Festival's grand finale

Bregenz, 9.8.17. The two latest additions to the Bregenz Festival programme will ensure a grand finale in the concluding week of its 72nd season. The Opera Workshop will give the world premiere of a new opera it has commissioned, while the Opera Studio will complete its Mozart–Da Ponte cycle with a staging of The Marriage of Figaro.

The Opera Workshop's debut opera – more than three years in the making – will be premiered on 16 August in the Workshop Theatre; there will be one further performance. The final instalment of the Mozart–Da Ponte cycle that was launched in 2015 will open at the Kornmarkttheater on 14 August, with three further performances scheduled.

Insight sessions shed light on new opera
The first discussions with the artists took place back in May 2014. One year later the first insight session allowed the general public to follow the process of creating a new opera. And in one week's time that opera – To the Lighthouse – will receive its world premiere at the Workshop Theatre. The Opera Workshop, initiated by the festival's artistic director Elisabeth Sobotka and realised in association with Kunsthaus Bregenz, aspires to be midwife to new works of music theatre and also to answer the question, "How is an opera created?". Composer Zesses Seglias has been working on transforming Virginia Woolf's eponymous novel into an opera in collaboration with stage director Olivier Tambosi, dramaturge Olaf A. Schmitt and artist Jakob Kolding, who designed the performance space in what is his first work for the theatre stage. The costumes have been designed by Vibeke Andersen and the music director is Claire Levacher.

World premiere dedicated to Ernst Binder
The libretto was written by Ernst Binder, who passed away in January 2017 and also contributed to the staging concept. Born in Styria in 1953, the Austrian author and director Binder was a founder member of Bregenz Festival's Opera Workshop. Next week's world premiere will be dedicated to him. (The seventh and final insight session took place last Sunday evening.) The opera will be performed by the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra.

Da Ponte Finale at the Kornmarkt
The cycle of Mozart–Da Ponte operas which was launched in the 2015 season now concludes with what was the first of the works to be staged. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro will be performed at the Kornmarkttheater next week, following on from Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni. Singers at the start of their career come together on the third anniversary of the founding of Elisabeth Sobotka's Opera Studio for a feast of comic scheming, erotic recklessness and political dynamite. Jörg Lichtenstein, director of the Opera Studio in its inaugural year, returns to stage this work. Hartmut Keil conducts the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra. In cooperation with the international singing competition NEUE STIMMEN, founded by the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Brass Espagnole and OPUS XXI
Also coming up are Brass Espagnole, a wind orchestra matinee conducted by Martin Kerschbaum in the Great Hall of the Festspielhaus on 13 August, and OPUS XXI, in which young composers attending the summer academy will present the fruits of their labours. The concert, to be conducted by Miroslav Srnka, will take place in the Lake Studio on 11 August. Tickets are still available.

18th performance of Carmen this eveningCarmen will be performed on the lake stage this evening, the 18th performance in this first-season run. Around 125,000 people have already seen the Bregenz production of Georges Bizet's opera, directed by Kasper Holten on a stage designed by Es Devlin, with a colossal pair of hands and 59 outsized playing cards. In all, 28 performances of the opera are scheduled and virtually all of the nearly 200,000 tickets have been sold. A total of approx. 217,000 tickets were up for sale for the 2017 season of the summer festival. Advance booking for Carmen on its second run next year starts on 20 August (evening). The opera is scheduled for 26 performances in the 2018 season from 18 July to 19 August.

The 2017 Bregenz Festival runs from 19 July to 20 August. For tickets and details visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call 0043 5574 4076.

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