International

VIENNA – Upon Arnold Schoenberg’s 150th birthday, in the city where premieres of his music set off public scandals, the annual festival Wien Modern set out to consider the relationship between experimental scores and community.

TOKYO – Kornilios Michailidis captured the 2024 Tokyo International Conducting Competition with a heated turn in Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. British conductor Riley Court-Wood was runner-up in this superbly organized triennial event.

PRAGUE – Jakub Hrůša led members of the Czech Philharmonic and Bamberg Symphony Orchestra on the exhibition grounds where the Seventh was first performed in 1908. Mahler's main language was German, but he was a native of Bohemia.

LUCERNE – A Rachmaninoff concert by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly hardly captured the composer, and a historically informed Walküre, brought from Dresden and led by Kent Nagano, seemed mainly an anomaly.

SALZBURG – This year’s Salzburg Festival boasts an impressive variety, from a new staging of Weinberg’s The Idiot, the summer's hit, to recitals and a concert treatment of Thomas’ opera Hamlet – in which the melancholy Dane is crowned king!

PARIS – Unheard at the Paris Opera since 1854, La vestale returned to the Bastille stage, entrusted to the fashionable, wildly imaginative American-born director Lydia Steier. She and dramaturg Olaf A. Schmitt clearly felt unbound by the original story.

MORETON-IN-MARSH, U.K. – The Longborough Festival, an upstart opera company located west of London, has pulled off a seriously professional effort in a 500-seat house. Anthony Negus led a fine, mostly British cast and a 60-piece orchestra.

BUCHAREST – While opera companies worldwide have acknowledged this year's centennial of the composer's death, the Bucharest Opera Festival presented eight staged productions and other events with 1,500 vocal and auxiliary participants.

LEIPZIG – The author, a regular contributor to Classical Voice North America, grew up singing in church choirs. He is a member of the Bach Cantata Choir of Portland, Ore., one of five U.S. choral groups invited to Leipzig's 2024 Bachfest.

PARIS – Even within director Lydia Steier's lurid concept of sensation for sensation's sake, Davidsen's stratospheric performance affirmed her place as the peerless soprano of her time in a diva legacy extending from Callas to Sutherland.

BERLIN – With his own orchestra called Utopia, 112 players from 20 countries including Russia and Ukraine, Teodor Currentzis led the mostly standing troupe in an assault on Bruckner's Ninth that left no room for spiritual transcendence.

ADELAIDE – To offset other risks, the venerable Adelaide Arts Festival offered two shows directed by favorites of the annual event, Robert Lepage's treatment of Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Barrie Kosky's setting of The Threepenny Opera.

PARIS – In an era when so many opera companies are struggling to fill seats and dialing back risk, it was salutary to see very fine Paris Opera offerings of Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda (right), Verdi's La traviata, and Handel's Giulio Cesare in one week.

ATHENS – As a native of Greece who has lived abroad for more than half of his life, this writer always gets a particular feeling being back amid the intimacy of Greek musical institutions, this time to witness Shostakovich's raw satire.

SYDNEY – The Australian World Orchestra consists of Australians from distant points who meet annually in their homeland. This year, founding conductor Alexander Briger presided over a blood-on-the-floor performance of Mahler.

MADRID – The Teatro Real lived up to its splendid reputation as an innovative, important company. After a stimulating week, one might even argue the renovated theater has surpassed Barcelona's Gran Teatre de Liceu as Spain's opera showplace.

BARCELONA – With Julia Bullock restored to her intended role, John Adams' Shakespearean opera on the ill-starred affair between the Roman general and the Egyptian queen was more gripping here than in the San Francisco premiere.

AMSTERDAM – The Netherlands' Asko|Schönberg ensemble, a multi-instrumental powerhouse, displayed its stylistic dexterity and exceptional ability to respond to any challenge in a concert featuring a world premiere at the Concertgebouw.

LONDON – An exhibition exploring how classic musicals have been adapted, together with three vibrant productions, demonstrated how gifted directors can make familiar favorites fresh again while honoring the original creators' intentions.

SYDNEY – On paper, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra program promised a night of fireworks: John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Wynton Marsalis' Violin Concerto (with Nicola Benedetti), and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. The plan fizzled.