The traditional music season runs from September to June, rather like the academic year. But music has summer school, too, and that can be a pleasure, not a penance. What might we look forward to in the hot months?

Begin with the New York Philharmonic, which will give an array of concerts, in its Lincoln Center home, and in the city’s parks. On June 30 and July 1 – this is in Avery Fisher Hall – it will do a program called “A Little Nightmare Music.” This includes Liszt’s “Totentanz” (“Dance of Death”), Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” Dukas’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” – that sort of thing. On hand will be Marc-Andre Hamelin, a pianist with a monster technique. Then, on July 2 and July 3, there will be a program called “New York, New York.” It features a delicious, ultra-urbane piece by Gershwin – “Promenade (Walking the Dog)” – and several pieces by Leroy Anderson (but not his beloved “Typewriter”).

Skipping ahead a bit, the Philharmonic will stage a “Soiree Francaise,” with a couple of guest singers, including the excellent mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. (This is July 9 and July 10.) She will sing French arias. All of the programs I have mentioned, incidentally, are led by Bramwell Tovey, a British conductor.

Music director Lorin Maazel will be in front of the orchestra on July 19, in Central Park (the Great Lawn). His program will be all-Dvoryak, and that will include – you bet – the “New World” Symphony. How about the Metropolitan Opera? Mothballed? Not at all – like the Philharmonic, the company will be out in the parks. For example, it will occupy the Great Lawn on July 14, presenting “Tosca.” It will not dump third-raters on you, either: In the title role is the notorious diva Aprile Millo (if she shows, that is – she is one of the great cancelers). Cavaradossi will be sung by the quite respectable tenor Francisco Casanova (who owns the most romantic name in music). And Scarpia will be one of the Scarpias of our time, James Morris. Even the minor roles are attractively filled: Paul Plishka as the Sacristan, Richard Bernstein as Angelotti, and Charles Anthony as Spoletta.

The next night, veteran conductor Julius Rudel will lead a performance of “Samson and Delilah,” with the vibrant mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura. Then the Met takes those two operas – “Tosca” and “Samson and Delilah” – out of Central Park, to other parks around the city, and into New Jersey, too.

Care to go up to Cooperstown, N.Y., for the Glimmerglass Opera? You’ll have four productions, of “Cosi Fan Tutte”; “Lucie de Lammermoor” (the Paris version of “Lucia di Lammermoor”); a double bill, composed of one-act operas by Massenet and Poulenc (“Le Portrait de Manon” and “La Voix Humaine”); and Britten’s “Death in Venice.” Singers of particular interest are the mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy in “Cosi”; the baritone Earle Patriarco in “Lucie”; the soprano Amy Burton in “La Voix Humaine”; and the tenor William Burden in “Death in Venice.” (He was splendid in the Met’s “Pelleas et Melisande” this season.)

Glimmerglass runs from June 30 to August 23. While in Cooperstown, why not the baseball Hall of Fame, too?

Opening night of the Lincoln Center Festival – July 12 – will include an opera by Ottorino Respighi, a version of “Sleeping Beauty” (“La Bella Dormente del Bosco”). It is an opera for puppets. And don’t laugh – some people think the best thing about the Salzburg Festival is the Marionette Theater.

The Bard Music Festival, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., will explore “Copland and His World,” in August. This includes Copland’s opera “The Tender Land,” which is to opera what “Oklahoma!” is to musical theater: a somewhat unexpected Western. Bard will also give us Marc Blitzstein’s interesting opera, “Regina” (based on Lillian Hellman’s “Little Foxes”).

Crowning New York’s summer music season is Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, whose lineup is simply first-rate. Most important is that the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, under Louis Langree, plays very well. And the festival’s guests tend to be stars. Opening night – July 28 – features the soprano Renee Fleming and the pianist Stephen Hough. Subsequent nights are no less promising.

The Russian violinist Viktoria Mullova plays Beethoven’s concerto. The pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Ravel – and teams up with Sir James Galway for Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto, K. 299. Afterward, Mr. Thibaudet will play a late night recital, in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse. (This will be an all-French affair.)

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson will sing Bach cantatas, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra – excellent in itself – features the pianist Angela Hewitt, in Bach concertos. With the festival orchestra, Louis Lortie will play a Mozart concerto, and Garrick Ohlsson will play a Beethoven concerto. (These are two reliable pianists.) Mr. Ohlsson, too, will get in on the late-night-recital act: He will play three Beethoven sonatas.

Joshua Bell, the Hoosier violinist, is a Mostly Mozart regular, and he will play a Prokofiev concerto and the Tchaikovsky concerto. Another poster-boy violinist, Gil Shaham, will play a Mozart concerto. And the Russian Patriarchate Choir will pay a visit – in an appetizing program beginning with liturgical chant and going to Grechaninov. I have not heard this particular choir, but I have never heard a Russian choir that wasn’t agreeable.

They will help close the 2005 Mostly Mozart Festival when Maestro Langree leads Mozart’s Mass in C minor.

Summer music is supposed to be lightish, fun. Mozart’s Mass in C minor – that’s serious business!