The Fisher Center at Bard has announced the 2024 SummerScape lineup, including the return of Elevator Repair Service's Ulysses. The SummerScape commission was meant to have its world premiere at the Fisher Center in September 2023, but the production was cancelled due to COVID after two previews. The adaptation of James Joyce's monumental novel will now receive its official premiere running June 20-July 14.
Another world premiere will be SCAT!, a new "dance-driven jazz club spectacular" by Urban Bush Women, conceived, directed and choreographed by the company's founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, with music composed and performed by Craig Harris. The work, which runs June 28-30, is inspired by Zollar's life growing up in a segregated Kansas City in the post-war era.
On the less contemporary side of things, Meyerbeer's grand opera Le prophète will run July 26-August 4 in a production directed by Christian Räth. The opera is inspired by the Münster rebellion, in which Anabaptists staged a revolution to seize control of the city of Münster, then under Catholic rule as part of the Holy Roman Empire. The opera imagines Jean de Leyde, a leader in the rebellion, as a pawn of three conspiring Anabaptists, who is persuaded to join their cause, and loses his loved ones along the way. Le prophète has also been credited with popularizing the pastime of roller skating, as in the original production in 1849, the newly-invented roller skate was used in the customary third-act ballet scene to emulate ice skating.
The Bard Music Festival, in its 34th season, will celebrate Hector Berlioz with 11 programs presented across two weekends in August. The programs will feature some of Berlioz's best-known works, such as Symphonie Fantastique and La damnation de Faust; as well as many lesser-known gems, including his Te Deum, and Le mort d’Ophélie. The festival will also include works by other composers, ranging from Cherubini to Viardot, whose music will be explored in the context of Berlioz's writings and legacy.
This summer will also see the return of Bard's Spiegeltent. The mirrored pavilion will host a variety of events to be announced.
For more information, visit FisherCenter.Bard.edu.
