Preview of the 2025 season

Oedipe by George Enescu to be first house production under artistic director Lilli Paasikivi

Bregenz, 6.6.2024. Next week rehearsals start for the 2024 season of the Bregenz Festival, the final season with Elisabeth Sobotka as artistic director. Meanwhile  preparations are well underway for the 2025 festival, to be held under the new artistic director Lilly Paasikivi. The first production under her tenure, in summer 2025, will be the opera Oedipe, composed by George Enescu, who was born in present-day Romania in 1881.

First performed in 1936, the opera will open the Bregenz Festival in its 79th season on 16 July 2025. The following day sees the first performance of the second run of the opera on the lake stage, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz.

Inescapable fate
He kills his father and marries his mother, without ever being aware that he is doing so. Guilty by no fault of his own, Oedipus gets more and more deeply entangled in a destiny that was preordained for him. Since antiquity, people have been enthralled by the story of his calamitous life. In 1909, the composer Enescu attended a performance of the tragedy Oedipus Rex by the Greek dramatist Sophocles at the Comédie Française and was deeply moved by it. He adapted the play as a monumental choral opera that is regarded today as Enescu’s masterpiece. Oedipe combines French Impressionism with Romanian folk music and is remarkable for its colourful scoring, powerful rhythms and song-like melodies.

Oedipe is to be directed by the German stage director Andreas Kriegenburg in a set designed by the Austrian stage designer Harald B. Thor. The costumes will be the work of German costume designer Tanja Hofmann. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by the Finnish music director Hannu Lintu.

The 2024 Bregenz Festival runs from 17 July to 18 August. For tickets and information, please visit our website www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call 0043 5574 4076.