Bregenz Festival's most spectacular water stages thumbnail

Bregenz Festival's most spectacular water stages

There’s nothing quite like the spectacular Bregenz Festival and its wonderfully creative stage designs. Every year, the Austrian shore of Lake Constance is home to this fabulous annual event – which origins can be traced back as far as 1946!

With their possibly most ambitious stage design coming to live for Rigoletto this summer – and hitting our cinema screens on 17 September – we take our pick of our favourite Bregenz Festival stages to date.

1. Rigoletto (2019-2020)

It’s alive! Well, not quite, but it sure looks like it. The giant mechanical clown that hugs this year’s lake stage moves all the way throughout the production, reacting to and often mirroring what’s happening in the story. The centre-stage enormous head is fixed on a massive crane that can lift, lower or move it in any direction- and yes, everything else can move too: the enormous hands, the eyes, and the mouth which at one point swallows the actors.

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a genuine huge hot air balloon being held by one of the hands – that brings Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda up at one point!

2. Carmen (2017-2018)

We knew we were onto something huge when we found out Es Devlin was behind Carmen’s stage design for the 2017 festival. The London-based designer has an incredibly impressive portfolio, having worked on stage designs for artists such as Beyoncé, Kanye West, U2 or Adele, just to name a few. She’s also the genius behind the incredible staging of Take That’s Progress and Circus tours!

The Carmen stage featured 2 massive female hands (one with a giant cigarette), and a whole deck of cards being shuffled between them.

3. Tosca (2007-2008)

 

Puccini’s thriller Tosca saw the stage of Bregenz Festival turned into a massive all-seeing eye – with a movable iris that would come out, turn into a platform, or turn into a giant screen – bringing everyone in the audience even closer to the action.

You might think to yourself: where do I recognise this giant eye from? Indeed you may have seen it before, during one of 007’s adventures – as James Bond visited Bregenz Festival in the film Quantum of Solace.

4. Andrea Chénier (2011-2012)

For Giordano’s opera about French Revolution, the stage had been designed to recreate the famous painting, David’s ‘The Death of Marat’. A set of staircases comes down from Marat’s left eye, and to his left we see a giant Alice in Wonderland-like book of Chénier’s poems. During the story, the book flips the pages the reveal the main character coming out of it. To the right of the giant figure, there’s a beautiful mirror on which images would be projected throughout the performance.

5. The Masked Ball (1999-2000)

I think this one’s my personal favourite – although perhaps it’s not as ingenious as some of the more modern, moving designs, this stage featuring a massive skeleton overlooking the tiny characters of the story walking around over a massive open book is particularly beautiful.

I only wish I could’ve seen it in action – live, or in a cinema!

6. The Magic Flute (2013-2014)

Perhaps the most magical and whimsical staging blossomed on the shore of Lake Constance in 2013 for Mozart’s fantasy opera, The Magic Flute. The whole stage is constructed around a giant, revolving green mound, which on one side reveals a sprouting forest and on the other Sarastro’s kingdom.

Surrounding the stage are three tall dragons, connected by catwalks – and one of the highlights of the design is a big water turtle, carrying characters on its back during the story. What a way to use the lake water!

 

We can’t wait to see the spectacular Bregenz Festival’s water stage on the big screen in all its glory for Verdi’s Rigoletto on the Lake – in cinemas 17 September 2019!

By Kat