Bard SummerScape 2009 Season Announcement: Seven-Week Festival Opens July 9, Exploring Life and Times of Richard Wagner through Opera, Music, Theater, Dance, Film, and the Spiegeltent
SummerScape 2009 Includes 20th-Anniversary Season of World-Renowned Bard Music Festival, “Wagner and His World”, and New Production of Meyerbeer’s Grand Opera, Les Huguenots
Bard SummerScape 2009 Season Announcement: Seven-Week Festival Opens July 9, Exploring Life and Times of Richard Wagner through Opera, Music, Theater, Dance, Film, and the Spiegeltent
“Bard College’s [SummerScape is] adventurous and ambitious.” – New York Observer
“[The Bard Music Festival is] part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit.” – New York Times
Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. – The resonance of ancient myths and centuries-old historical events in our own times is a recurrent theme of the seventh annual Bard SummerScape festival, which once again features a rich tapestry of opera, theater, dance, music, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the Bard Music Festival and presented in the acoustically superb Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s stunning Hudson River campus. The seven-week festival opens on July 9 with Lucinda Childs’s Dance, to music by Philip Glass and a film by Sol LeWitt, and closes on August 23 with the final concert of the 20th annual Bard Music Festival, which focuses this year on “Wagner and His World”. Other SummerScape highlights include Meyerbeer’s grand opera Les Huguenots; the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus; a special performance of Mendelssohn’s St. Paul; a film festival focusing on “Politics, Theater, and Wagner”; and the return of Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent for the full seven weeks.
The “uniquely stimulating” (Los Angeles Times) Bard Music Festival provides the creative inspiration for SummerScape, presenting “Wagner and His World” – a far-reaching and illuminating program of orchestral, chamber, and choral concerts, as well as lectures, films, and symposia, devoted to exploring the life and times of a composer who remains as controversial as he is revered. The two weekends of the Bard Music Festival will take place on August 14-16 and August 21-23.
The American Symphony Orchestra, under its music director, Leon Botstein, is in residence at Bard throughout SummerScape, performing opera, concerts, and an oratorio. Of major importance is the programming of concert excerpts from every one of Richard Wagner’s operas, from Die Feen (1834) to Parsifal (1882).
Bard’s annual fully staged opera will be Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grandly scaled Les Huguenots, its four performances directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, designed by Eugenio Recuenco and associate designer Eric Dover, with costumes by Mattie Ullrich. Mr. Botstein will conduct the American Symphony Orchestra. The five-act opera, composed in 1836 for the Paris Opéra, requires seven superb singers and a large cast to recreate the historic 16th-century massacre of French Protestants and a hopeless love story, in full-blown 19th-century Romantic style (July 31, August 2, 5, & 7).
In theater, Bard will present Aeschylus’s trilogy, Oresteia, in the translation by Ted Hughes. The three plays – Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides – will be directed by Gregory Thompson. Bard is offering special prices to those who subscribe to all three plays (July 15 –August 2).
A significant dance performance has opened SummerScape each year since 2006. This year, the Lucinda Childs Dance Company will open the festival on July 9 with a gala performance of Ms. Childs’s highly acclaimed 1979 creation, Dance, to music by Philip Glass that is the score of a purpose-designed film by Sol LeWitt (July 9-12).
A single oratorio performance will be part of SummerScape 2009 – a presentation of Felix Mendelssohn’s heartfelt St. Paul, given during the bicentennial season of the composer’s birth. The 1836 Biblical oratorio – like its 1846 “sibling,” Elijah – arguably demonstrates the young composer’s spiritual connection to the Jewish roots of his prominent Christian-convert family (August 9). Since Wagner despised Mendelssohn for his Jewish birth, and yet also admired his work, the inclusion of this Romantic German oratorio is a significant and striking aspect of “Wagner and His World”. Another is the festival’s exploration of the conflict between those who supported and promoted Brahms and his aesthetic, and those who supported his supposed antipode, Wagner. The examination of Wagner is a fitting 20th-anniversary season for the festival, whose inaugural season was dedicated to Brahms.
In the introduction to the Bard Music Festival posted at the Fisher Center’s website, Bard explains the purpose and raison-d’être of this important Hudson Valley institution.
“The Bard Music Festival was founded in 1990 to promote new ways of understanding and presenting the history of music to a contemporary audience. Each year, a single composer is chosen as the main subject. The biography of the composer, the influences and consequences of that composer’s achievement, and all aspects of the musical culture surrounding the time and place of the composer’s life are explored. Perhaps the most important dimensions of the festival are the ways in which it links music to the worlds of literature, painting, theater, philosophy, and politics and brings two kinds of audience together: those with a long history of interest in concert life and first-time listeners, who find the festival an ideal place to learn about and enjoy the riches of our musical past.”
There follow complete details of the music programs, lectures, symposia, panel discussions, and other events that make up “Wagner and His World”.
SummerScape’s annual offerings include a film festival, a series of international films relating in numerous ways to the season’s theme. This year, “Politics, Theater, and Wagner” will include showings of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès, and Visconti’s Ludwig – all rarities in the era of DVD and movies on-demand. Screenings are on Thursdays and Sundays, and tickets are only $8 (July 16 – August 20).
Bard SummerScape 2009 – Highlights by Genre
Opera and Oratorio
Since the opening of the Fisher Center at Bard, Mr. Botstein and the ASO have rediscovered and reinterpreted a number of operas by under-exposed but significant composers. All of these presentations and their remarkable stagings have been enthusiastically received by audiences and critics. This summer, Bard presents one of the most popular and spectacular examples of 19th-century France’s opéras grands, Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots – a five-act extravaganza first staged in 1836 at the Paris Opéra, but seldom performed today. This is Bard’s most ambitious operatic production to date, calling for a large cast, chorus, and orchestra to tell the tragic story of the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, when thousands of French Protestants were killed to rid Roman Catholic France of Protestant influence. Being Jewish, Meyerbeer knew something about religious persecution himself; and, like Mendelssohn, he was a target of Wagner’s vicious and often anti-Semitic criticism. Les Huguenots is sometimes referred to as the “Night of Seven Stars” because it requires seven singers of formidable talent and strength to perform the lead roles. Dame Joan Sutherland was the foremost recent interpreter of Marguérite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, a role with stratospheric high notes. The enormous success of Meyerbeer’s opera encouraged other composers, including Liszt, to create virtuosic piano works based on its themes. The production by director Thaddeus Strassberger, winner of the 2005 European Opera Directing Prize, with his team – Eugenio Recuenco and Eric Dover (set designer and associate designer) and Mattie Ullrich (costume designer) – will be performed in French with English supertitles. An Opera Talk, free and open to the public, will precede the performance on August 2 (July 31, August 2, 5, & 7).
In 2003, Janácek’s Osud inaugurated Bard’s annual presentation of fully-staged opera – as well as its Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center. Osud has since been followed by Shostakovich’s biting comedy The Nose, Blitzstein’s Regina, Schumann’s Genoveva, Zemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy and The Dwarf, and Szymanowski’s King Roger and Harnasie.
This year, the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth, the ASO and Bard Festival Chorale will give a single performance of his 1836 Biblical oratorio St. Paul, on August 9, following an Opera Talk. Based on the story of the conversion of Paul of Tarsus, St. Paul is the first of Mendelssohn’s two oratorios, written a decade before the second, Elijah, which concerns the travails of the Biblical prophet. Both perhaps recall the Jewish faith of Mendelssohn’s esteemed family before its conversion to Christianity. In addition, both were to some extent based on Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which Mendelssohn conducted in a famous revival performance in Leipzig in 1829 – its first airing since Bach’s own day. In his infamous diatribe “Judaism in Music”, Richard Wagner expressed glowing admiration for Mendelssohn’s work in spite of his being a (converted) Jew.
Theater
The seven surviving plays by Aeschylus, the “father of tragedy,” have surely been as influential as any written works in theatrical history. Richard Wagner’s lifework, the four-part Ring of the Nibelung, was inspired by the Aeschylus trilogy known as Oresteia, first performed around 2,500 years ago, shortly before the author’s death. Bard presents Oresteia’s three parts – Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides – individually and in sequence. They concern the ongoing tragedy and hereditary curse of a royal family. Among those before and after Wagner who capitalized on Oresteia were Jean Racine, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Richard Strauss, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, to name but a few.
Performances of the trilogy, in the translation by poet Ted Hughes, are directed by Gregory Thompson with sets and costumes by Ellen Cairns. Tickets to individual plays are $45, but tickets for the complete trilogy are only $90 (July 15 – August 2).
Dance
For the past four seasons, dance has been a vital component of SummerScape, which has opened to great acclaim with dance performances each summer since 2005. The Lucinda Childs Dance Foundation opens SummerScape on July 9 with Dance – a work Ms. Childs created in 1979 for her own company, to music by Philip Glass that is the soundtrack of a film by Sol LeWitt. Despite publishing numerous articles and interviews with the New York-based choreographer, the New York Times has stated that “Ms. Childs is revered across Europe as a grande dame of American dance. In the United States, though, her work is so rarely seen that she has assumed almost mythical status.” Bard is presenting an overdue heroine’s welcome for Ms. Childs this summer.
Lucinda Childs, an original member of Judson Dance Theater, where she was also active as choreographer, has revived Dance for numerous opera houses and dance companies all over the world, and has also choreographed for John Adams (The Chairman Dances, Doctor Atomic), Henryk Górecki, Philip Glass (Einstein on the Beach), and other noted composers. Named a Commandeur in France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Lucinda Childs was the subject of a documentary made by Arte, the Franco-German television arts channel (July 9-12).
Music
The numerous offerings that make up the comprehensive 20th annual Bard Music Festival, “Wagner and His World”, take place during SummerScape’s two final weekends: August 14-16 and August 21-23. These include, most significantly, performances of excerpts from all of Wagner’s operas – from Die Feen (The Fairies, 1834) to Parsifal (1882). “Wagner and His World” encompasses many composers who were his contemporaries, as well as many who came after, for he influenced everyone in the business of music – whether positively or negatively – throughout his creative lifetime and long afterward.
Weekend One, August 14-16: The Fruits of Ambition
Weekend Two, August 21-23: Engineering the Triumph of Wagnerism
The 20th annual Bard Music Festival takes stock of the pathbreaking composer Richard Wagner (1813-83), with orchestral concerts (featuring excerpts from all of his operas, including the rarely performed first three, Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi), as well as chamber and choral performances, panel discussions, symposia, and other events that reveal and explore his life and times. Wagner first defined and then satisfied his audience’s demand for a new kind of music and theater to reflect the contradictions of the era. In the process, he rewrote the history of music, turning it into a progressive narrative in which he himself played the leading role. His influence extended well beyond music into the realms of philosophy, literature, painting, and architecture. No composer in Western music has as effectively controlled his posthumous reputation; the tradition of cult-like Wagnerian orthodoxy survives to this day.
The historical, intellectual, and musical roots and contexts of Wagner’s canonic operas are easily lost from view because they still loom so large in the repertoire. The Bard Music Festival aims to explore the sources that provided Wagner with the tools for his brilliant self-invention. Although the festival’s polemical intent is the ambition to contest a set of Wagnerian myths, the program is informed by a genuine degree of awe for his achievement. Exploring the world of Wagner makes a fitting 20th-anniversary season for the festival, whose inaugural season was dedicated to Brahms – long considered Wagner’s contemporary aesthetic counterpole.
Since the founding of the Bard Music Festival, Princeton University Press has published a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation relating to the featured composer and his world. Thomas S. Grey is editor of the 2009 volume on Wagner and His World.
The 12 musical programs built thematically and spaced over the two weekends range from Wagner’s inauspicious beginnings (“Genius Unanticipated,” Aug. 14) to his virtual apotheosis (“Music and German National Identity,” Aug. 23), and feature the three orchestral giants of the day – Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms. Three panel discussions and a symposium are augmented by an informative talk before each concert, addressing the concert’s theme, that is free to ticket holders.
As the New York Times declared, “As impressive as many of the festival performances were, they were matched by the audience’s engagement: strangers met and conversed, analyzing the music they’d heard with sophistication, and a Sunday-morning panel discussion of gender issues in 19th-century culture drew a nearly full house. All told, it was a model for an enlightened society.”
Film
Bard SummerScape’s 2009 Film Series, “Politics, Theater, and Wagner,” is inspired by a suggestion made by American independent director and screenwriter Harmony Korine, quoted by Ronald Bergen in London’s Guardian: “If Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the Great Art Form would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.”
With screenings on Thursdays and Sundays at 7 pm in the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center, “Politics, Theater, and Wagner” offers a single-ticket price of $8 for each film. The amazing list of titles is: Lola Montès (1955), the last great film by Max Ophüls, now restored; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), by Max Reinhardt; The Great Dictator (1940) by Charles Chaplin; To Be or Not to Be (1942) by Ernst Lubitsch; Deception (1946) by Irving Rapper; Unfaithfully Yours (1948) by Preston Sturges; Meeting Venus (1991) by István Szabó; Ludwig (1972) by Luchino Visconti; Perceval le Gallois (1978) by Eric Rohmer; and the two-part film Die Nibelungen (1924) by Fritz Lang – Part I: Siegfrieds Tod (“Siegfried’s Death”) and Part II: Kriemhilds Rache (“Kriemhild’s Revenge”).
Spiegeltent
For a fourth magnificent summer, the authentic, one-of-a-kind, Belgian Spiegeltent returns – sensationally popular since its introduction at Bard in 2006, the first time one of these fabulous structures appeared in America. A movable feast of exotic delights, offering food, beverages, and entertainment Thursday through Sunday throughout SummerScape, the Spiegeltent is the festival’s center for fun and refreshment. During weekend days there are family programs, and in the evening there’s a lineup of cutting-edge cabaret and musical performances, with post-show dancing and drinks.
The Spiegeltent is a handmade pavilion decorated with mirrors, centered on a theater-in-the-round that doubles as a dance floor. Its ballooning velvet canopies, ornate bars, and intimate booths make Bard’s Spiegeltent a fabulous place to enjoy a dazzling array of entertainment throughout the festival, and provide a meeting place for drink, food, and celebration before and after weekend shows.
This summer’s exciting assortment of Spiegeltent cabaret and Family Fare productions includes Amy G, perhaps the world’s only roller-skating comic cabaret act, a “studied combination of elegance and slapstick” (Irish Times); the acclaimed chanteuse Justin Bond, known to New York audiences as Kiki of the 2007 Tony Award-nominated Kiki & Herb: Alive on Broadway; and Taylor Mac, a “breathtakingly real and unconditionally unmissable” (Time Out), sequined, ukulele-playing performance artist. Returning Spiegeltent favorites include the eccentric Bindlestiff Family Cirkus; the “irreverent, sacrilegious, lascivious” (New York Times) Wau Wau Sisters; and the ever-popular SpiegelMaestro, Nik Quaife.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, while the night is still young, following the regularly scheduled performances of SummerScape, the SpiegelClub is the region’s most exhilarating summer gathering place, offering $5 admission (free to SummerScape ticket holders) after 10 pm and a late-night bar with music and dancing, where audiences and artists can meet over a drink or a casual bite and enjoy SummerScape evenings at Bard.
New this year, adjacent to the Spiegeltent, is The Parliament of Reality, a permanent sculptural environment by the internationally renowned Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Commissioned by Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, the installation consists of a circular pond surrounded by a ring of trees and punctuated by an island that visitors can reach via a stone bridge enclosed in tunnel-like latticework. Before or after the show, visit the installation, a place where the artist encourages audiences to “relax, discuss ideas, question what you’re taught, and negotiate with each other.”
SummerScape 2009: Key Performance Dates by Genre
OPERA
Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots
July 31 and August 7 at 7 pm
August 2 and 5 at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
$25, $55, $75
THEATER
Aeschylus: Oresteia trilogy – Agamemnon, Choephori, The Eumenides
LUMA Theater
July 15 – August 2
$45 per play, $90 for the trilogy
DANCE
Dance by Lucinda Childs
music by Philip Glass; film/decor by Sol LeWitt
July 9, 10, and 11 at 8 pm
July 12 at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
$25, $40, $55
MUSIC
Mendelssohn: St. Paul
August 9 at 3 pm (one performance only)
Sosnoff Theater
$25, $40, $55
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Wagner and His World: The Fruits of Ambition” (August 14-16)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Wagner and His World: Engineering the Triumph of Wagnerism” (August 21-23)
Complete program details follow.
FILM FESTIVAL
“Politics, Theater, and Wagner”
Thursdays and Sundays, July 16 – August 20 at 7 pm
Ottaway Film Center
$8
SPIEGELTENT
Cabaret, Family Fare, and SpiegelClub
Cabaret $25; Family Fare $15 ($5 for child under 18); SpiegelClub $5
Venues:
SummerScape operas and most Bard Music Festival programs are held in the Sosnoff Theater or LUMA Theater in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region. Some chamber programs and other BMF events are in Olin Hall. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, café, and bar before and after performances. The Film Festival screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.
Special Coach Transportation:
To make a reservation on the round-trip coach provided exclusively to ticket holders for specific performances indicated by + in the full information that follows, call the Box Office at 845-758-7900. The fare is $10 round-trip, and reservations are required. The coach departs Columbus Circle four hours before scheduled curtain time to allow for dining in the Spiegeltent or a pre-performance visit to Bard’s Hessel Museum.
Critical Acclaim:
London’s Times Literary Supplement lauded SummerScape as “[t]he most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” The New Yorker called it “one of the major upstate festivals”; Travel and Leisure reported, “[At] Bard SummerScape … Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for innovative fare”; Newsday called SummerScape “brave and brainy”; and the New York Sun observed, “Bard’s [SummerScape] … offers one of the best lineups of the summer for fans of any arts discipline.”
Full Schedule:
A complete schedule of SummerScape and Bard Music Festival events (subject to change) follows. Updates are posted at the festival website www.fishercenter.bard.edu. Tickets for all SummerScape events go on sale to the public on March 2, 2009, but those who register early as “e-Members” will have the early-bird’s advantage for the best seats and also receive regular news and updates.
Chronological List of SummerScape 2009 Highlights
July 9 SummerScape opens with Lucinda Childs’s Dance, to Philip Glass (through July 12)
July 11 Gala Benefit before and after performance of Lucinda Childs’s Dance
July 15-Aug 2 Seven complete performances of the Aeschylus trilogy, Oresteia
July 16-Aug 20 Film Festival “Politics, Theater, and Wagner” (ten films)
July 31 First of four performances of Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots (through August 7)
August 9 Special single performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St. Paul
August 14 Annual Bard Music Festival Gala in the Spiegeltent
August 14-16 Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Wagner and His World”
August 21-23 Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Wagner and His World”
Program Details of Bard Music Festival, “Wagner and His World”
Weekend One, August 14-16: The Fruits of Ambition
FRIDAY, AUGUST 14
5:00 pm Annual BMF Gala in the Spiegeltent
Program One
Genius Unanticipated
Sosnoff Theater
7:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Leon Botstein
8:00 pm Performance: Christine Goerke, soprano; Mark Schnaible, bass-baritone; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Symphony in C major (1832)
Overture to Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes (1838-40)
Faust Symphony, First Movement WWV 59 (Faust Overture, First Version) (1840)
Excerpts from Die Feen (1834), Das Liebesverbot (1836), Parsifal (1882), Tristan und Isolde (1859)
Tickets: $25, $40, $55
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15
IllUstrated talk
Reality and Image: Wagner in Film
Olin Hall
10 am
John Deathridge
Free and open to the public
Program Two
In the Shadow of Beethoven
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Alexander Rehding
1:30 pm Performance: Danny Driver, piano; Marjorie Owens, soprano, Pei-Yao Wang, piano; Bard Festival Chamber Players
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Fantasy in F-sharp minor, for piano (1831)
Der Tannenbaum (1838)
From Seven Compositions from Goethe’s Faust (1831)
Louis Spohr (1784-1859)
Nonet, Op. 31, for strings and winds (1813)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Arias from Der Freischütz (1821) and Oberon (1826)
Carl Czerny (1791-1857)
Variations brillantes, Op. 14 (1821)
Arias and songs by Carl Loewe (1796-1869); Heinrich Marschner (1795-1861); Robert Franz (1815-92); Friedrich von Flotow (1812-83); and Ferdinand Hiller (1811-85)
Tickets: $35
Program Three
Wagner and the Choral Tradition
Sosnoff Theater
5:00 pm Performance: Bard Festival Chamber Players; Bard Festival Chorale, James Bagwell, choral director Works by Richard Wagner (1813-83); Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c.1525-94); Anton Bruckner (1824-96); Johannes Brahms (1833-97); and Franz Liszt (1811-86).
Tickets: $30
PROGRAM FOUR
The Triumphant Revolutionary
Sosnoff Theater
7:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Dana Gooley
8:00 pm Performance: Richard Brunner, tenor; Christine Goerke, soprano; Lise Lindstrom, soprano; Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano; Bard Festival Chorale with James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Arias for La déscente de la courtille (1841) by Théophile Marion Dumersans and Dupeutys, and Norma (1831) by Vincenzo Bellini
Excerpts from The Flying Dutchman (1841); Tannhäuser (1861); and Lohengrin (1848)
Tickets: $25, $40, $55
SUNDAY, AUGUST 16
Panel one
Warring Aesthetics
Olin Hall
10:00 am
Thomas S. Grey, moderator; Lydia Goehr; Kevin Karnes; Alexander Rehding
Free and open to the public
Program Five
Wagner’s Destructive Obsession: Mendelssohn and Friends
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Bryan Gilliam
1:30 pm Performance: Bernadine Blaha, piano; Jeremy Denk, piano; Piers Lane, piano; Jeffrey Lang, horn
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Les deux grenadiers (1839-40)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47)
From Songs Without Words, Op. 19b (1829-30)
Hebrides Overture, Op. 26, arr. piano duet (1830, arr. 1832)
Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 (1845)
Robert Schumann (1810-56)
Die beiden Grenadiere, Op. 49, No. 1 (1840)
Piano Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 44 (1842)
Andante and Variations, WoO 10 (1843)
Tickets: $35
Program SIX+
Wagner in Paris
Sosnoff Theater
5:00 pm Preconcert Talk
5:30 pm Performance: Randolph Bowman, flute; Jeremy Denk, piano; Laura Flax, clarinet
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Adieux de Marie Stuart, for voice and piano (1840)
Attente, for voice and piano (1839)
Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842)
String Quartet No. 4 in E major (1835)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871)
From Zanetta, arr. for flute and string trio (1840; arr. Wagner)
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864)
Hirtenlied, for voice, clarinet, and piano (1842)
Ferdinand Hérold (1791-1833)
Overture to Zampa, arr. for piano four hands (1831)
Fromental Halévy (1799-1862)
From Le Guitarrero, arr. for flute and string trio (1841, arr. Wagner)
Hector Berlioz (1803-69)
“March to the Scaffold,” from Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 (1830; arr. Liszt)
Fryderyk Chopin (1810-49)
Ballade in G minor, Op. 23 (c.1835)
Franz Liszt (1811-86)
Réminiscences des Huguenots (1836-42)
Arias by Gaspare Spontini (1774-1851); Giaochino Rossini (1792-1868); and Vincenzo Bellini (1801-35)
Tickets: $20, $35, $45
+ Round-trip transportation by coach from Columbus Circle to the Fisher Center will be provided for this performance. Call 845-758-7900 for information. Reservations are required.
Weekend Two, August 21-23: Engineering the Triumph of Wagnerism
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21
Symposium
Wagner and the Transformation of European Culture
Multipurpose Room, Bertelsmann Campus Center
10:00 am–noon
1:30 pm–3:30 pm
Marina van Zuylen, moderator; and others.
Free and open to the public
Program SEVEN
Wagner Pro and Contra
Sosnoff Theater
7:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Walter Frisch
8:00 pm Performance: Bernadine Blaha, piano; Teresa Buchholz, mezzo-soprano; Piers Lane, piano
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Wesendonck Lieder, (1857-58)
Eine Sonate für das Album von Frau M.W. (1858)
Franz Liszt (1811-86)
Die Lorelei (1841)
Orpheus, arr. for piano trio (1853-54; arr. Saint-Saëns)
Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Vocal Duets, Opp. 20 (1858-60) and 61 (1852-74)
Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor, Op. 34b (1864)
Joseph Joachim (1831-1907)
Overture to Hamlet, Op. 4 (c.1855, arr. Brahms)
Tickets: $20, $35, $45
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22
Program EIGHT
Bearable Lightness: The Comic Alternative
Olin Hall
10:00 am Performance with Commentary
Works by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94); André Messager (1853-1929); Claude Debussy (1862-1918); Johann Nestroy (1801-62); Jacques Offenbach (1819-80); and Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-99)
Tickets: $30
Program Nine
Competing Romanticisms
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk
1:30 pm Performance: Bard Festival String Quartet; Noreen Polera, piano
Karl Goldmark (1830-1915)
Romance, for violin and piano (1913)
Hermann Goetz (1840-76)
Piano Quintet in C minor, Op. 16 (1874)
Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Six Choral Preludes, Op. 122 (1896; arr. Busoni)
Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900)
Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 24 (1877)
Max Bruch (1838-1920)
From Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola, and piano, Op. 83 (1910)
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
From Cypresses (1865)
Tickets: $35
Program TEN
The Selling of the Ring
Sosnoff Theater
7:00 pm Preconcert Talk: John Deathridge
8:00 pm Performance: James Johnson, baritone; Gary Lehman, tenor; Linda Watson, soprano; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Excerpts from Das Rheingold (1854); Die Walküre (1856); Siegfried (1871); and Götterdämmerung (1874)
Tickets: $25, $40, $55
SUNDAY, AUGUST 23
PANEL TWO
Wagner and the Jewish Question
Olin Hall
10:00 am–12:00 noon
Leon Botstein, moderator; Lawrence Rose
Free and open to the public
Program Eleven
Wagnerians
Olin Hall
1:00 pm Preconcert Talk: Byron Adams
1:30 pm Performance: Bard Festival String Quartet; Noreen Polera, piano
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Siegfried Idyll (1870)
Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
L’invitation au voyage (1870)
Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
From Goyescas, Op. 11 (1909-12)
Ernest Chausson (1855-99)
Piano Quartet in A major, Op. 30 (1897)
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire (1887-89)
Charles T. Griffes (1884-1920)
De profundis (1915)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
Italian Serenade (1887)
Songs by Richard Strauss (1864-1949); Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921); and Alexander Ritter (1833-96)
Tickets: $35
Program Twelve
Music and German National Identity
Sosnoff Theater
4:30 pm Preconcert Talk: Christopher H. Gibbs
5:30 pm Performance: Corey Bix, tenor; James Johnson, baritone; Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano; Bard Festival Chorale, with James Bagwell, choral director; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Richard Wagner (1813-83)
Kaisermarsch (1871)
Excerpts from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1862-67)
Anton Bruckner (1824-96)
Germanenzug (1863)
Johannes Brahms (1833-97)
Triumphlied, Op. 55 (1870-71)
Tickets: $25, $40, $55
Bard SummerScape 2009 Calendar: Events in Chronological Order
July 9 (Thursday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Dance (Sosnoff)
July 10 (Friday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Dance (Sosnoff) +
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
July 11 (Saturday)
5:00 pm Gala Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Dance (Sosnoff)
9:00 pm Opening Night Party (Spiegeltent)
July 12 (Sunday)
3:00 pm Dance (Sosnoff)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
5:30 pm Sunday SpiegelLounge (Spiegeltent)
July 15 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
July 16 (Thursday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Lola Montès (Ottaway)
8:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 17 (Friday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 18 (Saturday)
11:00 am Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 19 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
4:00 pm Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
5:30 pm Sunday SpiegelLounge (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm A Midsummer’s Night Dream (Ottaway)
July 22 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
July 23 (Thursday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm The Great Dictator (Ottaway)
8:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 24 (Friday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:00 pm Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 25 (Saturday)
11:00 am Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
July 26 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
4:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
5:30 pm Sunday SpiegelLounge (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm To Be or Not to Be (Ottaway)
July 29 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
July 30 (Thursday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Deception (Ottaway)
8:00 pm Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
July 31 (Friday)
3:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Les Huguenots (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 1 (Saturday)
11:00 am Agamemnon (LUMA Theater)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Choephori (LUMA Theater)
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 2 (Sunday)
1:00 pm Opera Talk (Sosnoff)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm Les Huguenots (Sosnoff) +
3:30 pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
4:00 pm Eumenides (LUMA Theater)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
5:30 pm Sunday SpiegelLounge (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Unfaithfully Yours (Ottaway)
August 5 (Wednesday)
3:00 pm Les Huguenots (Sosnoff)
August 6 (Thursday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Meeting Venus (Ottaway)
8:30 pm Thursday Night Live (Spiegeltent)
August 7 (Friday)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
7:00 pm Les Huguenots (Sosnoff)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 8 (Saturday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:30pm Family Fare (Spiegeltent)
5:30–7:30 pm Dinner (Spiegeltent)
8:30 pm Cabaret (Spiegeltent)
10:00 pm SpiegelClub (Spiegeltent)
August 9 (Sunday)
1:00–3:00 pm Lunch (Spiegeltent)
3:00 pm
This event was last updated on 06-25-2009
- First U.S. Survey of Artist Stan Douglas in Over Two Decades Opens June 2025 at the Center for Curatorial Studies’ Hessel Museum of Art
- Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock Announce Relocation to Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and Master of Arts in Teaching Program Receive Library of Congress Grant Award
- Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking Resumes Dynamic Partnership with Cooke Foundation’s Young Scholars Program in 2025