Particularly in Northern Europe, much depends on weather. In the wake of the wettest British winter in 230 years, only the opera mad or the mad optimist will book for Glyndebourne (May 17-Aug. 26), that elegant annual operafest set in the Sussex countryside. Trust us, risk the rain. This year, virtuoso Peter Hall returns to direct two magnificent takes on Shakespeare: the festival’s first-ever version of Verdi’s “Otello” and a revival of Hall’s classic 1981 production of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Weather won’t deter the camping fans who crowd the festival grounds for the 30-year-old summer music festival at Roskilde (June 28-July 1), 20 kilometers outside of Copenhagen. Rain or shine, every June thousands of pop fans come, drawn by cheap music, free love and a four-day flood of underpriced Carlsberg. The festival has a distinctly humanitarian slant: each year, several million pounds from the proceeds are donated to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other charities. This year the lineup includes stars from a range of eras: Robbie Williams, Patti Smith, Neil Young and Beck.
It’s not just the venues, but mind-sets, that open up in the summer. Not for nothing did Shakespeare make lust, chaos and upturned social hierarchy the themes of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” At Europe’s big summer arts festivals, inclusiveness, rather than exclusivity, is the rule. Highbrow and lowbrow crowd the same stages, as do performers from Topeka to Taipei. To wit: at the Montreux Jazz Festival (July 6-21), long recognized as a place to discover new talent, novices and pros jam together late into the night. And this year, in addition to concerts by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, blues master B. B. King himself is offering guitar lessons.
At the Proms, London’s summer concert series at the Royal Albert Hall (which runs July 20-Sept. 15), people in the cheap seats bring picnics, lie on the cool marble floors and unabashedly scope for potential dates. The relaxation of Albert Hall’s proper Victoriana transforms it into a venue that’s downright funky. This summer the theme is the pastoral, with performances of Handel’s “Acis and Galatea,” Roussel’s “Bacchus et Ariadne,” and a newly commissioned work called “Birds of Rhiannon.” Drawing on ancient Welsh mythology, composer James MacMillan says he made the birds into “mystical, angelic presences,” symbolized by high cellos and saxophone.
Cheerful eclecticism has reigned at Italy’s leading international arts festival, the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, since it began in 1958. This year (June 28-July 15) is no exception: the Royal Danish Ballet, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Carlo Colla Marionettes Company–as well as a range of poets, artists and performers–will take over the piazzas and winding streets of the Umbrian city. The repertoire is equally varied at the Paleo Festival in Nyon, just outside of Geneva. From July 24 to July 29, British popsters like Texas and Pulp, American rockers like Ben Harper, reggae and hip-hop musicians, Indian singers and French electronics stars St. Germain will jam near Lake Leman. Fans camp on a nearby prairie, and the spirit is as close to Woodstock as Switzerland ever gets.
Summer reinvigorates the old theatrical traditions of roving players: at theater festivals, European actors gather to build temporary ensembles. This year, Berlin’s Theaterwelten Festival (June 2-Oct. 21) features Peter Brook’s spare, multicultural “Hamlet,” a prize-winning “Don Juan” out of Budapest and 27-year-old Hungarian wunderkind Arpe Schilling, with his free actor’s group Kretakor. Onstage at the Edinburgh Festival, that annual orgy of fringe theater in Scotland (Aug. 12-Sept. 1), will be Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, whose PASTForward looks back at the iconoclastic choreographers of the 1960s and ’70s. Also onstage: Avant-garde composer John Cage’s radio play “The Alphabet,” featuring longtime Cage collaborator, choreographer Merce Cunningham. Unbound by such stuffy notions as plot, the play is a series of imagined conversations among Cage’s favorite historical characters, including James Joyce, bad-boy artist Marcel Duchamp, Mormon leader Brigham Young and Chairman Mao.
In the time of year traditionally devoted to travel, even legends yearn for cross-cultural adventure. Bob Dylan, touring the Old World as part of his 60th-birthday celebration, will spend much of July in Italy–where he’ll reportedly sing a song in Italian. Earlier this month, Madonna launched her Drowned World Tour in Spain, appearing onstage as a cowgirl, a modern dancer and a geisha. Even France–where skepticism about American culture reigns in the cold months–puts on its Elvis Presley fest in Sete (June 21-Oct. 31). That’s not to be confused with the American Country Music Festival in the southwestern city of Mirande (July 13-15), complete with horse parades, Native American art and Harley Davidson shows.
Mirande’s unabashed Ameriphilia is rivaled only by the Biarritz Surf Festival. From July 14 through July 22, the Basque coast will be transformed into a Pacific-island paradise for traditional Hawaiian dances, art exhibits and surf training. The Beach Boys will play their only French date there. Kicking off the festival is a Hawaiian ceremony called Ho’okupu. A crowd of surfers gathers, each putting ocean water brought from his or her home country in a large vase. The mixed water is poured into the Atlantic, to symbolize the union of cultures. Ordinarily, few people on earth–least of all the French–would tolerate such sloppy sentimentalism. But hey, it’s summer.
