July 6 – August 19, 2012

"It has long been one of the most intellectually stimulating of all American summer festivals and frequently is one of the most musically satisfying." —Wall Street Journal 

Bard SummerScape 2012 presents seven weeks of opera, music, theater, dance, films, and cabaret. The season’s focal point is the 23rd annual Bard Music Festival, which this year celebrates the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, whose remarkable career shaped not only the history of music, but also the ways in which that history was transmitted and communicated to the public. Another season highlight is The King in Spite of Himself, an opéra comique about a reluctant ruler by Saint-Saëns’s contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier. Add to this a French dance company that seamlessly blends the Baroque and the contemporary, a production of Molière’s hilarious comedy The Imaginary Invalid, an unusual and provocative film festival, and the lively cabaret and eclectic musical acts of the Spiegeltent, and the sum is a festival like no other—SummerScape 2012.

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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.

Opera

The King in Spite of Himself (Le Roi Malgré Lui)

This tale of Henri de Valois, a 16th-century French noble elected by the people of Poland to be their king, despite his great reluctance to be away from France, has been much praised for the quality of its music—indeed, no less a master than Maurice Ravel claimed that Chabrier’s score changed the course of French harmony. Given a contemporary treatment by Thaddeus Strassberger, who also directed Bard SummerScape’s acclaimed productions of Les Huguenots (2009) and The Distant Sound (2010), this staging will be a coproduction with Ireland’s Wexford Festival Opera, which annually hosts one of the world’s finest showcases for the grandest of vocal arts.

Sosnoff Theater
July 27 and August 3 at 7 pm
July 29 and August 1 and 5 at 3 pm
Tickets: $30, 60, 70, 90

*Premium seating available.

Special support for this program is provided by Emily H. Fisher and John Alexander. Opera Talks are presented in memory of Sylvia Redlick Green.

Dance

Compagnie fêtes galantes

Founded in 1993 by Béatrice Massin, Compagnie fêtes galantes elaborates on the many aspects of Baroque dance, wedding them to contemporary choreography. By avoiding any attempt at reconstitution, fêtes galantes brings forward, in our time, a kind of Baroque dancing that engages and appeals to a contemporary sensibility.

Sosnoff Theater
July 6 and 7 at 8 pm
July 8 at 3 pm
Tickets: $25, 40, 45, 55

Theater

The Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade Imaginaire)

Molière (the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) was second only to Shakespeare as a master of comedy, and The Imaginary Invalid—his final play—is among his greatest works. The illusory agonies of the wealthy Argan, a housebound hypochondriac who sorely desires to marry his daughter to a doctor, have proved tonic to audiences ever since the play premiered in 1673. This production is directed by Erica Schmidt, whose deft hand guided three previous SummerScape offerings—The Tender Land, The Sorcerer, and Uncle Vanya.

Theater Two
July 13, 14, 19, 20, and 21 at 8 pm
July 14, 15, 18, 21, and 22 at 3 pm
Tickets: $45

This performance has been underwritten by the Martin and Toni Sosnoff Foundation.

Film Festival

France and the Colonial Imagination

The SummerScape 2012 film festival—“France and the Colonial Imagination”—explores the legacy of French colonialism in Africa and Southeast Asia. A wide range of styles, concerns, and viewpoints are represented by these films, which include romantic treatments of Europeans in the African Muslim world (Pépé le Moko; Casablanca; Beau Travail); works by European filmmakers that confront and challenge colonialism (The Battle of Algiers); works that explore the consequences of colonialism in French life (Caché); and works from the perspective of the colonized, including two films by Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene, considered the “Father of African film."

Bard Music Festival

Saint-Saëns and His World

The career of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) spanned the course of French music from Gounod to Ravel, and his prodigious and stylistically varied output helps to define our understanding of the classical, the romantic, and the modern in music. Over the course of two weekends, the 23rd Bard Music Festival will explore the life and times of the French composer, with performances of many of his masterworks—including his Third Symphony—and works by his contemporaries.

August 10–12 and August 17–19

Cabaret and More

The Spiegeltent

Once again, Bard’s glittering “Mirror Tent” is the stage for a rich array of performers, from dauntless acrobats to bawdy cabaret acts to musicians without boundaries. Before and after performances, enjoy light fare, meals, and drinks selected from the Hudson Valley’s farms, dairies, wineries, and breweries. As a place to meet friends, bring the kids, or relax between shows, the Spiegeltent is hard to top.