Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria and Puppet Master Mark Down of Blind Summit Theatre in collaboration with Stunt & Action Choreographer Ran Arthur Braun are looking for male and female “puppeteers/physical actors” for the open air opera production on Lake Constance of “The Magic Flute” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Some (3) of the artists will need to be able to carry large puppet sculptures - designed by Marie Jeanne Lecca and built by Robert Allsopp and his team - for 15 – 20 minutes or longer at a time and still be able to operate the puppet mechanisms built in the puppet. Other artists will be – as a team of 2-4 puppeteers – responsible for the specific movement and body language of the puppets.

The puppets will be over-sized animals (up to 5 meters tall) and iconic symbols that will play an important part in David Pountney’s staging of the opera.

We are looking for 6 – 10 artists (puppeteers):

• That are strong physical performers with good character and acting skills
  
• That are proficient at learning choreography
  
• That come from the fields of acting or moving, acrobatics, gymnastics, dance with stage experience
  
• That – as a benefit - have drama school education, puppet experience, passive German and basic music reading skills
  
• That can swim and are comfortable with performing at heights
  
• That are willing to devote their summer 2013 and potentially the summer of the revival in 2014 to working in a large team of performers, stage managers and crew with a variety of cross-disciplinary performance responsibilities
  
• That have no problem with being outdoors in all kinds of weather and love to be able to explore the picture postcard regions on the shore of Lake Constance in the little spare time there is
  

The contract will begin with rehearsals on June 10th in Austria. A maximum of 28 performances will run from July 17th to August 18th 2013. The production is planned for two seasons, hence there is a potential to participate for a second summer during the revival year in 2014.

Successful candidates will be employed by Bregenzer Festspiele and earn a total, gross salary of EUR 7.590,- from which accommodation and all other living expenses will have to be paid by the employee.

Please submit your CV, photos & any media via email or preferably dropbox link by 20 January 2013 to Artistic Production Manager Daniel Knapp at daniel.knapp@bregenzerfestspiele.com.

The audition will take place on 17-18 of February in Bregenz BY INVITE ONLY. No compensation for travel and accommodation will be paid. Please let us know if you need any assistance in finding accommodation or need any other advice. 

With the Bregenz Festival having become, unofficially at least, the leading festival for Polish music – showcasing composers like Szymanowski and Weinberg in recent years, and now André Tchaikowsky – it's only fitting that we should celebrate in 2013 the centenary of the birth of one of Poland's most important composers: Witold Lutosławski. He will be the subject of a concert portrait by the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra on 12 August. Lutosławski's works are amongst the most lyrical and beautiful compositions of the 20th century.

12 August – 7.30 p.m., Seestudio

Conductor: Gérard Korsten

Duration: 1 1/2 hour, incl. interval

• W. Lutosławski: Dance préludes (3rd Version); Chantefleurs et chantefables; Paroles tissées
• M. Weinberg: Chamber symphony No. 3, op. 151
  

With the kind support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw
(]www.lutoslawski.culture.pl, ]www.polskamusic.pl)

Price: 24 Euro

18 August – 11 a.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Gérard Korsten
Violin: Ilya Gringolts

Duration: 1 1/2 hours, incl. interval

• G. Puccini: Capriccio Sinfonico
• M. Weinberg: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, op. 67
• B. Martinů: Symphony No. 4
  

Prices

Introductory talk an hour before the performance begins, Price 7 Euro. On 12 August there is no introductory talk.

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.

22 July – 7.30 p.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Paul Daniel
Piano: Maciej Grzybowski

Duration: 1 3/4 hours, incl. interval

• André Tchaikowsky: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, op. 4
• Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, op. 27
  

29 July – 7.30 p.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Claus Peter Flor
Soprano: Arpiné Rahdjian
Alto: Katrin Wundsam
Tenor: Rainer Trost
Bass: Eike Wilm Schulte
Chorus directors: Lukas Vasilek, Benjamin Lack (Prager Philharmonischer Chor, Bregenzer Festspielchor)

Duration: 2 1/4 hours, incl. interval

• Mieczysław 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

Duration: 2 hours, incl. interval

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

Prices

Introductory talk an hour before the performance begins, Price 7 Euro.
On 11th August is no Introductory talk.

Vienna Symphony Orchestra day

11 August – 11 a.m., Festspielhaus

Conductor: Ádám Fischer

Special concert "Greetings from Vienna"

Duration: 2 hours, incl. interval

• Johann Strauß (Sohn): Ouvertüre zur Operette "Waldmeister", "Kaiserwalzer" op. 437
  
• Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Ouvertüre op. 21 zu „Ein Sommernachtstraum“, Musik zum gleichnamigen Schauspiel von William Shakespeare
• Johann Strauß (Sohn): "Vom Donaustrande", Polka schnell op. 356 aus der Operette „Karneval in Rom“
• Carl Maria von Weber: Ouvertüre zur Oper "Der Freischütz"
• Josef Strauß: "Waldröslein", Polka mazur op. 63
• Edvard Grieg: "Morgenstimmung" aus der Schauspielmusik zu "Peer Gynt"
• Josef Strauß: "Waldbleamln", Ländler im Walzerstil op. 79
• Johann Strauß (Sohn): "Auf der Jagd", Polka schnell op. 373, "Unter Donner und Blitz", Polka schnell op. 324
  

11 August – from 1 to 4 p.m.

In and around the Festspielhaus

Ensembles comprising members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra perform a selection of works from the classical repertoire.

Admission free

Festival mass

28 July – 10 a.m., Pfarrkirche Herz-Jesu (Herz-Jesu Parish Church)

Conductor: Christian Birnbaum
Chorus directors: Wolfgang Schwendinger

Soloists of the Bregenz Festival
Kornmarkt Choir and members of the choirs of Herz-Jesu church, Bregenz and St. Karl, Hohenems
Members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Admission free

The Magic Flute conveys an enlightened, humanistic ideal of man: at the end it is a normal man and a normal woman who bear responsibility for the future of society, while the machinery of power serving queens and priests reveals itself to be nothing but superfluous bombast. At one point, Sarastro's priest asks if Tamino will manage to complete all the ordeals since he's a prince. Sarastro answers, "More than that – he's a human being!" And by the end of the opera we do indeed see Tamino and Pamina no longer as prince and princess, but simply as a man and a woman. For me, that's the essence of this work. The Magic Flute is steeped in the ideas of the Enlightenment, a movement that placed its faith in human reason and thus called into question the authority and power of time-honoured institutions like the aristocracy and religion. 

But if The Magic Flute was only about that, the opera would have been forgotten long ago. The fact is Mozart creates an extraordinary blend of the kind we otherwise know only from Shakespeare: The Magic Flute is at the same time a marvellously told fairy tale! It's charming and entertaining, bewitching and witty, romantic and dazzlingly imaginative – and nevertheless communicates a great philosophical message. 

David Pountney, director

A work of music theatre by Ben Frost, text by David Pountney,
after the novel by Iain Banks

For three performers, string quintet and electronic instruments
In English with German surtitles

Disturbing, fascinating, grotesque

The Wasp Factory

Premiere 1 August 2013 – 7.30 p.m., Werkstattbühne
Duration: 1 1/4 hours, no interval

Based on the best-selling novel by Iainn Banks, The Wasp Factory has at its heart a quest for identity under the most outrageous circumstances. Abandoned by his mother and left to his own devices by his father, Frank grows up on a remote island. He styles himself as its ruler  and adheres to a self-invented warrior cult. The return of his deranged half-brother Eric triggers a series of events that finally reveal the secret hidden in his father's locked laboratory…

The compositions of Ben Frost, an Australian who lives in Iceland, are as gripping as they enigmatic, beautiful and bizarre. His music is rich in contrasts; influenced by classical minimalism as well as genres like punk, rock and metal, Frost's textures seem to emerge from nothing and coalesce into huge, forbidding forms. The physical presence of his compositions can be felt as well as heard.

Additional performance: 3 August – 7.30 p.m.

Price: 26 Euro
Introductory talk (in German) half an hour before the performance begins (admission free).

Director: Ben Frost
Stage designer: Mirella Weingarten
Costume designer: Boris Bidjan Saberi
Lighting designer: Lucy Carter
With: Jördis Richter, Mariam Wallentin, Lieselot de Wilde und Reykjavik Sinfonia.

^{Commissioned by Kunst aus der Zeit / the Bregenz Festival
A production of Hebbel am Ufer and Laura Berman_Next in co-production with Holland Festival and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in association with the Cork Midsummer Festival and Mercat de les Flors / Graner, Barcelona. Supported by the Capital Cultural Fund and Nordic Culture Point.}

The first concert by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, on 22 July, is part of the André Tchaikowsky Weekend in the course of which we will be holding a symposium on his life and work and also performing his six most important compositions. Tchaikowsky was a legendary pianist himself – and so it comes as little surprise that he should become the composer of the "other" Tchaikowsky Piano Concerto. The concerto, premiered by Radu Lupu, will be played in Bregenz by Maciej Grzybowski, who has for some time been regarded as a specialist in Tchaikowsky's music. It shares the bill with Rachmaninov's Second Symphony.

The other concerts present a conscious retrospective of some of the most important composers that have been showcased at the Bregenz Festival over the past ten years. First and foremost among these, of course, is Mieczysław Weinberg, probably the most significant Bregenz discovery of this era. As the concert on 29 July will demonstrate, his Fifth Symphony can hold its own alongside other famous fifth symphonies – and also Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which it will be coupled with on the day.

For the third concert, Sir Mark Elder returns with the Hallé Orchestra after his triumphant previous visit to Bregenz. He will conduct Benjamin Britten's thrilling and very unusual cantata Our Hunting Fathers with a really delightful text by W. H. Auden, along with Antonín Dvořák's Eighth Symphony.

In the concert by the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra we focus once again on Weinberg, with a performance of his Violin Concerto played by Ilya Gringolts. In this last concert of my artistic directorship, I would like to link hands with my predecessor in a symbolic gesture of continuity and have therefore programmed the Fourth Symphony of the man who composed the operas The Greek Passion and Julietta: Bohuslav Martinů.

David Pountney
artistic director

A work of music theatre by Olga Neuwirth

Concept and reworking of the first and second act of Alban Berg's Lulu, music and text for act three by Olga Neuwirth.

Text von Akt I und II gekürzt und adaptiert von Helga Utz und Olga Neuwirth nach einer Übersetzung von Richard Stokes von Catherine Kerkhoff-Saxon.

In English with German subtitles

American Lulu ist a commissioned work of The Opera Group and the Komische Oper Berlin, A co-production with The Opera Group, Scottish Opera and The Young Vic in association with the London Sinfonietta.

Against the male perspective

American Lulu by Olga Neuwirth

Premiere 16 August 2013 – 8 p.m., Werkstattbühne
Duration: 1 3/4 hours, no interval

The multiple award winning Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth takes a new look at one of the most fascinating female figures in the history of theatre. In her reworking of Alban Berg's Lulu, a key work of 20th century opera, the protagonists become Afro-Americans whose story is told against the backdrop of US protest movements of the 1960s and 70s.

Alban Berg's Lulu is an embodiment of the classic femme fatale of the early 20th century: Lulu is the seductive scourge of men. Idolised and yet for ever out of reach, she drives men to despair and suicide one after the other. In American Lulu, Neuwirth looks at Lulu with women's eyes: "What I was aiming for was not to create an authentic Alban Berg all over again, but to reconsider this mystical female figure from the perspective of a woman, a composer of my generation. It was only ever male views that were presented of this female figure Lulu. This male view of female central characters in opera always bothered me."

Additional performance: 17 August – 8 p.m.

Price: 26 Euro
Introductory talk (in German) half an hour before the performance begins (admission free).

At the age of 15 Shostakovich developed tuberculosis. While staying at a health resort on the Black Sea coast he met and fell in love with a girl of the same age, Tatyana. Instead of declaring his love for her, the shy composer dedicated a piano trio to her, and it was only rediscovered after his death.

At the other end of the programme is André Tchaikowsky's Trio Notturno, composed in the year he died.

Between the two works lies the art of finding one's own voice in life, expressing oneself vis-à-vis others as well as oneself.

30 July – 9 p.m., Kunsthaus Bregenz

Altenberg Trio Wien

Piano: Christopher Hinterhuber
Violin: Amiram Ganz
Cello: Christoph Stradner 

Duration: 1 1/4 hours, no interval

• Dmitri Shostakovich: Trio op. 8 (1923) 
• Luciano Berio: Sequenza No. 8 for solo violin (1976) 
• Beat Furrer: Voicelessness The Snow Has No Voice (1986) for solo piano 
• André Tchaikowsky: Trio Notturno (1982)
  

Price: 15 Euro

Mozart, like Shakespeare, is one of those rare geniuses who are able to fuse together humour, fantasy and philosophical profundity in one and the same work. The Magic Flute is a comedy about an ordinary citizen, the love story of a young couple, and an ideological battle that is fought with magic and superstition, prayers and curses, fire and water. Who will emerge as the winner? A woman and a man. Mozart shows enlightened, rational humanism triumphing over priests and queens – and their machinery of power made of myths and empty pomp.

The path the protagonists take is not an easy one: two of them try to kill themselves, two actually murder each other, one is flogged on the soles of his feet, and two have to walk through fire and water. In spite of all this, the journey they go on is supremely entertaining for the viewer: a journey that leads through the propitious realm of humour and philosophy and strives for the radiant sun of triumphant rationalism.

In The Merchant of Venice, too, the journey is from darkness into the light. For Shakespeare, Venice wasn't a tourist magnet, but the centre of money and power, a city of men and business, intolerance and hate. There the Christian Antonio and the Jew Shylock see each other as worthy of contempt and punishment.

Away from Venice, however, lies Belmont, a land of women, of music and love. And there the fate of its mistress, Portia, is decided by a choice from among three caskets. The golden casket, symbolising money, has no value here; it is lead that wins. Portia disguises herself as a man in order to humanise the world of men. But she too falls into its clutches and seeks revenge on Shylock, whose hate-filled intolerance acquires an ever greater tragic nobility: a fundamental transformation which only a genius like Shakespeare can make plausible; and Tchaikowsky's moving music demonstrates no less a fine skill.

After a night of hatred, the lovers gather at Belmont to enjoy their dawning love. Two figures, however, stand in the sidelines: the melancholy Antonio and Shylock, a tragic victim of intolerance. Both pay the price for their intransigence.

Let's do the same as this enchanting cast of characters and turn our backs on the darkness and our faces and hearts towards the sun!

David Pountney,
artistic director 

Programme

PRICE: 70 euros (participation in symposium). Symposium participants are entitled to a 30% discount on tickets for Musik & Poesie, the Festspielhaus opera and the orchestral concert.

Partners

Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw
Josef Weinberger Wien, ges.m.b.h.
Jewish Museum, Hohenems
Opernwelt – the international opera magazine
Wolke Verlag

Tickets for the André Tchaikowsky symposium can be booked by phone  +43 5574 407 6. For hotel reservations please contact our ]partner.