Ravello Music Festival

An introduction to the Ravello Music Festival from the Fodor's Travel blog:

No end of artists and celebrities have found inspiration along the Amalfi Coast, from Titian to Noel Coward to Nan Goldin. But Ravello's most famous celebrity visitor remains that genius composer and tyrant-ideologue Richard Wagner, who, in February 1880, paid a visit one day to Villa Rufolo and proceeded to thunder his way through the second act of Parsifal on a crumbling pianoforte in front of nonplussed swells.

It was an inspired moment, and since that day music has played an important part of Ravello's cultural atmosphere. Indeed, Germany's titan composer was the inspiration for the annual Ravello Music Festival, one of the world's great showcases for symphonic and chamber music. This year's musical celebration runs March 9 through mid-October, with a summer break in August.