THE EGYPTIAN HELEN to Open at Bard SummerScape in Rare New Production

Starting on Friday, July 24 at the 2026 Bard Summerscape festival, the Fisher Center at Bard presents a rare, grand-scale new production of Richard Strauss's epic, seldom-staged 1928 opera, The Egyptian Helen (“Die ägyptische Helena”). Hailey Clark, John Matthew Myers, and Jana McIntyre star alongside the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), Bard Festival Chorale, and festival founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein in an original treatment by Christian Räth, the visionary German director behind SummerScape's celebrated stagings of Strauss's The Silent Woman, named among the “most memorable classical music performances of 2022” by The Boston Globe; Meyerbeer's Le prophète, pronounced “a revelation” by The Washington Post; and Korngold's The Miracle of Heliane, of which Musical America declared: “Opera productions don't get much better than this.”
 
The Egyptian Helen runs for five performances in the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center on Bard's idyllic Hudson Valley campus (July 24, 26, 29, 31; August 2). There will be an intermission toast on the opening night (July 24) and Botstein will give an opera talk before the first Sunday matinee (July 26). Chartered coach transportation from New York City will be available for two matinees (July 26 and August 2), and the fourth performance will stream live online (July 31).
 
Three additional operas will also receive semi-staged concert performances at the 2026 Bard Music Festival, which undertakes an in-depth re-examination of “Mozart and His World.” The second half of Program Five presents selections from the one-act operas Prima la musica, poi le parole (“First the Music, then the Words”) by Antonio Salieri and Der Schauspieldirektor (“The Impresario”) by Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (August 9). Next, marking the festival's final program, Botstein, the ASO, and the Bard Festival Chorale take part in Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio (“Die Entführung aus dem Serail”) (August 16). Chartered coach transportation from New York City will be available for the final performance, and the two concerts will stream live online here and here respectively.

The Egyptian Helen at SummerScape

The Egyptian Helen (“Die ägyptische Helena”) is by far the least well-known of the six operas set to Hugo von Hofmannsthal's librettos by Richard Strauss (1864–1949). Yet the great late Romantic composer himself was particularly attached to The Egyptian Helen, and its lush score has always found favor. The Guardian considers it “wonderfully crafted with orchestral writing of a richness that Strauss never surpassed.” The Classical Source notes that it contains “some of Strauss's most heartrending and intimate-sounding music.” British director Guido Martin-Brandis affirms: “Strauss's affinity for the soprano voice comes to the fore. … The score richly rewards repeated listening.”
 
Bard's lavish production features close to 40 first-rate singers. Heading this stellar cast is soprano Hailey Clark, winner of the Austrian Music Theater Prize for Best Female in a Leading Role, in her SummerScape and title role debuts. Clark's previous triumphs include portrayals of Freia in Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Bayreuth Festival, of the Queen of Hearts in the Dutch premiere of Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and in the title role of Halévy's La juive at Germany's Hannover State Opera, where Opera Today – praising her “wonderfully full-bodied, darkly inflected soprano” – concluded: “She has both the power and the range, and she projects thrillingly into the auditorium.” Clark sings opposite the Menelaus of tenor John Matthew Myers, whose past credits include the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and SummerScape 2025, where he stepped in at the eleventh hour to headline Smetana's Dalibor, leading Bachtrack to marvel: “Dalibor is a trying Heldentenor role, and Myers conquered it with unflagging power, grace and nuance.” Soprano and Metropolitan Opera National Council grand finalist Jana McIntyre returns as the sorceress Aithra, after “dispatch[ing] Aminta's many high notes with aplomb” (The Financial Times, UK) in the title role of 2022's The Silent Woman. Last seen as Brigitta in Korngold's Die tote Stadt at the 2019 Bard Music Festival, mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel brings her “formidable display of vocal power and dramatic assurance” (San Francisco Chronicle) to the role of the Omniscient Seashell. George London Foundation Competition-winning baritone Blake Denson rounds out Bard's cast of principals as the nomad chieftain Altair.
 
Presented in Strauss's original 1928 edition, The Egyptian Helen reunites four of Christian Räth's most trusted collaborators, all of whom helped bring his previous SummerScape productions to life. As was the case for Le prophète, set design is by the director himself, in tandem with Daniel Unger, an “immensely gifted set designer” (Opera Today); costumes by European Opera Prize-winner and SummerScape regular Mattie Ullrich, whose Silent Woman designs were “a feast for the eyes” (Bachtrack); choreography by Catherine Galasso, whose “expressive choreography ... provide[d] a window into Heliane's psyche” (Bachtrack); and projections by Elaine McCarthy, whose honors include a Henry Hewes Design Award and a Distinguished Achievement Award from the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology. The Egyptian Helen also marks Räth's first collaboration with Tony Award-winning lighting designer Tyler Micoleau.

The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Bard Music Festival, Program 11

Strauss is the ultimate heir to a German-language opera tradition that originated with Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–1791), subject of this year's Bard Music Festival. Set to a German libretto by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie, based on a play by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner, The Abduction from the Seraglio (“Die Entführung aus dem Serail,” 1782) reflects the fascination that Turkey held for Mozart and his Viennese contemporaries, for whom the Ottoman Empire was not only a key cultural influence but also – in the long shadow of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars – a remembered military threat. Imagining the Ottoman world through Western eyes, the work is imbued with Orientalism, from Mozart's approximation of Turkish music, loosely based on that of the famous Janissary marching bands, to exoticized characters like the buffoonishly brutal overseer Osmin. Yet the opera also complicates such stereotypes: the Pasha Selim's final act of clemency gave Viennese audiences an Enlightenment lesson, presenting virtue as a universal trait and using the imagined East to critique Western cruelty.
 
With its emphasis on historical scholarship and ability to provide a “rich web of context” (The New York Times), Bard is uniquely well-placed to explore the work in all its rich complexity. Pavarotti International Competition-winning tenor Minghao Liu makes his festival debut as the Spanish nobleman Belmonte, with The Egyptian Helen's Jana McIntyre as his fiancée, Konstanze. Grammy-winning tenor Aaron Blake, the acclaimed star of Martinů's Juliette at the 2025 festival, and soprano Catherine Creed, a National Opera Association Competition finalist, portray the couple's servants, Pedrillo and Blonde, with Harold Wilson, who “commanded a sonorous bass” (The New York Times) in the lead role of SummerScape's Silent Woman, as the comic yet menacing Osmin. Under the direction of Marco Nisticò, Opera Producer of the Fisher Center at Bard, and with video projections by CT Critics Circle nominee John Horzen, Botstein and the ASO anchor a semi-staged concert performance of the opera that forms the 2026 Bard Music Festival's eleventh and final program, “Too beautiful”: Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio (August 16).

Round-trip bus transportation from New York City

Chartered coach transportation from New York City is available for the matinee performances on Sunday, July 26; Sunday, August 2; and Sunday, August 16. This may be ordered online or by calling the box office, and the meeting point for coach pick-up and drop-off is at Lincoln Center, Amsterdam Avenue, between 64th and 65th Streets. More information is available here.

SummerScape tickets

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