domingo, for instance, runs not one but two opera companies. “Can I imagine hanging up my spurs, period, and just doing something like running an organization?” he asked aloud. “Sure, I can imagine it. I can’t see it being an opera house; I can see it being a school.”

But not yet. “I can maintain this level of activity and vocal quality,” he said. “I’ve made some adjustments to my schedule. I was singing a little too much. But I say that with a certain irony, because next season is kinda sick. January to June, I think I sing 55 concerts, Mahler’s music with seven different orchestras on three different tours. I’m gonna get a lot of frequent-flyer miles.” But don’t get him started on Mahler. That’s a whole other day’s discussion right there.

THE LIST

Hyper Hyped

Angela Gheorghiu in Verdi's La Traviata (opened 3/29)

Renee Fleming in Rossini's Armida (opens 4/12)

Karita Mattila in Puccini's Tosca (returns 4/14)

But Don't Forget About...

Handel's Partenope at City Opera (4/3-4/17)

Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites at Julliard (4/21, 4/23, 4/25)

Schoenberg's Erwartung at Carnegie Hall (5/16)

zwoolfe@observer.com

SLIDESHOW: 10 Must-See Spring Movies >

Please Give is the fourth feature by Ms. Holofcener, who turned 50 last week, and whose career as “the West Coast Woody Allen” started with 1996’s Walking and Talking, and continued with 2001’s Lovely and Amazing and 2006’s Friends With Money. These low-budget films are all recognizably Holofcener, thanks to the very human (some could say neurotic) characters, pitch-perfect dialogue and occasionally cringe-worthy situations. Oh, they also all star Catherine Keener, who pops up again in Please Give as Kate, who, along with her husband, Alex (Oliver Platt), wants to expand her Manhattan apartment. They buy the place next door but have to wait for the cranky old lady (a.k.a. the current tenant) to die, becoming inexplicably entwined with her granddaughters (played by Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall) in the process. It’s a very funny movie that manages to deal with love, death, fidelity, liberal guilt, New Yorkers’ insane obsession with leaf peeping and, of course, real estate.

“Some people want to be able to know their neighbors, and some people make an effort not to so they don’t get stuck in conversation in the elevator,” said Ms. Holofcener, who grew up on the Upper West Side as a kid and then again through most of her 20s and early 30s (she now lives full time in L.A. with her twin 12-year-old sons). “We had such a low budget that it was difficult to do anything anywhere,” she said of shooting here in the city. “We had one person who wouldn’t move out of the center of the shot one day because of some crazy idea that we didn’t have a permit. Amanda Peet and I went over and confronted her, and Amanda said, ‘I’m the actress in the this movie and I’d really like to get this shot.’ And the woman was like, ‘Who gives a shit? Fuck you!’” Ms. Holofcener laughed. “I guess it’s a good story now that it’s over.”

The Observer wondered how it felt as a female director to watch Kathryn Bigelow make history when she won the Oscar this year. “It wasn’t like watching Obama win the presidency,” she said. “I didn’t cry or anything, but it was exciting. Maybe because it was so overdue, I didn’t feel that grateful. It’s stupid that it’s such a big deal, you know? It was a really good movie, and she deserved it, and this is a great step forward and all, but we still have a long way to go.”

SLIDESHOW: 10 Must-See Spring Movies >

svilkomerson@observer.com