Blog entries

Final Report on the 2016 Salzburg Festival: Opera

( 31 Aug 2016 )  Altogether, 46 opera performances were on the programme: three new productions, two revivals, one restaging, one revival from the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and three concert performances formed the 2016 opera offerings. Compared to last summer, 12,000 opera tickets more were on sale – a record topped only during the Mozart Year 2006.

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Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s “Farewell”

( 31 Aug 2016 )  Esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press!                             

My time at the Salzburg Festival is ending, as you know, and I would like to give thanks. 

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Individual tickets for the 2017 Salzburg Whitsun Festival now available online

( 14 Oct 2016 ) Starting today, you can book your tickets for the 2017 Salzburg Whitsun Festival not only as subscriptions, but also purchase individual tickets for all performances that still have available places. Join us in looking forward to Cecilia Bartoli’s artistic fireworks, all under the motto “Joy of Grief”!

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An Epicentre of the Extraordinary

( 10 Nov 2016 ) What should an arts festival be? This is a question that occupied the initiators of the Salzburg Festival in their efforts to create a unique dramaturgy for Salzburg when they presented their memorandum on the founding of the Salzburg Festival almost exactly a hundred years ago. We have set out to rethink and develop further the great ideas of our founding fathers Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt.

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Opera 2017

( 1 Dec 2016 ) The beginning of Markus Hinterhäuser’s new tenure as Artistic Director is marked in the 2017 opera programme by five new productions, three semi-staged performances and two operas performed in concert. Of course Ariodante, performed at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, will also be shown during the summer.

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Concerts 2017

( 7 Dec 2016 ) From the very beginning, concerts have been one of the three pillars of the Salzburg Festival’s programme, and the formal structure of the concert programmes has demonstrated great continuity over recent decades. 

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Helga Rabl-Stadler Unanimously Confirmed as Festival President till 2020

( 3 Dec 2016 ) In its meeting today, the Supervisory Board of the Salzburg Festival made important decisions regarding the institution’s future.“Helga Rabl-Stadler will remain Festival President for another three years; her contract was extended until September 30, 2020,” Dr. Wilfried Haslauer announced as the legal representative of the Salzburg Festival Fund on December 2, 2016.

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Ouverture spirituelle • Transfiguration

( 11 Jan 2017 ) Sacred music, religiously inspired works and sounds which escape from earthly bonds will spark off one another in this year’s Ouverture spirituelle: from the vocal polyphony of the Renaissance to baroque, classical and romantic repertoire, and beyond, to the music of the twentieth century. 

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Musical Sensuousness

( 30 Dec 2016 ) An interview with Cecilia Bartoli about the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and the new opera production: Ariodante by Handel, her first trouser role in Salzburg.

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In Praise of Reconciliation

( 20 Jan 2017 ) Director Peter Sellars returns to the Salzburg Festival to stage Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. In a video statement, he explains his take on the great opera of reconciliation.

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