Bregenz Festival
17st July to 18nd August 2024
The 2022 Bregenz Festival will be showing the opera Der Freischütz on the floating stage.
Der Freischütz - game on the lake
An uninviting village in Germany shortly after the Thirty Years’ War: The young scrivener Max loves Agathe, the daughter of the head forester Kuno. But in order to Marry her, the inexperienced marksman Max must participate in an archaic tradition and score in a shooting trial – an unfulfillable challenge for him. The dubious war veteran Kaspar knows this. He convinces the scrivener to meet him at Wolf’s Glen at midnight to forge “free bullets” that never miss their target. Max, who does not see any other way out of his unfortunate situation, sells his soul to the devil. What he does not know, though, is that while six of the cursed bullets will hit their target, the seventh is in the devil’s hands …
Since its premiere in 1821, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz has been one of the most popular operas in the German speaking area. In the summer of 2024, it is staged on the Seebühne for the first time. Director and stage designer Philipp Stölzl and the Conductor in Residence Enrique Mazzola team up again in Bregenz following the phenomenal success of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Musical Director Enrique Mazzola, Erina Yashima
Stage Director | Stage Designer Philipp Stölzl
Costume Designer Gesine Völlm
Wired Aerial Theatre | Bregenzer Festspiele Extras
Bregenzer Festspiele Choir | Prague Philharmonic Choir
Wiener Symphoniker
Magical moments at the lake
The lukewarm summer air caresses the skin, on the gently rippled surface of the water the glowing red-glittering reflection of the evening sun sinking on the horizon dances, it smells of a Mediterranean night and grandiose opera. Welcome to the Bregenz Festival, welcome to Lake Constance in front of the unique backdrop of the Bregenz lake stage.
Every summer the festival plays its way into the hearts of the audience with a beguiling art enjoyment for all the senses.
In the midst of an enchanting landscape
... located in the westernmost Austrian state of Vorarlberg, the Bregenz Festival does not only present top-class art in the open air:
Whether unforgettable opera premieres and concert treasures in the Festspielhaus, unheard-of in the context of art from the time on the workshop stage or touching gems of opera literature in the Vorarlberger Landestheater.
The summer festival attracts around 200,000 visitors to the triangle between the Alps and Lake Constance with more than eighty performances in July and August. Magical moments at the lake arise from artistic aspirations and a passion for the extraordinary.
Foundation, history and development
1946
One year after the end of the Second World War, the first Bregenz Festival Week took place on two gravel barges - one for the stage construction of Mozart's youth work Bastien et Bastienne, the other for the orchestra. In a city that didn't even have a theater at the time, the idea of holding a festival seemed ludicrous, but the stopgap solution of choosing the most beautiful part of the city - Lake Constance - as the stage turned out to be a resounding success.
Visitors from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France made the festival an international event in its first year. The Wiener Symphoniker formed the festival orchestra from the beginning and have played a major role in the development and success of the festival to this day.
2006
The summer of 2006 was mainly dominated by the newly renovated festival hall - the “most beautiful birthday present for the 60th anniversary of the festival”, as Festival President Günter Rhomberg called it: “Finally, this summer it was possible to present our program to the audience in an infrastructure that does justice to the quality of the festival performances. "
The play on the lake, The Troubadour, was among the most successful operas on the lake stage of the past ten years: 301,573 visitors saw the spectacular production by Robert Carsen and Paul Steinberg in two years.
There was unanimous enthusiasm among critics and audience for the opera in the Festspielhaus Der Untergang des Haus Usher by Claude Debussy: In the first opera production as part of the Bregenz Festival on the stage of the newly renovated Festspielhaus, Debussy's ballets Prélude à l ' après-midi d'un faune and Jeux as well as the newly completed one-act opera The Downfall of the House of Usher.
The contemporary program series Art from Time and the orchestral concerts achieved record attendance.