Consider these gifts from L.A.

It’s that time of year again. Did someone say “Messiah”? “Nutcracker”? You want ‘em straight, funny, funky, dorky, deconstructed? They’re all ready for the picking.

There is no reason not to find new pleasure in uplifting works that speak to the holiday spirit, be it spiritual or just plain homey. But holiday entertainment has a way of taking over, and as the holiday season easily lasts six weeks -- beginning on Thanksgiving or before and lingering a few hung-over days past New Year’s -- the takeover is significant. That’s approximately 10% of the calendar year.

This is why the first couple of weeks of December at the Music Center this year are so unusual and remarkable. Along with all the annual holiday stuff, something has been happening that won’t be found anywhere else.

This weekend at Walt Disney Concert Hall, two of the greatest stage works in the Western canon, Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” are being given newly conceived interpretations that invite us into the texts in the purest possible way yet also bring the works into the context of the here and now -- with the here really being here. These are Los Angeles creations, and they are intense, probing, uncompromising, profound productions given stirring, impressive performances.

Meanwhile at the Ahmanson is a new musical, “Caroline, or Change.” It is an import from New York, and no one is suggesting that Tony Kushner’s text is Shakespearean or that Jeanine Tesori’s music approaches Wagner’s. “Caroline, or Change” is popular entertainment that speaks to us about our times; it provides both a sour and a sweet look at race relations and religion. Yet like Shakespeare and Wagner, this is theater with the ability to rise above reality into the realm of fantasy. Its creators understand, as Wagner and Shakespeare did, that the right kind of magic heightens rather than undermines reality.

In “Tristan,” a love potion serves as an ego delete key: It allows the lovers to lose themselves in each other, and in so doing dares us to look into the human heart’s forbidding, daunting depths. In “Macbeth,” witches’ magic potions remove inhibitions, allowing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, one of literature’s more intriguing marital couples, to indulge their lust for power.

Nothing could be more different than these two productions. The “Macbeth” at REDCAT is stripped down as far as it can go. Stephen Dillane, in a miraculous one-man performance directed by Travis Preston, gets inside Shakespeare’s language by letting the play enter him.

“Tristan,” as stunningly presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen -- with fine singers, powerful video images by Bill Viola and illuminating commentary by Peter Sellars -- is an attempt, in modern terms, to re-create Wagner’s “art of the future.” The composer cried out for whatever media were available to be put to use to immerse all an audience’s senses in a deep, boiling-hot theatrical bath.

The future is Disney Hall and is now. In this space -- where the sound of the orchestra, under the right circumstances, is so alive it excites the skin with soft caresses or with nasty, if exhilarating, aural pinches -- everything in Wagner’s radical score comes to life. Viola supplies searing visual counterpoint only available from a contemporary, visionary artist. Sellars then completes the experience with pre-concert poetic preparations for the encounter.

In “Caroline, or Change,” the magic is moon magic. The moon sings, as do other inanimate objects. Social change is in the air in Louisiana in 1963, and someone (or something) has to say so.

This show charts the slow melting of Caroline’s heart -- the heart, toughened by much scar tissue, of a black maid in a Jewish household. And Caroline has to reach out to the heart of a smart, sad, manipulative (and funny) young boy.

Returning to “Caroline” the other night -- a bad night in which Tonya Pinkins practically lost her voice -- only increased my admiration for this show, and especially for its score, which on first hearing gave the impression of being high-level pastiche. In fact, Tesori is more than an excellent musical mimic; she inventively uses different pop music (and a few classical) devices to give each character a distinct musical voice.

All this magic didn’t come out of nowhere. CalArts built REDCAT so it could do things like “Macbeth.” The beauty of “Tristan” is the result of Salonen’s 20 years of work with the Philharmonic and his consistent reaching out to Sellars and Viola. We can credit the presence of “Caroline” to Gordon Davidson’s longtime championing of Kushner.

But I’m not sure how much we can thank the Music Center. As an entity, it not only provides no vision but has done absolutely nothing even to exploit what comes its way. Last weekend, I found myself practically directing traffic from Disney Hall to REDCAT, since out-of-town “Tristan”-goers had no idea about “Macbeth.” How can it be that a world-class performing arts center has a world-class festival in its midst and doesn’t even recognize it?

But let this weekend be a wake-up call. “Change come fast and change come slow,” sings the moon in “Caroline, or Change,” “but change come.”