If stars of opera and the concert stage can book appearances years
ahead, why shouldn't we, the audience, act likewise? So here's some
idiosyncratically selected consumer information for the summer of 2001.
(It's later than you think.)

At the Oregon Bach Festival (June 22 - July 9), the big works to be
conducted by Helmuth Rilling include the Bach Magnificat, the Brahms
and Verdi Requiems, as well as the festival-opening collaborative "Messa
per Rossini." The 1868 project was headed by Verdi, and performed as a
whole for the first time only in 1988, in Stuttgart, conducted by Rilling.
Quebec's Bernard Labadie makes his OBF debut with the Faure Requiem and an
all-French program.  Festival participants include Robert Levin, Jeffrey
Kahane, the Los Angeles String Quartet, organist Wolfgang Rubsam, and
oboist Ingo Goritzki.

At the Round Top, Texas, festival-institute - coming up in the ranks
slowly but surely - June-July 2001 will see Pascal Verrot conduct the
opening concert, James Dick, piano.  Boston's Grant Llwellyn heads an
all-British program, including the Walton Viola Concerto, with Thomas
Turner.  Peter Bay, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Stafan Sanderling and JoAnn
Falletta conduct subsequent programs.  Harth-Bedoya's all-Brahms program
features the Double Concerto with Jorja Fleezanis and Andre Emelianoff.

August in Bayreuth? It's the Sinopoli-Flimm-Wonder "Ring," Pappano-Warner
"Lohengrin" and Eschenbach-Wagner "Parsifal." The 2001 ticket price range
- $8.60 to $146 - is nothing short of astonishing against far greater
increases just about everywhere else.  (Of course, you may not be able
to buy a ticket at all, but that's another matter.)

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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