Venue

Company

Orchestra

Choir / Chorus

Festival

Chamber Ensemble

Ballet

Other

Competition

Educational

Young Artist Programme

Extra

Ensemble

Theatre

Church

Foundation

associazione musicale

Teatro

conservatorium

Opera Concerts

Organisation

Fondazione

Orquesta

Ente regionale

Associazione

Instytucja kultury

Budapest

Hungary

Wagner in Budapest

Approved

Brattleboro

United States

Wagner in Vermont Festival

Warsaw

Poland

WarszeMuzik

Oxford

United Kingdom

Waterperry Opera Festival is a unique and innovative opera festival hosted at the beautiful Waterperry House & Gardens in Oxfordshire. The festival offers high-quality, accessible and socially relevant work, created and performed by a diverse company, which bridges the gap between artists and audiences.

Waterperry Opera Festival

Krakow

Wawel Royal Castle at Dusk

Vienna

Austria

Weinviertler Festspiele

Werdenberg

Switzerland

Werdenberger Schloss-Festspiele

Wernigerode

Germany

Wernigeröder Schlossfestspiele

Wertinger Festspiele

Berkeley

West Edge Festival

Wexford

Ireland

When Compton Mackenzie, the renowned novelist and founder of Gramophone magazine, suggested to Tom Walsh that he stage an opera in Wexford, few could have imagined where the idea would lead. But since the first ‘Festival of Music and the Arts’ took place in October 1951, Wexford Festival Opera has grown into one of the world’s leading opera festivals. In 2017 Wexford Festival Opera won Best Festival at the International Opera Awards.

From the beginning, the Festival made a name for itself by introducing audiences to unjustly neglected works, many of which have since found a place in the canon. For nearly 70 years the Festival has breathed new life into forgotten masterpieces, establishing a reputation for high-quality productions that, every year, bring thousands of opera-lovers flocking to Wexford from all over the world.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Since Tom Walsh first guided the Festival to international success, Wexford Festival Opera has been blessed with a succession of talented and passionate artistic directors, all of whom balanced tradition with bold innovation. Over the years the Festival has championed the works of Donizetti, having staged more of his operas than any other opera company in the world outside his native Bergamo, sparked a Massenet revival, included a variety of daytime events to compliment the evening operas and established an international reputation both for attracting and for making major stars. Over the past seven decades, the Festival introduced Western audiences to baritone Sergei Leiferkus back in 1983, while tenors Juan Diego Floréz and Joseph Calleja and sopranos Mirella Freni, Elizabeth Connell, Angela Meade, Ermonela Jaho and mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona all made early appearances here. Beyond the singing stars, the Festival has also offered a platform to emerging conductors like Vladimir Jurowski and Michele Mariotti as well as directors like Nicholas Hytner and Francesca Zambello.

The former Artistic Director, David Agler (2005-2019) presided over one of the most exciting phases in the Festival’s history when the old Theatre Royal, which served the Festival for 50 years, was replaced by Ireland’s first custom-built opera house, a state-of-the-art building with two auditoriums capable of staging ever more ambitious and spectacular productions. With a world-class venue to match its international reputation, the National Opera House is better placed than ever to champion neglected operatic gems, and in 2014 its staging of Foroni's Cristina, regina di Svezia won Best Re-Discovered Work at the International Opera Awards.

In 2020 a new adventure for the Festival began with the appointment of Rosetta Cucchi as the new Artistic Director. Rosetta, an internationally-renowned pianist and director, has been a regular presence at the Festival for more than 25 years as Assistant to the Artistic Director, first under Luigi Ferrari and later under David Agler. Her passion, knowledge and respect for Wexford and the Festival places her in the fortunate position to honour Wexford’s traditions while simultaneously introducing a new and innovative vision to bring the Festival to a wider audience locally, nationally and internationally. Her appointment represents a choice consistent with the past and at the same time focused firmly towards the future.

With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the inability to invite a public audience into the National Opera House, the Festival was forced to reimagine both the programme and the way of bringing the Festival to its audience. Rosetta’s new programme and format proved successful in keeping the Festival alive. Instead of audiences coming to Wexford, Wexford came to its audience by partnering with our National Broadcaster, RTÉ to live-stream the evening events. The daytime events were available to view through the Festival’s YouTube Channel. This also gave the opportunity to invite a new, curious audience to the Festival for the first time. 

But of course, the Festival’s success is due in no small part to Wexford itself and the hundreds of local, dedicated volunteer force who complete the Wexford experience. This ancient Viking town, nestled in a wonderful setting on the banks of the River Slaney, has a character and charm all its own. Just two hours from Dublin, in a county renowned for its stunning beaches and rebellious history, the town is a key part of what helps to make the Festival unique. Every year at Festival time the streets, pubs and restaurants are abuzz with excitement, and the warm welcome waiting from an army of Festival volunteers keeps opera-lovers coming back year after year.

With a unique vision, outstanding production values and spectacular setting in a beautiful small town, Wexford Festival Opera is a remarkable success story that looks set to continue for many years to come.

Wexford Festival Opera

Whitsun Festival

Wielkanocny Festiwal Ludwiga van Beethovena

With around a month of events at countless locations all over the city, Wien Modern is the biggest festival for contemporary arts music in Austria and one of the biggest of its kind worldwide. It was founded in 1988 at the initiative of Claudio Abbado, conductor and the general music director of the city of Vienna at the time. Since then, it takes place every year in November in Vienna.

Exactly what is to be expected from "contemporary arts music" and from a festival with the name "Wien Modern", which is at odds with all the clichés of Vienna? We reinvent it every year. In the beginning the goal was to "catch up" with Vienna's musical reputation as a hub for tradition and to bring the great masterpieces of the 20th century into the big halls of the city. In a historical first, the Wiener Konzerthaus and Musikverein collaborated to bring the post-war avant-garde and the Viennese School centre stage in 1988. Claudio Abbado as the festival's first artistic director conducted the Vienna Philharmonic and acquainted the Viennese audience slowly but surely with contemporary arts music with performances of Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Rihm, György Ligeti and Alban Berg.

One look at a few numbers from the founding year makes it clear just how far the festival has come since then: In 1988, 28 events took place over 23 days, in three venues and two of the Viennese districts, with a conscious decision not to include any world premieres; counting the Viennese School, there were six composers and eight ensembles and orchestras from Vienna, but nothing from the rest of Austria, no activities from a youth or access angle, not a single female composer and nothing but classical concert formats. Eight years later, in 1996, the festival had reached its record length of 44 days and took place across eight locations with 68 events; the international programme included ten world premieres, twelve female composers, all in all 23 composers from Austria, large musical theatre productions and an opulent range of concerts for a surprisingly large audience, which had garnered Vienna the reputation of a metropolis for contemporary arts music.

Today, Wien Modern is a bit shorter with around 30 festival days, but the audience has grown again and again, as does the musical diversity: as a platform which is open to all kinds of possibly contradicting aesthetics and formats, with a colourful coexistence of different scenes and generations, Wien Modern had a record number of 31.491 visitors in 29 venues and 10 districts in 2018. The transformation from the initial retrospective to what now resembles a bustling music workshop was a long one. In 2019, we counted 109 world premieres, 57 female composers, ten projects with young artists, four productions for young audiences and 30 backstage events  ̶  proof that in the three decades since the festival started, contemporary arts music has become quite a bit more dynamic and open.

The specific mix of Wien Modern now includes large parts of the city; the Great Hall of the Wiener Konzerthaus figures alongside the tiny basement room of Café Korb, the experimental echoraum in  Sechshauser Straße 66, as well as the Museumsquartier, the Kunsthistorisches Museum and (for the first time in 2020) the Natural History Museum, and many more. Concerts still lie at the heart of the programme, but now they are joined by musical theatre, dance, visual arts, film, video, performance, installations, site-specific or durational works, improvisation and discoveries of all sorts of new formats – from a simultaneous performance of all 15 string quartets by Shostakovich in the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus in 2016, to a 15-hour-long Michael Hersch premiere from dusk till after dawn in the Austrian National Library in 2019, where the audience found a landscape of pillows, blankets and all sorts of other refreshments.

Speaking of refreshments: Wien Modern admires the willingness to experiment that its audience brings to events each year. This extends to the "Bar Modern", where artists meet and events conclude, where we have been serving our "Wine Modern" for a few years now. We specially choose wines which sum up what’s so special about Wien Modern: from quite unusual to radical, with a mind of its own, no-nonsense, non-commercial, but very fun and very worth exploring.

Wien Modern

Wiener Festwochen

THE VIENNA OPERA SUMMER IS PROMOTED BY THE NON-PROFIT ASSOCIATION “FRIENDS OF THE WIENER OPERNSOMMER”.
The associatons's aim is to offer open-air opera performances of the highest artistic quality in Vienna during the summer months, to benefit both the Viennese population and international visitors. At the same time, many artists of the younger generation should be supported and engaged; engaging young audiences is also one of the aims of this charitable association.

Wiener Opernsommer Belvedere

London

About
Our Mission
to bring the finest artists to audiences in Wimbledon and South West London.
to give a platform to exceptional artists in the early stages of their careers.
to commission and perform new works from international composers in association with our global partners.
to create distinctive original productions.
to encourage the active involvement of students in Merton Borough schools, by helping to fund educational projects, often linked to WIMF original productions.
Founded in 2009
Our aim has been to inspire audiences young and old by offering the opportunity of hearing some of the very best musicians in the world performing live in venues close to their doorsteps.

Sixteen days at the end of November each year are devoted to glorious music-making in Wimbledon and nearby areas. The Festival period was chosen to embrace St Cecilia’s Day, November 22nd, and we like to celebrate the Patron Saint of Music with events involving the community.

 

World-Class Performers
During the rest of the year we are out looking and listening to find the very best of world-class performers to bring to the Festival. Some are household names, some are inevitably less well known but we think are equally top notch.

Often the pleasure is all the greater in discovering a new artist, or being introduced to an unfamiliar sound world. Some of our ‘hidden gems’ – such as ‘Gesualdo’, or the superb ‘Calefax Reed Quintet’ – have proved to be many people’s event of the Festival.

Organization Name	City, Country	Organization Type
Wagner in Budapest	Budapest, Hungary	FestivalView profile
Wagner in Vermont Festival	Brattleboro, United States	FestivalView profile
WarszeMuzik	Warsaw, Poland	FestivalView profile
Waterperry Opera Festival	Oxford, United Kingdom	FestivalView profile
Wawel Royal Castle at Dusk	Krakow, Poland	FestivalView profile
Weinviertler Festspiele	Vienna, Austria	FestivalView profile
Werdenberger Schloss-Festspiele	Werdenberg, Switzerland	FestivalView profile
Wernigeröder Schlossfestspiele	Wernigerode, Germany	FestivalView profile
Wertinger Festspiele	Germany	FestivalView profile
West Edge Festival	Berkeley, United States	FestivalView profile
Wexford Festival Opera	Wexford, Ireland	FestivalView profile
Whitsun Festival	Germany	FestivalView profile
Wielkanocny Festiwal Ludwiga van Beethovena	Warsaw, Poland	FestivalView profile
Wien Modern	Vienna, Austria	FestivalView profile
Wiener Festwochen	Vienna, Austria	FestivalView profile
Wiener Opernsommer Belvedere	Austria	FestivalView profile
Wimbledon International Music Festival (WIMF)	London, United Kingdom	FestivalView profile
Winslow Hall Opera	Buckingham, United Kingdom	FestivalView profile
Winter in Schwetzingen	Heidelberg, Germany	FestivalView profile
Winterfestspiele Baden-Baden	Baden-Baden, Germany	FestivalView profile

Arts Organisations / Festival