Start off with opera, end up at the Bowl

You know the routine. Summer in L.A. is hot, dry and, if you want to hear classical music, you go to the Hollywood Bowl and hope for the best. But here’s the good news. We at The Times cheat. Memorial Day signals summer for us, and June, usually a good month for music, is, this year, a particularly good month.

First off, it’s a month for opera. The two most promising productions (and the two best operas) of the Los Angeles Opera’s season, two wistfully wise comedies -- Verdi’s wondrous “Falstaff” (with the charismatic Bryn Terfel, May 28-June 15) and Strauss’ moving “Der Rosenkavalier” (directed by Maximilian Schell, May 29-June 19) -- are both conducted by music director Kent Nagano (catch him while you can; he has but one more season with the company before decamping to Munich). Meanwhile, Long Beach Opera turns over Handel’s heavenly “Semele” to spunky director Isabel Milenski (June 4, 12) and Weill’s ever-apt “Three Penny Opera” to provocative Christopher Alden (June 11, 15).

The Cleveland Orchestra comes to town in June. In fact, it comes to three towns. Widely regarded as America’s best (forget the qualifications, it is the best), this dream ensemble appears with music director Franz Welser-Most at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Ojai Festival (June 8, 9, 10).

And then there are two multi-culti events in June. At UCLA, Nagano conducts a new concert work for orchestra and several narrators about Manzanar, where innocent Japanese Americans were interned in Central California during World War II (June 2). At OCPAC (June 24), Philip Glass presides over an ensemble of world musicians for his evening-long “Orion,” which he composed for the Olympics Arts Festival in Athens.

Even the Bowl starts promisingly with opera. John Mauceri leads the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in a preseason concert performance (July 10) of the final moments (OK, hours) of Wagner’s “Twilight of the Gods,” with impressive soprano Christine Brewer atop the funeral pyre. Opening classical week (July 12-16) is sure-thing Gershwin -- concert music, a jazz program and “Porgy and Bess.” The soloists are fine. The conductor, Leonard Slatkin, gets Gershwin. The sound system, one hears and hopes, will be better.

After that it’s Bowling pretty much as usual. But you might try Mahler’s Fifth Symphony led by Slatkin (Aug. 23), or bouncy Nicholas McGegan’s Baroque week (Aug. 9, 11).