About the Bregenz Festival

The Bregenz Festival is one of the largest Opera festivals in Europe, which starts in July every year and lasts for a month, bringing together Opera lovers from all over the world. 

The festival takes place in the picturesque Austrian town of Bregenz on the shore of lake Constance. The program of the festival takes place in different places, but the site that is most in demand among the public is the lake scene (Seebühne). This is a modern stage, which is located on an artificial island among the lake waters. By the next performance, she changes her appearance, reincarnating in the main scenery of the production. The auditorium, which can accommodate about seven thousand people, is located on the shore in the open air. That is, you are sitting on the shore, and the Opera is played on the water, on a floating stage. So the play is born in unity with the landscape.

The music lover, who got to Bregenz for the first time, can be confused by the obvious artificiality of sound. There is no direct contact between the singers, the conductor, and the orchestra: the latter play in the Festspielhaus building and remain invisible. So every artist is equipped with a microphone and sees the conductor only in the monitor. Festival in Bregenz uses a sound system similar to Dolby developed in Franciscom the Institute of media technology and is designed for showing movies outdoors. The system provides perfect contact between the performers on the lake stage and the invisible orchestra, and, in addition, allows the singers with maximum freedom to move horizontally and vertically. 

The history of the festival began in postwar 1946 when two floating barges were placed on the lake. One housed the Vienna Symphony orchestra, which later became a regular participant in the festival, and the other held the main stage. The auditorium was arranged in the open air. 

The first production was the opera Bastien et Bastienne by W. A. ​​Mozart, the festival itself lasted only a week.

Operas "on the water" are often popular productions: Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Bernstein. But in some cases, a classical opera is performed with a “new maneuver”: stage directors and directors use not only special effects, complex stage decorations, and the latest acoustic systems - they also fully use the water surface of Lake Constance, moving part of the action there. Examples are the famous opera "Aida" with numerous actions right on the water against the backdrop of the destroyed Statue of Liberty and the opera "André Chenier", dedicated to the life of this poet.

Operas on the lake stage go on for several seasons in a row, so after the end of the festival season, the stage constructions are not dismantled, but left to winter until next summer.