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.