Bard SummerScape opens next week; highlights include Smetana’s opera Dalibor and 35th Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World”
(June 2025, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY) — The curtain rises next Friday, June 27, on Bard SummerScape’s 22nd season, presented by the Fisher Center at Bard in New York’s idyllic Hudson Valley. In eleven themed concerts, plus talks, commentary, and panel discussions, the 35th Bard Music Festival, “Martinů and His World,” offers an in-depth re-examination of Bohuslav Martinů, the 20th century’s foremost Czech composer (August 8–10; August 14–17). Other highlights of the annual, seven-week arts festival include the first fully staged American production of Dalibor, a rarely heard opera by Martinů’s compatriot Bedřich Smetana, in an original treatment by French director Jean-Romain Vesperini, whose SummerScape staging of Henri VIII was named one of the “Best Classical Music Performances of 2023” by The New York Times (July 25–August 3). Maestro Leon Botstein will lead a free “Dalibor in Depth” preshow opera talk on July 27 at 12 noon. Chartered coach transportation from New York City is available for two performances of Dalibor (July 27 and August 3) and the final program of the Bard Music Festival, a semi-staged concert performance of Martinů’s eighth and most adventurous opera, Julietta (August 17); more information is available here. Dalibor, Julietta, and five additional concerts will also stream live to home audiences worldwide on the Fisher Center’s virtual stage.
Two new works round out SummerScape’s main-stage presentations. Pastoral, a new Fisher Center LAB commission from Choreographer-in-Residence Pam Tanowitz, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, and visual artist Sarah Crowner, receives its world premiere performances (June 27–29). Drawing inspiration from Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, this new multidisciplinary work represents the latest in a series of SummerScape commissions from Tanowitz, whose previous works for the festival include Four Quartets, hailed as “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times). Pastoral will be accompanied by an opening night member toast (June 27) and a preshow conversation with the artists (June 29). Round-trip transportation from New York City is available for the final performance of Pastoral (June 29); more information is available here.
Marking the first of Fisher Center LAB’s Civis Hope Commissions, SummerScape presents Jubilee, a new libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, in a work-in-progress reading directed by Steve H. Broadnax III (July 11–13). Inspired by Scott Joplin’s 1910 ragtime opera Treemonisha, and set one day after the Emancipation Proclamation, Parks’s libretto forms the basis of a forthcoming musical, scheduled to premiere in a future Fisher Center production. Together with a post-show talk, the final performance of Jubilee will be interpreted in ASL (July 13).
“Fresh, eclectic, and glamorous” (Chronogram), SummerScape’s one-of-a-kind Belgian Spiegeltent returns for sumptuous weekends of dancing, drinks, and live performances in the glittering mirrored pavilion. Featured artists include Susanne Bartsch, Tina Friml, Sunny Jain, John Cameron Mitchell, Meshell Ndegeocello, Martha Redbone, Adrienne Truscott, and the Jason Carter Band (June 27–August 16).
Tickets for SummerScape’s mainstage events start at $25. For complete information regarding tickets, series discounts, and more, visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call Bard’s box office at (845) 758-7900.
What critics are saying about Bard SummerScape …
“Seven weeks of cultural delight.” (International Herald Tribune)
“A track record of reliable transcendence.” (The New York Times)
“One of the major upstate festivals.” (The New Yorker)
“A highbrow hotbed of culture.” (Huffington Post)
“The smartest mix of events within driving distance of New York.” (Bloomberg News)
“Leon Botstein’s Bard SummerScape and Bard Music Festival always unearth piles of buried treasure.” (The New Yorker)
“One of the best lineups of the summer for fans of any arts discipline.” (New York Sun)
“One of the great artistic treasure chests of the tri-state area and the country.” (GALO magazine)
“One of the New York area’s great seasonal escapes.” (American Record Guide)
“A haven for important operas.” (The New York Times)
“A thinking listener’s festival.” (The Boston Globe)
“An indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape.” (Musical America)
“Essential summertime fare for the serious American opera-goer” (Financial Times, UK)
“Botstein, and his annual opera production at Bard, seem more invaluable by the year.”
(The New York Times)
“Botstein and Bard SummerScape show courage, foresight and great imagination, honoring operas that larger institutions are content to ignore.” (Time Out New York)
“A spectacular venue for innovative fare.” (Travel and Leisure magazine)
“It’s hard not to find something to like, and it’s even harder to beat the setting.” (New York Post)
“Ever a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure.” (The New York Times)
“The experience of entering the Fisher Center and encountering something totally new is unforgettable and enriching.” (Time Out New York)
… and about the Bard Music Festival
“The summer’s most stimulating music festival.” (Los Angeles Times)
“It has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“Part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit.” (The New York Times)
“A highlight of the musical year.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“An edifying mix of academic and aesthetic delights.” (The New Yorker)
“The most intellectually ambitious of America’s summer music festivals.” (Times Literary Supplement, London)
“One of the ‘Ten Can’t-Miss Classical Music Festivals.’” (NPR Music)
“A two-weekend musicological intensive doubling as a sumptuous smorgasbord of concerts.” (The New York Times)
“An always intrepid New York event.” (Time Out New York)
“One of New York’s premier summer destinations for adventurous music lovers.” (The New York Times)
SummerScape 2025: key dates
June 27–29
Dance: Pastoral
(world premiere of new SummerScape commission)
June 27–August 16
Spiegeltent: live music and dancing
July 11–13
Theater: Jubilee
(new SummerScape commission; work in progress)
July 25–August 3
Opera: Smetana’s Dalibor
(new production; first fully staged production in U.S.)
August 8–10
Bard Music Festival: Martinů and His World
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
August 14–17
Bard Music Festival: Martinů and His World
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
All programs subject to change
The Fisher Center is generously supported by Carolyn Marks Blackwood and Gregory H. Quinn, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation, Felicitas S. Thorne, Andrew E. Zobler, the Advisory Board of the Fisher Center, Fisher Center members and general fund donors, The Shubert Foundation, Smokler/Hebert Family Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. The Bard Music Festival is generously supported by Helen and Roger Alcaly, Kathleen Vuillet Augustine, the Bettina Baruch Foundation, Jeanne Donovan Fisher, the Marstrand Foundation, the Naughton-Chesley Gift Trust, Denise Simon and Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Felicitas S. Thorne, the Wise Music Family Foundation, the Bard Music Festival Board, and Bard Music Festival members.
Fisher Center LAB is funded by the Lucille Lortel Foundation and the Fisher Center’s Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and additional funding from The William and Lia G. Poorvu Family Foundation. The Pam Tanowitz Creation Fund is supported by the Friends of Pam with leadership gifts from an anonymous donor, Angela Bernstein CBE, and Lizbeth and George Krupp. Major development support for the Fisher Center’s Hope Commissions is received from the Fisher Center’s Hope Commissions Fund, endowed by the Civis Foundation and Bard College.