Another vacancy: No-one wants to open Bregenz Festival
mainThe job of opening the lakeside festival is one of the duties of the Austrian President.
But, since the country’s constitutional court invalidated the result of the last election, there is no president.
They are asking the Parliament speakers, but it’s not yet clear if they are interested, or free.
Anyone with a black tie or clean dirndl will do.
Until Austria has a new president, the three chairpersons of the parliament will share his duties. None of them wants to be seen exploiting the short limelight too much, thus they declined the invitation to open the festival. The third chairperson of the parliament actually is one of the candidates for the election in October.
The linked article makes no mention of a “president of the Vorarlberg region”. Ms Bures is the first chairperson (Nationalratspräsidentin) of the Austrian parliament (Nationalrat).
Since the blog entry has been corrected, plese ignore my reply from 7:16h.
I would be glad to fly over and open the Festival. Why? I have a wonderful memory of attending the Bregenz Festival with my great Aunt Lucile Morley in 1972, or was it 1973?, to see Purcell’s “King Arthur.” It was an enchanting evening I will never forget. FYI, my great Aunt, from Austin, TX, once sang on the same program with John McCormack at Royal Albert Hall, She was a contralto who sang, among other things, the Harry Burleigh arrangements of African American songs.