Opera Daily 🎶 — The Floating Opera Stage

This week's Opera Daily features Bregenzer Festspiele and Lake Constance, the world's largest lake stage

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2017 Production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Bregenz Festival (Photo Credit: Karl Foster)

The Floating Opera Stage

The Bregenzer Festspiele is a world-renowned music and arts festival that takes place every summer in the picturesque city of Bregenz, Austria.

Every year, the festival attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world.

But let’s not kid ourselves — they come for its unique setting: an open-air opera house on a floating stage on Lake Constance.

The lake is situated where Germany, Switzerland, and Austria meet.

The imagination of the festival’s set designers has no limits. They are the secret stars of this festival. Every new set takes, on average, 215 days to construct, and they seem to outdo themselves every year.

The stage is surrounded by an enormous water basin, which allows for an incredible view of the surrounding mountains. The stage itself is large enough to accommodate an orchestra of 100 musicians and a chorus of 200 singers.

Thankfully they require all singers not to be afraid of heights and be able to swim. In 2013 during a production of The Magic Flute, three singers and an extra accidentally feel into the lake, including Kathryn Lewek who was singing The Queen of the Night.

2013 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute

Let’s listen to a selection from a past season at Bregenz and look at some photos of the amazing stages over the years.

🎧 Listening Example (3 minute listen): Compilation from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Bregenz Festival, July 2022, Barno Ismatullaeva (Cio-Cio-San), Annalisa Stroppa (Suzuki), Edgaras Montvidas (Pinkerton), Brian Mulligan (Sharpless), Wiener Symphoniker, Enrique Mazzola, conductor

2011 production of Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier

1995 production of Beethoven’s Fidelio

2002 production of Puccini’s La bohème

2007 production of Puccini’s Tosca. The colossal iris transformed into a mechanical mobile platform, becoming a new circular stage.

1999 production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera

2019 production of Verdi's Rigoletto. The last from the pre-pandemic era, as the 2020 festival was canceled. The clown's head and the balloon stood around 130 feet in the air.

Thank you for reading (and listening), and feel free to reply with feedback or leave a comment.

Michele

PS. If you missed last week’s selection, we featured the English opera Peter Grimes by British composer Benjamin Britten.

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