Light and fire, freezing cold and a stunning mountain panorama: on the last weekend in January the idyllic winter sports resort of Lech am Arlberg will once again play host to the Bregenz Festival, as it has for the past six years. In a show entitled Viva Verdi – Aria Magic in the Alps the festival presents the famous Italian composer's most moving melodies amid the majestic setting of the Schlosskopfplatz on 28 and 31 January 2010. 

The show is subtitled Fathers and Daughters – a fateful relationship which lies at the heart of many of Verdi's operas and also inspired the composer to write some of his most magical duets: for instance the Ethiopian princess Aida and her father Amonasro, Violetta from La Traviata and her father-in-law Giorgio Germont, and the jester Rigoletto and his daughter Gilda. The duets will be performed by Elena Kelessidi (soprano) and David Stout (baritone), both artists who perform at the festival. 

Nestling between a river, a forest filled with snow, and high mountains is the outdoor location of the show, Schlosskopfplatz – a large square at the Schlosskopf ski-lift station. Here, an extraordinary stage sculpture of ice and snow will be fashioned to serve as the backdrop for a spectacle of light, fire and tragic passion. 

Ice-cold opera highlights since 2004

Every year since 2004 the Bregenz Festival has staged an open-air concert of opera highlights at Lech am Arlberg. In the last six winters, festival singers have sung a selection of best-loved arias and melodies from hit productions on the Floating Stage like West Side Story, La Bohème, Tosca and Aida. The shows in the snow regularly draw several thousand enthusiastic spectators to the centre of Lech in spite of temperatures as low as minus 25. 

 28 and 31 January 2010 - 6.15 p.m. (Lech am Arlberg, Schlosskopfplatz, admission free)

]Aida - Liebestod at Lech am Arlberg in 2009

]Movie "Puccini on Ice 2008"
]Movie of Show in the Snow 2006

Floating Stage tickets to be won! Visitors to Viva Verdi – Aria Magic in the Alps, whose appetite is whetted for a summer evening on Lake Constance, will have plenty of chances at the Lech show to win tickets for the coming season of the Bregenz Festival.

On land, in water and up in the air: We are looking for professional dancers who want to be part of Graham Vick’s (Choreographer: Ron Howell) spectacular open-air production of Verdi’s "Aida" next summer in Bregenz. 

Period: 21. June 2010 (security briefing & start of rehearsals) to 22. August 2010

Requirements: Very good modern and contemporary technique, solid classical technique, high improvisation ability and stage experience. 

Please send your application including a portrait picture & CV to audition@bregenzerfestspiele.com
Make sure you also state your email address, phone number and post address!

Application deadline: 20. January 2010

Participation in audition (beginning of February) only upon written invitation.

Contact: from 11.01.2010: Daniel Knapp, Phone: +43 5574 – 407-377

Voices from inner emigration

Totalitarianism, whether fascist or communist, forced many people into exile. For those who stayed in their homeland, a possible solution was self-imposed internal exile. Chamber music and poetry are the supreme forms of expression of artists in this sort of "inner emigration". For Weinberg, Akhmatova and Shostakovich these genres were a respite from the strictly guarded public utterances of artists living in totalitarian regimes; for others, like Beethoven and Smetana, chamber music was a voice from an inner island amid the sea of deafness surrounding them. Chamber music concerts are not normally a feature of the Bregenz Festival programme, but in the case of Weinberg, his powerful, intimate and passionate chamber music makes up an important part of his extensive oeuvre, and a festival celebrating his music simply cannot leave it out. The chamber music section of the festival has been programmed by our friends and partners, the members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and it is a great opportunity to experience these excellent musicians close at hand – with music whose every note illustrates the motto of the Festival in 2010: "In foreign lands".

Ralph Dutli reads – in Russian and German – texts by four great Russian poets of the 20th century: Ossip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky, who today are regarded as classic figures of modernism. Two of them – Tsvetaeva and Brodsky – were exiles in Paris and New York, while the other two – Mandelstam and Akhmatova – were significant representatives of inner emigration. Mandelstam died in the Gulag camps, Tsvetaeva committed suicide; all four suffered political repression and a ban on publication. In their poems they created a "portable fatherland", as Heinrich Heine called it, a precarious security in language, a final possibility of freedom and a breathing-space.

25 July – 7.30 p.m., Lake Studio

EOS-Quartett Wien
Willy Büchler, violin
Christian Blasl, violin
Roman Bernhart, viola
Andreas Pokorny, cello
TBA, piano
Talia Or, soprano

• Mieczysław Weinberg: Piano Quintet op. 18
• Mieczysław Weinberg: Three Palms op. 120, a setting of verses by Mikhail Lermontov for string quartet and soprano
  
• Mieczysław Weinberg: Jewish Songs op. 13 Songs

Texts by Ossip Mandelstam, read by Ralph Dutli

Ticket price: 22 euro

8 August – 11 a.m., Lake Studio

Luca Monti, piano
Kana Matsui, violin
Johannes Flieder, viola
Christoph Stradner, cello

• Mieczysław Weinberg: Trio op. 48 for Violin, Viola and Cello
• Mieczysław Weinberg: Sonata No. 2 op. 63 for Cello and Piano

Texts by Joseph Brodsky, read by Ralph Dutli

Ticket price: 22 euro

15 August – 7.30 p.m., Lake Studio

Ensemble Dolby’s Around
Claire Dolby, violin, voice
Nicolas Geremus, violin
Vera Reigersberg, viola
Luis Zorita, cello
Ernst Weissensteiner, double bass

• Mieczysław Weinberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1 op. 145
• Works by Claire Dolby and Nicolas Geremus

Texts by Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova, read by Ralph Dutli

Ticket price: 22 euro 

children's festival

Before the adults celebrate the premiere of Aida on the Floating Stage, our youngest friends of the festival are invited to put together their own musical and perform it in front of an audience. In a week-long festival, children aged from 6 to 11 take part in various workshops to create everything they need for a show of their own: they paint stage scenery, assemble props, practise singing and rehearse dances… At the end the excitement mounts because the first night is drawing near.

crèche

A new service for matinees – come to an orchestral matinee concert, a morning performance of the opera in the Festival Opera House or the festival breakfast and the crossculture team will look after your children if they are three years old or more. During the performance we will entertain your children with a creative cultural programme with lots of play, fun and music.

• Matinee concert of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, 25 July – 11.00 a.m.
• Festival Opera House production Die Passagierin, 31 July – 11.00 a.m.
• Matinee concert of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, 1 August – 11.00 a.m.
• Matinee concert of the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, 15 August – 11.00 a.m.
• Festival breakfast, 25 July, 1 and 15 August – 9.30 a.m.
  

This service is free of charge | Festival Opera House

For information and registration, write to info@cross-culture.at or call +43 5574 407 296.

crossculture night

The big summer event in the open air for school-pupils and students aged from 14 to 26. The highlight is a performance of Aida on the Floating Stage, but the Festival Opera House opens its doors to participants in the afternoon. Stockkampf and Opernworkshops invite the young people to take part and try things out. Those who prefer can go on guided tours, take part in sound and stage checks and listen to introductions to the works. And everyone who likes being outside can enjoy the show on the open-air stage in front of the Festival Opera House.

crossculture week

Spontaneity, a sense of fun and passion for music. Band workshops will be offered by the musicians of Simon Kräutler & The Gang. The rehearsal room will thus become a musical workshop for young people aged from 14 to 20 who have instrumental and singing ability but would like to improve their ability to play together and to work on their stage presence. They will also learn about acoustics and lighting and get tips on song-writing. The week of music ends with an open jam session on stage and a performance on the stage in front of the Festival Opera House as part of crossculture night.

crossculture workshops

Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. The stage set on the Nile is the backdrop for one of the greatest tales of tragic love in the entire opera repertoire: the Ethiopian princess Aida loves the Egyptian commander Radames, but in times of war and with intrigues at the Pharaoh's court, their passionate love has no chance of survival. Participants in the crossculture workshops experience the story and music of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida themselves and find solutions by acting out scenes. "Opernschlüssel" provides an insight into stage acting technique and gives facts about life in the theatre.

crossculture tours

What shoe size would fit the statue whose feet are part of the stage set for Aida? What must the crane operator, 60 metres high up, look out for during the performance? Why doesn't the Floating Stage have an orchestra pit? Artistic and technical secrets of the Floating Stage will be revealed on a tour behind the scenes (admission is free for children of 10 or younger, for school groups and young people's groups). The backstage tour can be conveniently combined with a crossculture workshop.

concessions for school children & students

For schoolchildren and students no older than 26, reduced-price tickets are available for every event at the Bregenz Festival, except for premieres and events not organized by the festival.

Ticket prices: 25 % of the regular ticket price, but not less than EUR 8.

For organizational reasons, reduced-price tickets can be ordered only by phone on +43 (0)5574 407-6 or in person at the box office.

academy of the bregenz festival and the vienna symphony orchestra

For the third season now, soloists of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra coach aspiring musicians and prepare them for a professional career in a unique atmosphere of art and nature on the shore of Lake Constance. Participants in the Academy of the Bregenz Festival attend master-classes and in addition to the tuition there is a varied programme of extracurricular events. Rehearsals and visits to Bregenz Festival performances, body awareness workshops, as well as the opening and closing concerts are also part of the Academy.

Opening concert with tutors from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Closing concert with Academy participants

A production by les ballets C de la B in co-production with Théâtre de la Ville (Paris),
Le Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, TorinoDanza, Sadler’s Wells (London), Stadsschouwburg
Groningen, Tanzkongress 2009 / Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Kaaitheater (Brussels)

13 and 14 August – 8 p.m., Werkstatt Bühne

"The scene is a place of urgency and the body / bodies in ecstasy," the choreographer Alain Platel writes about his new production. "One of the themes that has figured prominently in my work in recent years is that of the body in a state of hysteria. I am not referring to the medical condition of hysteria, but instead to a kind of oversensitivity to life.

Whenever words are no longer capable of expressing our deepest feelings, our body takes over. I have been working with dancers to develop a body language that is based precisely on this principle. Because that's probably what dance has been from the beginning: a physical translation of extreme emotions.

Fear of the discomfort of those who witness a body in such a state is very great. And yet I believe it's a positive experience to observe this state closely. It puts us in a position to be able to understand this very special form of behaviour, just like other forms of strange – extreme and provocative – behaviour which are all part of our human selves."

Ticket price: EUR 26

Alain Platel

The choreographer and dancer Alain Platel brings on to the stage things that don't seem to belong together, and in his choreography he repeatedly blurs the boundaries between dance, theatre, music and the plastic and graphic arts. Platel was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1956. His first training was in remedial education and for five years he was involved in teaching severely handicapped children. In 1984, he founded the dance collective les ballets C de la B with other stage directors and choreographers. He achieved his international breakthrough four years later with the production Lets op Bach. His most important works include Wolf (2003), Allemaal Indiaan (1999), La Tristezza Complice (1995) and Bonjour Madame (1993). In 2004, Platel was awarded the European Theatre Prize for life-time achievement.

"Platel combines the graphic style of social reportage with the silliness of a children's birthday party and brings together the many stories like a circus juggler" (Berliner Zeitung).

5 and 7 August – 8 p.m., Werkstattbühne

Jacob is a survivor of genocide – where and when it took place is left to the imagination of the listener. He is haunted by memories of his past, tormented by guilt at having survived, which cost other people their lives. His own mother sacrificed herself for him, and he even witnessed her act of sacrifice. Years later Jacob tries to rid himself of all his feelings of guilt. The title of the opera refers to the "thinking room" in which Jacob meets "The Guide", a being who takes him on a journey back to his childhood.

Morton Subotnick is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of electronic music in the USA. In the 1960s he had great success with his psychedelic experimental compositions. In the 1990s he was rediscovered by the Electronica movement and has enjoyed considerable popularity since then. The opera Jacob’s Room was in fact commissioned as long ago as the 1970s but was never given in the planned form on account of artistic differences; it was premiered in 1989 in a concert performance.

Now, 30 years on, the Bregenz Festival is staging Subotnick's full-length opera. For it, the director and set designer Mirella Weingarten has devised a dynamic stage sculpture which the video artist Lillevan will use as a projection screen for live images.

Ticket price: EUR 26, introductory talk half an hour before the performance begins

Morton Subotnick

The American composer Morton Subotnick (*14. 4. 1933) is not only regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music, but he has also been very much in the vanguard of multimedia art. In the 1960s he was the first composer to be commissioned to write a work of electronic music by a record company. The album that resulted was Silver Apples of the Moon; composed in 1967 using the first model of the Buchla synthesizer, the album became a bestseller and made it to the top of the US Classical Charts. In the mid sixties Subotnick worked as music director of the notorious Electric Circus, a kind of multimedia disco in which artists like The Velvet Underground and The Grateful Dead performed.

As a composer, Subotnick's chief interest has always lain in dance and theatre. His idea of theatre corresponds to that of other American artists of his generation such as Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk and Robert Ashley. In his compositions Subotnick shapes the sound within the three-dimensional space of the theatre.

Along with the world premiere of the opera Jacob's Room, two other events are on the programme. First, Morton Subotnick will give a talk about his early days in electronic music during which he will demonstrate a Buchla synthesizer built in 1961. And second, he will present some of his works from the 1960s in a laptop show with live video.

The word "foreign" denotes something we are not familiar with – something different in nature or far removed. A geographical region as well as a field of experience or expertise can be regarded as foreign or alien. Something "foreign" can be perceived positively as something "exotic", but also it can arouse fear.

The three concerts are the product of free association around the term "foreign". Christoph Stradner and Luca Monti, well known for their radical and theatrical concepts, have entitled their programme in 2010 "Suite Exotika".

The Ensemble Lux, which entranced Bregenz audiences with its extraordinary virtuosity in summer 2008, presents works by composers who live and work "in foreign lands" and they include two pieces commissioned by Art of our Times.

The ensemble oenm returns to Bregenz with a concert programme that focuses on the combination of music and video. A VJ – as outlandish for the world of new music as it is for many concert-goers – will create images, live, to accompany the music.

In addition to this concert series, the music of Austrian composers will continue to occupy a special place in the programme of Art of our Times. This year there is a concert portrait of the Austrian composer Johannes Maria Staud, played by the Wiener Concert-Verein.

Ticket Price: EUR 15