Ace Russian trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov makes an appearance July 14.

You’d think Mark Malkovich could go out for dinner and not think about the Newport Music Festival, the annual chamber music marathon he has presided over for the past 33 years. But there he was last fall at the home of friends, when he heard a stunning CD in the background

It was a recording by an Icelandic tenor named Gardar Thor Cortes, a sort of cross between Pavarotti and Josh Groban. Malkovich’s host, Kaja Zaklynsky, is from Iceland and her family had sent along a copy of the recording, which last year went double platinum in the United Kingdom.

Malkovich knew then that he had to have Cortes for this summer’s festival, and set out to track down the 34-year-old singer.

As it turns out, Cortes will be making his American debut at The Breakers July 23, singing a mix of opera arias and pop ballads.

Cortes is one of three-dozen musicians taking part in the 17-day event, which opens Friday in the marble halls of Newport’s famed mansions. Other highlights include an appearance by 11-year-old pianist Alice Burla, who will be tackling Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations, and the American debut of Wai Yin Wong, a young pianist from Hong Kong who swept last year’s Horowitz Competition in Ukraine when she was just 14.

Ace Russian trumpeter Sergei Nakariakov makes an appearance July 14, and pianist John Bayless will be back with his masterful improvisations based on suggestions from audience members July 19. Look for a return, too, of Texan Adam Golka, the 21-year-old pianist who made such a splash when he debuted here last year.

The festival, now 40 years old, prides itself on introducing audiences to rising stars and unusual repertoire. During Malkovich’s tenure, the festival has staged more than 130 American debuts.

It’s an exhaustive non-stop event, offering this summer almost 60 concerts and some 800 pieces of music. And no program is expected to generate more excitement than that of Cortes, who is sort of Iceland’s answer to Andrea Bocelli.

Actually, Cortes, a former child actor, considers himself first and foremost an opera singer, unlike Bocelli, who is more of a pop crooner. Cortes, whose father was a world-class tenor who ran a music school in Reykjavik, was trained in Vienna, Copenhagen and London, and has performed leading tenor roles. But it was as a crossover artist that he rose to prominence.

His album, entitled simply Cortes, was first released in Iceland in 2005 and went double platinum there in three months. Aside from Puccini’s soaring Nessun dorma, it is packed with romantic tunes by pop composers.

But the singing is sensational, the work of a real artist with a glorious top register.

Malkovich predicts Cortes, who has become very popular in Europe, will have a big career, and that those who catch his Newport debut will be able to one day say, “I was there.”

On his July 23 concert at The Breakers, Cortes will be singing a mix of opera arias, as well as music by the Italian film composer Ennio Morricone, Josh Gorban and Leonard Bernstein.

Tickets for the 8 p.m. event, which are selling briskly, are $100, which includes cocktails on the terrace beforehand and a reception for Cortes afterward.

It has been a while since the Newport festival went in for child prodigies. But this year there are two, including the precocious Alice Burla, who was just 6 when she entered the pre-college division at the Juilliard School in New York. Burla was born in Toronto to Ukrainian immigrant parents and showed an unusual talent for music at age 2. She went on to win a national Canadian piano competition when she was 5.

Burla came to the attention of Malkovich through Yamaha pianos, which sponsors both the young performer and the festival. She performs July 16 at The Breakers.

The other young star is 15-year-old Wai Yin Wong, who last year won the Horowitz competition, at which Malkovich was a judge. He said she was so impressive that the judges refused to give a gold medal to a player in the senior division and awarded the top prize to Wong alone.

She performs a demanding program of Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Faure July 12 at The Breakers. She then returns to The Breakers July 15 for a performance of the first Chopin concerto arranged by the composer for piano and string quintet.

This year will be a time of change for Malkovich, who worked in the chemical business before settling in Newport. He took over the festival at the last minute in 1975, after the previous director was let go.

Although he had been a businessman, he had studied piano and hung out with a lot of professional musicians during his time in New York and Brussels, where he lived with his family for several years.

And it didn’t take long for him to put his stamp on the festival, bringing in important Soviet pianists who had not been heard in this country before, and using his contacts at the Library of Congress to unearth unusual repertoire. Under his stewardship the event took on an international profile.

Now at 77 (he will be 78 this week) Malkovich is stepping down in September as general director and turning over the business end of the operation to son Mark Malkovich IV. Malkovich senior will remain on, though, as creative head, the person who books players and chooses repertoire, a specialty of his.

The change will have little bearing on the festival, at least in the short run, because the younger Malkovich has been handling things like sponsorships and housing for the past several years.

“It’s mostly a change of titles,” said Mark Malkovich IV.

Otherwise the festival will stick pretty much to the format it has followed for decades now, with three and as many as five concerts a day in Newport’s storied mansions.

Fewer mansions are being used this year, however, and the traditional concert on a cruise ship will not take place, in part because Malkovich didn’t have a musician he wanted to showcase.

But there will be more hour-long concerts in the 7 p.m. time slot, including a July 13 program by Indonesian pianist Eduardus Halim featuring Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes. That’s at Ochre Court.

Halim, the last student of Vladimir Horowitz, will also open the festival Friday night with more music by Liszt, his Evenings in Vienna, and the second book of Chopin etudes.

Among the other highlights:

Michael Endres performs the first of several programs devoted to the complete Mozart piano sonatas July 14 at Salve Regina University’s Ochre Court.

A children’s program of familiar tunes by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin takes place July 12 under a tent at Wakehurst.

Russian pianist Vadim Rudenko, who is not well known in this country, appears July 13 at The Breakers, with a program that concludes with excerpts from the Nutcraker arranged by Russian pianist-conductor Mikhail Pletnev. Pletnev premiered this music at the festival in 1979.

On July 21, violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky and pianist Konstantin Lifschitz, both festival veterans, team up for a program of Mozart and Prokofiev.

Russian cellist Sergey Antonov, who took the gold medal at last year’s Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, performs the gorgeous Rachmaninoff sonata July 24.

Pianist Agustin Anievas, a longtime friend of Malkovich’s and a festival regular years ago, comes out of retirement to play the Liszt sonata July 26.

The festival ends July 27 with an all-Paganini night with Romanian violinist Eugene Tichindeleanu.

Tickets range from $25 to $40 for evening events. Call (401) 849-0700 or log on to www.newportmusic.org.