The Cleveland Orchestra: Carmina Burana at Blossom Music Center

It’s almost time for the annual Blossom Music Festival, with the return of the world-renowned Cleveland Orchestra to their summer home, bringing some of the best classical repertoire to eager music lovers. The orchestra, featuring over 100 skilled musicians, has gained a reputation around the world as one of North America’s best. With their award-shelf groaning under the weight of no less than four Grammy Awards for Best Orchestral Performance, and Grammy Awards for Best Classical Album, Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra), and Best Engineered Album (Classical) respectively, you can be guaranteed that 2025’s installment of the Blossom Music Festival will be one for the books! 

Now, finally, the Cleveland Orchestra, under the masterful baton of Osmo Vänskä, is back with Carl Orff’s famous cantata, ‘Carmina Burana’, live on stage, featuring internationally acclaimed soloists Shelén Hughes, Reginald Mobley, and John Brancy, alongside the Blossom Festival Chorus and the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus. 

The highly popular ‘Carmina Burana’ is one of the biggest and most impressive classical works ever. The cantata is a sonic tour-de-force based upon a collection of medieval 24 poems discovered in margins of medieval texts found in a German monastery in 1803. The enthralling work forms part of a musical triptych, and is best known for the first and last sections, known as ‘Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi’, starting with the famous ‘O Fortuna’. The incredibly spellbinding work premiered in 1937, performed by the Oper Frankfurt, and has since gained the reputation of being a real test of technique and stamina, and captivating from start to finish. The ‘Carmina Burana’ flaunts unparalleled dramatic instinct, requires effortless and almost dangerous vocal delivery, and boasts a sense of momentum that keeps propelling it forward. 

The Cleveland Orchestra will also be performing Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ tone poem, ‘En Saga, Op. 9’, one of the composer’s biggest purely orchestral successes. 

The Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home, the Blossom Music Centre, is one of the nation’s most beloved outdoor music venues. With the venue’s breathtaking setting, excellent acoustics, seating capacity of over 19,000, and regular line-up of world-class performances, every visit to the Blossom Music Centre is one that will be remembered for years to come! 

Get your tickets now, and be part of one of the biggest classical musical celebrations of the year!