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Mozart Marathon

January 27 will be Wolfgang Amadeus’s 250th birthday, and if he were alive today, who knows that this musical prodigy wouldn’t be teaching Lloyd Webber how to write and R. Kelly how to rap and sitting in behind the drums to show Meg White how it’s done. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is celebrating with a "Mozart Marathon" of three 90-minute concerts on Sunday January 29, with the Borromeo String Quartet and the Gardner Chamber Orchestra and soloists including Paula Robison and Kim Kaskashian in violin sonatas, string quartets, a flute concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante K.364, and Symphony No. 40. The Gardner is at 280 the Fenway, Boston | January 29 @ 10 am and 1 and 4 pm | $20; $14 seniors; $10 college students [includes museum admission] | 617.278.5156 or http://www.gardnermuseum.org/.

West Bank story?

The American Repertory Theatre imports directors as if it were some thespian Pier One. Next up is Israeli Gadi Roll, helming his first American production: that iambic precursor to West Side Story, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But if there’s to be an Israeli/Palestinian gloss on the feuding Verona clans of the Bard’s tragic paean to teen love and bad timing, we haven’t heard about it. We’ve just peeped at a cast list that includes ART favorites Remo Airaldi, Thomas Derrah, Jeremy Geidt, Will LeBow, and Karen MacDonald, as well as returning Oedipus John Campion. Avery Glymph, whose New York credits include The Tempest with Patrick Stewart, plays Romeo to the Juliet of recent Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts grad Annika Boras. Director Roll, incoming associate director of Great Britain’s New Belgrade Theatre, teaches at RADA as well as at Tel-Aviv’s Bait Zvi School of Stage and Cinematic Art. Romeo and Juliet is at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St, Cambridge | February 4–March 25 | $37-$74; $15 students | 617.547.8300 or http://www.amrep.org/.

Hot Handel

Mark Morris’s epic L’Allegro, il Moderato ed il Penseroso hasn’t been seen in Boston since 1994, so it’s overdue for a return visit. Set to Handel’s 1740 oratorio of the same name (which drew on two poems by John Milton), and sporting 30 dances, 24 dancers, and 21 set changes, not to mention an excellent performance by Craig Smith and Emmanuel Music, the two-hour pastorale brought the Wang Theatre house down 12 years ago, and it’ll likely do the same when Mark Morris Dance Group brings it back to the Wang, 270 Tremont St, Boston | January 20 @ 7:30 pm; January 21 @ 8 pm; January 22 @ 3 pm | $35-$85 | 800.447.7400 or http://www.celebrityseries.org/.