20th Anniversary Season
Breaking Ground
A celebration of innovative performance featuring SummerScape, the Bard Music Festival, the ground breaking of our new studio building designed by Maya Lin, and more.
Illinois
World Premiere/SummerScape Commission
Music and Lyrics by Sufjan Stevens
(based on the album Illinois)
Story by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury
Directed and Choreographed by Justin Peck
Tony Award-winner Justin Peck (New York City Ballet, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) transforms Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 concept album Illinois into a full-length theatrical performance with a cast of virtuosic dancers, singers, and musicians in a narrative crafted with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury.
June 23 – July 2
Henri VIII
New Production
By Camille Saint-Saëns
Libretto by Léonce Détroyat and Paul-Armand Silvestre
Directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini
American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein
Henri VIII is French grand opera at its most magnificent. In this love triangle for the ages, an infamous Tudor king is determined to divorce Catherine of Aragon in favor of the ambitious, beautiful Anne Boleyn. Saint-Saëns’s exquisite vocal passages and rich orchestration bring this rarely performed masterpiece to vivid life in this captivating new production.
July 21–30
Bard Music Festival
Vaughan Williams and His World
The Bard Music Festival returns for its 33rd season with an exploration of the life and work of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), one of the greatest symphonists of the 20th century.
Few figures have had such a formative and protean influence on their musical environment as the British composer. With an oeuvre that ranges from songs and hymns to opera, film music, and full-scale orchestral and choral works and includes popular works such as the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending as well as scores of uncompromising modernity, Vaughan Williams’s voice defined an era. The festival will explore the full scope of his work and set it in the context of his politics and the culture of the time.
WEEKEND ONE • August 4–6
Victorians, Edwardians, and Moderns
WEEKEND TWO • August 10–13
A New Elizabethan Age?
The Spiegeltent
Live Music | Performance | Dancing
The spectacular Spiegeltent, with sumptuous summer weekends of dazzling performances, drinks, and dancing, returns to SummerScape. Longtime favorites and first-time faces (including a new Bluegrass on Hudson series) inhabit a summer-long party with a program that offers something for everyone.
June 22 – August 12
20th Anniversary Community Day Celebration
The Fisher Center invites you to a day of events and activities for all ages, in honor of YOU—our community.
Discover the Fisher Center like never before, with interactive, behind the scenes tours full of surprises. Kingston’s own DJ Ali brings her Kinder Disco to the Spiegeltent for movers and shakers of all ages. The Latin Grammy Award-winning, all female mariachi sensations Flor de Toloache fill the lawn with their enlightened interpretations of traditional mariachi music. End the evening dancing the night away with DJ MK Ultra (of WKZE radio) in the Spiegeltent.
Saturday, July 15
Free; advance reservations are recommended.
Opening Night Package
Attend all of our opening night performances and summer soirees and save 25%. The Opening Night Package includes a premium opening night seat and these events:
- Illinois Opening Night Cast Party • June 23
- Henri VIII Opening Night Premiere Party • July 7
- Bard Music Festival Opening Night Social • August 4
Visit the Fisher Center
The Fisher Center at Bard is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, situated on the east bank of the Hudson River in the beautiful Hudson Valley, about 90 miles north of New York City and 220 miles southwest of Boston.
The Performing Arts Are Essential
Support the creation of innovative work by adventurous artists.
