Here’s HELEN MUSA’s latest wrap of all-things-arts. It’s “Arts in the City”…

SUPERSTAR Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez is coming to Australia – and Canberra – for the first time. He has won Peru’s highest honour, the Gran Cruz de la Orden El Sol, for having founded Sinfonía por el Perú, an inclusive social project that operates orchestras and choirs throughout Peru to help the most vulnerable children and adolescents. Flórez will perform at Llewellyn Hall on November 7.

THE fourteenth annual “Come Alive” Festival of Museum Theatre, the brainchild of drama teacher and critic Peter Wilkins, will be produced by Lexi Sekuless Productions and hosted by the National Library and the National Portrait Gallery. Students from secondary schools and colleges visit a museum and select a character, an object or an event that inspires them to research, devise and perform a performance piece inspired by the museum. Mill Theatre, Fyshwick, 3.30pm and 6pm October 30-November 3.

THE Orava Quartet and Polish pianist Aleksandra Świgut will perform a program of Chopin, Penderecki and Kilar, which commemorates the tour in Australia of Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski in 1904. National Gallery of Australia, November 9.

THE final CSO Chamber Ensemble matinee for the year will be a celebration of woodwinds, featuring the CSO’s principal woodwind players. Albert Hall, October 29. 

WORLD War I soldier-settler, farmer and playwright, Millicent Armstrong’s four-act drama, “Fire”, will be given a public first reading at Gunning Court House on October 29 under the umbrella of the Gunning Arts Festival. Published in a serialised version on the front page of “The Daily Telegraph” in 1923, it has never been performed. 

SINGER-songwriter Damien Leith will perform “Roy Orbison Orchestrated” at Canberra Theatre, November 3. 

GUITAR Trek members Matt Withers and Callum Henshaw will showcase new Australian music for guitar, including works by composers Ross Edwards, Richard Charlton, Nat Bartsch, Sally Greenaway and Elena Kats-Chernin at Wesley Music Centre, November 4. 

MUSICA da Camera’s final concert this year will be “An Afternoon of Baroque”, directed by John Ma, whose concerts are known for innovative and sometimes wild playing. “We guarantee you won’t drift off to sleep,” he says. Holy Covenant Church, Cook, November 4 and Gunning Shire Hall November 5.