ACF SUPPORTED | Bard SummerScape Festival 2010
The 2010 Bard SummerScape Festival enriches the exploration of “Berg and his Word” with the first US staging of Franz Schreker’s Opera The Distant Sound (July 30 – Aug 6) and a new production of Oscar Straus’s Operetta The Chocolate Soldier (Aug 5–15)
Reviving an important but neglected opera is one of the ways the Bard SummerScape festival paints a faithfully nuanced portrait of each past age, and this year’s exploration of “Berg and His World” is no exception. To enrich its evocation of Viennese modernism, Bard presents the first fully-staged U.S. production of The Distant Sound (Der ferne Klang, 1910), by Berg’s compatriot Franz Schreker, in its centenary year.
The 21st volume of the award-winning Bard Festival series, published by Princeton University Press, will be Alban Berg and His World, edited by Christopher Hailey.
Alban Berg (1885-1935) has a unique place in the history of 20th-century music. Born and raised in Vienna, Berg came from a well-to-do family. After studying privately with Schoenberg, he became determined to make a living as a composer and was distracted only by the demands of a complex personal life and his fragile health. Despite the appearance of an ideal marriage, he encoded into his music the secrets of his private life, including a long affair with Hanna Fuchs, the sister of the Austrian writer Franz Werfel. The genius of Alban Berg lived only half a century. Yet no modernist composer of the early 20th century has had such a lasting impact on the hearts and minds of audiences after 1945.
Alban Berg at the Bard Festival:
Weekend One: Berg and Vienna
Friday, August 13 – Sunday, August 15
The first weekend includes a foray into the role of psychology and literature in fin-de-siècle Vienna and a sampling of the impact Schoenberg and Berg had as teachers and friends. The intricacies, secrets, and consequences of Berg’s private life will be explored as will the legacy of Gustav Mahler.
Weekend Two: Berg the European
Friday, August 20 – Sunday, August 22
In the 1920s Berg became active in international organizations for new music. The post-World War I modernist experiment had its detractors. By the early 1930s, Fascism came to dominate Europe, and Berg found himself again at the margin as politics once again helped shape the course of music history.
For tickets and information go to http://fishercenter.bard.edu/
ACFNY-subscribers receive a 30% discount on tickets. Mention discount code AUS.
VENUE
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson
NY 12504