Ooh I've been to a bunch of operas there! Bregenz has a world-renowned stage designer create something awesome every two years. It's in late summer, so sometimes you'll see fireworks go off around the lake in the evening.

That particular stage was for Un Ballo in Maschera - the skeleton's left hand moved, and they used a boat that came around the stage to pick up the king when he was murdered.

Some of their other stages were equally insane -- for La Bohème they built a massive oversized Parisian bistro, with a huge greeting card dispenser. West Side Story had a 9/11 homage, Aida did a mashup of Shelly's Ozymandias (the feet), and their idea of the declining American empire (the broken statue of liberty), Il Trovatore had a massive smoking factory with toxic looking shit coming out the front, and you've all seen the Tosca stage.

If anyone ever considers going, the tickets begin selling out early in the year (i.e. now is the time to book -- although I've never heard of the opera André Chénier).

Aida was actually the only one we saw where the performance was pretty "meh" - they usually manage to attract world-class acts.

Here is the link to the festival page -- if you go, don't get the most expensive tickets (although get seats that are as close to the middle and front as you can afford) -- when/if it rains, the opera gets moved inside, and the priciest seats get to watch it in the big hall, which sort of misses the point. When we saw Il Trovatore, it started to rain buckets, and I was furious as I'd wanted to see that for years -- but the cast were troopers and finished the whole anvil chorus before running for shelter.