2010 Bard SummerScape Festival Closes The Distant Sound 8/6

Reviving an important but neglected opera is one of the ways the Bard SummerScape festival paints a faithfully nuanced portrait of each past age, and this year's exploration of "Berg and His World" is no exception. To enrich its evocation of Viennese modernism, Bard presents the first fully-staged U.S. production of The Distant Sound (Der ferne Klang, 1910), by Berg's compatriot Franz Schreker, in its centenary year. Returning to oversee the landmark production is the visionary Thaddeus Strassberger, who also directed last season's resounding success at Bard, Meyerbeer's grand opera Les Huguenots. The opera'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.

"The premise of Der ferne Klang is simply told," Berg and Schreker scholar Christopher Hailey explains. "A composer forsakes a woman's love for a chimeric sound that is but the distant echo of her presence. It is a tidy plot for an opera, a love story of tragic deferral and a paradoxical meditation upon the vanities of ‘l'art pour l'art'." Besides telling the story of the composer and the elusive ideal shimmering beyond his grasp, the opera addresses the plight of his loved one, a woman exploited by the society she lives in, who survives by retreating into her dreams. Like Wagner, Schreker wrote his own libretto, and his masterful melding of disparate dramatic devices and psychological and cultural forces, along with the beauty and brilliance of his score, makes The Distant Sound one of the most moving and groundbreaking works of 20th-century opera.

Franz Schreker: The Distant Sound (Der ferne Klang, 1910)
Libretto: Franz Schreker
Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger
Artists: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director
Grete: Yamina Maamar
Fritz: Mathias Schulz
Old Grauman: Peter Van Derick
Grauman's wife: Susan Marie Pierson
Innkeeper: Matthew Burns
Actor: Jeff Mattsey
Dr. Vigelius: Marc Embree
The Count: Corey McKern
The Chevalier: Jud Perry
Venue: Sosnoff Theater, Fisher Center, Annandale-on-Hudson (served by regular Amtrak trains)
Dates & times: July 30 and August 6 at 7 pm; August 1 and 4 at 3 pm
Tickets: $25, $55, $75; Fisher Center box office: (845) 758-7900 or www.fishercenter.bard.edu <http://www.fishercenter.bard.edu/>

Pre-show "Opera Talk" with Leon Botstein: August 1 at 1 pm. Free and open to the public

www.summerscape.bard.edu <http://www.summerscape.bard.edu/>

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