Salzburg Festival Reports Return to Pre-Pandemic Attendance

By Francisco Salazar

The Salzburg Festival ⁦ has released its final report for the 2022 festival announcing a return to pre-pandemic levels of attendance.

The festival reported that 96 percent of seats were occupied this summer.

In a statement says Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser said, “The most precious thing a festival can achieve is to enable people to come together and essential artistic encounters to happen – that has been the Salzburg Festival’s goal since its very beginning. More than one hundred years ago, when artists thought up this Festival, Europe lay in ruins. And today, we once again feel that we have come to the threshold of tremendous change. Then as now, the mission of a festival is to open new intellectual spaces for our audience, to ask the essential questions of our times, using the great works of art as our guides. The dramaturgy of the 2022 Salzburg Festival was inspired by Dante’s Divina Commedia – and by numerous works created or first performed at the time of World War I.”

Festival President Dr. Kristina Hammer added, “The extraordinary success of this Festival summer reflects the importance of opera, theatre and concerts, even and especially in difficult times. Given the state of the world, we were not only allowed, but compelled to give the arts all the more room to unfold. This is reflected in the euphoric reactions of our audience. The fact that the percentage of occupied seats resembled the record-breaking year of 2019 demonstrates the unbroken desire people have for cultural live events. Guests from other continents, especially the USA, returned to the Festival this year in greater numbers. However, we are also increasing our efforts to attract new audience groups, both younger and older ones, to Salzburg. To this end, we are focusing more on online marketing and sales, but have also initiated the Festival mentorships and reserved a contingent of 6,000 discounted youth tickets explicitly for young festivalgoers,”

The company added that the demand was high from European countries and non-European countries and the 2022 Festival season saw a return to the record sales of the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Executive Director Lukas Crepaz said, “Had not four performances been canceled for health reasons, a new record would have been achieved. Thus, Salzburg once again sets the standard for other institutions’ yearlong seasons beginning shortly: demand for the arts is unbroken! With 96% of all seats occupied, revenues increased by 16 percent compared to the previous year. This will help us overcome the great challenges facing us due to the extraordinary levels of inflation.”

The Salzburg Festival saw productions of “Aida,” “Il Trittico,” “Bluebeard’s Castle,” “Lucia di Lammermoor,” Katya Kabanova,” ‘Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” and “Die Zauberflote,” among others.

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