Premiere
Captain Nemo's Library Premiere

Bregenz Festspielhaus, Werkstattbühne, Bregenz, Austria

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8 PM

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Important Info

Festival: Bregenz Festival 2022

Type: Opera

City: Bregenz, Austria

Starts at: 20:00

Duration: 1h 30min

Sung in: German

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Festival

Bregenz Festival 2022

Enthusiastic visitors, impressive productions and a lot of positive reporting in the media – three days before the 76th season ends, the Bregenz Festival can look back on a highly varied summer of culture, the first production of which was staged back at Easter. The opera on the lake stage attracted visitors in droves again. Madame Butterfly production played on 26 dates in all, including dress rehearsal and Crossculture Night. The opera by Giacomo Puccini, which was staged for the first time on the Bregenz lake stage, has played to capacity audiences. The festival season began on the Easter weekend with guest performances of the play No Exit (Huis clos) presented by Vienna’s Burgtheater.

Overview

The composer Johannes Kalitzke and the librettist Julia Hochstenbach stick closely to the book written by the Swedish novelist Per Olov Enquist. In their narration, they transform the fictional series of books into a refuge from pain and hopelessness. Literature becomes an anchor. In an artistic and creative space, the first-person narrator creates a new self that helps him cope with his suffering.

Two little boys grow up in a village in Northern Sweden. They are childhood friends that could not be any more different: Johannes is a little ray of sunshine, His mother, however, is a cold, disreputable outsider. The first-person narrator, on the other hand, is very taciturn but his mother gets along well with the local community. When the boys turn six, the authorities decide that they were switched at birth.

Having been robbed of their family identity, they must live with each other’s birth mothers from now on. This cruel act engulfs them in misery and madness. Trapped in this unbearable situation the first-person narrator finds shelter in his very own fantasy world. He dives down to the library in Captain Nemo’s submarine, which is based on Jules Verne’s novel The Mysterious Island.

Stage director Christoph Werner, who is the artistic director of the Puppentheater Halle, and designer Angela Baumgart use puppets to capture the subtle game between reality and fantasy and explore how we all create our own realities and subjective perceptions.

Commissioned co-production with Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele
Supported by The German Federal Cultural Foundation

History

The story of Captain Nemo's Library largely deals with the life of two childhood friends, the narrator and his friend Johannes, in bleak northern Sweden. The two were switched at birth, something that is only discovered (or realized) when they are five or so.

Venue Info

Bregenz Festspielhaus - Bregenz
Platz der Wr. Symphoniker

The Bregenz Festspielhaus is an event center in Bregenz and was opened in July 1980. It is the venue for the Bregenz Festival and the venue for conferences, congresses, and events. The operator of the Congress culture Bregenz GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the state capital Bregenz is.

In 1990, architectural competition for an extension of the building was announced, which was won by the architects Helmut Dietrich and Much Untertrifaller, based in Bregenz and Vienna, with their architectural office of the same name, Dietrich/Untertrifaller. The concept envisaged a two-stage expansion of the existing building.

The first part of the extension was built in 1996/1997, including the workshop stage with side stage, lake studio, lake foyer, central kitchen, and the new administrative part of the house.

In 2005/2006, the existing building from 1980 was completely renovated and expanded by 10,000 cubic meters. The "Platz der Wiener Symphoniker" in front of the Festival and Congress Hall was redesigned as part of an "Art and Construction" project.

The approximately 7-meter high sculpture "Ready Maid" was created by Gottfried Bechtold. According to the renowned Vorarlberg artist, the inverted tree made of polished bronze is a striding tree woman, an antipode, a diametrically opposed art object to the performances. The sculpture stands in a slight depression, which, depending on the amount of precipitation, turns into a water-based paint and mirror surface up to 15 centimeters deep.

Cerith Wyn Evans created an installation of white neon light that reads "299,792,458 m/s" - the speed of light. The installation was mounted on the Festspielhaus and can be perceived as a light object itself, as a reflection in window panes and in the water, as shadows, etc.
The multifunctional orientation of the Festspielhaus now enables the implementation of a wide variety of event types. Conferences and congresses, cultural events, entertainment as well as company events, and social events form the portfolio of the house. In 2009 the Festspielhaus in Bregenz was voted one of the best event centers of its size in Europe by the European Association of Event Centers (EVVC) and received the corresponding award "Best Center 2009". In 2013, the Bregenz Festival Hall again received an award from the EVVC, this time in cooperation with the German Convention Bureau, namely the “Meeting Experts Green Award” in the “Sustainable Event Center” category.

In addition to the annual Bregenz Festival, performances of the Bregenz Spring Dance Festival, the Bregenz master concerts, concerts of the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, and shows and concerts of all genres take place in the Festspielhaus.

At the Seebühne Stars like Falco, Peter Gabriel, Supertramp, Herbert Grönemeyer, Elton John, Udo Jürgens, Xavier Naidoo and Cro gave concerts. In 2008, film recordings of James Bond 007: a Quantum consolation were recorded there.