An "operatic miracle", a "gigantic show", "Hollywood music theatre", a "brilliant production" – these are some of the plaudits from critics who reviewed the Bregenz production of André Chénier, the most famous work by the Italian composer Umberto Giordano. The powerful opera returns to the lake stage for a second run in the coming summer.

The opera Solaris, the latest work by the German composer Detlev Glanert, will receive its world premiere at the Festspielhaus in 2012. Based on the futuristic novel by Polish science-fiction author Stanislav Lem, first published in 1961, Solaris explores the moral problem of remembered guilt and our personal way of dealing with it.

A revolutionary drama of breathtaking pace
Umberto Giordano's opera André Chénier on the lake stage

France in the year 1789. The aristocracy revels, the citizenry groans. And between two stools stands the poet André Chénier: adored by the rich for his touching verse, in his heart he remains a revolutionary.

Set against the background of the French Revolution, the opera André Chénier, which premiered at La Scala Milan in 1896, is a historical drama of sharp perceptivity and a human tragedy of devastating intensity; appealing both as a passionate love story and as a historical thriller. The central character is the eponymous French poet who got caught up in the turmoil of the revolution. First an enthusiastic supporter, he was appalled by the excesses of the tyrannical Jacobin regime, and was himself mercilessly persecuted and finally sent to the guillotine.

Lake Constance as bath tub

Director Keith Warner and stage designer David Fielding have chosen "The Death of Marat", an iconic painting by the revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David, as the inspiration and symbol of their staging of André Chénier. It is the first time that a historical painting has served as the basis for a Bregenz stage set, which towers 24 metres high above Lake Constance. The famous image shows the radical revolutionary leader Jean Paul Marat after being stabbed in his bath tub by a political opponent in 1793.

Music of stirring emotion

Giordano's music is exuberant, ardent, biting and stirring, and the work culminates in a hymn to fraternity, love – and liberty in death. In his score, Giordano incorporated historical dances and marches from the time before the French Revolution, along with classic revolutionary songs like "Ça ira" and the Marseillaise. Together with rousing arias and breathtaking duets they lend a unique flavour to the opera.

Responsibility, remembrance, remorse
Detlev Glanert's opera Solaris at the Festspielhaus in 2012

Detlev Glanert's opera Solaris, based on the celebrated science fiction novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem (published in Warsaw in 1961), will receive its world premiere at the Festspielhaus in Bregenz on 18 July 2012.

Solaris is the story of the psychologist Kelvin, who is dispatched to a space station which is orbiting the distant planet Solaris and on which strange things have been happening. Right after arriving on board Solaris, Kelvin is warned by weird apparitions. Not long afterwards a very personal phantom appears in the form of his former lover, Harey, who killed herself at the age of nineteen. Now she accompanies him, reviving guilty memories of their love affair.

In Lem's Solaris, science fiction is not an end in itself but a vehicle for constructing a metaphor for the moral problem of guilt and memory and for our strategies of dealing with them. Lem presents possible reactions of people who are directly confronted by a quasi-physical manifestation of a memory: suppression by various technical means, resignation, and the acceptance of responsibility.

Detlev Glanert, born in Hamburg 1960, is regarded as a wizard of sound and a masterly orchestrator. He is admired above all for his orchestral works and operas. Glanert's first attempts at composition date from the age of twelve; later he studied composition under various teachers including Hans Werner Henze in Cologne. Glanert's works reflect his fascination with the Romantic tradition, viewed from a modern standpoint. Among his chief influences are Gustav Mahler with his emotionally charged view of the world, and Maurice Ravel with his artificial-sensuous sonic landscapes.

Orchestral concerts in 2012
Glanert, Bruckner, Eisler, Weill and Gruber

Works by Detlev Glanert and Anton Bruckner are on the bill of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra's first orchestral concert, which is to be conducted by the well known German conductor Markus Stenz.

The second concert sees the welcome return of the eccentric Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis, who caused a sensation with his interpretation of Weinberg's opera The Passenger at the Bregenz Festival of 2010.

The Austrian composer and conductor HK Gruber, whose opera Tales from the Vienna Woods will be staged at the Festspielhaus in 2013, will conduct the third concert, which features music by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill plus one work of his own.

The Bregenz Festival 2012 runs from 18 July to 18 August 2012. For tickets and information, please call
+43 (0)5574 407-6 or visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com.

_{© Bregenz Festival/Babette Karner/Translation by Giles Shephard}