Bard SummerScape Announces Their 2012 Season

Culture at the crossroads in Belle Époque France will be explored at the ninth annual Bard SummerScape festival, which once again features a sumptuous tapestry of music, opera, theater, dance, film, and cabaret, keyed to the theme of the 23rd annual Bard Music Festival.

Presented in the striking Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s bucolic Hudson River campus, the seven-week festival opens on July 6 with the first of three performances by France’s Compagnie Fêtes Galantes, and closes on August 19 with a party in Bard’s beloved Spiegeltent, which returns for the full seven weeks. This year’s Bard Music Festival explores “Saint-Saëns and His World,” and some of the great French composer’s most innovative compatriots provide other SummerScape highlights, including Emmanuel Chabrier’s opéra-comique The King In Spite of Himself in a first staged revival of the original 1887 version; Molière’s final comedy of manners, The Imaginary Invalid (1673); and a film festival, “France and the Colonial Imagination.” Together, Bard’s offerings present 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.

The Bard Music Festival provides the creative inspiration for SummerScape, presenting “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, all devoted to examining the life and times of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921). The French composer’s long career not only spanned the course of French music from Gounod to Ravel but, thanks to his co-founding the influential Société Nationale de Musique, helped shape it too. His own prodigious compositional output reflects his virtuosity on piano and organ, and, in its advanced chromaticism, his championship of Wagner and Liszt. Yet the clean, almost classical transparency, and the brilliant glitter of his orchestration, help define a sound that is unmistakably French. The Bard Music Festival offers an immersion in French late-Romanticism with its trademark opulence and emotional richness – from luminaries like César Franck and Claude Debussy to lesser-known figures like Cécile Chaminade – while also contextualizing Saint-Saëns within the wider musical world, alongside composers both conservative and modernist. A wide range of Saint-Saëns’s music will be performed, from popular works such as the “Organ” Symphony, to his rarely performed “biblical poem,” Le déluge (“The Flood”). With its recognized gift for thematic programming, Bard achieves a depth and breadth of musical and cultural discovery that is truly unique. The two weekends of the Bard Music Festival will take place on August 10-12 and August 17-19.

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”), an opera by Saint-Saëns’s compatriot and contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier. Conducted by Botstein the production will receive a contemporary treatment from Thaddeus Strassberger, director of SummerScape’s previous, celebrated productions of Les Huguenots and The Distant Sound. 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: The Tender Land, The Sorcerer, and Uncle Vanya. A significant dance performance has opened SummerScape each year since 2005. This year, the Compagnie Fêtes Galantes will launch the festival with Que ma joie demeure (“Let My Joy Remain,” 2002), which celebrates the sublime music of Baroque master J.S. Bach with Béatrice Massin’s contemporary choreography.

Imported from Europe for its seventh SummerScape season, Bard’s authentic and sensationally popular 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 is the festival’s center for fun and refreshments. During weekend days the glittering “tent of dreams” hosts family programs, and in the evening there’s a lineup of cutting-edge cabaret and musical performances, with post-show dancing and drinks.

Bard SummerScape 2012 – highlights by genre

Music

The numerous offerings that make up the comprehensive 23rd annual Bard Music Festival, “Saint-Saëns and His World,” take place during SummerScape’s two final weekends: August 10–12 and August 17–19. Through the prism of Saint-Saëns’s life and career, this year’s festival will explore the music of the Belle Époque that set the stage for modernism’s subsequent upheavals; it was, after all, in Paris and well within Saint-Saëns’s long lifetime that Stravinsky’s notorious Rite of Spring premiere took place.

Saint-Saëns, from his childhood as a prodigy dubbed the “French Mozart,” was a consummate and exceptionally versatile musician. His oeuvre includes 10 concertos, five symphonies, 39 chamber works, 50 solo piano pieces, 12 operas, numerous choral works, more than 90 songs, nearly 40 transcriptions, and incidental music for six stage plays. A world-class virtuoso on piano and organ, he was also a conductor, critic, essayist, editor, and at the start of his career a musical pioneer, instrumental in introducing German innovations, not least the symphonic poem, to France.

The 12 musical programs, built thematically and spaced over the two weekends, range from “Saint-Saëns and the Cultivation of Taste” to “Out of the Shadow of Samson and Delilah: Saint-Saëns’s Other Grand Opera.” As well as music by his contemporaries, a broad sampling of Saint-Saëns’s own compositions will be presented, from canonical works like the Danse macabre to such comparative rarities as the late solo sonatas for oboe and bassoon. Two panel discussions will be supplemented by informative preconcert talks before each performance that illuminate the concert’s themes and are free to ticket holders.

Weekend One, August 10–12: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism

The first weekend of the Bard Music Festival includes a reconsideration of Saint-Saëns’s most famous piece, The Carnival of the Animals, which he judged so poor a reflection of his work that it was kept under lock and key until after his death. Also featured are such favorites as the soaring Third Symphony, his “official magnum opus” and his Fifth Piano Concerto, alongside less familiar works like La Muse et le poète, and a generous selection of his sadly neglected chamber repertoire.

Weekend Two, August 17–19: Confronting Modernism

Weekend Two of the Bard Music Festival explores music by many of Saint-Saëns’s contemporaries – including fellow organist César Franck, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, and his close friend and most famous student, Gabriel Fauré. The weekend opens with readings from novelist Marcel Proust, including the famous “Vinteuil Sonata” passage, commonly identified with Saint-Saëns’s exquisite Violin Sonata, and ends with a concert performance of his grand opera Henry VIII. The weekend also features a performance of the composer’s finest choral work, the biblical oratorio The Flood. Programmed alongside it are other scriptural settings including Psalm 130 (Du fond de l’abîme) by Lili Boulanger, first female winner of the Prix de Rome. Also examined are the engagement by Saint-Saëns and his peers with Baroque composers, such as Rameau, and with the medium of film.

Since the founding of the Bard Music Festival, each season Princeton University Press has published a companion volume of new scholarship and interpretation, with essays, translations, and correspondence relating to the featured composer and his world. Jann Pasler, author of Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France, which won the 2010 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, is editor of the 2012 volume, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World.

The 23rd annual Bard Music Festival is made possible in part through the generous support of 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.

Opera

Where Saint-Saëns was a polished professional, his contemporary and compatriot Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94) was considered by his peers to be something of an amateur. His rarely performed comic opera The King in Spite of Himself (“Le roi malgré lui,” 1887) is the story of Henri de Valois, a 16th-century noble named King of Poland despite pining for his native France. Such revivals as have been undertaken are usually on the concert platform rather than in the opera house, and make use of later, revised versions of the work. 

Now SummerScape is in the happy position of returning Chabrier’s masterpiece in its original form to the opera house, in a new, fully-staged production featuring Botstein’s tried and tested musical direction and a modern treatment by Thaddeus Strassberger, whose previous SummerScape opera productions are among Bard’s undisputed success stories. 

The new staging, a coproduction with Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera, which annually hosts one of the world’s finest opera showcases, will run for five performances (July 27 & 29; August 1, 3, & 5), with an Opera Talk from Leon Botstein, free and open to the public, before the performance on Sunday, July 29, at 1 p.m.

Special support for The King in Spite of Himself (Le roi malgré lui) is provided by Emily H. Fisher and John Alexander.

The Opera Talk is presented in memory of Sylvia Redlick Green.

Theater

Although they were less than fashionable among his contemporaries, Saint-Saëns professed himself an aficionado of the works of his countryman Molière (1622–73), enjoying them in performance and undertaking reconstruction of the lost incidental music to The Imaginary Invalid. Through comedies of manners like The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, The Miser, and The Imaginary Invalid itself, Molière – the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin – satirized the hypocrisy and pretension of the ancien régime, raising comedy to the pitch of great art, and setting standards by which it has been judged ever since.

The Imaginary Invalid (“Le malade imaginaire”) was first staged in 1673, as a three-act comédie-ballet featuring incidental music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Targeting both hypochondriacs and the money-grubbing medics who exploit them, its protagonist is the wealthy Argan, who obsessively doses his imagined complaints with costly treatments and tonics. This fixation so blinds him to the realities of family life that it is only by faking his death that Argan learns the truth. The playwright himself undertook the title role in the original production; with macabre irony, he hemorrhaged during the fourth performance, and – despite managing to complete it – died later that evening.

Opening on July 13, the new production is directed by Erica Schmidt for a total of 10 performances (July 13–22). Schmidt, whose numerous honors include Princess Grace, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics, Drama Desk, and Obie Awards, is the creator of three previous SummerScape offerings: The Tender Land (2006), The Sorcerer (2007), and Uncle Vanya (2008).

Performances of The Imaginary Invalid have been underwritten by the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation.

Dance

For the past seven seasons, dance has been a vital component of SummerScape, which has opened with celebrated dance performances each summer since 2005. This year, opening SummerScape on July 6, is France’s Compagnie Fêtes Galantes, founded in 1993 by revered choreographer and Baroque specialist Béatrice Massin. It was through her collaboration with pioneering dance historian Francine Lancelot at the Ris et Danceries company that Massin first developed her “great love affair with Baroque dance” (Le Soir). Yet despite her command of the genre, Massin’s works are not strict historical reconstructions. Rather, they take the vocabulary of 17th- and 18th-century dance and offer it with a modern and wholly original slant. Massin’s many commissions include the official opening of Paris’s Centre National de la Danse (2004), and musical partners include period performance specialists Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques, and William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, with whom Fêtes Galantes collaborated on the Merchant-Ivory motion picture Jefferson in Paris (1995).

This summer Béatrice Massin brings to SummerScape one of her most successful dances, Que ma joie demeure (“Let My Joy Remain,” 2002), with which Fêtes Galantes has already toured France, Belgium, Italy, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria.

Set to the music of J.S. Bach performed by two leading period-instrument ensembles (excerpts from the Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2, 3, and 6 with Ton Koopman and his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and from Cantata BWV 78 with Philippe Herreweghe directing La Chapelle Royale) Que ma joie demeure will be presented in three performances (July 6–8).

Film

France and the Colonial Imagination

Saint-Saëns was the first important composer to write an original score for a motion picture: 1908’s L’assassinat du duc de Guise (“The Assassination of the Duke of Guise”). Now the SummerScape 2012 film festival “France and the Colonial Imagination” takes a similarly political theme, exploring the legacy of French colonialism in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and the countries that once comprised French West Africa. A wide range of styles, concerns, and viewpoints are represented by these films, which include romantic treatments of Europeans in the African Muslim world, as in Pépé le Moko (1937) and Casablanca (1942); works by European filmmakers that confront and challenge colonialism, like The Battle of Algiers (1966); and works from the African perspective, including two films by Senegal’s Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), considered the “Father of African film.”

Once again, Bard SummerScape is pleased to present all titles on 35mm film (wherever possible). Films are screened at the Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center in the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Center.

Spiegeltent

Back for a seventh magnificent summer, the authentic, one-of-a-kind Belgian Spiegeltent has been sensationally popular since its introduction at Bard in 2006, the first time one of these fabulous structures appeared in America. The perfect place to enjoy a dazzling array of entertainment throughout the festival, Bard’s Spiegeltent provides a meeting place for drink, food, and celebration before and after weekend shows. Food is casual summer fare, à la carte burgers from the grill, fresh salads, gourmet ice cream, microbrewed beer, local wine, and more, sourced locally whenever possible. During weekend days there are family programs, and in the evening there’s a lineup of cutting-edge cabaret and musical performances – almost all of which sold out last summer – with post-show dancing and drinks. Reflecting SummerScape’s current Gallic theme, this season’s Spiegeltent programming takes on a distinctly French flavor!

See below for chronological list of SummerScape 2012 highlights; key performance dates by genre; full program details for the Bard Music Festival; and ticket information.

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” (11 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.

Tickets for all SummerScape events go on sale to the public on February 20, 2012, but those who register early as “e-Members” will have the early-bird’s choice of the best seats and also receive regular news and updates.

Program details of Bard Music Festival, “Saint-Saëns and His World”

WEEKEND ONE: Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism

Friday, August 10

PROGRAM ONE
Saint-Saëns and the Cultivation of Taste*†

Sosnoff Theater

7:30 p.m. Preconcert Talk

8:00 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)

Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55

Saturday, August 11

PANEL ONE

Prodigy, Polymath, Globetrotter, and Reactionary

Olin Auditorium

10:00 a.m. –12:00 noon

Free and open to the public

PROGRAM TWO

Performing, Composing, and Arranging for Concert Life

Olin Auditorium

1:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

1:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87);

Franz Liszt (1811–86); Charles Gounod (1818–93); Anton Rubinstein (1829–94);

Leo Delibes (1836–91); Jules Massenet (1842–1912); Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908);

Georges Bizet (1838–75); and others

Tickets: $35

PROGRAM THREE

Saint-Saëns, a French Beethoven? *†

Sosnoff Theater

7:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

8:00 p.m. Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)

Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75

Sunday, August 12

PROGRAM FOUR

The Organ, King of Instruments

Sosnoff Theater

10 a.m. Performance with Commentary

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Adolphe Adam (1803–56); Louis Lefébure-Wély (1817–69); Charles Gounod (1818–93); César Franck (1822–90); Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937); Leon Boëllmann (1862–97); Louis Vierne (1870–1937)

Tickets: $35

PROGRAM FIVE

Ars Gallica and French National Sentiment

Olin Auditorium

1:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

1:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Édouard Lalo (1823–92); Marie Jaëll (1846–1925); Augusta Holmès (1847–1903); Henri Duparc (1848–1933); Ernest Chausson (1855–99); Albéric Magnard (1865–1914)

Tickets: $35

PROGRAM SIX

Zoological Fantasies: Carnival of the Animals Revisited*†

Sosnoff Theater

5:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

5:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Emmanuel Chabrier (1841–94); Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924); Erik Satie (1866–1925); Maurice Ravel (1875–1937); Jacques Ibert (1890–1962); Francis Poulenc (1899–1963); and others

Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55

WEEKEND TWO: Confronting Modernism

Friday, August 17

PROGRAM SEVEN

Proust and Music* †

Sosnoff Theater

7:00 p.m. Preconcert Panel

8:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); César Franck (1822–90); Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924); Claude Debussy (1862–1918); Reynaldo Hahn (1874–1947)

Tickets: $25, 35, 45, 55

Saturday, August 18

PANEL TWO
Exporting Western Music Past and Present

Olin Auditorium

10:00 a.m. –12:00 noon

Free and open to the public

PROGRAM EIGHT

La musique ancienne et moderne

Olin Auditorium

1:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

1:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87); Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764); Pauline Viardot (1821–1910); Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924); Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931); Cécile Chaminade (1857–1944); Paul Dukas (1865–1935)

Tickets: $35

PROGRAM NINE

The Spiritual Sensibility*†

Sosnoff Theater

7:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

8:00 p.m. Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Charles Gounod (1818–93); Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924); Florent Schmitt (1870–1958); Lili Boulanger (1893–1918)

Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75

Sunday, August 19

PROGRAM TEN

From Melodrama to Film

Olin Auditorium

10:00 a.m.: Performance with Commentary

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) and Hector Berlioz (1803–69)

Tickets: $30

PROGRAM ELEVEN

Unexpected Correspondences: Saint-Saëns and the New Generation

Olin Auditorium

1:00 p.m. Preconcert Talk

1:30 p.m. Performance

Works by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921); Claude Debussy (1862–1918); Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)

Tickets: $30

PROGRAM TWELVE

Out of the Shadow of Samson and Delilah: Saint-Saëns’s Other Grand Opera*†

Sosnoff Theater

3:30 p.m. Preconcert Talk

4:30 p.m. Performance: American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein, music director

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), Henry VIII (written 1881–82)

Tickets: $30, 50, 60, 75

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 February 20, 2012.

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: fishercenter@bard.edu; or by phone at 845-758-7900

Updates: Bard’s “e-members” get all the news in regular updates send an e-mail to fishercenter@bard.edu.

Transportation: SummerScape offers round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard as well as shuttles to and from the Poughkeepsie train station for selected performances. For more information go to: fishercenter.bard.edu/transportation/.

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.