Charleston, S.C.: THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL @ Spoleto USA

[caption id="attachment_77" align="aligncenter" width="810"] Photo by Alastair Muir[/caption] The ultimate femme fatale returns in a staging by the provocative director Calixto Bieito in his U.S. opera debut, which opens San Francisco Opera's summer season. SAN FRANCISCO--Hailed as "gritty and fierce", Bieito’s vision of the classic opera sets it in 1970s Spain, post-Franco's rule has been hailed as "tough, dark....and intelligent".  The production includes SF Opera favorites Irene Roberts and Ginger Costa-Jackson double cast as the gypsy heroine and Brian Jagde as Don Jose. It also marks the debut of many of its cast and its two conductors Carlo Montanaro and Jordi Benacer. All performances will be held at the War Memorial Opera House on Van Ness Avenue.  May 27 - July 2, 2016    

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This year’s Gilmore offers 84 musical events with more than 100 musicians participating. The festival draws an audience of thousands to the arts-friendly university city from around the globe. Though no new Gilmore Artist is the focus for this year’s festival, Yefim Bronfman is highlighted in a recital of works by Prokofiev on April 29. He will share the spotlight with three past Gilmore Artists — Gerstein (with the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra), Fliter (solo and with Gerstein), and Blechacz (with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra). Also taking a prominent role in the 2016 Gilmore is the versatile French composer Michel Legrand, who is to perform his own piano concerto in a world premiere with the Kalamazoo Symphony. Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham is to present a recital of Schumann songs. And two Gilmore Young Artists for 2016 will have essential parts to play: San Francisco native Daniel Hsu, 18, is scheduled to perform in Lansing with the Lansing Symphony Orchestra, and Charleston, S.C., nativeMicah McLaurin, 21,  is to join the Battle Creek Symphony for a concerto performance. Both are veteran prize winners and students of the Curtis Institute. Solo recitals happen all day, each day, at the festival. Among prominently featured pianists this year are Dick Hyman, Bruce Hornsby, Jeremy Denk, Imogen Cooper, Lori Sims, Llŷr Williams, Nelson Freire, Richard Goode, Till Fellner, and Dejan Lazic. Chamber music events will feature the Morgenstern Trio, Mantra (using electronic music), Gilmore Festival Chamber Orchestra, Siskind-Rathbun Duo, and Anderson & Roe Piano Duo.Go here for the full schedule. Jazz and pop music are well represented in the 2016 program, and Tony Bennett will find a huge audience awaiting his songs. More options? Twelve of the performers are to lead free morning master classes, always popular. Lectures are offered by experts on such topics as Stockhausen and German song cycles. Five films addressing musicians and musical subjects are scattered throughout the festival. And ten performances of Murder For Two, a 90-minute musical comedy for two actors who both play the piano, will be staged in conjunction with Farmers Alley Theatre. An ancillary dimension of the Gilmore has been its Rising Stars series. Gifted newcomers under 30 are invited to Kalamazoo each year for solo recitals that are spread throughout the fall and winter season, outside the festival calendar. Although the names of the young artists are not yet well known (this year’s roster included newcomers from China, France, Israel, Russia, Germany and the U.S.), the list of previous rising stars includes many who went on to important solo careers, among them Lang Lang, Jonathan Biss, Yuja Wang, Orion Weiss, Adam Neiman, Natasha Paremski, and Christopher Taylor. A bonus delight for those who attend these Rising Stars programs is watching the pianists gain increasing international prominence as time goes by. For more information about the Gilmore and the 2016 festival, go here.

LOS ANGELES- Often dubbed CelloFest, the biggest names in the cello world — from Zuill Bailey and Truls Mørk toSol Gabetta and Yo-Yo Ma — will gather with students and fans on the West Coast to share their insatiable appetite for all things cello. The immersion festival involves the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Emerson and Calder Quartets, and the LA Chamber Orchestra under the auspices of USC.

A typical program, on May 17 at Walt Disney Concert Hall, features “dozens and dozens” of virtuoso cellists from around the world along with a new work called Threads & Tracesfor mass cello ensemble. It was commissioned by the LA Phil from British-born composer Anna Clyne, who is drawn to unique collaborative challenges. She is composer-in-residence for the Orchestre National d’Ile de France and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra after similar appointments with the Cabrillo Festival and the Chicago Symphony. The festival involves significant student opportunities; its name honors the great mid-20th century Russian-born cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, who often performed with pianist Arthur Rubinstein and violinist Jascha Heifetz, and who taught for many years at USC. (Some events are free.)

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May 16-June 5: Full details  DALLAS- The Dallas Symphony Orchestra and two of classical music’s youngest breakout stars will play a central role in the city’s second annual Soluna International Music & Arts Festival, which sprawls throughout the performing and installation spaces of Dallas’ downtown arts district. The 23-year-old composer and pianist Conrad Tao — who was first commissioned by the DSO to write a work observing the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy — will be back to perform a solo recital. And then, in festival-capping final concerts June 3-5, Tao’s latest orchestral work, Alice, will receive its world premiere led by DSO music director Jaap van Zweden. Meanwhile, DSO assistant conductor Karina Canellakis, who has been making the rounds with major orchestra debuts, will conduct a novel program called “Remix: Orchestral Myth and Legend” (May 20-21). It involves the world premiere of a multimedia component — Turo, a film by New York-based artist Anton Ginzburg. The film is designed to coordinate with live performances of Sibelius’s Pohjola’s Daughter and Wagner’s Forest Murmurs. The festival crosses freely into art and science; the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is offering a seminar, “Music and the Brain.”

May 20-28: Full details

Music director James Conlon brings his extraordinary 37-year tenure as music director of the Queen City’s choral festival to an end this season, after which the gloriously eccentricred-brick Victorian Gothic revival hall that was built to house it (along with historic civic functions and wrestling matches) will be closed for extensive renovation. For his final fling, Conlon has chosen to revisit favorite achievements from past seasons, including a concert performance of Verdi’s Otello on May 21 (with Gregory Kunde in the title role, Tamara Wilson as Desdemona, and Egils Silins as Iago). On May 27, Conlon will lead Dvořák’s cantata Stabat Mater, which he led the first time he conducted it at the festival, in 1978, as an up-and-coming maestro of 28. New works by American composers Julia Adolphe and Alvin Singleton, both of whom Conlon has long championed, have been commissioned for the festival, which extends as usual over two long weekends. The 145-member chorus is led by Robert Porco.

May 21-June 26: Full details

A typical Opera Theatre of St. Louis festival season allows you to catch a world premiere, check out talented young American singers before they become household names, and remind yourself of the pleasures of hearing opera sung in English. With its thrust stage, clear acoustics, and good sightlines, the Loretto-Hilton Center, in suburban Webster Groves, makes opera an intimate experience. AGlyndebourne-style ambience prevails in miniature: Following the performances, patrons gather for snacks and libations in a striped party tent on the green adjacent to the theater. The 41st festival season will begin May 21 with a new production of Puccini’s La bohème, conducted byEmanuele Andrizzi and directed by Ron Daniels.May 28 will bring Verdi’s Macbeth, with baritone Roland Wood in the title role and sopranoJulie Makerov as his power-hungry Lady; Stephen Lordconducts, and Lee Blakeley directs. Strauss’ Ariadne on Naxos is next, with Rory Macdonald pacing a production both staged and choreographed by Seán Curran (June 5). This year’s world premiere will be Shalimar the Clown, opening June 11, with music by Jack Perla and libretto byRajiv Joseph, based on the novel by Salman Rushdieabout an ill-fated marriage between Muslim and Hindu entertainers in a folk troupe. OTSL artistic director James Robinson will direct, and Jayce Ogren will conduct.

May 23-June 11: Full details

Going even bigger — and more social — after last year’s city-wide celebration of new music, the 2016 NY Phil Biennial will last three weeks and spread to eight locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn with 12 presenting partners including Yale, Aspen, and Interlochen. Expect post-concert meet-ups with many of the composers and artists and a #biennialist social media contest. Music director Alan Gilbert and composer-in-residence Esa-Pekka Salonen have planned the event to feature many world and U.S. premieres of symphonic, solo, and mixed-media works, as well as electroacoustic and opera. Among the first-ever offerings: Gin, Jazz and Dreams by composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel (JACK Quartet at the 92^nd St. Y);Shared Madness, consisting of very short works by more than 30 contemporary composers (violinist Jennifer Koh at National Sawdust); and the new Trombone Concerto by William Bolcom (principal trombone Joseph Alessi, conducted by Gilbert with the NY Phil at Geffen Hall.)

May 26-June 29: Festival de Saint-Denis – Full details

For Gothic splendor, skip the routine performances of Baroque warhorses at Sainte-Chapelle and ride the No. 13 Métro line north to Saint-Denis, a working-class suburb just over the city line. Looming above the town is the 12th-century Saint-Denis Cathedral Basilica, housing the remains of every French king since Clovis; it’s well worth a visit even without music. In its 30th year, the Saint-Denis Festival fills the huge space with major orchestras, with an emphasis on French artists; smaller-scale programs take place in the adjacent Légion d’honneur, a former cloister. The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, under Mikko Franck, opens the festival with Mahler’s Third Symphony (May 26-27). The gifted young conductor Raphaël Pichon will lead his Ensemble Pygmalion in Bach’s Magnificat and Mendelssohn’s42nd Psalm (May 31). Donizetti’sRequiem (June 8) and the final act of Stockhausen’s Samstag aus licht (June 17) venture into more unusual repertoire. A recital by the Basilica’s organist, Pierre Pincemalle, offers a chance to hear the first instrumentcreated by France’s most revered organ maker, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll(June 12). The festival concludes with the traditional Beethoven Ninth Symphony, with Michele Mariotti leading the Orchestre National de France (June 23-24).

May 27-June 12: Full details

Among the 33 concerts presented at this summer’s Spoleto Festival USA, eleven will come from the Bank of America Chamber Music series, programmed each year by director Geoff Nuttall of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. With Porgy and Bess serving as the Festival’s centerpiece, the Chamber Music Series will feature occasional selections from the opera performed by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, violinist Livia Sohn, and pianist Pedja Muzijevic. Costanzo, who is making his rounds of the world’s opera houses — notably, Philip Glass’ Akhnaten in 2015 at the English National Opera — will perform on the first three programs of the series. In addition to Gershwin, Costanzo will offer some Handel, a selection from Suzanne Farrin’s dramatic cantata La dolce morte, which was written for him, and Argentinian composerOsvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae, a 2002 Spoleto USA commission. The chamber series will also feature members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet and assorted guests. Chamber concerts take place in the city’s historic Dock Street Theatre, offering festival goers an intimate opportunity to hear an eclectic mixture of lesser-known works and newly commissioned pieces. The festival’s co-mingling of opera, chamber music, and modern works is further augmented by the City of Charleston’s concurrent Piccolo Spoleto Festival, which permeates the city with hundreds of additional events and activities, many admission-free.

May 27-July 3: Full details

The venerable War Memorial Opera House does not sit empty during the summer months; rather, it plays host to full-scale productions of standard and not-so-standard repertoire, with interesting (if not invariably name-brand) casts, conductors, and stage directors. This year’s summer opera fest opens with the U.S. operatic debut of bad-boy Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito and his reportedly steamy production of Bizet’sCarmen, arriving from Barcelona via the English National Opera. Alternating as the gypsy femme fatale will be mezzo-sopranos Irene Roberts and Ginger Costa-Jackson, paired with the Don José of tenors Brian Jagde and Maxim Aksenov, respectively. Carlo Montanaro will share baton duties with SFO resident conductor Jordi Bernàcer (May 27-July 3). The company also will present a free live simulcast of Carmen July 2 at AT&T Park. SFO music director Nicola Luisotti will conduct a revival of Verdi’s Don Carlo, which includes role debuts from tenor Michael Fabiano in the title part and soprano Ana María Martínez as Elisabetta. Other cast members include baritone Mariusz Kwiecień, bass René Pape, and mezzo-soprano Nadia Krasteva; Pape will cede the role of King Philip II to bass-baritone Ferruccio Furlanetto for the final performance (June 12-29). A distinguished former exponent of the titular heroine in Janáček’s Jenůfa, soprano Karita Mattila will make her role debut as Jenůfa’s domineering stepmother Kostelnička in a production of the opera that stars soprano Malin Byström as Jenůfa, tenor William Burdenas Laca, and tenor Scott Quinn as Števa. Jiří Bělohlávek is the conductor, Olivier Tambosi the stage director (June 14-July 1).

CHARLESTON--The Spoleto Festival kicks off its 40th Anniversary season performing the Gershwin classic in the city which inspired librettist DuBose Heyward. David Herskovits, whose Mamba's Daughters sold out during 1999's Spoleto Festival, returns at the helm of this production. Scenic designer Johnathan Lee's sets promise to evoke the feel of early Charleston that Heyward drew from. Portraying the titular, troubled pair is “ravishing, rolling baritone" (Opera News) Lester Lynch and “radiant and compelling" (The Washington Post) Alyson Cambridge. This Porgy is a fitting celebration of Charleston and its rich history on the occasion of the Festival's 40th birthday.

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May 30-July 9: Versailles Festival 2016 – Full details

To experience the French High Baroque, take a commuter train in the other direction to the placid bourgeois town of Versailles. No more than a ten-minute walk from the station,the palace lies at the end of a tree-lined avenue, a splendid, improbable mirage. Under Louis XIV, the original 15th-century chateau was expanded and enhanced with an immense tract of gardens and groves, and a huge and intricate system of waterworks. These embellishments united with architecture, the decorative arts, music, drama, and dance to bolster the Sun King’s reputation as a near deity. While performances take place year-round in the Opera House (completed less than 20 years before the Revolution), the Royal Chapel, and the Hall of Mirrors, the Festival expands its offerings into the vast gardens, the fountains, and more intimate venues like theGrand Trianon. Installations by Olafur Eliasson, this summer’s artist-in-residence, should add an unexpected note to the historic property. In the 700-seat jewel-box Opéra Royal you can see recitals by Cecilia Bartoli (May 31),Patricia Petibon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra (June 14), and Lang Lang (July 5). But to best appreciate the exquisite theater, see a Baroque opera. Hervet Niquet’s Le Concert Spirituel performs Boismortier’s comic Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse (June 11-12), andCollegium 1704 from Bratislava stages Vivaldi’s Arsilda, regina di Ponto (June 23 and 25). Even without fluency in French you’ll get the jokes in Moliere’s play Le bourgeois gentilhomme, of the Comédie Française, with Lully’s incidental music directed byChristophe Coin (June 3-5). Performances of sacred music in the Royal Chapel include the Gabrieli Consort in Handel’s Dixit Dominus (June 4) and Handel’s Ode to Saint Cecilia by the Kammerorchester Basel and the Leipzig Radio Choir (June 11). In the Hall of Mirrors you can attend aSerenade Royale, a 40-minute program of Baroque dance performed every Saturday at 6:30. From 8:30-10:50 attendees can stroll the gardens and groves, enjoying the extensive fountain display, with lights and (recorded) music, ending with fireworks just before 11. And on the final evening, the Petit Trianon, the pavilion built for Louis XV’s mistress, is the headquarters for a gala event, with mini concerts throughout the property and an open buffet (July 9), inspired by the royal fêtes champêtres of Versailles’s heyday.

June 2-July 2: ManiFeste 2016 – Full details

For something more current, IRCAM, Paris’ institute for music research founded in 1970 by Pierre Boulez, presents ManiFeste, a series of concerts and training institutes devoted to contemporary and electronic music. The 28 events include concerts of music bySalvatore Sciarrino, Beat Furrer, Helmut Lachenmann, and Rebecca Saunders, among many others, along with dance and mixed media events. A highlight is Heiner Goebbel’s Ruhrtriennial production of Harry Partch’sDelusion of the Fury, taking place in the historic Grande halle de La Villette, a 19th-century wholesale market pavilion now part of the music complex that includes Jean Nouvel’s new Philharmonie. Go early to have time to check out the new building and the music museum, or just to enjoy the park. Other concerts take place throughout Paris in newer venues like Renzo Piano’s Pompidou Center and the shabby-chic Bouffes du Nord.

June 3-July 2: Full details

Housed in the oceanside town of Rockport, an hour outside of Boston, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival will open its summer season June 3 with the young award-winning Parker String Quartet (recently installed on the faculty of Harvard University) in performance with the venerable pianist Menahem Pressler, founder of the Beaux Arts Trio. Visiting artists include theNEXUS percussion ensemble, Trio Solisti, and pianists Lise de la Salle, George Li, Jeremy Denk, andKiril Gerstein. One unusual highlight, on June 12, is the Dünya Collective’s coffeehouse opera Othello in the Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black Eunuch, a mashup of three Othello sources including Shakespeare and Turkish writer Reşad Ekrem Koçu’s 1933 Kızlarağası’nın Piçi (The Bastard of the Chief Black Eunuch). The libretto is by New England Conservatory music historian Robert Labaree with music by composer-performer Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, performed on traditional Turkish instruments.

June 16-July 29: Full details 

With presidential politics gobbling up the headlines this year, the nation’s second-oldest opera company is right in step with the zeitgeist as it unveils a world premiere set in the nation’s capital and rife with political intrigue.Fellow Travelers, with music by composer Gregory Spearsand libretto by playwright Greg Pierce (based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel), takes place at the height (nadir?) of the McCarthy era, in 1950s Washington. A young college graduate’s forbidden love affair with a State Department official devolves into deceit, betrayal, and worse. Aaron Blake, Joseph Lattanzi, and Devon Guthrie star. The first of eight performances is June 17. Playing in repertory will be more familiar fare: Strauss’Die Fledermaus, with Nicole Cabell, Nicole Haslett, andZach Borichevsky (opens June 16); Beethoven’s Fidelio,with Christine Goerke, Russell Thomas, and Nmon Ford(July 7), and Puccini’s Tosca, with Evelina Dobračeva,Marcello Giordani, and Gordon Hawkins (July 23). Performances will be given at the company’s temporary venue, the Aronoff Center for the Arts, while its regular home, the venerable Music Hall, undergoes renovation. Stars from the 2016 season will present a free Opera in the Parks concert of opera and musical theater favorites,June 26 at Washington Park.

Carlos Kalmar conducts the Midwest premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Whisper, Echo, A Cry, and the Grant Park Chorus makes its season debut with Michael Torke’s dazzling Book of Proverbs. Also, Beethoven’s First Symphony.

June 18-26: Musique & Vin au Clos Vougeot – Full details

Away from Provence and on a different scale, two choice, intimate festivals exemplify a more typical French approach to summer music festivals. Rather than grand international events drawing crowds of international visitors, these are small gatherings on a local level that enhance the music in combination with the other senses. From June 18-26, enjoy fine Burgundy wine and chamber music at Musique et Vin au Clos Vougeot, founded in 2008 by Met Opera concertmasterDavid Chan. For nine days the storied chateau (no longer in active production) becomes headquarters for wine tastings and concerts. Most evenings begin with an optional wine tasting at 5 p.m.; the concerts begin at 6:30 and end well before sunset, in time for dinner. The festival opener is a free performance at the Halles de Beaune, Burgundy’s main wine auction house, with the Orchestre des climats introducing the winner of a Young Artist prize, this year soprano Hyesang Park (June 18). Chamber music played by Met Opera Orchestra members and friends fills the week, and the closing orchestral concert, conducted by Charles Dutoit, with soloists Ildar Abdrazakov andGautier Capuçon, will be followed by a gala dinner and wine auction at the chateau. As a happy local journalist put it: “It’s pleasant to apply oneself to the understanding of these two forms of creativity in the company of musicians, winemakers, and our companions.”

June 18-Aug. 21: Full details

Overlooking the mighty St. Lawrence River, Domaine Forget (pronounced “For-zhay”) is located on a 150-acre park in St-Irenée, a two-hour drive northeast of Quebec City. Here, the International Music Festival offers about three dozen concerts, mostly on weekends, spread out over the summer months. This summer’s featured artists include the Quebec Symphony Orchestra (July 23), the chamber orchestras I Musici de Montréal (August 6) and Les Violons du Roy(August 21), guitarist Pepe Romero (July 9) and pianistsMarc-André Hamelin (August 13) and Jan Lisiecki (July 16) – all performing in the 600-seat Françoys-Bernier Hall. There’s also a Sunday brunch concert series on the terrace of Joseph-Rouleau Pavillion, as well as masterclasses and a sculpture garden. On-site accommodation is available at Les Studios du Domaine. And in the vicinity, there are plenty of hotels, inns, B&Bs, and restaurants. Domaine Forget is located in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, rich in French-Canadian history and culture. But don’t worry if your French is a little rusty: people in Quebec’s hospitality industry usually speak some English.

June 24-July 17: Full details

Ordinarily one would not expect opera to thrive amid the Iowa cornfields, but DMMO is no ordinary opera company, and it is thriving just fine, thank you. One of the heartland’s leading summer opera festivals has earned distinction for presenting big works on a relatively small scale, with mostly American casts, conductors, and production teams, in a cozy, 467-seat theater at the Blank Performing Arts Center on the Simpson College campus just outside Des Moines. DMMO presents at least one opera new to its repertory each season. For the 44^th festival summer, that opera is Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, presented in its French version, with Gary Thor Wedow conducting (opening July 2). Verdi’s Falstaff opens the season June 24 with baritoneWayne Tigges as the fat knight, led by conductor David Neely. Soprano Sydney Mancasola will portray the pleasure-loving heroine of Massenet’s Manon, under Neely’s baton (June 25). DMMO will go off-site to theScience Center of Iowa in Des Moines for performances of Philip Glass’ one-act opera Galileo Galilei, July 7 and 10.

June 25-July 30: Full details

In the summer months at Guilford College, the dorms, buildings, and historic Dana Auditorium are filled with students and faculty of the Eastern Music Festival. Now in its 55th season of bringing world-class artists to the three cities of the Piedmont Triad and providing educational groundwork for orchestra students, the 2016 season runs from June 27 to July 30 and features two world premieres – a viola concerto by the 27-year-old American composer Julia Adolphe, performed onJuly 16 by Cynthia Phelps, principal viola of the New York Philharmonic, and a yet-to-be-named work by renowned composer, conductor, and pianist André Previn on July 23. The Festival Orchestra will collaborate with guest artists such as Awadagin Pratt performing Brahms’ First Piano Concerto July 2, William Wolfram in Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto July 30, and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, who will open the season June 30with a solo recital. In addition to the Festival Orchestra, EMF faculty perform Sunday afternoon chamber music programs on the campuses of Guilford College and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Both are within easy driving distance of downtown Greensboro, which offers quality hotel and restaurant choices.

June 25-Aug. 6: Full details

Set against a lush Maine summer backdrop, the Bowdoin International Music Festival returns this season with the theme of so-called (Re)Invention. Led by David and Phillip Ying, members of the Ying Quartet (based at Eastman School of Music), the six-week summer festival on the beautiful campus of Bowdoin College features a rich program of chamber music standards as well as contemporary works by composers such as John Zorn and Caroline Shaw. According to the Yings, “reinvention is always at the heart of composition, performance, and teaching – everything the festival is about. It also characterizes the growth process that keeps the festival relevant and dynamic.” Musicians from ensembles such as the Jupiter and Ying Quartets, the Houston and Detroit Symphonies, the New York Philharmonic, and major conservatories come together with gifted pre-professional musicians for more than 100 performances. The festival’s Monday Showcase series will feature five different string quartets including the JACK Quartet (July 25) in a program of works ranging from the 14th-century Machaut, 15th-century Rodericus, and 16th-century Gesualdo to contemporary works by Zorn and Shaw. Shaw’s Ritornello 2.sq.2.j, which the JACK will perform, is part of a larger ongoing multimedia project in which the JACK has repeatedly participated, including a well-received 2015 concert at Lincoln Center. Other quartets include the Shanghai, Ariel, and Jupiter. A variety of chamber configurations is featured on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the Gamper Festival for Contemporary Music runs July 28-31, with works to be announced. Advanced students will perform on “Artists of Tomorrow” concerts throughout the summer.

June 30-July 20: Festival d’Aix – Full details

Situated half an hour north of Marseille, the ancient Roman spa town of Aix is host to the most prestigious of France’s summer festivals. Opera, orchestral and choral concerts, chamber music, and recitals comprise a very busy schedule, with over 60 events in five venues. High-profile opera offerings include Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Katie Mitchell (who directed Written on Skin in 2013). Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts thePhilharmonia Orchestra and a dream cast headed by Stéphane Degout and Barbara Hannigan. (July 2-16). This year’s Mozart opera is Così fan tutte, in a new production byChristophe Honoré and the resident Freiburg Baroque Orchestra conducted by Louis Langrée or Jérémie Rhorer (Jun 30-July 19). Handel’s Il Trionfo del tempo e del disingannounites conductor Emmanuelle Haïm and her ensemble, Le Concert d’Astrée, with the provocative Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski (July 1-14). The world premiere ofMoneim Adwan’s Kalila wa Dimna, based on a fourth-century collection of didactic fables considered a classic in the Arab world, will widen the musical vocabulary beyond Europe (July 1-17). And Peter Sellarscontinues his association with the Festival with a staging of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Symphony of Psalms, with Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra (all productions provide surtitles in French and English). Plenty of chamber music and recitals by well-known artists and Academy students fill out a very busy month. Just be sure to leave time to enjoy a cool beverage in a cafe on the tree-lined Cours Mirabeau, with Roman fountains along its way, or an excursion into the lavender-and-herb-scented countryside.

June 30-Aug. 21: Full details

High in the Colorado Rockies, opera performances play a relatively minor role in this jam-packed classical music festival that is a mecca for performers, pre-professional music students, and audiences alike. Still, the artistic level requires no apologies, and the repertoire is nicely varied. Opera Center director Edward Berkeley will stage Puccini’s La bohème (opens July 14) and Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict (Aug. 16). Representing contemporary American opera will be William Bolcom’s A Wedding, a comedic drama from 2004 based on the 1978 Robert Altman film, with libretto by Altman and Arnold Weinstein (July 28). The conductors will be Ramón Tebar,Johannes Debus, and Patrick Summers, respectively.

July 1-Aug. 14: Full details

Opera is always a prime component of this ever-ambitious, seven-week cornucopia of culture at the gleaming, Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Performing Arts Center at Bard College in bucolic Annandale-on-Hudson in New York’s Hudson Valley. “Puccini and His World” is the theme of the 27th Bard Music Festival, its final two weekends devoted to exploring the Puccini paradox – 11 concerts of orchestral, choral, vocal and chamber music in all. The big highlight will be a rare revival of Iris, by Puccini’s sometime rival, Pietro Mascagni, which ushered in a wave of fin-de-siècle operatic exotica; Leon Botstein, the festival’s co-artistic director and indefatigable repertoire adventurer, will conduct. Other Puccini-era operas will be given – some complete, others in excerpts – including Jules Massenet’s La Navarraise, Arrigo Boito’s Nerone,Alfredo Catalani’s Loreley, and the final act of Puccini’s Turandot (in the Luciano Berio completion), paired with Ferruccio Busoni’s setting of the same tale.

July 1-Aug. 27: Full details

Santa Fe Opera’s summer festival seasons attract opera lovers from all parts of the planet, as much for the diverse repertoire and top-level performances as the magnificent setting: an alluring aerie of an amphitheater perched atop a mesa in the mountains of northern New Mexico. A stage house open at the back affords breathtaking views of high-desert sunsets that more than one stage director has worked into his or her show. Almost every Santa Fe Opera season comes with a world premiere, but not this time around. Even so, the 60^th-anniversary schedule offers a canny combination of standard repertory and less-often-performed operas, and the roster is full of performers worth hearing. Barber’s Vanessa and Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette will receive Santa Fe Opera premieres. Vanessa’s libretto (byGian Carlo Menotti) may be slushy hokum, but the score is prime lyrical Barber, and soprano Erin Wall should be entrancing in the title role; Leonard Slatkin conducts, and James Robinson directs (opens July 30). SopranoAilyn Pérez and tenor Stephen Costello portray the star-crossed lovers in Gounod’s Gallic tragédie lyrique, with the company’s chief conductor, Harry Bicket, presiding (July 16). Puccini’s spaghetti western, La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), will open the season July 1, in a co-production with English National Opera that stars soprano Patricia Racette as the pistol-packing Minnie;Emmanuel Villaume is the conductor. Rounding out the season will be a new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, conducted by John Nelson and directed by Ron Daniels (July 2), and Richard Strauss’ “conversation piece with music,” Capriccio, conducted by Leo Hussain and directed by Tim Albery (July 23). A footnote to the Strauss: Capriccio had its American premiere at Santa Fe Opera one year after the company’s maiden season in 1957. Founding director John Crosbyremained a tireless champion of Strauss’ music throughout his tenure, conducting every one of the composer’s operas save Die Frau ohne Schatten. 

July 4-17: Music & Beyond – Full details

July 21-Aug. 3: Ottawa Chamberfest – Full details

Ottawa isn’t just the national capital of Canada, it’s also a musical capital. With two major classical music festivals, summertime in Ottawa offers more concerts than you can shake a stick at. Music & Beyond is first out of the gate, with an eclectic mix of programming. The Vienna Piano Trio plays three programs (July 7, 8, and 9). The vocal ensembleChanticleer also makes an appearance (July 16). And the province of Quebec is well represented this summer, with the Montreal-based vocal ensemble Studio de musique ancienne (July 7), Les Violons du Roy (July 9) and I Musici de Montréal (July 12) For many years, the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival – or “Chamberfest,” as it’s come to be called – was billed as the largest such event in the world. It’s an intense festival, with multiple concerts daily, spread over a two-week period, in churches and concert halls all over Ottawa. Full details of this summer’s Chamberfest have yet to be announced. But, as in past years, Canadians will be well represented in solo recitals and small ensembles. Highlights for the 2016 event include Haitian-born Canadian soprano Marie-Josée Lord’s festival-opening production called Femmes, embodying the spirits of Delilah, Musetta, even Piaf (July 21); the Gryphon Piano Trio with baritone Russell Braun (July 22); a Chopin recital by pianist Janina Fialkowska (July 29); and Bach’sMass in B Minor, in a small-scale performance by Arion Baroque Orchestra (August 3). In addition to all these concerts, there’s more to recommend Ottawa as a cultural destination. Museums are plentiful – including the National Gallery of Canadaand the Canadian Museum of History. Canada’s Parliament Buildings are open daily for tours – and every morning on Parliament Hill there’s a British-style “Changing of the Guard.”

July 8-Aug. 27: Full details

Best known as the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, this sleepy village in Otsego County in upstate New York comes alive every summer with opera and song, courtesy of the redoubtable Glimmerglass Opera. Performances in the Alice Busch Opera Theater include classic American musical theater works along with operatic favorites old and new: it’s small-town opera with big-town class. A new production of Puccini’s La bohème in the style of the Belle Époque will launch this year’s Glimmerglass season. Christopher Alden will direct Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, with baritone Greer Grimsleydispensing close shaves as the demon barber. Rossini’s comic opera The Thieving Magpie will receive a rare U.S. staging. A new production by artistic and general directorFrancesca Zambello of Robert Ward’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Crucible will complete the mainstage offerings. Season add-ons include Sondheim in conversation with Jamie Bernstein (July 30), and recitals by soprano Deborah Voigt (Aug. 5) and mezzo-sopranoJamie Barton (Aug. 12).

July 8-Aug. 20: Full details

An Unlikely Muse, a staged biographical drama by Harry Clark about Brahms’ late-life surge of creativity upon hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, will receive its East Coast premiere at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.  Pianist André Watts, clarinetist David Shifrin, actor Jack Gilpin, and assorted chamber musicians will appear. (The artists also take the work to  Chamber Music Northwest July 29 and the Ravinia Festival Aug. 30.) Brahms’ last nine works included the Clarinet Trio, Clarinet Quintet, and the two Clarinet Sonatas, which figure in the performance. Another inspiration is explored in Lalo Schifrin’s Letters from Argentina, which blends tango, folk song, and classical music in a vivid homage. Clarinetist Shifrin, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, pianist Alex Brown, double bassist Pablo Aslan, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, andHéctor del Curto on the bandoneón.Most of them also played at the work’s 2005 world premiere at Lincoln Center. The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival ends Aug. 27 with a visit by San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque. The entire festival takes place on the beautiful grounds of the Battell-Stoeckel Estate, which was left in trust for Yale University to operate as a music school. Young artists perform frequently throughout the festival.

July 16-Aug. 19: Full details

Located on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, Music Niagara is an easy destination for anyone in the Niagara Falls area. This festival is located in the picture-postcard town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, well known to theater-lovers as the home of the Shaw Festival, where George Bernard Shaw’s plays are staged. Programming isn’t exclusively classical (there’s also some jazz, country, and world music) – but there’s a handful of classical artists, most of them Canadian. Look for thePenderecki String Quartet (July 18), the piano duo ofAnagnoson & Kinton (July 24), pianist Janina Fialkowska (August 2), and a recital by the rising soprano Ambur Braid (August 6). And in between concerts and plays, why not take a tour of the region’s wineries? Yes, Canada produces wine – and even wins international awards for it.

August 2-12: Full details

Every summer, the city of Vancouver is host to an international gathering of historically informed performers. This year’s event focuses on the music of J.S. Bach – and just about every concert features works by the Leipzig Kapellmeister. The festival opens with French-American jazz pianist and composer Dan Tepfer playing his own unique version of the Goldberg Variations (August 2). Other artists include harpsichordist Davitt Moroney (August 3), Arion Baroque Orchestra (August 5), cellist Beiliang Zhu (August 11), and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra (August 12). All concerts take place either in Vancouver’s Gothic Revival Christ Church Anglican (Episcopal) Cathedral or at the modern Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of British Columbia. Vancouver is a vibrant city, flanked on one side by mountains and on the other by the ocean. Its many attractions include the Vancouver Art Gallery and UBC’s Museum of Anthropology, with its stunning collection of West Coast Native totem poles. If you’d care to step outdoors, Stanley Park offers a wilderness experience right in the city – a vast rainforest circled by the Seawall Trail.

Aug. 20-27: Dans les jardins de William Christie – Full details (available June 2)

If you’re very lucky – perhaps while visiting the châteaux de la Loire, or if you’re willing to drive a bit – in the out-of-the-way hamlet of Thiré, midway between the Loire valley and the Atlantic coast, you can join guests enjoying music and la vie douce “In the Gardens of William Christie.” The American-born harpsichordist and conductor, who spearheaded the revival of French Baroque repertoire, has been creating a dream landscape on the grounds of a 16th-century chateau he acquired some 30 years ago. In 2012 he opened his property for performances by the musicians of Les Arts Florissants, along with ensemble interns and students from the Juilliard School as well as the art of of the garden. Informal open-air concerts take place afternoons throughout the property (no chairs, the audience stands or sits on the grass), along with guided tours of the gardens. Evenings there are candlelight concerts by the reflecting pool, followed by a short walk to the Thiré village church for a 30-minute musical meditation to end the evening in peaceful contemplation. For the second year, winners of a competition for young landscape designers will construct a temporary performance space on the grounds. Unlike the intense and glitzy festival scenes at Salzburg or Bayreuth, Christie’s week invokes more Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, an experience of nature enhanced by the gardener’s art, by exquisite music, and by their enjoyment in good company. It’s akin to the original delights of Versailles, smaller in scale but more relaxed and inclusive. And isn’t that the most restorative kind of vacation?

Aug. 29 – Sept. 5: Full details

For outdoor scenery, Banff, Alberta, can’t be beat. Located within a large national park, the town is surrounded by the spectacular Canadian Rockies. Not surprisingly, it’s a popular destination for outdoor sports, year round. The town is also home to the triennial Banff International String Quartet Competition. Strictly speaking, the BISQC isn’t a music festival; like most music competitions, its core purpose is to compare, judge, and reward upcoming musicians through prizes awarded by a jury of experts. But the competition doesn’t just attract some of the best young quartets in the world. It has also become a destination for chamber-music enthusiasts. Indeed, the audience is an intrinsic aspect of the BISQC. There aren’t many string quartet competitions in the world, and the BISQC is one of the most prominent, with a good track record of picking young ensembles that go on to impressive careers. Since 1983, winners have included the Miró Quartet, the St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Jupiter Quartet. At the last BISQC, in 2013, the Dover Quartet became the first ensemble to make a clean sweep of the prizes. This year’s competing quartettistes come from the USA, the UK, Japan, Israel, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Canada. The 2016 competition takes place from August 29 to September 5, and attendees can purchase a “passport” for the full week or just for the final weekend. Packages include tickets to all events – lectures, concerts, and competition rounds – along with meals and accommodation at the Banff Centre (in a respectable on-campus hotel facility, atop Tunnel Mountain). There’s also a final weekend accommodation package and tickets for individual events.

Rheingold Opens Chicago Lyric's Ring Cycle CHICAGO-- The Lyric kicks off its ambitious Ring cycle, Wagner's four-part masterpiece filled with mermaids, dragons, a golden ring, and, of course, love. To this day, it is considered one of the greatest achievments of Western culture and continues to influence writers, composers, and fantasy-lovers alike. Das Rheingold, the first of the cycle, will be conducted by Lyric favorite Sir Andrew David and directed (along with the remaining operas in the cycle) by director David Pountney. In Rheingold, a magic ring that promises its owner unlimited power is stolen by Alberich. When the king of the gods, Wotan, tries to usurp the ring from Alberich a thrilling drama ensues that can only be seen to be believed.

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Jan. 13 and 15, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Full details

With a 2015 release titled Follow, Poet, Mohammed Fairouz became the youngest composer in the history of Deutsche Grammophon to have an album dedicated to his or her work. Such milestones keep coming rapidly for this unusually prolific 31-year-old creative voice, whose music draws on multiple cultures and looks both backward and forward. During two already sold-out performances, the Washington National Opera will present the world premiere of Fairouz's second opera, The Dictator’s Wife, based on a bitingly satirical play by the work’s Pakistani librettist, Mohammed Hanif. The hour-long opera centers on the dictator’s wife, who is forced to answer for her cowardly husband’s atrocities. The Dictator's Wife is part of the fifth season of the National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, which also includes a presentation of three new 20-minute operas on Jan. 14: What Gets Kept, by North Carolina composer Frances Pollock and librettist Vanessa Moody, about a family preparing for the death of a loved one; Adam, by composer Zach Redler and librettist Jason Carlson, about the creation of the world's first sentient artificial human; and Lifeboat, by composer Matthew Peterson and librettist Emily Roller, about three strangers stranded at sea.