The 2023 Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert

Every year, as the days grow longer, Austria gets ready for one of the classical calendar’s highlights: the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert. This event, inaugurated in 2004, brings the prestigious orchestra together with some of the world’s most illustrious soloists—in front of an audience that regularly numbers more than 100,000—in the gardens of Vienna’s world-famous Schönbrunn Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In the 2023 edition, the Vienna Philharmonic welcomes Canadian maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča to an all-French evening of Romanticism and Impressionism. The program includes highlights from Bizet's Carmen and the Summer Night debut of Lili Boulanger, whose moving D'un matin de printemps is performed in honor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed 75 years ago—as well as arias and orchestral favorites by Berlioz, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel, culminating in the irresistible Boléro.

Photo © Julius Silver