PLAYING IT SAFE: Would you like the good news first or the bad? Since this bit of news is coming from a press release, you can imagine the good comes first: The Fort Worth Opera will finish in the black this year. Exactly how black is still to be determined, but the opera’s Development Director Suzy Williams says $25,000 sounds about right. The bad news is that the opera is unwilling to gamble with that financial position, and so it has decided to cut its family-friendly Hansel and Gretel planned for December. General Director Darren K. Woods says the move is dedicated to, “making sure that the 2010 Festival is well-funded and fantastic.” Unfortunately, that means all of the opera’s 2009 fantasticness was crammed into just a few days for 2009.

LOCAL CLASSICAL CDS: We’ve written a bit about the new CDs out by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. But Scott Cantrell reviews each of them today on dallasnews.com. If you’ve read Cantrell’s reviews over the last year of each orchestra, you know that he loves Jaap van Zweden and he also thinks highly of Miguel Harth-Bedoya. So it should come as no surprise that he is pretty fond of each disc, giving the DSO’s an A and the FWSO’s a B+. To be fair, his main critiques of the later disc are lacking liner notes and the music itself, not the performance.

SOUL PATROL!: If Taylor Hicks is the main draw for you to see the Grease tour playing at Bass Hall, you’d be wise to check the cast listing. The American Idol champ plays Teen Angel, and as you know, that only means one song. But according to dfw.com, he makes the most of those few, precious minutes. Reviewing for the site, Stephanie Allmon writes, “Decked out, Elvis-like, in a sequined suit, he descends from above a burger joint in an ice cream cone, then sings, hip-shakes and even blows his signature harmonica.” The show runs through the weekend.