Bregenz Festival excavates long-forgotten Krenek opera

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

BREGENZ, Austria (AFP) — While the opening night of the annual Bregenz Festival on Wednesday was one for the masses with a visually stunning staging of Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca", opera connoisseurs were in for a treat on Thursday with a rarely performed operatic gem from the 1930s.

"Karl V", a 12-tone "drama with music" by exiled Austrian composer Ernst Krenek (1900-1991), has only ever been performed a handful of times since it was premiered in 1938 -- in Essen, Duesseldorf, Zurich, Munich, Vienna and Salzburg.

The Bregenz Festival has made it its task to unearth and stage more difficult and lesser-known works, alongside the usual operatic blockbusters it puts on for the wider public, says artistic director David Pountney.

"Karl V" -- reputedly the first...