By PAULA DEITZ [NY Sun, 8 August 2008]

When New York's performing arts season — from September to June — came to a close, my parents would arrange outings to outdoor musical events, especially at Tanglewood and Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia. The excursion, the picnic, and the starry skies enhanced my childhood memories of those individual performances on warm nights. The enchantment endured when I later discovered, during my student travels abroad, an abundance of theatrical and music festivals in bucolic settings, some centuries-old, like entertainments at such aristocratic venues as Versailles.