Provisional attendance figures for 2023
farewell of an audience favourite
DER FREISCHÜTZ to follow MADAME BUTTERFLY in 2024
Bregenz, 19.8.23. The Bregenz Festival comes to an end on Sunday evening with audience figures expected to reach approximately 249,000 in total. In its 77th year, the festival mounted a programme of 80 events within a five-week span. The opera on the lake stage continued to exert a magnetic attraction for festival-goers this summer.
In its second run, Madame Butterfly drew visitors in droves again. Providing Sunday evening’s performance is not cancelled due to bad weather, around 179,000 people will have seen the acclaimed lake stage production of the opera by Giacomo Puccini by the festival’s end. That corresponds to 99 percent capacity of tickets sold to 26 performances in all, including the dress rehearsal and Young People’s Night.
Most visited Puccini opera
Running for two consecutive summers, Andreas Homoki’s production will therefore have been seen by about 346,000 people. No opera by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini staged at the Bregenz Festival has attracted a bigger audience than Madame Butterfly. On Monday morning, work will begin already on dismantling the stage, followed by preparations for the wholesale reconstruction of the lake stage’s concrete core.
Three more performances of Madame Butterfly are scheduled, including the one on Sunday, the final day of the festival. After that the gigantic white sheet of paper which has been the stage will vanish for ever from the Lake Constance shore. In addition, before the festival ends there are two more performances of the Opera Studio production of Werther – today and tomorrow evening – and Die Judith von Shimoda also has its final performance tomorrow. On Sunday morning the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra gives its matinee concert.
Tickets for Freischütz from 2 October
On 2 October 2023, booking opens for events at the 2024 festival. The opera on the lake stage next summer is Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber, which will open the 78th Bregenz Festival on 17 July 2024. The opera will be directed by Philipp Stölzl, director of the lake stage Rigoletto in the years 2019 and 2021.
The 2024 programme currently envisages 25 performances on the lake stage before the festival ends on 18 August. The production in the Festspielhaus next summer will be Gioachino Rossini’s Tancredi.
Near-capacity audiences at the Festspielhaus
Ernani, the opera at the Festspielhaus in a staging by Lotte de Beer, was all but sold out for its three performances, playing to 99 percent capacity with a total audience of 4,563 people. The two contemporary music theatre productions at the Workshop Theatre, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions and Die Judith von Shimoda, will have been seen by a total audience of 1,326, which corresponds to 89 percent capacity. The feminist interpretation of Jules Massenet’s Werther staged by Jana Vetten as part of the Opera Studio is expected to play to 71 percent capacity and be seen by 1,377 visitors, come the end of the festival.
The two small but popular series Musik & Poesie and the Vienna Symphony Personal Favourites went down very well with festival visitors again this year, with 95 percent of tickets sold and a total audience of about 1,000. Also highly popular were the tours of the lake stage and the introductory talks, which 35,000 people took part in altogether. The remaining events, for instance the Young People´s Festival, were well attended, too.
Festival kick-off in January
Before the Bregenz Festival was officially opened in the summer, a number of festival events took place earlier in the year. In January there was an open session (Einblick) of the Opera Workshop. Held in the Kunsthaus Bregenz, it offered an insight into the creation of a new work of music theatre that is scheduled to premiere at the 2024 festival. This was followed in March by a masterclass given by legendary soloist Brigitte Fassbaender as part of the festival’s Opera Studio. At Easter, Vienna’s Burgtheater gave a guest performance of the play Die gefesselte Phantasie in the Great Hall of the Festspielhaus, while in May the Young People’s Festival put on a Magic Flute for Kids that thrilled the festival’s smallest fans as part of the programme that has been renamed Young People’s Festival.
Advance booking for the 2024 festival opens on 2 October 2023
The 2024 Bregenz Festival will run from 17 July to 18 August. Advance ticket sales start on 2 October 2023. For tickets please contact www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call 0043 5574 4076.
(ar)
