Bard Music Festival
Program Eleven • “Too beautiful”: Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio
August 16
Bard Music Festival
August 16
Mozart was commissioned to write The Abduction from the Seraglio (“Die Entführung aus dem Serail”) by Joseph II, who hoped to promote a German-language National Singspiel to rival Italian opera. An immediate success at its premiere, the work established Mozart’s reputation and remained one of the greatest successes of his career. The Abduction is the story of a Spanish nobleman and his fiancée. She and their two servants have been kidnapped by pirates and sold into the harem of a Turkish Pasha. Using intrigue and disguises to outwit their overseer, the lovers plot an escape. However, it is only when the pasha reveals unexpected nobility, choosing mercy over revenge, that the four regain their freedom. This story reflects the fascination that Turkey held for Mozart and his Viennese contemporaries, for whom the Ottoman Empire was not only a key cultural influence but also—in the long shadow of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars—a remembered military threat. Imagining the Ottoman world through Western eyes, the work is imbued with Orientalism, from Mozart’s approximation of Turkish music, loosely based on that of the famous Janissary marching bands, to exoticized characters like the buffoonishly brutal overseer. Yet the opera also complicates such stereotypes: the pasha’s final act of clemency gave Viennese audiences an Enlightenment lesson, presenting virtue as a universal trait and using the imagined East to critique Western cruelty. With its emphasis on historical scholarship and ability to provide a “rich web of context” (The New York Times), Bard is uniquely well-placed to explore these contradictions, when Botstein, the ASO, and the Bard Festival Chorale take part in a semi-staged concert performance of the opera. This forms Program Eleven, “Too beautiful”*: Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, which draws the Bard Music Festival—and all seven weeks of Bard SummerScape—to a gripping close.
2 pm • Preconcert Talk
3 pm • Performance (plus livestream): Jana McIntyre and Catherine Creed, soprano; Minghao Liu and Aaron Blake, tenor; Harold Wilson, bass; Bard Festival Chorale; American Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leon Botstein; design by John Horzen; directed by Marco Nisticò
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–91)
The Abduction from the Seraglio, K384 (1782)
*Quote attributed to Emperor Joseph II.
Artwork: Costume Study for Blonde in the Abduction from the Seraglio by W.A. Mozart by Johann Georg Christoph Fries, ca. 1830–50; Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Grab a bite and a drink while you’re at the Fisher Center! We offer theater concessions at Sosnoff Theater, LUMA Theater, and Olin Hall. Across the way is the al fresco Spiegeltent Garden—or grab a nosh while seeing a Spiegeltent performance. There is ample space for outdoor picnics across the Bard College campus. Nearby villages and towns in the Hudson Valley boast a large selection of restaurants, as well as a variety of hotels, motels, inns, and bed & breakfasts.
Eat & StayBard College’s main campus is located in Annandale-on-Hudson (a hamlet of Red Hook), New York, on the east bank of the Hudson River, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston. The Taconic State Parkway and the New York State Thruway provide the most direct routes to our campus. Click the Google map below, or get directions by entering the following address into your GPS: 60 Manor Avenue, Red Hook, NY 12571.
From the East
If you are traveling from east of the Hudson River in New York State, take the Taconic State Parkway to the Red Hook / Route 199 exit, drive west on Route 199 through the village of Red Hook to Route 9G, turn right onto Route 9G, drive north 1.9 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
From the West
If you are traveling from west of the Hudson River, take the New York State Thruway (I-87) to exit 19 (Kingston), take Route 209 (changes to Route 199 at the Hudson River) over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to Route 9G, turn left onto Route 9G, drive north 3.5 miles, turn left onto Annandale Road, then turn right onto Manor Ave.
Sosnoff Theater
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