New Seating for "Madame Butterfly"

Bregenz, 2.2.23. Demand remains high for Madame Butterfly, which returns to the lake stage in summer 2023. The number of tickets booked for the opera has already passed the 100,000 mark. The Giacomo Puccini opera is being staged at the Bregenz Festival for the first time. At last year’s festival it played to capacity audiences, with 100% of tickets sold, and standing ovations were frequent at the end of the show.

Before the audience can rise from its seats in the coming summer, however, 6,659 seats first have to be installed in the open-air arena. As part of a comprehensive refurbishment of the Festspielhaus, the substructure under the tiered seating is being renovated and the seats are being replaced by new ones. In all, nearly 185,000 tickets are available for the opera on the lake stage in 2023 (including the dress rehearsal and Young People’s Night).

Inspired by the Olympiastadion in Munich
The Festspielhaus (Festival and Congress Centre) was built at the end of the 1970s, and the lakeside viewing area opened in 1979 with a production of Puccini’s Turandot. The seating was modelled on the characteristic green seats in the grandstands of Munich’s Olympiastadion, which opened in 1972 and is now a protected monument. The same manufacturer supplied the green folding stadium seats for the outdoor arena of the new Festspielhaus.

Construction work is scheduled to finish in early summer, when the arena will reopen and members of the public can again admire the Madame Butterfly stage set. Those who can’t wait that long might like to use our online X-ray viewer, a tool that offers fascinating views of the lake stage as well as a chance to look behind the scenes and even inside the spectacular set. Great music will again stir great emotions from 20 July when the white sheet of paper floating on Lake Constance will become the “big screen” for the most moving love story in opera.

The 2023 Bregenz Festival runs from 19 July to 20 August. For tickets and information please visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call 0043 5574 4076.

(ar)