A new commission and world premiere, the opera Miss Fortune opened to great acclaim on July 21st 2011 at the Festspielhaus of the Bregenzer Festspiele, a landmark performance festival that also boasts an impressive floating stage on gorgeous Lake Constance.

In a stunning setting and scenery to rival these beautiful surroundings, Miss Fortune, the work of British composer Judith Weir, retraces the twisted steps of its bewildered female protagonist. Also known as Achterbahn (rollercoaster), this apt allegory on fate – and the control we have over our own lives – delivers a timely update on the Italian folk tale Sfortuna. Backed by ffv visuals throughout, the whirlwind opera takes its heroine – and audience – on a fantastical and dreamlike rollercoaster ride that transcends the facets of luck, love and loss.

Under the aegis of flora&faunavisions favourite and director Shi-Zheng Chen, the ffv team spent more than a year spinning the evocative and aesthetic red thread that ties together the ups and downs of Miss Fortune’s hapless protagonist. An integral part of the stage setting and overall dramaturgy, the resulting video content and choreography works on myriad levels to underscore the subtlety and multi-layered message of the opera itself: After all, this is no mere funfair ride, but a reflection of perception and existence itself. A careful blend of abstract animations and real footage, often spliced together, the resulting contextual contents highlight the drifting protagonist’s rites of passage with visual premonitions, allusions to star signs – and obvious signs of fate itself. The latter even joins the cast as one of the opera’s main characters: Heavy on the symbolism, yet with a delicate lightness of touch, brief video glimpses herald fate’s appearance with allusions to the forces of nature or imminent natural disasters. In this spirit, ffv’s content provides both a traditional stage backdrop and additional narrative hints – premonitions of things to come, fleeting recaps of actions past or visual accents to underscore, distort and caricature particular aspects or events.

To reflect and support the opera’s breathtaking spectrum and storyline, its immersive, multi-sensory appeal, ffv employed an equally wide range of media and display systems (HD projection, LED sculpture, plasma and Barco monitors) and then supplemented this synergistic set-up with mapped video content for a further statement screen: a striking, moveable polygon (approx. 12m x 7m in size). Taking on different positions throughout the opera, and displaying video during the movement, this defining object not only added a sense of imposing scale to the proceedings, often towering over cast and stage, but also – peak and slope in one – served as an apt symbol of the insignificance of our own existence when faced with fate itself.

A joint commission and co-production by the Bregenz Festival and another previous ffv collaborator, the eminent Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden, Miss Fortune stages a total of three performances enjoyed by an audience of 1,650 per show. The production will travel to the Royal Opera House in March 2012.

Press quotes Miss Fortune

Musik & Theater, Zurich, ORF interview with Reinmar Wagner
It was David Pountney’s declared mission to purge new opera of its elitist and intellectual slant. And the result lives up to this challenge – a light-hearted piece, a fairytale. At the same time, there is plenty of depth, especially in the orchestral and vocal passages. A truly great achievement.

Austria Press Agency, Vienna
A rollercoaster ride with plenty of highlights […] Applause and ovations for the festival’s commissioned piece […] Conducting the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra: Sir Paul Daniel, a very considered musical director for this world premiere. Miss Fortune’s eponymous protagonist, soprano Emma Bell, graced the stage almost continuously and delivered a magical performance. […] Director Chen Shi-Zheng added structure to the seven-act narrative and the entire show benefited a great deal from its stage design, fabulous light choreography and, last but not least, subtle video elements.

Stuttgarter Zeitung
Sophisticated, but generally accessible pieces with an easy-to-follow storyline. With Miss Fortune, Weir delivered the perfect answer to these preconditions. […] Modern everyday objects add appeal to this setting while atmospheric lighting and projections of subtle, yet ingenious interplays of colour underscore the magical effect. […] Weir’s evocative music, the result of cleverly interlaced tonal and atonal sounds, benefits from confident instrumentation interspersed with graceful vocal parts.

Der Standard, Vienna
Stock exchange princess and the pea of fate [...] in this abstract and strongly atmospheric blend of sound and vision […] an overall oeuvre of bashful beauty […] adding welcome substance to the festival.

ORF "Kulturmontag" (cultural Monday), Vienna
The production delivers evocative and poetic imagery according to the old adage, “less is more.” During the world premiere, the ensemble needs to show real acting skills: expansive gestures would have been out of place.

Images: © Bregenzer Festspiele / Karl Forster