Now in his sixth season as Festival Director, Johannes Wildner remains true to his concept for the Oper Burg Gars festival and is showing Beethoven’s “Fidelio”.
This is a choice of not just a musical masterpiece from the hand of a true genius but also of a deep-diving discussion of the Enlightenment’s and the French Revolution’s ideals—a discussion that puts to us, today, the question which of the tasks left to us we, our society, have managed to complete … and which ones still await, undone, ignored, silently reproaching us.
The staging of this, Beethoven’s only, opera is in Stephan Bruckmeier’s hands; Johannes Wildner has undertaken the musical direction. Bettina Jensen, the German soprano that Gars still remembers as Agathe in “Der Freischütz”, debuts in the role of Leonore.
For those who find themselves closer to Salzburg than to Gars: The Beethoven-plus-Festival in Bad Aussee has invited the ensemble to perform their “Fidelio” as an opera-in-concert on July 29th.
Oper Burg Gars
Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio
Johannes Wildner: Dirigent
July 18th (première), 20th, 23rd, 25th, 27th; August 1st, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 10th
Bettina Jensen: Leonore
July 23rd, 25th; August 3rd, 10th; possibly additional shows
Beethoven plus-Festival Bad Aussee
Oper in der Kirche: Fidelio
August 29th
