Festival d'Aix-en-Provence starts tomorrow night, July 27! This year marks the 60th anniversary.
The opera lineup is sweet, with Mozart's Zaide & Cosi fan tutte, Wagner's Siegfried, Pascal Dusapin's Passion, Haendel's Belshazzar (which ends the two-month festival on Wednesday 23 July 2008), and a Karita Mattila recital. For concerts, William Christie will conduct Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen, Sir Simon Rattle will conduct the Berliner with pianist András Schiff, and various concert halls will breathe life into the music of Smetana and Stockhausen.
Below is a sneak preview of Siegfried and Zaide.
(Above: Ben Heppner and Burkhard Ulrich in Siegfried, directed by Stephane Braunschweig.)
(Above: soprano Ekaterina Lekhina and Russell Thomas in Zaide, directed by Peter Sellars.)