Hundreds thousands of spectators every year, enormous stages, courageous and innovative, just out of this world – all this is Bregenz Opera Festival taking place every summer on the picturesque austrian lake Constance.
/A giant floating stage set up for Keith Warner’s production of Umberto Giordano’s opera André Chénier , which was open to the public in July of 2011 / Photograph by Miro Kuzmanovic for Reuters
Bregenzer Festspiele Opera was founded 67 years ago, in 1946, just one year after the end of the Second World War. In a town that did not even possess a regular theatre, the idea of mounting a festival seemed eccentric, but ingenious approach and unusuality of place made the festival hugely successful.
Every year, the floating stage, or Seebühne , is transformed by a designer, with every year topping the last in terms of grandiose set pieces and staging.
One of the most impressive masterpieces of Bregenz Festival is the stage set for the opera André Chénier by the Italian composer Umberto Giordano in 2011.
The opera depicts a story of a poet André Chénier, who was executed during the French revolution. Stage designer David Fielding was inspired by the image of Jean-Paul Marat, a revolutionary made famous in a painting by Jacques-Louis David.
/Photograph by Karl Forster © Bregenzer Festspiele
The stage measurements were undoubtedly impressive:
performance area / 1600 m2
knife height / 13.5 m
cloth size / 1100 m2 and it was mounted by 14 male workers
Marat’s head weight / 60 tons
the whole stage set weight / 350 tons
The stage was built directly into the lake Constance. It was then mounted upon a concrete core anchored into the base of the lake, while wooden poles supported accessory structures of the stage.
/Photograph by Karl Forster © Bregenzer Festspiele
The stage design for André Chénier is dominated by an oversized face and torso of Jean-Paul Marat from whose left eye streams a series of stairways. An open book to right of the figure is frequently highlighted throughout the performance with spectacular lighting effects, ranging from sculptural installations to elaborate gobos that cast shadow scenes along its pages. At water level, a floating platform, carried by what appears to be the hand of the statue, moves in response to plot action. Other mobile set pieces rise in and out of the water over the course of the performance.
/Tosca by Giacomo Puccini 2007/08 Photograph by Karl Forster© Bregenzer Festspiele
Not only audiences at Bregenz were enthusiastic about the spectacular staging of Puccini’s opera Tosca. In July 2007 a team from EON Productions, the production company responsible for the James Bond movies, with Daniel Craig visited one of the last rehearsals for Tosca.
/Aida by Giuseppe Verdi 2009/10 Photograph by Karl Forster © Bregenzer Festspiele
/The Magic Flute/Die Zauberflöte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 2013/14 Photograph by Rainer Trost © Bregenzer Festspiele
© Bregenzer Festspiele
/Panorama view of festival area 2010
More about The Opera on The Lake, the history of Bregenzer Festspiele Opera and how to buy a ticket for the upcoming 2014 season, you can find on Bregenzer Festspiele official website www.bregenzerfestspiele.com
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