Bregenz Festival

Thunder and lightning followed the Wolf’s Glen scene

Seven "free balls" are cast in the Wolfsschlucht gorge. The seventh belongs to the devil.(Bild: DIETMAR STIPLOVSEK / APA / picturedesk.com)

The dress rehearsal of the play on the lake at the Bregenz Festival came to a stormy end on Monday evening. Half an hour before the end, it was abandoned due to the bad weather. 

Despite the interruption, the visitors to the dress rehearsal of "Der Freischütz" on Monday evening were enthusiastic. They were not only impressed by the singers, but also by the production and the stage design. "In the scene in which the devil announces that a thunderstorm is approaching, this was actually the case," reported one of the festival guests.

After light rain started to fall on Monday evening, the dress rehearsal had to be stopped half an hour before the end due to a storm warning. A wise decision, as a violent thunderstorm with storms, lightning and thunder raged over the state capital just a short time later.

Successful interaction
"With the Wolf's Gorge, the audience saw the most important scene of Der Freischütz. This is the scene that everything revolves around and which our director and set designer Philipp Stölzl has made particularly successful," says Babette Karner, press spokeswoman for the festival. She also enjoyed the successful interplay with the approaching thunderstorm during the scene in the Wolf's Gorge. Visitors wouldn't have missed much after that anyway. "The scene then slowly leads into the end of the opera."

The fact that the singers and others involved in the dress rehearsal were not able to perform until the end was not a problem either. All three casts have rehearsed so much over the past few weeks that an aborted dress rehearsal doesn't throw anyone off their stride. And because every move is perfect, the cast of the play on the lake had a well-deserved day off before the premiere on Wednesday evening.

In the Festspielhaus, on the other hand, there was still plenty of rehearsing, cleaning and preparing for the opening festivities. As usual, there will be speeches by Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler and Festival President Hans-Peter Metzler as well as excerpts from this year's productions. Puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan will not be present due to illness.

The police, who are responsible for the safety of the celebrity guests, will also be on duty for the opening and the premieres. In addition, access to the Festspielhaus will be regulated by the traffic police. The lake police will monitor a no-entry zone around the lake stage, which applies to boats of all kinds, including surfboards.