Cecilia Bartoli wears her grandezza lightly. Since taking up the reins as artistic director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2012, she has consistently orchestrated discoveries, kaleidoscopic juxtapositions, and knockout opportunities for a phenomenal cadre of international talent. “It’s just a weekend,” she has said of the four-day event, but nothing about it is ever routine. Fancy sellout audiences always eat whatever’s on offer. And while no one could be more collegial about sharing the spotlight, no one ever sparkles more brightly than Cecilia. On one memorable occasion, she even played Maria in West Side Story—a sadder but wiser Maria, looking back on the lost love of her youth. This year’s main event is in many ways even bolder. In tandem with Barrie Kosky, arguably the most nimble and fantastical stage director currently at large, she has devised Hotel Metamorphosis, based on the epic Metamorphoses of Ovid’s compendious Metamorphoses. The score is by Vivaldi, yet nothing Vivaldi ever knew in this form. Stitched together from arias, ensembles, and choruses from any number of different works, it’s a classic pasticcio—literally a “mess,” though why not say “patchwork” instead? As such, it belongs to established Baroque tradition. In a narrower context, impresarios and composers of the age were only too happy to cut and paste (paste-stich-io!) for the benefit of their top performers. The objective, naturally, was to make everybody look fabulous, even if dramatic logic might sometimes suffer. Other guests in the Ovidian hotel are Bartoli’s sister nightingales Varduhi Abrahamyan, Lea Desandre, and Angela Winkler, with Philippe Jaroussky, Pied Piper of countertenors to join them as the self-loving Narcissus and the sculptor Pygmalion, who falls in love with one of his own statues. The ensembles Il Canto di Orfeo and Les Musiciens du Prince–Monaco are on point for period authenticity in the choral and instrumental departments. —Matthew Gurewitsch