Bard celebrates Igor Stravinsky with seven-week arts festival

After dance follows drama, in the traditional SummerScape format; and what looks to be the hottest ticket of the 2013 season is the world premiere of János Szász and Gideon Lester’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s absurdist Faustian novel The Master and Margarita, with the visionary Hungarian auteur Szász himself directing. The cast includes Ronald Guttman as Woland, Stephanie Roth Haberle as Margarita, Arliss Howard as the Master, Michael Medeiros as Pontius Pilate, Ean Sheehy as Ivan, Danny Wolohan as Azazello, Mickey Solis as Koroviev and Peter Macklin as Behemoth the cat. Previews on July 11 and 12 are already sold out, as is the “official” premiere performance on Saturday, July 13. As of presstime there was still “limited availability” for $45 tickets at 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 14, Wednesday, July 17, Saturday and Sunday July 20 and 21, and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday through Sunday, July 18 to 21. All will be staged in Theater Two.

Opera fans have something special to look forward to at SummerScape 2013: Sergei Taneyev’s 1894 setting of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, directed by Thaddeus Strassberger. Not only will this represent the US stage premiere, but it’s actually the first time that the opera in its entirety has been fully staged anywhere outside Russia. The performances will include mezzo-soprano Liuba Sokolova as Clytemnestra, bass Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev as Agamemnon, tenor Mikhail Vekua as Orestes, soprano Olga Tolkmit as Elektra and soprano Maria Litke as Cassandra. The new production will be performed at 7 p.m. on Fridays, July 26 and August 2, and at 3 p.m. on Sundays, July 28 and August 4 and Wednesday, July 31. Ticket prices range from $30 to $90. An Opera Talk, free and open to the public, precedes the matinee on July 28.

The two weekends of the Bard Music Festival, “Stravinsky and His World,” will take place on August 9 to 11 and August 16 to 18. Weekend One, “Becoming Stravinsky: From St. Petersburg to Paris,” kicks off the Festival with an evening gala in the Spiegeltent. Performances and talks then trace Stravinsky’s path from his early Russian years to his first great successes in Paris writing for Sergei Diaghilev’s legendary Ballets Russes. Alongside Stravinsky’s own works, including the Symphonies of Winds, Concerto for Two Pianos, Les Noces and Mavra, the opening weekend presents music by his contemporaries, including his mentor Rimsky-Korsakov and Parisian acquaintances Debussy, Ravel and Satie.

Weekend Two, “Stravinsky Reinvented: From Paris to Los Angeles,” explores Stravinsky’s creative output during the interwar years and the music that he composed in the US, where he settled in 1939 and began to shift his musical style from neoclassicism to serialism. The weekend’s programs include compositions by fellow neoclassicists like Hindemith, younger American composers such as Copland and Carter and an examination of the sacred music that influenced Stravinsky’s later religious works.

Each Bard Music Festival weekend will offer a packed menu of evening orchestral concerts in the Sosnoff Theater, with ticket prices ranging from $25 to $75; afternoon chamber music or choral recitals in Olin Hall, at $30 to $35; and panel discussions in the morning that are free and open to the public. See the full schedule at https://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/2013.

For the young and the trendy, or those who wish that they were, the Spiegeltent is the place to be at Bard SummerScape Thursdays through Sundays from July 5 to August 18. Besides food, drink and amazing ambiance, the mirror-spangled handmade pavilion offers cabaret-style entertainment that tends to be family-friendly in the afternoons and edgier at night. Besides opener Sandra Bernhard, performances scheduled for the first two weekends include a spoof of the Miss America pageant by Justin Vivian Bond, Django Reinhardt-style jazz from the Hot Sardines and genre-crossing world music from Eviyan. There’s plenty of after-hours action for those who never sleep, and Sunday evenings feature lessons in salsa, tango and swing dance. Visit https://fishercenter.bard.edu/spiegeltent/2013 for the full schedule and ticket prices.

Besides the free panel discussions, the biggest bargain at Bard SummerScape is the Film Festival. “Stravinsky’s Legacy and Russian Émigré Cinema” will run from July 12 through August 3. With a special focus on the émigré studio Films Albatros, it will include such early Russian and French film classics as The Red Shoes, The Lower Depths, Pierrot le fou and Orpheus, plus Marcel L’Herbier’s L’inhumaine (1924), which includes a scene depicting the famous riot in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées at the Rite of Spring ballet premiere. The full schedule is posted at https://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=117625. All films are screened in the Jim Ottaway, Jr. Film Center, and single tickets cost $12.

Bard SummerScape/Bard Music Festival, July 5-August 18, Bard College, 60 Manor Avenue, Annandale-on-Hudson; (845) 758-7900, https://fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape/2013.