Programme-Presentation 2026

Opera on the lake: glamour, longing, transience
In summer 2026, Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera La traviata will be performed on the Bregenz lake stage for the first time. The work, which premiered at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 1853, is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world and still has the power to move us today with its timeless story of love, freedom and social convention. The premiere is on 22 July 2026.

For the Bregenz production, director Damiano Michieletto and stage designer Paolo Fantin – a much sought-after international team – are setting the story of Parisian courtesan Violetta Valéry in the heady 1920s, a world of jazz clubs, luxury and illusions. Between glittering parties and inner emptiness, Violetta searches for a life behind the façade, for true love in the midst of a society that passes moral judgements but itself lives without any moderation.

“This period has come to symbolise excess, partying and hedonism,” Michieletto says. “It fits perfectly with the atmosphere of La traviata – and the opulence of the lake stage.” As in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the stage becomes a mirror of a society that wants everything and loses its humanity in the process. Michieletto will stage the Verdi opera as a balancing act between intimacy and spectacle, closeness and distance. “La traviata is a very intimate opera,” says the director. “We want to preserve this closeness at the same time as making it possible to experience on the big lake stage.” Using film techniques, video and symbolic images, the team will create a poetic and at the same time sharp-sighted narrative about love, self-determination and transience.

Damiano Michieletto is one of the most distinguished artists of his generation. He directed productions at leading opera houses and festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London and the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. For many years, he has worked closely with set designer Paolo Fantin whose detailed, atmospheric stage spaces contribute significantly to Michieletto’s unmistakable style. The musical directors of La traviata are Kirill Karabits and Pietro Rizzo, both of whom are conducting in Bregenz for the first time. Joining set designer Paolo Fantin are lighting designer Alessandro Carletti and the Austrian video designer Roland Horvath, while Carla Teti will design the costumes.

Opera at the Festspielhaus: an anti-hero stumbles through time and space
All that Matěj Brouček actually wants is peace and quiet. The world outside is too loud, too complicated, too demanding for him. He prefers to stay within the safety of his own four walls. But life has other plans. Without him causing it to happen, Brouček gets hauled out of his comfort zone – first he’s catapulted to the moon and then he lands in the Prague of the 15th century. Awaiting him there, instead of safe and cosy isolation, are grotesque congregations, bizarre trials to endure, and a past that is strikingly reminiscent of our own times. But do these journeys really change Brouček – or does he ultimately remain the same person?

The opera at the Festspielhaus in summer 2026 is The Excursions of Mr Brouček by Czech composer Leoš Janáček. The new production of the work, which was first staged in 1920 in Prague, will open at the Bregenz Festival on 23 July 2026. The opera is a work of caustic irony and pointed comedy – a satire on middle-class complacency and self-serving morality as well as on the eternal human inability to learn from the past. Janáček‘s music moves with masterly ease between irony and seriousness, between light-hearted waltzing and impassioned choral singing, between evocations of everyday life und surreal exaggeration.

At a time when societies are increasingly retreating from one another into isolation, The Excursions of Mr Brouček seems more relevant than ever. The US director Yuval Sharon, known for his innovative and unconventional opera productions – he was the first American to direct at the Bayreuth Festival, and is currently artistic director of Detroit Opera – brings the rarely performed work inspired by Dadaism and absurd theatre to the stage in a bold and visually stunning production. The stage and costumes will be designed by Jon Bausor from the UK, while the music director will be the Czech conductor Robert Jindra.

Music theatre at the Werkstattbühne: technology versus empathy
The Werkstattbühne in 2026 will be the venue for two visionary music theatre projects that shed light on human experience at the interface of technology, emotion and reality. In Passion of the Common Man, to be performed on 31 July and 1 August 2026, Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason and Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek have created a secular oratorio that transposes the structure of J.S. Bach’s Passions into the near future. Composed for four soloists, choir and chamber orchestra, Passion of the Common Man is about the need for empathy in a futuristic world.

The piece is directed by Netia Jones, deputy head of Opera at the Royal Opera House in London, who transforms the Werkstattbühne theatre into an immersive space in which music, light and video merge into a multi-layered gesamtkunstwerk. The legendary mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter takes on a central role that combines singing and speech and offers a reinterpretation of the traditional image of the Evangelist.

YUM! also looks to the future – albeit in a grotesquely satirical way. A blend of opera, performance art and extended reality, the theatre piece by Chinese composer Wen Liu and French librettist Sarah Théry transports the audience to a decadent dinner at which pleasure becomes an illusion and consumption an abyss. In this project, digital technology merges with live performance to produce a sensual, bitter-sweet commentary on our times. YUM!, directed by the French stage director Benoît Bénichou, will be performed at the Werkstattbühne on 20 and 22 August 2026. The concept for YUM! comes from the Vienna-based Studio M.A.R.S., a young international collective with expertise in music, theatre, media art and immersive technologies. The concept won the team the FEDORA Digital Prize in 2025.

Opera Studio at the Kornmarkt: love, high school, and a dash of magic
In 2026, the Bregenz Festival Opera Studio presents Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, a romantic comedy full of charm, humour and emotion. Stage director Anna Kelo and music director Danila Grassi will transform the Theater am Kornmarkt into a colourful high school world. Here unfolds a story about love, longing and self-discovery – a coming-of-age story that is reminiscent of Netflix series such as Sex Education and throws Donizetti’s opera into a new, contemporary light. The production opens on 17 August 2026.

The story centres on the shy Nemorino, who is hopelessly in love with the clever and self-confident Adina. When the eccentric quack doctor Dulcamara sells him a “love potion”, emotional chaos ensues. The tale of the trials and tribulations of love is told by Donizetti in a light-footed though very touching way with humour, subtle characterisation – and one of the most beautiful tenor arias in opera history.

“This production is an ideal stage for the young singers of the Opera Studio to combine vocal expressiveness and acting presence,” says artistic director Lilli Paasikivi, who will be giving the Opera Studio masterclass for young singers herself, as she did last year. “This opera needs playfulness and lightness of touch, but also depth and expressiveness.”

Jaakko Kortekangas, the festival’s director of operations, will join Lilli Paasikivi in holding a masterclass in March 2026 to prepare the talented young singers for the premiere.

Drama: a hypochondriac and three intoxicated women
The spoken theatre programme of the 2026 Bregenz Festival consists of guest performances of Molière’s Le malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid) by the Burgtheater and the world premiere of Under the Influence by Natalie Baudy, which won the Austrian Theatre Alliance competition in 2025.

Vienna’s Burgtheater will visit Bregenz in summer 2026 to give guest performances of Molière’s Le malade imaginaire in a production by director Stefan Bachmann. The original plan was to suspend the Burgtheater’s series of guest performances for two years on account of cuts made by the subsidy providers. Thanks to a special grant from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport to mark the 80th anniversary of the Bregenz Festival, the guest performances can take place in summer 2026. With Le malade imaginaire, the Burgtheater is bringing one of its most successful productions to Lake Constance. The classic, first performed in 1673 and also the last play by the French master of comedy, exposes the human fear of illness and death with sharp wit and bitter humour. The central character is the hypochondriac Argan, surrounded by money-grabbing doctors and self-serving relatives – a grotesque game of self-deception and profiteering that is both highly entertaining and frighteningly topical. The first performance is on 24 July 2026 at the Theater am Kornmarkt.

This is followed by the world premiere of Under the Influence, winner of the Austrian Theatre Alliance prize, which opens at the KOSMOS Theatre on 12 August 2026. In the play, author Natalie Baudy tells the story of three women in an apartment building who are looking for new forms of intoxication. Touching on alcohol, memories and the urge for liberation, it is a powerful, contemporary play about dependencies, female self-empowerment and the need to experience life in delirium.

Orchestral concerts: origins, myths and modernity 
Journeys of discovery through music, legendary soundscapes, contemporary perspectives – the wide-ranging orchestral concerts of 2026 encompass the British musical tradition, Nordic myths and Austria of the present day. Audiences will be treated to worlds of sound charged with emotion, energy and inspiration under the baton of top conductors from around the world.

On 27 July 2026, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska will present a programme of works by Kaija Saariaho, Lili Boulanger and Antonín Dvořák, exploring origins, longings and identity. The concert begins with the luminous transparency and mysterious tension of Saariaho’s Ciel d’hiver. Lili Boulanger’s composition Faust et Hélène, which won her the Prix de Rome in 1913, is a musical psychogram of love, seduction and loss. The evening concludes with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 From the New World – a work that sounds like home from abroad and at the same time celebrates openness and cultural affinity. The concert features high-calibre singers: Emily D’Angelo, Andrew Staples and Rafael Fingerlos.

On 2 August 2026, Eva Ollikainen and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will transport us into Nordic and archaic soundscapes. Under the chief conductor of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, we will hear Pohjola’s Daughter by Jean Sibelius, a colourful piece evoking the power of nature and tragic grandeur. That composer’s Violin Concerto in D minor, played by the young Brazilian violinist Guido Sant'Anna, combines virtuosity with deep emotion. Finally, Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps presents modernism in its most radical form – a ballet of archaic force and explosive energy that has lost none of its fascination since its scandalous premiere in 1913.

On 10 August 2026, Petr Popelka and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will present a programme bringing together the present day, Impressionism, and vivid musical imagery. Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Intensity – a high-energy study of compression and movement, premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra in 2022 – will receive its Austrian premiere. Maurice Ravel’s second suite from Daphnis et Chloé takes us into a world of luminous tonal colours and refined harmonies. The concert ends with Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration – an orchestral masterpiece of colour and emotion and a hommage to painting.

Finally, on 23 August 2026, Leo McFall and the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra will give us a taste of Great Britain’s rich musical tradition, in which radical departures, identity, and subtle humour all feature. The orchestra’s British chief conductor Leo McFall opens with Ethel Smyth’s rousing overture to The Wreckers, a musical manifesto of female self-assertion. Elizabeth Maconchy’s Nocturne for orchestra is a poetic soundscape of light and shadow, while Benjamin Britten’s song cycle Les Illuminations after Rimbaud allows the young soprano Emma Kajander to dazzle in shimmering colours and marked speech rhythms. The concert concludes with Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a classic of British orchestral art that combines subtle humour and emotional depth in a set of ingenious musical portraits.

Chamber music in the Lake Studio and the KUB: of dreams and soldiers
The chamber music programme at the Lake Studio (Seestudio) and the Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB) offers a mix of  dream-like art song and jazzy baroque experimentation, touching instrumental sound and gripping narrative art.

In the recital Dreamers and the Departed, Jacques Imbrailo and James Baillieu perform songs about dreams and loss in the Lake Studio on 9 August. Baroque meets jazz at the Kunsthaus Bregenz on 11 August, when the Kronthaler Trio, led by mezzo-soprano Theresa Kronthaler, presents the music of Monteverdi, Purcell and Handel in a new guise – on electric guitar and double bass. On 16 August there is a chance to hear The Soldier’s Tale by Stravinsky with Moritz von Treuenfels as narrator, the actor who delighted audiences for two summers as Samiel in the lake stage performances of Der Freischütz. He will be joined by a seven-piece ensemble under the direction of violinist Sophie Heinrich.

The new series in which members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra play their own personal favourites in various chamber music formations continues in 2026 with three concerts. The eight-member cello section will perform works by Verdi, Puccini, Sibelius and Villa-Lobos together with soprano Emma Kajander in the concert Seelenvolle Stimmen (“soulful voices”) in the Lake Studio on 25 July 2026. On 1 August, a string sextet will take us from Britain to Bohemia – Von Britannien nach Böhmen – in a concert featuring Elgar and Dvořák. Leoš Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonata and Richard Stöhr’s Quartet in E minor (Austrian premiere) are coupled in what promises to be a moving concert – Strings Unbound – given by a string quartet from the Vienna Symphony on 15 August.

Other concerts: baroque soundscapes and French esprit
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach is a common thread that runs through the festival programme in 2026. Along with the world premiere of Passion of the Common Man at the Werkstattbühne, his music also plays a central role in two other concerts that reveal the meditative, almost healing power of his music.

Following the great success of the sold-out concert by the YL Male Voice Choir from Helsinki in the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in summer 2025, this year the Bavarian Radio Choir under the direction of Peter Dijkstra will present masterpieces from three generations of the Bach family with Im Herzen des Barocks on 28 July in the parish church of St. Gallus.

The Bach Nirvana concert on 7 and 8 August at the Werkstattbühne promises to be an extraordinary experience. The internationally acclaimed pianist Angela Hewitt, one of the most renowned Bach interpreters of our time, will present selected piano pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach that are moving for their clarity, spiritual dimension and inner poise. She will be accompanied by light and video artist Mikki Kunttu, who will add a poetic visual layer consisting of subtle colour gradients, iridescent projections and smooth transitions. In this concert on the Werkstattbühne stage, sound, space and light merge into a contemplative overall experience – music as a meditative state.

Anne Sofie von Otter provides a charming counterpoint with her chanson evening Douce France on 5 August at the Theater am Kornmarkt. She presents a stylistically diverse programme of salon music and jazz, ranging from French classics to Berlin songs – a tribute to chanson in all its facets. With her subtle sense of mood, she offers a personal and nuanced view of the poetic world of French song.

80 years of the Bregenz Festival: sing along with us!
In 2026, the Bregenz Festival celebrates its 80th anniversary with a programme that combines community, history and music. On 1 August, the lake stage itself will become an instrument: everyone is invited to be part of a unique musical experience at a big singalong on the lake. Under the motto Alemania cantat, which is engraved in the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus, hundreds of people from towns and villages, from choirs and singing groups as well as individuals of all ages, unite to sing the great melodies of opera history. Anyone can take part, whether experienced choral singers or amateur enthusiasts, because what this afternoon is all about is the joy of singing, the power of music and the energy that comes from massed voices.

Under the direction of Australian conductor Steven Moore and accompanied by an instrumental ensemble, renowned festival soloists and members of the Bregenz Festival Choir, the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Bavarian Radio Choir, the lake stage will be transformed into a sound space that resonates. The programme spans eight decades of festival history – with classics such as Va pensiero from Nabucco, the Huntsman's Chorus from Der Freischütz, Brindisi from La traviata and excerpts from Carmen and Turandot.

In addition, from 13 June to 23 August 2026, a photographic exhibition will be on show along the lakeside promenade in Bregenz, taking visitors on a journey through eight decades of the festival’s history. A long sequence of billboard-size images will show the most impressive stage sets, productions and moments from the opera on the Seebühne stage – set against the picturesque backdrop of Lake Constance.

Young People’s Festival:
Curiosity, creativity, and three sheep on their way to freedom 
In 2026, the Young People’s Festival will once again present a host of varied and inspiring events to introduce young people to music and theatre in a creative and unmediated way. As well as a STEM school project, opera workshops and the Children’s Festival, the programme includes the Lake Studio concert MähTropolis, running from 10 to 14 June. This is a boisterous musical adventure about three sheep in search of freedom in pastures new. Funny, charming and featuring music by Satie and Shostakovich and others, the Sonus Brass Ensemble shows how exciting and entertaining classical music can be.

The big highlight is Young People’s Night on 18 July. All day long, the Bregenz Festival opens its doors to youngsters, who can peek behind the scenes and get involved creatively themselves in a wide range of activities all round the festival grounds. In the evening comes the grand finale: admission to a performance of Verdi’s La traviata on the lake stage.

The 2026 Bregenz Festival runs from 22 July to 23 August. For tickets and information, please visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call tel. 0043 5574 4076.