General information

Bregenz and the Bavarian town of Lindau on the opposite shore of Lake Constance were under the same French occupying administration after the end of the Second World War. Lindau, like Bregenz, had plans for a cultural event in 1946. Military commander Paul Henri Dumas had to decide which initiative to support. From Bregenz’s point of view, he made the right choice.

A propos Lindau: to avoid confusion when it comes to technical details and stage directions, the terms “Lindau” and “Bregenz” are used. In Carmen, for example, the stage design featured a “Lindau hand”, which faced towards the German town, and a “Bregenz hand”, which was closer to Bregenz town centre. Left and right are deceptive concepts in the theatre business, because it always depends on whether you are on stage or in the auditorium. You can read more about this in an article from 2018.

The quantity of water in the lake stage “basin” used for the Bregenz production of Der Freischütz equals the capacity of around 3,200 bathtubs. This impressive volume not only emphasises the grand backdrop of the lake stage, but also plays a central role in the visual and acoustic design of the performances.

It takes four years to go from the initial idea to the premiere of a new work on the lake stage. 

The sound system in Bregenz, BOA (Bregenz Open Acoustic), is unique. It is also known as Bregenz directional hearing. It enables the audience to hear the singers where they are actually standing on stage, thus creating artificial spatial acoustics. This technology has impressed experts and audiences alike since it was rolled out in 2007. “For the first time on the lake stage, the sound is just as spectacular as the set,” wrote the Münchner Merkur newspaper.

The Bregenz Festival is thoroughly international. The performers at the summer festival come, on average, from 30 different countries.

The 2008 season was like none the Bregenz Festival had ever seen before. By the time Giacomo Puccini’s thrilling opera Tosca opened, the lake stage had already witnessed gunfights, dogged pursuits, nail-biting penalty shootouts – and many, many cameras. First, action-packed sequences were shot for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, then the German broadcaster ZDF set up a public viewing arena in front of the lake stage for the European Football Championship with Jürgen Klopp on hand as an expert. 

Weighing 800 tonnes, the stage set for Fidelio (1995/96) was the heaviest in the festival’s history.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore was performed in 2005/06 on a set that resembled an oil refinery that spewed flames metres high into the night sky – the hottest stage that audiences at the lake have ever experienced.

In 2009/10, two cranes assembled the stage set for Aida before the spectators’ eyes. Two festival technicians sat in the crane operator’s cabins every evening and were part of the production. One of the two cranes was 85 metres high. A festival record!

Since 2005, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra has played inside the Festspielhaus. From there the sound is transmitted to the outdoor stage. The conductor and singers can see each other live on monitors and so are able to coordinate their performances. The last time the orchestra was visible on the lake stage was in the second season of Porgy and Bess in summer 1998. Then between 1999 and 2004, the orchestra “disappeared” into the concrete core under the lake

The 30 metre high lighthouse from David Pountney’s legendary production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (1989/90) can still be admired today – in Vienna. After several years on the grounds of the Technical Museum, the 34-tonne piece of scenery found its final home in the Sunken City on Danube Island.

The 200 or so terracotta warriors from Turandot proved so popular with audiences that the festival, after receiving countless requests, decided to sell the figures off. As a result the army was scattered among private gardens, public parks and company premises.

The new lake stage was opened in 1979. For the first time, it had a concrete core in which the most important infrastructure facilities and the orchestra pit were located. The concrete core was renovated in 2023/24; the entire lighting and sound technology as well as production-related machinery such as hydraulic equipment are now housed there. Two underwater supply tunnels were also installed. Every two years, the foundations for the new stage are laid upon wooden pilots around the concrete core.

A production style specific to Bregenz developed from 1985 onwards. It primarily seeks to overcome people’s reservations, and pursues the ideal of popular theatre that both has high artistic standards and is accessible to everyone. The Bregenz production style emphasises a highly visual presentation of the themes of operas staged on the lake. This allows an emotional response to the opera’s content and makes it easier to follow. As a result, even people who rarely go to the opera can spontaneously understand what is going on in the work. This special form of presentation, the uniqueness of the location and the special atmosphere of open-air theatre are what make the Bregenz Festival so appealing.

For André Chénier in 2011/12, the stage set in Lake Constance was for the first time inspired by a historical painting. Stage director Keith Warner and set designer David Fielding chose The Death of Marat, one of Jacques-Louis David’s most famous paintings, which shows the radical revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat lying in his bathtub stabbed to death by a supporter of the opposing party in 1793.

A special kind of premiere took place in 2015, when the lake stage production of Turandot was shown on television in three different countries. The Austria broadcaster ORF, the German broadcaster SWR and the Swiss broadcasting corporation SRF simultaneously transmitted a performance as well as a “backstage version” in real time, offering a glimpse behind the scenes and giving cast members and others involved in the production a chance to have their say. The performance was additionally broadcast in its entirety on the German channel 3sat. The telecast was watched by more than one million TV viewers. Never before had so many people seen a Bregenz opera production on television.

When it became known in July 1946 that the estimated cost of 60,000 schillings for the first festival, the week-long Bregenz Festwoche, would triple, the socialist party leadership withdrew its consent in the Bregenz town council on 18 June. At a time when there was hardly any bread to eat, such expenditure was not appropriate. The protest died down as the preparations were already too far advanced. It turned out that even more visitors came than expected – a total of 25,500 – and in the end the festival even made a net profit of 4,000 schillings. 

The Bregenz lake stage has changed location four times to date. Although a stage on Lake Constance was not the first choice as a performance venue, it proved to be a godsend and a unique selling point right from the year the festival was founded. It had major advantages: the stage on two gravel barges was inexpensive, well located in terms of transport links with the railway station nearby, and it used the water as a natural sound amplifier.

The decisive factor for the success of the first Festwoche festival was that both the French occupation authorities and the canton of St. Gallen agreed to open the border. Of the approximately 25,500 visitors, 22,400 came from Switzerland on a day pass. The border with Germany was not opened until 1948.

The first opera production on the lake, Bastien and Bastienne, was notable for strong female involvement. Maria Wanda Milliore designed not only the costumes but also the stage set. It was not until 71 years later, in 2017, that another set for the Bregenz lake stage was designed by a woman – Carmen by Es Devlin.

In its third year, the festival was hit by a crisis. The Bregenz town council cancelled the opera on the lake in spring 1948, but was later persuaded to reverse its decision. The council considered the financial risk too great, and organising the festival was a burden on the municipal administration. The incident was the impetus for a move towards independence and a change of name: the “movers and shakers” wanted to be independent of political whims and influences, and founded the Bregenz Festival Community Association in 1949. This association hired the staff and decided on the programme, doing so until the 1980s. The president of the festival guaranteed the programme with his personal assets. Members of the association, the municipality of Bregenz and – something that has long since been forgotten – textile manufacturers from Dornbirn assumed the necessary liability. This private commitment is still continued today by the Friends of the Bregenz Festival.

The top positions at the summer festival are held by the same people for many years. Hans-Peter Metzler (born in 1959) worked as an usher in the lake stage auditorium during his school days. After Walter Rhomberg (1963-1968), Albert Fuchs (1968-1981) and Günter Rhomberg (1981-2012) he is only the fourth president in the history of the Bregenz Festival (incumbent since 2012). It’s not a question of “hop on – hop off” when it comes to artistic directors either, the list of whom is similarly short: Ernst Bär (1952-1982), Alfred Wopmann (1983-2003), David Pountney (2004-2014), Elisabeth Sobotka (2015-2024) and since 2025 Lilli Paasikivi.

For the make-up department, The Tales of Hoffmann was the most elaborate production. Over 100 wigs and headpieces were made for the opera, which was staged at the Festspielhaus in 2015 and directed by Stefan Herheim.

The Bregenz Festival is a major contributor to the economy of the region. On the basis of online surveys from 2019, the Vorarlberg Chamber of Commerce calculated that the summer festival contributes about 106 million euros to the gross domestic product. The tax revenue generated by business services associated with the festival, totalling 36 million euros, is about five times higher than the amount of subsidy the festival receives. In addition to this significant boost to the economy, more than 1,000 jobs in Austria – 904 in Vorarlberg alone – are substantially connected with the Bregenz Festival.

While the Bregenz Festival normally takes place in the warm summer months of July and August, it has been possible, some winters, to enjoy opera music at a “Show in the Snow” staged by the festival at the Alpine resort of Lech am Arlberg. One example was the show Viva Verdi in 2010, when highlights from four Verdi operas were performed in the open air, in sub-zero temperatures and with snow falling. The stage set was an oversized hat fashioned from 2,200 cubic metres of snow.

In July 2021, a contract was signed for the renovation and expansion of the festival theatre district. As well as comprehensive refurbishment of the Festspielhaus (theatre building) and the lake stage auditorium, the project included the construction of a modern multi-purpose building housing workshops, and is expected to be fully finished in 2025.

At the inaugural festival in Bregenz, the week-long Festwoche, the over 400 artists and theatre personnel were joined by 280 sportspeople. Town councillor Adolf Salzmann apparently doubted the appeal of music and theatre alone. Therefore, to be on the safe side, sporting events, including a football tournament, were arranged as part of the festival.

The stage set for Rigoletto, designed by Philipp Stölzl with Heike Vollmer, captivated audiences above all because of the moveability of the head, hand and ruff (i.e. collar piece). The set was controlled by about 120 cues, mostly consisting of a large number of individual movements. Several people worked on a central control system accessed via two control panels so that the head, for example, could be manoeuvred into the right position.

Special conditions apply to open-air theatre. It’s a mistake to believe that any two performances on the lake stage are the same. Sometimes improvisation is called for, at short notice. For instance, the premiere of Aida in 2009 was at risk of cancellation due to severe weather warnings, but the performance went ahead anyway – with some changes. The audience was unaware that what was dubbed the “elephant boat” could not sail during the Triumphal March due to high winds, and certain other movements of elements of the stage set had also been ruled out as too risky.

And who founded the festival in Bregenz? No single individual actually. There were multiple groups, all subscribing to the idea of a festival but pursuing different goals. Town Councillor Adolf Salzmann’s main concern was to boost tourism. Provincial Councillor for Culture Eugen Leissing wanted something edifying, a festival to distract the population from their worries. And Kurt Kaiser from Vienna – who ran the newly founded Vorarlberg State Theatre – was looking for work for the many artists and people employed in the cultural sector who had fled to Vorarlberg from the Russian occupation zone in eastern Austria in 1945.