Witch guide – Jamie Barton [BreeAnne Clowdus]

YOU know it’s summer when the Proms at St Jude’s emerge on the horizon – as they do now, with their coming season June 24-July 2. They run as always around Central Square in Hampstead Garden Suburb, raising funds for charity. And this year’s programme includes former BBC Young Musician Jennifer Pike playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto on opening night; tenor James Gilchrist singing Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings on June 29; and the London Mozart Players wrapping things up. With marquees on the lawns around St Jude’s Church and a truly festive atmosphere, it’s a great way to enjoy a summer evening with food, wine and music. Details: promsatstjudes.org.uk

• Another, more specialist north London festival worth experiencing is Stoke Newington Early Music Festival which runs June 22-July 6 in collectable venues and with major names of the early music circuit like tenor Nicholas Mulroy and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny. stokenewingtonearlymusic.org.uk

• If you’ve been to the Royal Opera’s spectacular Trovatore – strikingly staged and magnificently sung – you’ll have heard the dramatic singing of Jamie Barton as Azucena, the witch with a regrettable habit of throwing babies on bonfires. She’s a force of nature. And she appears again – as herself, without the need for social services intervention – in a song recital at The Temple on June 17. Accompanied by Julius Drake, she sings Dvořák, Duparc, Sibelius, the pyrotechnics purely vocal. templemusic.org

• That Trovatore was conducted by Antonio Pappanio, firing on all guns in the final weeks of his tenure as the Royal Opera’s music director and he is back again to lead a new run of the company’s clean, direct but powerfully moving production of Massenet’s Werther. This time round it’s Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, which makes it a hot ticket. Runs June 20-July 4. roh.org.uk

• It’s hard to believe that the pianist Daniil Trifonov is still only 32: he seems to have been around so long and done so much since he won the then-prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 2011. And he’s arguably the outstanding pianist of today – far more significant than Lang Lang or those other flashy heavy-hitters – which is why you’d be a fool to miss him at the Barbican on June 16: a solo recital in which he plays fantasy pieces by Schumann, Mozart, Ravel and Scriabin. barbican.org.uk

• Finally, if the hot weather is driving you out of London toward the coast, think of the Aldeburgh Festival – for my money, the finest annual fixture in the British music calendar. Founded by Benjamin Britten 74 years ago, it delivers the most interesting programmes, projects and performers you could hope for. And it runs this year to June 25, with artists including pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, baritone Roderick Williams, the Heath Quartet, John Wilson’s supercharged Sinfonia of London… And Snape Maltings, where the concerts mostly happen, is a joy to visit, looking out across the marshes of the River Alde. A glimpse of heaven. brittenpearsarts.org