May 2025

Festivals 2025 preview

Calixto Bieito’s new Opéra de Paris production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold is featured on our front cover, showing Alberich flanked by the three Rhinemaidens.

In addition to a Festivals Directory and Spotlight, features in this Festivals Preview Issue include:

Finnish bass Mika Kares in conversation as he prepares to sing two roles at Savonlinna

Composer Colin Matthews and writer William Boyd describing their new Chekhov-based operatic collaboration for Aldeburgh, A Visit to Friends

A look at the ambitious programme of Smetanova Litomyšl, the summer festival held in Smetana’s home town

Fifty innovative years of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis celebrated by Michael Clive

The composer Paola Prestini talks to Rebecca Paller about her boldly experimental and intensely moving opera Sensorium Ex ahead of performances at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha

John Allison looks at the composer Bohuslav Martinů’s close friendships with a circle of pioneering Czech painters

The artist emerging through our Stage Door is the conductor Daniela Candillari

Productions reviewed around the world this month include Yevgeny Onegin in Dubai and Milan, Innocence in Adelaide, Orfeo ed Euridice in Dallas, Don Pasquale in Calgary, Rinaldo in Detroit, Götterdämmerung in Brussels, Iolanta in New Haven, Mary, Queen of Scots at English National Opera, Mitridate in Hamburg, Giulio Cesare in Toulouse, Uprising at Glyndebourne, Madama Butterfly in Mexico City, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Melbourne, Werther in Zagreb, Das Rheingold in Paris