So cool, I’m afraid, that often his staging is upstaged by the stage itself. British designer Es Devlin struck gold with her arresting set, and offers director Kasper Holten the coolest of spaces to stage the story in. The set is this: Carmen’s olive-complexioned hands, a cigarette in the one and looking achingly lifelike with details like scars and chipped fingernail polish, shuffle a deck of cards, or cast them carelessly these cards form the backdrop and the surface of the stage, haphazard, frozen, fateful. ![]() ![]() There are other operas and philharmonic concerts in Bregenz for this festival, but with its 7,000-capacity tribune and a stage that emerges from the water, 20 metres high and 26 metres across, the lake-stage is the massive flagship in Bregenz’s miniature fleet. This and last year’s was for a production of Carmen, already reviewed in Seen and Heard and around for another 16 performances this month. ![]() It’s so elaborate they only erect a new one every two years. Along the way, there is Bregenz in Austria, with its ‘Spiel auf dem See’ – the play upon the lake – the lake being Lake Constance pooling at the base of the German, Austrian and Swiss Alps. Europe is the epicentre of these trips, Bayreuth for Wagner fans the pinnacle. Stick around with opera long enough and you realise there is a subset of the opera experience that is all about pilgrimages – pious devotees chase their most beloved composers, or singers, or certain festivals in certain cities, perhaps even certain directors. (CCr) Bregenzer Festspiele’s Carmen © Karl ForsterĬhoir directors – Lukáš Vasilek, Benjamin LackĬhildren’s choir director – Wolfgang Schwendinger Austria Bizet, Carmen: Soloists, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Children’s choir of Musikmittelschule Bregenz-Stadt, Vienna Symphony Orchestra / Antonino Fogliani (conductor), Bregenz Festival ‘Spiel auf dem See’, Bregenz.
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