Vienna/Bregenz, 3 June 2025. Next week rehearsals begin for the first Festspielhaus production under artistic director Lilli Paasikivi – George Enescu’s monumental opera Œdipe. But preparations are already well underway for the festival in 2026, when The Excursions of Mr Brouček by Czech composer Leoš Janáček will be the opera at the Festspielhaus. The new production of the work, which was first staged in Prague in 1920, will open at the Bregenz Festival on 23 July 2026. One day earlier, on 22 July 2026, the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata on the lake stage will raise the curtain on the 80th season of the festival.
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 isolation, are grotesque congregations, bizarre trials 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?
Leoš Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček is an opera 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. The 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.
The Excursions of Mr Brouček will be staged at Bregenz by the US director Yuval Sharon. He is known for his innovative and unconventional opera productions, was the first American to direct at the Bayreuth Festival, and is currently artistic director of Detroit Opera. The stage and costumes will be designed by Jon Bausor from the UK. The music director will be the Czech conductor Robert Jindra, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra playing under his baton.
The 2026 Bregenz Festival runs from 22 July to 23 August. For tickets and information, please visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call tel. +43 5574 4076.
