In our May Insider Guide, we considered the BBC Proms and picked out the highlights for the coming season, which opens later this month. The coming month sees us hit ‘peak festival season’ so it’s worth taking a look at some key festivals taking place around the globe.

Austria and Switzerland have their fair proportion of prestigious festivals during the summer months. The Salzburg Festival is as starry and exciting as classical music festivals come. All eyes will be trained on the Grosses Festspielhaus for a new production of Die Liebe der Danae, Strauss’ mix of comedy and Greek mythology in which Danae is turned into a golden statue when embraced by King Midas. Franz Welser-Möst conducts a fine cast in Alvis Hermanis’ staging. Other operatic highlights at Salzburg include Thomas Adès’ new opera The Exterminating Angel, based on Luis Buñuel’s and Luis Alcoriza’s screenplay for the film El ángel exterminador by Luis Buñuel. A co-production with The Met, Covent Garden and Den Kongelige Opera, Copenhagen, this has all the makings of a major work in the canon. Mozart always has a strong place in Salzburg, of course, and Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni are slated for this season. Perhaps the most intriguing operatic offering is a concert performance of Massenet’s Thaïs, starring Sonya Yoncheva in the title role. It also offers Plácido Domingo in the baritone role of Athanaël.

Grafenegg, also in Austria, is an important festival, opening in August and running through to September, boasting some top orchestras: The Cleveland Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the LSO, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Mariinsky and the Vienna Philharmonic are on this year’s roster. Hearing Jiří Bělohlávek conduct Dvořák or Valery Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky are musts.

Switzerland is hardly less starry. 2016 sees the start of a new era for the Lucerne Festival as Riccardo Chailly succeeds Claudio Abbado as the festival’s Music Director. Chailly began his career as Abbado’s assistant at La Scala, so it’s fitting that he follows in the maestro’s giant footsteps in Lucerne. A renowned Mahler interpreter, Chailly opens the festival with the Eighth Symphony – the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. Prestigious visitors include Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan, Bernard Haitink, Marin Alsop and the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

At the other end of the scale, Verbier Festival is renowned for the remarkable quality of chamber music on offer. A glittering array of the world’s finest pianists – Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov, Sir András Schiff, Grigory Sokolov – grace the festival this summer.

One thing you notice looking at a range of international listings is which orchestras are busily touring Europe. So the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra turns up at the BBC Proms, in Lucerne and at the Edinburgh International Fesitval. You can catch the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s all-Beethoven programme in Edinburgh, London, Salzburg and Lucerne, as well as in Leipzig itself, where it opens their new season.

Edinburgh International Festival provides a feast for music lovers. Top of the bill this season comes Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s Salzburg Festival production of Bellini’s Norma, featuring Cecilia Bartoli reprising the title role. Christophe Honoré’s controversial new production of Così fan tutte, which has just opened at Aix Festival, transfers to the EIF for three performances. Daniel Harding and the Swedish RSO bring Mahler 9, while Osmo Vänskä brings the Minnesota Orchestra in a programme of Sibelius and Beethoven. Vänskä also takes his orchestra to Amsterdam’s Robeco SummerNights festival, which attracts many top orchestras, Copenhagen’s Tivoli Festival and the Finnish town of Lahti, where Vänskä led the Lahti Symphony for two decades as chief conductor.

Finland is awash with summer festivals! Savonlinna is a must for opera fanatics. This season includes Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff – a nod, no doubt, to Shakespeare400, but there’s also the rare chance to see Janáček’s From the House of the Dead. At the smaller end of the scale comes the chamber music festival at Kuhmo, which puts together themed programmes of tremendous invention, and BRQ Vantaa, commited to period instruments but offering new perspectives on Baroque music.

In North America, there are a colourful range of festivals, many linked to great American orchestras. The Boston Symphony is resident at Tanglewood Festival, led this summer by the popular Andris Nelsons, Christoph von Dohnányi and Juanjo Mena among others. The Chicago Symphony is resident at Ravinia Festival, the oldest outdoor music festival in the United States.

New York has its Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, featuring a range of orchestras performing (though not exclusively) Mozart. Operas in this season’s festival include Così fan tutte (that cast from Aix again, in a ‘staged concert’ version) and Idomeneo, with a fine cast featuring Jeremy Ovenden, Alex Penda and Gaëlle Arquez.

The opera festival at Santa Fe always promises something extra special. Taking place in the open air in New Mexico since 1957, it attracts some excellent singers and dirctors. For example, Ailyn Perez and Stephen Costello star in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, Amanda Majeski and Susan Graham feature in Strauss’ Capriccio and Isobel Leonard stars as Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The most intriguing opera, however, is a rare chance to see Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, starring soprano Erin Wall and tenor Zach Borichevsky, led by Barber champion Leonard Slatkin. Well, a rare chance unless you happen to be near Wexford this season… but that’s a distinctly autumnal festival!