Press Room

Bard SummerScape 2009 Tickets Go On Sale Today, March 2, 2009

Annandale-on-Hudson,
N.Y. – Tickets for the 2009 Bard
SummerScape Festival
go on sale
today, Monday, March 2, and are
available at the Richard B. Fisher Center box office at (845) 758-7900 or
online at www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

The resonance of ancient
myths and centuries-old historical events in our own times is a recurrent theme
of the seventh annual Bard SummerScape festival, which once again features a
rich tapestry of opera, theater, dance, music, film,
and cabaret, keyed to the theme of
the Bard Music Festival and
presented in the acoustically superb Richard B. Fisher Center for the
Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s stunning Hudson River
campus.  The seven-week festival
opens on July 9 with Lucinda Childs’s Dance, to music by Philip Glass and a film by Sol LeWitt, and closes on August 23 with the final concert of
the “uniquely stimulating” (Los Angeles Times) 20th annual Bard Music Festival,whichfocuses thisyearon “Wagner
and His World
”.  Other SummerScape highlights include Meyerbeer’s
grand opera Les Huguenots; the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus; a special performance of Mendelssohn’s St.
Paul
; a film festival focusing on
Politics, Theater, and Wagner”;
and the return of Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent for the full seven weeks.

Highlights of Bard SummerScape 2009

· 
20th-annual
Bard Music Festival
explores “Wagner
and His World
”, and includes excerpts
from every Wagner opera, from Die Feen to Parsifal (August 14—16
and August 21—23)

· 
Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera Les Huguenots in full
staging, directed by Thaddeus Strassberger and starring Alexandra Deshorties as
Valentine (July 31—August 7)

· 
Dance, by Lucinda Childs and her Company, to music by Philip Glass (July 9—12)

· 
Aeschylus’s Oresteia, directed by Gregory Thompson in Ted Hughes’s
translation (July 15—August 2)

· 
Special performance of Felix
Mendelssohn’s
oratorio Saint
Paul
, in the bicentennial season
of the composer’s birth (August 9)

· 
Film festival, Politics, Theater, and Wagner, opens with Lola Montès (July 16—August 20)

· 
Daily Spiegeltent programs include evening cabaret for adults and
daytime programs for families (Bindlestiff Family Cirkus and Wau Wau Sisters
return)

Chronological List of
SummerScape 2009 Highlights

July
9                     SummerScape
opens with Lucinda Childs’s Dance,
to Philip Glass (through July 12)

July
11                   Gala
Benefit before and after performance of Lucinda Childs’s Dance

July
15-Aug 2         Seven
complete performances of the Aeschylus trilogy, Oresteia

July
16-Aug 20       Film
Festival “Politics, Theater, and Wagner” (ten films)

July
31                   First
of four performances of Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots (through August 7)

August
9                 Special
single performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St. Paul

August
14               Annual
Bard Music Opening Night Dinner in the Spiegeltent

August
14-16         Bard
Music Festival, Weekend One: “Wagner and His World”

August
21-23         Bard
Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Wagner and His World”

Critical
acclaim for the Bard Music Festival

“Uniquely
stimulating.” – Los Angeles Times

“Part
boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit.” – New York Times

 “As impressive as many of the festival
performances were, they were matched by the audience’s engagement: strangers
met and conversed, analyzing the music they’d heard with sophistication, and a
Sunday-morning panel discussion of gender issues in 19th-century
culture drew a nearly full house. 
All told, it was a model for an enlightened society.” – New York
Times

Critical
Acclaim for Bard SummerScape

“[At] Bard SummerScape …
Frank Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for
innovative fare.” – Travel and Leisure

 “Going to see anything at Bard’s SummerScape has to be one of
the New York area’s great seasonal escapes.” – American Record Guide

 “Brilliant.” – New York

“Awesomely intensive” – Musical
America

“Brave and brainy.” – New
York Newsday

“The most intellectually
ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” – Times Literary Supplement

“Has quickly become one of
the major upstate festivals.” – New Yorker

Bard SummerScape Ticket
Information

The Bard SummerScape
Festival is made possible through the generous support of the Advisory Boards
of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and the Bard Music
Festival, and the Friends of the Fisher Center.

Tickets for all Bard
SummerScape events go on sale to the public on March 2.

For tickets and further
information on all SummerScape events, call the Fisher Center box office at
(845) 758-7900 or visit www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

#          #          #

Bard SummerScape: fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape

Bard Music Festival: fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2009

Tickets: [email protected]; or by phone at 845-758-7900

Updates: Bard’s “e-members” get all the news in regular
updates.  Click here to sign up.

All program information is
subject to change.

– March 2, 2009

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