The Salzburg Festival has announced that Markus Hinterhäuser will remain the company’s Artistic Director. In a statement the festival said, that the Board of Trustees of the Salzburg Festival made an important decision for the organization’s future and extended the contract of Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser for five years. As a result, he will remain in his position until 2031. {…}
The Salzburg Festival has announced the keynote speaker for the 2024 opening ceremony, The festival said that Nina Khrushcheva will do the honors and will “address one of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s main premises that beauty will save the world. In the current political and cultural environment of war, crisis, animosity, and division, what is the role of art?” In a statement, {…}
(Credit: © SF/Marco Borrelli) The Salzburg Festival has announced that during a benefit gala, it raised revenues exceeding 186,000 Euros. The company noted that the revenue was raised during Daniel Barenboim’s 80th birthday gala which was presented for the Daniel Barenboim Foundation. The gala was held on May 29, 2023, and featured Cecilia Bartoli, Sonya Yoncheva, Rolando Villazón, Plácido Domingo, Martha {…}
(Credit: © SF / Peter Rigaud) The Salzburg Festival has announced its 2024 Season. Here is a look at the vocal performances. Opera Strauss’ “Caprricio” is set to be performed in concert form with Elsa Dreisig and Bo Skovhus as Countess and Count. The cast also includes Sebastian Kohlhepp (Flamand), Konstantin Krimmel (Olivier), Mika Kares (La Roche), Ève-Maud Hubeaux (Clairon), {…}
Photo: © Marco Borrelli Berlioz’s “Les Troyens” is one of those operas that is larger than life. Arguably, two operas in one night. Everything sounds like the realization of romanticism’s epic promise and showcases the musicians’ talents overflowing in the hall. It is hard to not expect a lot from a performance of Berlioz’s opera with a revolutionary and Romantique {…}
(Photo credit: Marco Borrelli) The Salzburg Festival has released the final report for its 2023 edition. In its 103rd year, the Salzburg Festival held 178 performances over 43 days at 15 venues. Directors of the Salzburg Festival, Kristina Hammer, Markus Hinterhäuser and Lukas Crepaz reported a “record quota” of 98.5% of seats filled at the 2023 festival. Over 241,000 visitors {…}
The Salzburg Festival has announced that The Würth Group will continue to provide support for the organization’s Youth Programme and the Ouverture Spirituelle in 2024. Dr. h.c. mult. Reinhold Würth’s first donation to the festival came in 2016 for the production of “West Side Story.” Since then he has been a support of the concert series “Ouverture Spirituelle” and the {…}
(Photo: © Ruth Walz) A couple of weeks ago, I had a lovely conversation with one of the dramaturgists of Salzburg Festival’s production of Verdi’s “Falstaff.” He pinpointed how strange it is for a dramaturg to hear that the staging for this production did not work, but the music did. To him, music and theater are part of the same {…}
(Photo: ©SF Marco Borrelli) It is believed that there are no bad orchestras, just bad conductors. Following this rationale, Marco Armiliato conducting my high school orchestra in David Gefffen Hall would be greeted with rave reviews. It is not that he wrung water out of stones—this miracle belongs exclusively to Moses’s staff. But, he did lead Salzburg’s Mozarteum Orchestra to {…}
(Photo: SF/Monika Rittershaus) Bohuslav Martinů’s opera “The Greek Passion” is a work still in search of its audience. The opera, seldom performed, is considered to be one of Martinů’s finest compositions. This season’s Salzburg Festival tried hard to make “The Greek Passion” a rare and visually noteworthy production. But it didn’t quite work out. The opera’s political radicalness and musical accomplishments are {…}
(Photo: © SF/Marco Borrelli) It is always good when a song recital does not include the usual suspects of the Lieder repertoire (you know who they are). This is nothing against “Die schöne Müllerin” or “Dichterliebe.” However, Asmik Grigorian and Lukas Geniušas’s recital was exciting because it featured Rachmaninoff songs, along with some small pieces by Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov for {…}
