SummerScape 2012 Opens with Compagnie Fêtes galantes
July 6-8
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets: $25, 40, 45, 55
Founded in 1993 by Béatrice Massin, Compagnie Fêtes galantes creates a type of Baroque dancing that engages and appeals to a 21st-century sensibility. Let My Joy Remain, the work that she and her dancers have recently toured the world with and are presenting at SummerScape, is a thoroughly joyous, contemporary reimagining and celebration of Baroque dance set to the magnificent music of J. S. Bach.
SummerScape Opening Night Party!
Come celebrate the start of the festival and enjoy this unique dance performance in the Frank Gehry-designed Sosnoff Theater, followed by a reception in the SpiegelGarden, and late night dancing at SpiegelClub. For Compagnie Fêtes galantes July 6 ticket holders only.
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Molière's Final Comedy
The Imaginary Invalid
July 13, 14, 19, 20, and 21 at 8 pm
July 14, 15, 18, 21, and 22 at 3 pm
Theater Two
Tickets: $45
The final play by a master of comedy, The Imaginary Invalid is among Molière's greatest works. Blending satire with farce in an indictment of the medical profession, The Imaginary Invalid offers a scathing social and political commentary that retains its freshness and bite more than 300 years after it was written.
SummerScape's innovative, new, all-male production is directed by Erica Schmidt, who directed three previous SummerScape offerings, The Tender Land, The Sorcerer, and Uncle Vanya, and leads a spirited cast in this production. Ethan Phillips, best-known for long-running roles on TV's Star Trek: Voyager and Benson, stars as Argan, the imaginary invalid himself. Mark Junek plays Argan's lawyer brother, Béralde. The new production reunites Preston Sadleir and Zach Booth, who recently costarred Off-Broadway as identical twins in the New York premiere of Edward Albee's Me, Myself & I. Both undertake cross-dressing roles, Booth as Argan's duplicitous wife, Béline, and Sadleir as his maligned daughter, Angélique. As rivals for Angélique's hand in marriage, Danny Binstock, recently seen in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Titus Andronicus, plays her favorite, Cléante, and Henry Vick, who proved "winningly goofy" in Twelfth Night (New York Times), is perfectly cast as her father's preference, the awkward Thomas Diafoirus. Damian Young, of television's Californication, Damages, and Law and Order, does double duty as Argan's two money-grubbing doctors, Mr. Purgon and Dr. Diafoirus, Thomas's father.
Finally, anchoring Bard's first-rate company, in women's dress as the spirited and savvy maid, Toinette, is Peter Dinklage, star of The Station Agent and winner of Emmy, Golden Globe, Satellite, and Scream Awards for his role in the current HBO series The Game of Thrones. The New York Times described Dinklage's title role performance as "the star attraction" of SummerScape's Uncle Vanya production in 2008, when Variety applauded the actor's range and rapport with his director, remarking: "Dinklage projects the same soulful pain as in the film The Station Agent, but Schmidt, his wife, also gives him room to be a fool, using several drunken tirades to provoke bleak laughter." Click here to check out the full cast and creative team of The Imaginary Invalid.
2012 SummerScape Gala
A festive dinner in the Spiegeltent precedes the July 14 evening performance of The Imaginary Invalid and a post-performance party with the cast. For more information, click here.
Limited seating is available for The Imaginary Invalid. Order your tickets now before it's sold out.
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SummerScape Presents the First Staged Revival of the 1887 Version of The King in Spite of Himself
July 27 and August 3 at 7 pm
July 29 and August 1 and 5 at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Tickets: $30, 60, 70, 90
Although Emmanuel Chabrier is remembered primarily for two orchestral works, España and Joyeuse marche, he also left an important body of operas, including the rarely performed The King in Spite of Himself (Le roi malgré lui, 1887). Loosely based on history, by way of popular historical novelist Alexandre Dumas, the opera tells the story of Henri de Valois, a 16th-century noble named King of Poland despite pining for his native France.
In a new, fully staged production, and given a modern treatment by director Thaddeus Strassberger, SummerScape 2012 will present the first staged revival of the 1887 version of The King in Spite of Himself. Strassberger teams up with costume designer Mattie Ullrich, who previously worked with him for Bard's production of Les Huguenots, and whose "canny costuming deserves unqualified praise" (New York magazine).
2012 Season Premium Seating Program
The premium seating program offers a limited a number of the very best seats for each performance, with special benefits available, including reserved VIP parking for all SummerScape and Bard Music Festival performances in the Sosnoff Theater and Theater Two. For more information, call 845-758-7948.
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Bard Music Festival's In-Depth Survey of Music by Camille Saint-Saëns and His Contemporaries Is Centerpiece of 2012 Bard SummerScape Festival
Described by the New York Times as "part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit," the world-renowned Bard Music Festival returns for its 23rd annual season, filling the last two weekends of Bard SummerScape 2012 with a compelling and enlightening exploration of "Saint-Saëns and His World." Twelve concert programs over the two mid-August weekends, complemented by preconcert lectures, panel discussions, and expert commentary, make up Bard's examination of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), whose long and remarkable career spanned and helped shape the course of French music from Gounod to Ravel. The 12 concerts offer an immersion in the music of Belle Époque France, with its trademark opulence and emotional richness, presenting masterpieces from all genres of Saint-Saëns's prodigious oeuvre, including a rare concert performance of his grand opera Henry VIII, alongside a wealth of music from contemporaries and compatriots.
Weekend 1, "Paris and the Culture of Cosmopolitanism" (August 10-12), situates Saint-Saëns within his native city, which, as the new musical capital of Europe, was attracting a young generation of composers from abroad.
Weekend 2, "Confronting Modernism" (August 17-19), explores the ways in which the French late-Romantics set the stage for modernism's subsequent upheavals. Together, Bard's offerings present a vivid portrait of a dazzlingly creative and colorful era in European history: a golden age of promise and possibility that came to an end with the tragedy of World War I.
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SummerScape Transportation
The Fisher Center provides inexpensive, convenient transportation from Manhattan to Bard as well as shuttles to and from the Poughkeepsie train station. This service is for ticket holders only.
By Coach
SummerScape offers round-trip transportation from Manhattan to Bard to all opening night and Sunday matinee performances and select Bard Music Festival performances for $30.
Poughskeepsie/Bard Shuttle
Shuttles to and from Bard and the Poughkeepsie Metro-North train station are now available for all Saturday evening performances, all opera performances, and all Bard Music Festival Sosnoff Theater evening performances.
Visit fishercenter.bard.edu/transportation for complete schedule and to purchase tickets.
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