The summer festival season is underway! Here’s a first look at the Early Music Festival in Boston, Monteverdi in Cremona, Potsdam Sanssouci, Maguelone, and Bachfest in Leipzig. 
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Keiser’s Octavia in Boston
The highlight of the 2025 Boston Early Music Festival was the new production of Keiser’s Octavia. Composed for the renowned Hamburg Opera House in 1705, this monumental work features sumptuous spectacle and brilliant orchestration alongside a nuanced narrative about the corruption of power and the resilience of love. A fantastic parade of philosophers, clowns, ghosts, and despots comes to life on stage as the noble Octavia struggles to survive the turmoil and cruelty around her. The production features a wide variety of dance interludes interwoven into a complex libretto conducive to great passions.
With Emőke Baráth, Douglas Ray Williams, Amanda Forsythe, Sherezade Panthaki, Aaron Sheehan, Hannah De Priest, Christian Immler, Michael Skarke, Richard Pittsinger, Marc Molomot, Jason McStoots, Gilbert Blin, the Boston Early Music Orchestra, Robert Mealy and Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière.
Monteverdi in Cremona
Thirty-three years after winning a Monteverdi singing competition in Cremona and becoming an internationally-renowned stage director in the meantime, Davide Livermore returned to the Lombard city to stage his first Monteverdi production with Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria (Ulysses’ Return to his Homeland). The work, which opened the 42nd edition of the Monteverdi Festival, was performed at the Teatro Ponchielli by the La Fonte Musica orchestra conducted by Michele Pasotti, and Livermore was also part of the vocal cast, playing the character of the beggar Iro.
With Mauro Borgioni, Margherita Sala, Jacob Lawrence, Luigi De Donato, Giulia Bolcato, Cristina Fanelli, Arianna Vendittelli, Valentino Buzza, Chiara Osella, Francisco Fernández-Rueda, Alberto Allegrezza, Alena Dantcheva, Davide Livermore, Arnaud Gluck, Roberto Rilievi, Matteo Bellotto and Chiara Brunello.
Vivaldi in Maguelone
Amandine Beyer and her ensemble Gli Incogniti opened the early music festival in Maguelone (near Montpellier) by celebrating the 300th anniversary of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. On the same day, Olivier Fourès, one of the composer’s greatest specialists, provided keys to understanding and (re)discovering the famous score by the “red-headed priest”. To close the Festival, Vincent Dumestre, Le Poème Harmonique and Isabelle Druet offered a vocal recital of “El Fenix de Paris”, an ensemble of Spanish music played in Baroque Paris.
With Amandine Beyer, the ensemble Gli Incogniti, Vincent Dumestre, Isabelle Druet and Le Poème Harmonique.
Bach in Leipzig
The Bachfest in Leipzig is in full swing. Until Sunday 22 June, the Nikolaikirche, the Altes Rathaus and the Evangelische Reformiertte Kirche will be hosting a succession of the biggest names in early music and Bach today: Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Leonardo García-Alarcón and Cappella Mediterranea, John Eliot Gardiner and his new ensemble Constellations, Reinhard Goebel and the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum, Capricornus Basel, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Jean Rondeau and Nevermind, I Barochisti and Diego Fasolis, Solomon’s Knot, and more. (in the photo: La Cetra Basel at the Nikolaikirche, conducted by Andrea Marcon).
With La Cetra Basel, Ton Koopman, l’Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Leonardo García-Alarcón, Cappella Mediterranea, John Eliot Gardiner, the ensemble Constellations, Reinhard Goebel, the Neues Bachisches Collegium Music, Capricornus Basel, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Jean Rondeau, the ensemble Nevermind, I Barochisti, Diego Fasolis and Solomon’s Knot.
Charles Burney’s notebooks in Potsdam
The Potsdam Sanssouci Early Music Festival opened at the Friedenskirche in Potsdam with a concert by Max Emanuel Cenčić, featuring flutist Laura Quesada, Martyna Pastuszka, and her ensemble {oh!} Orkiestra. Featuring arias by Johann Adolf Hasse, Nicola Antonio Porpora, Antonio Vivaldi, and Handel, the recital evoked the travels and notebooks of musicologist Charles Burney and showcased various musical capitals such as London, Paris, Vienna, and Venice.
With Max Emanuel Cenčić, Laura Quesada, Martyna Pastuszka, and the ensemble {oh!} Orkiestra.
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