May 2026

2026 FESTIVALS ISSUE

Our front cover for this month’s Festivals issue shows a scene from the premiere at Scottish Opera of The Great Wave by Dai Fujikura.

Inside you’ll find our pick of what’s on at this year’s opera festivals, plus our festivals directory and features including:

Serge Dorny, Intendant of the Bayerische Staatsoper, reflects on opera festivals with John Allison.

As the Bayreuth Festival celebrates its 150th anniversary we have gathered a symposium of contributors from all over the music world to consider its future.

Douglas Boyd, music director of Garsington Opera, talks to John Allison as he prepares to conduct La traviata and The Importance of Being Earnest at this year’s summer festival.

SeokJong Baek talks to Mark Pullinger before returning to Covent Garden, the scene of his former triumph in a last-minute role debut as Saint-Saëns’s Samson in 2022, to sing the role again.

Italian opera came to the United States in the winter of 1825-6 and has been a firm fixture ever since—Will Crutchfield of Teatro Nuovo celebrates its bicentenary.

Michael Egel has made the Des Moines Metro Opera into one of the most enterprising and successful companies in the US. Here he is in conversation with Mark Thomas Ketterson.

CD reviews include Smetana’s The Two Widows and Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins.

Tenor to watch out for Liam Bonthrone comes through the Stage Door in our emerging artists feature before singing in the premiere of Brett Dean’s Of One Blood in Munich.

Productions reviewed around the world include: The Great Wave in Glasgow, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the London Coliseum, Faust and Prince Igor in Munich, Awakening in Bonn, Die Fledermaus in Cedar Rapids, Götterdämmerung in Milan, Tristan und Isolde in New York, Luisa Miller in Vienna, Siegfried in Paris, The Cunning Little Vixen in Dún Laoghaire, Falstaff in Valletta, Don Carlo in Dallas and in Tampere, Benvenuto Cellini in Brussels, Ariane et Barbe-bleu in Madrid