International

BAYREUTH – Wagner omitted Rienzi from his canon of 10 music dramas at the Bayreuth Festival. He declared his third opera too closely tied to the grand French style, a "shouter." A 150th anniversary staging here proved him right.

SOPOT, Poland – In a mix of opera and concert presentations over the course of a week, the festival offered a wide-ranging program that reflected its artistic ambitions, commitment to Polish culture, and appetite for experimentation.

PARIS – With Esa-Pekka Salonen poised to become music director of the Orchestre de Paris in 2027, outgoing director Klaus Mäkelä, who has built something remarkable here, led the orchestra in a concert buoyed on Technicolor waves of sound.

LONDON – Two powerful performances that drew charged public response, Britten's opera led by Jakub Hrůša and a London Symphony Wagner concert under Simon Rattle, left little doubt that these classical traditions remain vibrant here.

PARIS – The Palais Garnier's La cenerentola dispensed with the oft-encountered farce to plumb the opera's real drama, while the Opéra Bastille mounted what seems to be the actual premiere of Antonia Bembo's 1707 Ercole amante.

CANBERRA – Conductor-violist Lawrence Power added the role of speaker in Garth Knox's The Ancient Mariner, a dramatic concerto based on Coleridge's epic poem, with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Missing was a true actor.

BUDAPEST – Conductor Ádám Fischer, who founded "Budapest Wagner Days" 20 years ago to recreate the Bayreuth Festival spirit in concert presentations of Wagner operas, led a masterful account of Parsifal at Béla Bartók Concert Hall.

SOFIA, Bulgaria – Plamen Kartaloff, director of the Sofia Opera and Ballet, uses his jewel of an opera house as a showcase for Bulgarian singers, and his intelligently staged Ring tetralogy is a worthy destination for Wagner fans around the world.

SALZBURG – Barrie Kosky's new staging of Il viaggio a Reims at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival sets out to lend the multicultural characters more psychological depth but goes overboard in a bid to make the opera amusing in modern terms.

ATHENS – The classical bond of cultures between Greece and the United States was celebrated in a program fashioned on the concept of nostos: nostalgia and homecoming expressed through songs, rhythms, and dances that reflect tradition.

HALLE, Germany – The Halle Opera presented Franz Schreker's rarely performed Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (The Music Box and the Princess), about a mysterious box that can influence people either in a good way or for ill.

VIENNA – The conventions of Italian tragic opera are spoofed in Florian Gassmann’s L’opera seria, staged here for the first time since its 1769 premiere. “An accursed business!” exclaims the impresario. “You’d be crazy to get involved.”

VIENNA – In the Vienna State Opera's rare revival of Luisa Miller, the heroine works at a food-delivery company whose headquarters are decked out in bright yellow and red. The musical performance argues for wider access to the work.

UTRECHT – Liszt Utrecht 2026 and the Netherlands Violin Competition presented two perspectives on how competitions work when they are designed as cultural ecosystems nurturing artistic growth and public engagement.

FRANKFURT – Three operas over as many evenings at Oper Frankfurt revealed why the company has repeatedly been honored as Germany's top opera house. The shows also displayed the breadth of American talent here.

VIENNA – Stepping in for Hahn, who was to play Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto but had to cancel, violinist Alena Baeva (right) appeared with London's visiting Philharmonia Orchestra led by principal conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

HONG KONG – Amid the hustle and bustle of cars, trucks, and jackhammers, a concert of works by Locatelli, Tartini, Vivaldi, and Beethoven felt like a breath of fresh air. Added to the mix was soothing Satie and the calm moves of flow artist Chris Lam.

PARIS – Every September through December since 1972, Paris has opened its doors to Festival d’Automne, a nomadic, multidisciplinary event dedicated to the new and harnessing the French audience’s voracious appetite for discovery.

MILAN – At La Scala, it was Mozart with onstage cameras, jumbo screens, a control room, and a studio audience, all in a setting dominated by a bubblegum palette. Up the road, in Bergamo, Donizetti's Caterina Cornaro looped through time.

VIENNA – Johann Strauss II embodies the paradoxes of Viennese musical culture, its extravagance and conservatism. Celebrations have revealed the composer as a projection for ahistoricism as well as political correctness.