After the pandemic-years 2020 and 2021, with their ever-changing rules and restrictions, the Frankfurt Chamber Opera (Kammeroper) returned to the Palmengarten and put on ten open-air performances of a staged opera in the summer of 2022. Okay, it was only a one-act opera, but they made it seem like two Read More …
To add to the excitement of an open-air performance, you never know how the weather is going to develop in this part of the world. For the summer performances of the Frankfurt Chamber Opera (Kammeroper), the bandstand of the Palmengarten is used as the stage, and it has a roof Read More …
The big open-air opera production at the St Gallen Festival in 2022 was supposed to have been Orleanskaja dewa (The Maid of Orleans) by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). But then, (as the general director of the St Gallen Theater explained it in the German opera magazine Das Read More …
In July 2022, after a gap of seventeen years, I returned to Bregenz and took another tour of the festival grounds and the lakefront stage, this time to see the stage that had been built up for Andreas Homoki’s new production of Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). Since I Read More …
Bregenz, Austria, is best known for its open-air opera performances at the lakefront stage on Lake Constance, but the town also has a conventional theater building called the Theater am Kornmarkt, which is used each year from September through June as the main venue of the Vorarlberger Landestheater, the state Read More …
The Luzerner Theater is on the left bank of the Reuss River, at the lower end of Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee in German). The theater dates from 1839, and now describes itself as “the oldest multi-genre venue in Central Switzerland” and as “one of the largest cultural institutions, offering a variety Read More …
An option for those who have found accommodation in other cities on Lake Constance is to travel to Bregenz on a special ship that is timed to arrive shortly before the performance, and leave shortly afterwards. There is a ship to and from Lindau, Germany, for every performance, and usually Read More …
The Bregenz Festival began on a very small scale in 1946, directly after the Second World War, while this part of Austria was still under French military rule. The stage that first summer consisted of two small barges moored in Bregenz harbor. That first year, the festival already included two Read More …
You can take a tour of the Bregenz Festival grounds at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 13:30, 14:30 or 15:30 any day during the five-week festival season. The cost (as of 2022) is € 7.50 per person and usually includes the inside of the festival building, the grandstand, and of course the big stage Read More …
Before my first trip to Bregenz in the summer of 2002, I was very skeptical about the loudspeaker system. I was afraid it would either sound tinny, like a London musical, or ear-splitting like a rock concert. But it was neither of these. It was pleasant, natural, clearly audible but Read More …