360Photography

[ By Steph in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Magnificent, surreal stages rise from the depths of Austria’s Lake Constance, rotating, glowing, rising and falling in time with the plots of famed operas, plays and musicals. Unparalleled in their scale and complexity, these stages are built every two years for the Bregenz Opera Festival, which began in 1946. With each season that passes, the sets get even more impressive. Here are 10 standouts.

Andre Chenier

Looking like the remains of some fallen civilization, a statue emerges from the lake, its head draped. Then the fabric begins to fall away, revealing a set of stairs that lead right up to the figure’s eye. This interactive set for Andre Chenier, an opera set during the French Revolution, grows even more amazing as the night goes on: the neck of the statue is severed, the head falling back to reveal an additional set.

A Masked Ball

A massive skeleton looms over an open book as the scene for A Masked Ball, an opera by Guiseppe Verde. One of the Bregenz Festival’s most iconic sets, this one from 1999 is fairly simple compared to the amazingly complex ones seen in more recent years.

Tosca

Puccini’s Tosca played out against this unforgettable backdrop, which featured a giant eye with an iris that actually rotates to reveal a hidden room. Scenes for the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace were filmed in the front of the building and in the audience while this stage was still active, in 2008.

La Boheme

The 2001-2002 seasons of the Bregenz Festival featured three giant bistro tables and chairs for Puccini’s La Boheme, one of the world’s most popular operas.

Aida

Life-sized replicas of the Statue of Liberty – or at least, bits and pieces of it – made a dramatic setting for a contemporary adaptation of Verdi’s Aida, symbolic of the breakdown of human rights. The pieces were mounted to cranes, and seemingly floated up into the sky at various points in the opera.

Carmen

Though not as surreal as many of the other sets,  the 1991-1992 stage for Georges Bizet’s Carmen was no less epic.

West Side Story

Abstract representations of a rather futuristic-looking city rose and curved as a surprising stage for Leonard Bertstein’s musical West Side Story in 2003.

The Magic Flute

Last seen at Bregenz nearly twenty years ago with this magnificent rocky stage, The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote, presented in German with English subtitles) will return for 2013 and 2014 with a new set.

The Troubadour

Il Trovatore, or The Troubadour, had a very industrial-looking stage – a recreation of an oil refinery in stark red, which spewed fire from those smokestacks during its run in 2005.

Fidelio

A prison rears up right amidst a life-sized Cardiff street as the set for Fidelio, an Italian opera about insidious evil in the world.

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