Bregenz Festival: Opening with Bumm Tschak and subsidy crisis!

Bregenz Festival: Opening with Bumm Tschak and subsidy crisis!

The Bregenz Festival will experience a striking change at the top this year: Lilli Paasikivi took over the directorate and relies on a return to the spoken theater. This was impressively inaugurated on Friday with the premiere of the play "Bumm Tschak or the Last Henker" by Ferdinand Schmalz in the Theater am Kornmarkt. The play deals with the life of the last executioner of the K.-U.K. monarchy, Josef Lang, who executed a total of 39 death sentences and was buried like a folk hero after his death. Lang runs a “Club Schafott” in the work, where a watermelon is beheaded in an extraordinary way, in a guillotine replica.

The stage design, designed by Olaf Altmann, impressed by a steep metal grid floor, crossed by a scaffold blade. The staging by Burgtheater Director Stefan Bachmann presents the play as a brightly colored punched player for adults, whose rhythmized language significantly influences the action. The focus is on topics such as new rulers and their dealings with regime gearders, while Josef Lang's final monologue addresses the existence despite the loss of the head. After three performances in Bregenz, the piece will be listed in the academy theater from September 4th.

subsidies and program variety

The Bregenz Festival, however, face major challenges. Due to drastic subsidies of 30 percent, which were decided retrospectively, planned co -productions are threatened from 2026 and 2027. This leads to a loss of 2.1 million euros and a loss of purchasing power of 4.2 million euros annually. Festival President Hans-Peter Metzler described the cuts as "attack on good business" and emphasizes that the festival needs a bank account due to the lack of real estate to be able to conclude long-term contracts.

Despite these financial challenges, the new director Lilli Paasikivi plans the premiere of George Enescu's opera for her first season. This opera, which was premiered in Paris in 1936 and is based on the ancient dramas of Sophocles, will be presented in the Festspielhaus on July 16, 2025 and is part of a program with a total of six music theater productions. Director Andreas Kriegenburg will assign their own color and mood each of the four acts, and integrate elements such as fire, water, wood, fog and earth into the staging. Conductor Hannu Lintu emphasizes the uniqueness of the composition, while bass baritone Paul Gay describes his role of Oedipus as "the role of his life".

foresights and new insights

In the meantime, the opera "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber from Paasikivis predecessor Elisabeth Sobotka was elected for the 2024 season. Director Philipp Stölzl plans to upgrade the women's figures in this production. The first opera production, which will take place under Paasikivi on the seaside stage, is Verdi's "La Traviata", which is scheduled for 2026. Of the 220,000 tickets that were launched for the 79th Bregenz Festival, 80 percent of the tickets are already sold out for "Der Freischütz".

Overall, it becomes clear that the Bregenz Festival is in an exciting but also challenging change, in which both artistic and economic questions are of central importance. A field of tension that brings with it both creative possibilities and serious challenges.