Opera Workshop, Season Two

Bregenz, 6.3.18. The public will have the opportunity to follow the process of creating another new work of music theatre. The Bregenz Festival's Opera Workshop – initiated by artistic director Elisabeth Sobotka in 2015 – will commence its second season on 4 April, with the Vorarlberg-born composer Alexander Moosbrugger.

The world premiere of the as yet untitled opera is scheduled to take place in summer 2020.

In association with Kunsthaus Bregenz several open sessions will be arranged, offering unique insights into the creative world of the composer and the artists collaborating on the project with him.

Sounds that go beyond the familiar
Following the successful world premiere of Zesses Seglias' opera To the Lighthouse last summer, the Opera Workshop now continues with round two. What form the new work of music theatre takes, what main subjects it addresses and what sound worlds open up before the audience once the several-year-long process has been completed, will be worked out at many sessions of intensive discussion between the artists involved.

The composer participating in the new Opera Workshop is Alexander Moosbrugger. Born in the Bregenz Forest region, he has been living in Berlin since 2001 and has worked a number of times already with visual artists. Both as organist and composer, Moosbrugger exposes his audiences to a wide spectrum of sounds that often go beyond the familiar. Listening becomes part of the compositional process. He makes abundant reference to the music of preceding centuries, out of which he frequent develops a new musical tuning system.

Alexander Moosbrugger studied music at Feldkirch Conservatory and the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, supplemented by philosophy studies at Vienna University. His works are performed by respected ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, österreichisches ensemble für neue musik, ensemble recherche, Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Arditti String Quartet and Quatuor Diotima. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and grants in recognition of his work.

Multifarious sound worldsInsight session no. 1 will present the composer and his work to date, especially his collaborations with visual artists. Moosbrugger's multifarious sound world will be illustrated by the performance of two compositions. Members of ensemble plus will play Skalen, Texte, Maß, composed in 2009. A work for loudspeakers entitled Alignement promises to be of particular interest to the audience: listeners can move around inside the piece, in which Moosbrugger and Thomas Kessler rework music and texts that came into being during a lesson that English composer Thomas Attwood took with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Complementing this, Johannes Hämmerle will play a piano work by Mozart himself.

The 2018 Bregenz Festival runs from 18 July to 20 August. For tickets and information, please call 0043 5574 4076 or visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com.

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