“If we’re not tired at the end, something will be wrong,” said conductor Michael Barrett on the eve of his second season as chief executive and general director of the Caramoor International Music Festival. “Or maybe it will go so well that we’ll feel exhilarated!” The festival opens on Saturday, June 25, and runs through August 13.

Mr. Barrett has already put his imprint on the festival by diversifying it. He quickly sensed, he said, that “if all we play is Handel and Haydn, people will stop coming.” Bach, opera, jazz, French music circa 1920, Cuban songs, and music for the theremin are among the offerings of the festival’s 60th-anniversary season. The opening will be celebrated with a work never before played at Caramoor – Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which will be performed by Caramoor’s resident orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, under Peter Oundjian, the festival’s principal conductor.

For the anniversary, the festival pays tribute to its founders, Walter Rosen and his wife, Lucie Bigelow Dodge, former owners of the 60-acre, Mediterranean-style estate the festival calls home. “Caramoor was started in memory of their only son, Walter Bigelow Rosen, a pilot in the Canadian RAF shot down while returning from his first mission, a raid on Germany in 1944,” Mr. Barrett said. “What the Rosens did is really moving – they gave away their estate to the public in an uplifting, life-affirming gesture.” And the Caramoor festival was born.

Born in Berlin, Rosen came to the United States when he was 10, graduated from Harvard and started his own law firm at the age of 22, before turning to banking. Private concerts were long part of the Rosens’ life at Caramoor, as was collecting. “The house is full of artifacts Walter collected on his travels to Europe. Sometimes he would acquire an entire room of an old palazzo or a Spanish castle, which would be brought over and reassembled,” Mr. Barrett said.

Opera endures at Caramoor under the resourceful guidance of Will Crutchfield. This year his Bel Canto at Caramoor series of semi-staged performances offers a work that postdates what we think of as the bel can to era, Verdi’s “La Traviata” (July 23). Mr. Crutchfield plans to emphasize its bel canto aspect by performing it uncut. Traditional cuts make the opera seem more modern than it actually is by omitting cabalettas and repeats, which singers would be expected to ornament.

“‘Traviata’ probably hasn’t been done like this in America for more than 100 years,” said Mr. Barrett. “And the other opera, Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” [July 9], hasn’t been given by one of New York’s major opera houses for 35 years.” Is there any prospect for upgrading Caramoor’s operas to full productions? “No. We don’t have the facilities, and operas are expensive, especially since we give only one performance of each. We’re not an opera festival, but a festival that includes opera,” he said.

Mr. Barrett, who was a protege of Leonard Bernstein, said he especially looks forward to a program of early 20th-century French masterpieces inspired by primitivism, in which he will both play the piano and conduct in a program of Stravinsky, Milhaud, and Debussy in chamber arrangements, including “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” in a transcription by Schoenberg (July 8).

“And don’t forget the Bach. When was the last time you heard the B-minor Mass at a summer festival?” Mr. Barrett hopes to ignite a debate between purists and proponents of modern instruments by programming a double keyboard concerto with modern pianos and the Fifth Brandenburg with harpsichord (August 7). One of the Bach pianists will be John Musto, who becomes Caramoor’s composer-in-residence in the fall. The current festival lacks a composer-in-residence but will give the world premiere of Joel Hoffman’s String Quartet No. 3 (July 21). Jazz returns under Joe Lovano and Jim Luce (July 30 & August 6).

Clearly, Mr. Barrett doesn’t believe in tying a festival together with an overarching theme. “That might be all right with 10 concerts, but not 38.” Caramoor is not the kind of festival one heads to as a destination and stays for several days. As at Glyndebourne, people come and go for individual events. Asked how he envisioned the festival in future seasons, Mr. Barrett replied, “You’re looking at it right now.”