Venues in Bregenz
Bregenz is famous for its festivals:
Bregenzer Festspiele
Main article: Bregenzer Festspiele
The annual summer music festival Bregenzer Festspiele is a world-famous festival which takes place in July and August each year on and around a stage on Lake Constance. This festival attracts more than 150,000 people every year to Bregenz (2011: 166,453, 2016: 159,172) with a budget of around EUR 20 million. The program changes every two years. In 2016 the main opera performed was Turandot by Giacomo Puccini. In 2017 and 2018 the main opera was Carmen by Georges Bizet. In 2019/20 the opera will be Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi
In addition to playing on the lake stage, orchestral concerts and operas are also played in the adjacent festival theater. In 2018 local opera houses are staging productions of Beatrice Cenci by Berthold Goldschmidt and The Barber of Seville by Gioacchino Rossini. There is also a children's and youth program during and before the beginning of the festival.
The lake stage (Seebühne) is the largest open-air theater in the world, with an audience capacity of around 7,000.
Bregenz Jazz Festival
Since 2014, the Bregenz Jazz Festival has been held every year in June at the Kornmarktplatz. It is the successor of the New Orleans Festival, which took place from 1999 to 2013 several days in the early summer in the inner city of Bregenz, and which was no longer supported by the initiator Markus Linder. In addition to the change of name, there was also a musical genre change from blues to jazz. The location and the timing stayed roughly the same.
Bregenzer Spring (Bregenzer Frühling)
Since 1987, the Bregenzer Spring, a dance festival, has been held every year between March and May in the Festival Hall of Bregenz. Dance ensembles from all over the world perform their new productions as well as Austrian premieres. With a budget of around EUR 500,000 and up to 10,000 visitors, the Bregenzer Spring is one of the most important dance festivals in Austria.