Baroque opera is a battlefield once more. Just as 17th-century Venice thrived on rivalry, dazzle and excess, today’s Early Music scene brims with competition. Into this arena, the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival — founded only in 2020 — has stormed with astonishing speed, staking its claim through neglected Italian gems and the intoxicating intimacy of the UNESCO-listed Margravial Opera House. No dry concepts here: Bayreuth trades in beauty, detail, and theatrical seduction. This year’s jewel, Cavalli’s Pompeo Magno (1666), became both a Venetian centrepiece and a specialist’s odyssey under conductor Leonardo García-Alarcón.