The scene countertenor Iestyn Davies stars in Rinaldo at chicago’s Lyric Opera; Reich, Glass and Golijov unite at Portland’s March Music Moderne; American Mavericks festival returns to san Francisco

Femme fatale: Anna Netrebko stars in Laurent Pelly’s production of Manon at the Met, New York

Washington, DC Washington National Opera Così fan tutte (February 25 – March 15) Jonathan Miller’s vision of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Enlightenment comedy unpacks its modern-dress bags at the Kennedy Center, replete with leather jackets, news crews and Banana Republic’s spring line. Despite a cavalcade of Cosìs in the States this season there is some capital vocal power in DC not to be missed, chiefly in Elizabeth Futral’s Fiordiligi, Christine Brandes’s Despina and Teddy Tahu Rhodes’s Guglielmo. Croatian mezzo Renata Pokupic makes a rare US appearance as Dorabella, tenor Joel Prieto is Ferrando and British baritone William Shimell sings Don Alfonso. Philippe Auguin conducts. kennedy-center.org

Los angeLes Los Angeles Opera Albert Herring (February 25 – March 17) LA Opera music director James Conlon continues his celebration of Benjamin Britten, which started last season with The Turn of the Screw, as a prelude to the composer‘s centenary in 2013. Alek Shrader makes his company debut in the title-role, joined by Daniela Mack as Nancy, Ronnita Nicole Miller as Florence Pike and Jane Bunnell as Mrs Herring. Janis Kelly and Christine Brewer trade off as Lady Billows, and worth looking out for is the impressive young baritone Liam Bonner in the role of Sid. The production, directed by Paul Curran, comes from Santa Fe Opera – in which Shrader also starred. laopera.com neW York Metropolitan Opera Khovanshchina (February 27 – March 17) L’elisir d’amore (March 5-31) Manon (March 26 – April 23) In 2010’s new rendering of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, the rebellious peasants prevailed in the final, gloriously staged, crowd scene. Similar detractors are not so lucky in the same composer’s Khovanshchina, which details a revolt against Peter the Great lead by Prince Ivan Khovansky (here sung by Ukrainian bass Anatoli Kotscherga in his Met debut). The late German director August Everding’s staging is filled by a titanium cast of Eastern Europeans, including Olga Borodina,

Ildar Abdrazakov (also seen this season at the Met as Henry VIII), Misha Didyk and George Gagnidze. Kirill Petrenko conducts.

Adding some comic relief to the Met this month is a revival of John Copley’s L’elisir d’amore, featuring bel canto superstar Juan Diego Flórez as Nemorino, Diana Damrau as Adina, Mariusz Kwiecien as Belcore and Alessandro Corbelli as Dulcamara. Meanwhile, Anna Netrebko retains the Met’s reigning diva crown as Massenet’s titular femme fatale in a new Manon that places the action in a John Singer Sargent-esque belle époque at the hands of director Laurent Pelly. Netrebko is joined by tenor Piotr Beczala and baritone Paulo Szot, with principal guest conductor Fabio Luisi leading from the pit. metopera.org

ChiCago Lyric Opera of Chicago Rinaldo (February 29 – March 24) Handel’s magic-laden opera celebrated its 300th anniversary last year and comes to the windy city with a gold-standard cast. Red-hot baritone Luca Pisaroni plays King Argante (reprising his role from Glyndebourne), coupled

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with Elza van den Heever’s sorceress Armida, warring opposite Sonia Prina’s General Goffredo and David Daniels’s Rinaldo over Jerusalem. Baroque maestro and English Concert director Harry Bicket co nducts a cast that also features countertenor Iestyn Davies – who was the first British countertenor to sing at the Met in its winter production of Rodelinda – as Eustazio and Julia Kleiter as Rinaldo’s lover, Almirena. lyricopera.org

ChiCago Chicago Symphony Orchestra Das Lied von der Erde (March 1-3) There may be manifold Mahler in orchestras across the country this season (see Montreal’s entry), but few concerts are as tantalising as those helmed by Pierre Boulez, who has been on a recording spree of the composer’s works for record label Deutsche Grammophon. Boulez returns to Chicago to cap off the CSO’s season-long Mahler intensive, bringing with him Das Lied von der Erde sung by Michelle DeYoung and Stuart Skelton. Opening the programme is no less than Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a constant collaborator with Boulez, playing Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto. cso.org neW York New York Philharmonic The Modern Beethoven (March 1-20) Alan Gilbert’s leadership of the New York Philharmonic has included several in-depth festivals since he took the podium in 2009. The spring of 2010 brought in Valery Gergiev to explore the Russian Stravinsky, while 2011 featured a survey of Hungarian composers spanning Haydn, Bartók and Ligeti. This season, conductor David Zinman examines the modern, iconoclastic aspects of Beethoven. The month starts with a concert that bookends Stravinsky’s Capriccio for piano and orchestra (featuring Peter Serkin) with Beethoven’s Second and Seventh Symphonies, moving into the composer’s Eighth and Fourth Symphonies broken up by Barber’s Cello Concerto featuring Alisa Weilerstein. The festival concludes with Beethoven’s Symphony No 1 and Eroica Symphony No 3, paired off with Gil Shaham performing Hartmann’s Concerto funèbre for violin and orchestra. nyphil.org neW York Carnegie Hall Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (March 2–4) Former New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel weekends in his old stomping grounds just a few blocks south of his orchestral alma mater. For the occasion, he brings with him no less than the Vienna Philharmonic for a trio of pan-European pastries: March 2’s programme ventures to Finland for Sibelius’s First, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. The following evening, Maazel pairs Mozart’s Symphony No 40 with his own arrangement of music from Wagner’s operatic marathon, dubbed The Ring Without Words. Finally, the orchestra turns to its own compatriots with waltzes of Johann Strauss and his son, plus Richard Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Der Rosenkavalier Suite. carnegiehall.org

PortLanD Various artists March Music Moderne (March 5-31) The Pacific Northwest continues to become a haven, much like New York, for genre-bending contemporary classical music that defies categorisation. It amps up that drive with the second annual March Music Moderne, a festival that, in its own words, listens ‘to the here of the now’ and features 31 concerts representing 12 countries and 51 composers including not only the likes of Golijov, Reich and Andriessen but also Beethoven, Hendrix and Stravinsky. Highlights are pianist Kirill Gerstein performing Oliver Knussen’s Ophelia’s Last Dance on March 18, and the Kronos Quartet making a tour stop with Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11 and works by Laurie Anderson and Missy Mazzoli on March 21. Additionally, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra offers up a new work by Kenji Bunch on March 28, the Portland Opera showcases Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei on March 30 and the Oregon Symphony plays Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 on March 31. The festival closes out on the same day with 9 beet stretch, an extension of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 designed to last 24 hours, starting at 11pm and coursing through April Fool’s Day. marchmusicmoderne.org san FranCisCo San Francisco Symphony American Mavericks (March 8-18) In 2000, music director Michael Tilson Thomas paid homage to fresh and feisty voices in the United States’ classical scene with American Mavericks, a much-ballyhooed festival that solidified the orchestra’s commitment to works by living composers. For the orchestra’s centennial celebrations, American Mavericks comes back with a vengeance, revisiting some of the composers it feted 12 years ago Copland, Harrison, Ives and Varèse, for starters – and bringing in new blood with young composers such as Mason Bates. In addition to Bates’s Mass Transmission and John Adams’s Absolute Jest, performed in the festival’s final weekend, this 10-day ‘lollapalooza’ will also contain a world premiere from Meredith Monk, Emanuel Ax performing Feldman’s Piano and Orchestra, Jessye Norman singing selections from Cage’s Song books, Jeremy Denk playing gramophone.co.uk

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