Bregenzer Festival / Festspiele 2013

17 July - 18 August 2013

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The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflotte)

• Opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder
• In German with surtitles
• Premiere on 17 July 2013 – 9.15 p.m, Seebühne
• Duration approx. 2 ¼ hours, no interval

What begins like a fairy-tale turns into a whimsical fantasy halfway between magic farce and Masonic mysticism: The Magic Flute links a love story with the great questions of the Enlightenment, juxtaposes bird-catcher charm with queenly vengeance, and bewitches the listener with music that mixes cheerful melodies, lovers’ arias, show-stopping coloraturas and mysterious chorales.

Mozart’s 1791 premiered opera – one of the most often performed operas in the world – is being staged on the Bregenz Festival lake stage in the summer of 2013 and 2014. The Magic Flute was last seen on the Bregenz Seebühne in 1985 and 1986. It will be directed by the festival’s artistic director David Pountney with sets designed by Johan Engels. This duo attracted international attention in 2010 with their staging of the opera The Passenger at the Bregenz Festspielhaus.

Prince Tamino is attacked by a giant serpent. Instead of doing battle and slaying it, he faints. The Queen of the Night sends her ladies to rescue him – only to confront him with a far greater challenge: if Tamino frees her daughter Pamina, who has been abducted by Sarastro, then he will have her as his wife. When the queen shows him a picture of her daughter, Tamino falls in love on the spot and agrees to take up the challenge. Accompanied by the bird catcher Papageno, three enigmatic ladies and three knowing boys, Tamino sets off – equipped with magic instruments with which to tame wild beasts and at the end to save the two lovers from death by fire and drowning.

Performance Dates:

July 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31 - 09.15 pm August 01, 02, 03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18 - 09.00 p.m.

The Merchant of Venice

• World premiere
• Opera in three acts and an epilogue by André Tchaikowsky
• Libretto by John O’Brien after the play by William Shakespeare
• In English with German surtitles
• Premiere on 18 July 2013 – 7.30 p.m.
• Duration 3 hours, interval after Act 2

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is a play about love and money, mercy and law. The play was turned into an opera by André Tchaikowsky (1935–1982), a Polish-born composer who emigrated to Great Britain. He wrote the opera in 1970s and 80s, but it has never been performed. The Bregenz Festival will give the world premiere of The Merchant of Venice on 18 July 2013, thus continuing its series of world premiere at the Festspielhaus.

Set in Venice during the Renaissance, the drama centres on Bassanio, a young nobleman who would like to court the beautiful Portia but doesn‘t have the money to travel to her country estate, so he asks the merchant Antonio for help. Antonio‘s wealth is tied up in maritime trade but he offers to procure the sum Bassanio needs from the Jewish money lender Shylock. Shylock hates Antonio for being so contemptuous in his treatment of Jews, and therefore stipulates that if the debt is not repaid within three months, the penalty will be a pound of Antonio‘s own flesh...

Filmed in 2005 in a lavish adaptation with Hollywood stars like Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes, Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, first staged in 1605, doesn‘t dwell on Shylock’s Jewishness or his usury. Instead it focuses on his merciless „insistence on the letter of the law“, as Karl Marx put it. His blind intransigence is the cause of his undoing at the climax of the drama.

Performance Dates:

July 18, 21 - 11.00 am

Orchestra Concerts

The orchestra concerts of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra see a welcome return of the well-known British conductors Paul Daniel and Sir Mark Elder. Both have conducted orchestra concerts as well as operas at the Bregenz Festspielhaus before: Paul Daniel Death in Venice in 2007 and Miss Fortune in 2011, Sir Mark Elder King Roger in 2009. In summer 2011 Sir Mark Elder delighted audiences in Bregenz with his own orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester. The third conducter of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra this summer is the German Claus Peter Flor. The fourth orchestra concert will be presented by Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gérard Korsten.

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

22 July – 7.30 p.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Paul Daniel
Piano: Maciej Grzybowski

• André Tchaikowsky: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, op. 4

29 July – 7.30 p.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Claus Peter Flor
Soprano: Arpiné Rahdjian
Alto: Katrin Wundsam
Tenor: Rainer Trost
Bass: Eike Wilm Schulte

• Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Symphony No. 5, op. 76
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 9, op. 125

5 August – 7.30 p.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Sir Mark Elder
Tenor: Allan Clayton

• Franz Schreker: Chamber Symphony for 23 solo instruments
• Benjamin Britten: Our Hunting Fathers, op. 8
• A. Dvorák: Symphonie Nr. 8 G-Dur, op. 88

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Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra

18 August – 11 a.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Gérard Korsten
Violin: Ilya Gringolts

• G. Puccini: Capriccio Sinfonico
• Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, op. 67
• Bohuslav Martinu: Symphony No. 4

We are promoting Bregenzer Festival 2013
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Bregenzer Festpielhaus

Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival) is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz, Austria. Founded in 1946, the festival presents a wide variety of musical and theatrical events in several venues: Seebühne (or floating stage), with 7,000 seats, is the main stage for Bregenzer Festivals. It hosts large-scale opera or musical performances on a stage over water on the shores of Lake Constance.

Opera or musical productions on the floating stage generally tend to come from the popular operatic repertoire, but often are extravagantly original and innovative productions/ stagings, frequently using the waters of the lake as an extension of the stage. Recent productions have included Aida by Giuseppe Verdi in 2009 & 2010; Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in 2007-2008; Il trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi in 2005-2006; West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein in 2003-2004 La bohème by Giacomo Puccini in 2001-2002, and "Ein Maskenball" Un ballo in maschera by Giuseppe Verdi in 1999-2000.

Since December 2003, David Pountney has been the artistic director of the festival. In 2010, the festival offered about 100 performances that drew an audience of close to 200,000.

We are promoting Bregenzer Festival 2013
ORDER BREGENZER FESTIVAL 2013 TICKETS

We are promoting Bregenzer Festival 2013
ORDER BREGENZER FESTIVAL 2013 TICKETS