First Fully-Staged North American Production of Franz Schreker’s Haunting 1910 Opera The Distant Sound (“Der ferne Klang”) - Jul 30

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SummerScape 2010 Includes 21st Season of World-Renowned Bard Music Festival, “Berg and His World”, and New Production of Oscar Straus’s Operetta The Chocolate Soldier (Aug 5–15)

The eighth annual Bard SummerScape’s opera presentation, Franz Schreker’s The Distant Sound (“Der ferne Klang,” 1910), though familiar in Europe, has never yet – in the century since its composition – been fully staged in North America. Schreker, whose music synthesized elements from Romanticism to expressionism, was hailed early in his career as the most significant musical dramatist since Wagner, and The Distant Sound is a key work of Viennese modernism. Thaddeus Strassberger, visionary director of last season’s lavishly praised Huguenots presentation and winner of the 2005 European Opera Directing Prize, returns to direct the landmark production, with set designs by Narelle Sissons, whose credits include Babes in Toyland at Lincoln Center (2008), and costume design by Mattie Ullrich, who created the costumes for SummerScape’s productions of The Sorcerer (2007) and Les Huguenots (2009). Tenor Mathias Schulz, a Pavarotti International Voice Competition finalist, stars as Fritz, and soprano Yamina Maamar plays Grete, in which role the New York Times described her performance as a “triumph.” The Distant Sound’s four performances (July 30, August 1, 4, & 6) feature the festival’s resident American Symphony Orchestra under music director Leon Botstein, who gives a free Opera Talk before the August 1 performance.

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