Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation’s press. : MUSIC/DANCE

Opera Goes Shopping: The Washington Opera bought a nine-story former department store building at a bankruptcy auction this week and plans to convert it into a world-class opera house. The 40-year-old opera company, led by Placido Domingo, the new artistic director, said a local philanthropist, Betty Brown Casey, put up the $18.1-million purchase price. The building, virtually atop the Metro Center subway stop and mall, formerly belonged to Woodward & Lowthrop, a department store chain whose assets were auctioned in New York. Renovation and construction of the new opera house are estimated at $105 million, to be raised through private funding. However, city approval is required for the project. The company has performed for the last 25 years at Washington’s Kennedy Center.

Music Not Always Required: The White Oak Dance Project with Dana Reitz and Mikhail Baryshnikov will perform April 16-17 at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, the only Southern California engagement on the tour. The program, called “Solos--With Music and Without,” will include choreography by Mark Morris and Kevin O’Day to piano music by Dmitri Shostakovich. Among the scheduled selections, Baryshnikov will silently dance a 1995 work called “Unspoken Territory.”