Bard SummerScape 2012 opens Friday, July 6
Culture at the crossroads in Belle Époque France will be explored at the Bard SummerScape festival, which opens next Friday, July 6, and runs through August 19 with a sumptuous tapestry of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret. Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s bucolic Hudson River campus, SummerScape culminates in the Bard Music Festival – “Saint-Saëns and His World” – and some of the great French composer’s most innovative compatriots provide other festival highlights, presenting a vivid portrait of a dazzlingly creative and colorful era in European history: a Golden Age of promise and possibility that came to end with the tragedy of World War I.
French dance troupe Compagnie Fêtes galantes launches Summerscape 2012 with Que ma joie demeure (“Let My Joy Remain,” 2002); the Bard Music Festival crowns the seven weeks of Summerscape with “Saint-Saëns and His World.” A far-reaching and illuminating program of orchestral, choral, and chamber concerts, as well as preconcert talks and panel discussions devoted to examining the life and times of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), this summer’s offerings provide an immersion in French Romanticism with its trademark opulence and emotional richness, while also contextualizing Saint-Saëns within the wider musical world.
The American Symphony Orchestra, under its music director, Leon Botstein, is in residence at Bard throughout SummerScape. Bard’s annual opera will be the first staged revival of the original 1887 version of The King in Spite of Himself (“Le roi malgré lui”) by Saint-Saëns’s compatriot and contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier. Conducted by Botstein, whose 2005 concert performance of the opéra-comique was “vibrant and assured” (New York Times), the production will receive a contemporary treatment from Thaddeus Strassberger, director of SummerScape’s celebrated productions of Les Huguenots and The Distant Sound. Bostein also leads a concert performance of Saint-Saëns’s own grand opera Henry VIII, which will bring the Bard Music Festival – indeed the entire seven-week Bard SummerScape festival – to a thrilling close.
In theater, Bard will present Molière’s final play, The Imaginary Invalid (Le malade imaginaire, 1673); blending satire with farce in an indictment of the medical profession, this classic comedy of manners will be directed by Princess Grace Award-winner Erica Schmidt, creator of three previous SummerScape offerings, with a first-rate cast anchored by Golden Globe Award-winner Peter Dinklage, who starred in Schmidt’s SummerScape 2008 production of Uncle Vanya.
This season’s film festival, “France and the Colonial Imagination,” investigates the legacy of French colonialism in Africa, from romantic treatments like Pépé le Moko (1937) and Casablanca (1942) to European challenges to colonialism, like The Battle of Algiers (1966) and works from the African perspective, including two examples by Senegal’s Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), considered the “Father of African film.”
Imported from Europe for its seventh SummerScape season, Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent is a handmade pavilion decorated with mirrors, centered on a theater-in-the-round that doubles as a dance floor. Offering food, beverages, and entertainment on Thursdays through Sundays throughout SummerScape, the mirrored tent hosts family programs by day, and by night becomes a cutting-edge cabaret, with musical performances and post-show dancing and drinks.
London’s Times Literary Supplement lauded SummerScape as “the most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” The New Yorker called it “one of the major upstate festivals,” and American Record Guide agreed, “Bard’s SummerScape has to be one of the New York area’s great seasonal escapes.” Travel and Leisure reported, “Gehry’s acclaimed concert hall provides a spectacular venue for innovative fare.” Newsday called SummerScape “brave and brainy,” Musical America judged it “awesomely intensive,” the New York Times pronounced it “ever a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure,” and the New York Sun observed, “Bard…offers one of the best lineups of the summer for fans of any arts discipline.” As the International Herald Tribune concluded, SummerScape provides “seven weeks of cultural delight.”
SummerScape 2012: chronological list of highlights
July 6–8 SummerScape opens with Compagnie Fêtes galantes
July 13–22 Ten performances of Molière’s drama The Imaginary Invalid
July 12–Aug 12 Film Festival “France and the Colonial Imagination” (eleven films)
July 14 Gala benefit in the Spiegeltent
July 27–Aug 5 Five performances of Emmanuel Chabrier’s opera The King in Spite of Himself
August 10 Annual Bard Music Festival opening-night dinner in the Spiegeltent
August 10–12 Bard Music Festival, Weekend One:
“Saint-Saëns and His World: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism”
August 17–19 Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two:
“Saint-Saëns and His World: Confronting Modernism”
SummerScape 2012: key performance dates by genre
MUSIC
Bard Music Festival, Weekend One: “Saint-Saëns and His World: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism” (August 10–12)
Bard Music Festival, Weekend Two: “Saint-Saëns and His World: Confronting Modernism” (August 17–19)
Complete program details follow.
Round-trip coach transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available on August 10, 12, 17, and 19, for particular Sosnoff Theater performances. Round-trip shuttle transportation between the MetroNorth train station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is also available for some of the performances. A fare will be charged and reservations are required for coach and shuttle transportation. Check the website for schedules and details.
OPERA
Emmanuel Chabrier: The King in Spite of Himself †
Sosnoff Theater
July 27* and August 3 at 7 p.m.
July 29* and August 1 and 5* at 3 p.m.
Tickets: $30, 60, 70, 90
THEATER
Molière: The Imaginary Invalid
Theater Two
July 13*, 14+, 19, 20, and 21† at 8 p.m.
July 14, 15*, 18, 21, and 22* at 3 p.m.
Tickets: $45
DANCE
Compagnie Fêtes galantes
July 6* and 7† at 8 pm
July 8* at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets: $25, $40, $45, $55
* Round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $30 and reservations are required.
† Round-trip shuttle between the MetroNorth train station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is available for this performance. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. Shuttle service is available for all performances of the opera.
+SummerScape Gala Benefit dinner and post-performance party.
FILM FESTIVAL
“France and the Colonial Imagination”
Thursdays and Sundays, July 12 – August 12 at 2 p.m. or 7 p.m.
Ottaway Film Center
Tickets: $8
SPIEGELTENT
Cabaret, Family Fare, and SpiegelClub
Cabaret $25; Family Fare $15 ($5 for child under 18); SpiegelClub $5
Venues:
SummerScape opera, theater, and dance performances and most Bard Music Festival programs are held in the Sosnoff Theater or Theater Two in Bard’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and celebrated since its opening as a major architectural landmark in the region. Some chamber programs and other BMF events are in Olin Hall. The Spiegeltent has its own schedule of events, in addition to serving as a restaurant, café, and bar before and after performances. The Film Festival screenings are at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.
New York City Round-Trip Coach Transportation:
To make a reservation on the round-trip coach provided exclusively to ticket holders for specific performances indicated by * in the calendar of events that follows, call the box office at 845-758-7900. The round-trip fare is $30 and reservations are required. The coach departs from Columbus Circle four hours before scheduled curtain time to allow for dining in the Spiegeltent.
Poughkeepsie MetroNorth Train Station Round-Trip Shuttle Transportation:
Round-trip shuttle between the MetroNorth station in Poughkeepsie and Bard is available exclusively to ticket holders for specific performances marked with a †. Shuttle service is available for all performances of the opera. The round-trip fare is $20 and reservations are required. To make a reservation call the box office at 845-758-7900.
Full Schedule:
A complete schedule of SummerScape and Bard Music Festival events (subject to change) follows. Updates are posted at the festival web site fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape/2012.
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.
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/2012
Bard Music Festival: fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2012
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, or send an e-mail to [email protected].
All program information is subject to change.
The 2012 SummerScape season is made possible in part through the generous support of the Board of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, the Board of the Bard Music Festival, and the Friends of the Fisher Center, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.