Rheingau Music Festival, Leipzig Bach Festival, Spoleto Festival and Aldeburgh Music Festival all have tickets available. Whee!
Milan’s La Scala also has a summer season, and it definitely takes the cake for strangest programing. They’re doing Puccini’s La Boheme in July with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. Who would have guessed that the Italians take Christmas in sweltering July seriously? Add a young conductor known for his bravura to a sappy Puccinni classic, and, well, I feel the need to experienced the strangeness of it all.
Categories: Festivals · Italy · Travel
Plan A: Attend famous German music festivals.
No such luck. They are ALL sold out, in some cases years in advance. Fortunately, Salzberg Festival broadcasts on TV, and I might have a snowball’s chance at going to the Aldeburgh Festival to see a recital of Britten’s Quatre Chansons Francaises. All the other festivals?? Nein! No Mahler in the German sunset. No relaxing with a beer after the Four Last Songs. No pantomimes to live performances of Heldenleben. I’m seriously crushed… ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen! (heh)
Bayreuth’s box office amuses me the most. Hopeful attendees must send a written, formal request in German to their offices no later than September of the prior year. Further digging suggests that requests should be submitted TWO years in advance, assuming they have tickets on which lifetime attendees didn’t already call dibs. Then, and only then, will they give you a ticket… maybe. Agh. Evidently, I am not a lucky enough lil’ snowflake to get a ticket.
Plan B: You give me tickets? I give you kidney.
Plan C: Visit the festivals anyways, attempt to get tickets from a street hawker, scower the city for less famous concerts, and/or stake out a spot on a fence where I can (almost) hear the outdoor concerts. I just hate to see resonance go to waste.
Plan D: Screw Bayreuth. I’m going to Milan. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to Paris. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to pout, succumb to retail therapy, buy opera DVDs on Amazon, eat copious amounts of pasta and host a Ring cycle sing-a-long.
Plan E: Practice. Bis. Ewigkeit. I won’t need to submit ticket requests for ten, err… twenty years down the road if I’m on stage. Take that!
Plan F: Start my own festival. Yeah. At my festival everyone in the best seats would have one kidney, and it would never be sold out. There would also be a competition to write a piece for soprano and 8 track cartridge.
Plan G: All the above.
Categories: Festivals · France · Germany · Italy · Singing · Soprano Moments · Travel
