Blog entries

Guest Orchestras • RSO • Harpist Anna Verkholantseva

( 11 Apr 2016 ) The ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna will perform the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel on July 28, 2016. The series “Guest Orchestras” presents the RSO musicians in two concerts: on August 7, 2016 they perform under Lorenzo Viotti, winner of the 2015 “Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award”. And on August 11, 2016 their chief conductor Cornelius Meister takes the podium in works by Ravel, Cerha and Bartók.

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What is the weight of time passed?

( 15 Apr 2016 ) Keynote Address of Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Artistic Director of the Salzburg Festival, on the occasion of the two hundred-year anniversary of Salzburg’s joining Austria.

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“Romeo and Juliet” like a red thread at the Whitsun Festival

( 25 Apr 2016 ) Like a red thread, the ancient tale of Romeo and Juliet runs through the programme of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. The festival opens with West Side Story, the evergreen adaptation of the story of “Romeo and Juliet” based on an idea of Jerome Robbins, a script by Arthur Laurents, the music of Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. For the first time, world star Cecilia Bartoli sings the role of Maria opposite Norman Reinhardt as her Tony; Philip Wm. McKinley directs. 

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Zingarelli’s opera “Giulietta e Romeo”

( 9 May 2016 ) In the second text in his Kreisleriana, E.T.A. Hoffmann goes into raptures over the “indescribable power of the most irresistible appeal for any receptive mind.” This is his characterisation of the aria “Ombra adorata aspetta” in Zingarelli’s opera Giulietta e Romeo, extremely famous at the time, with which Romeo invokes the ghost of his supposedly deceased lover after taking poison. Not only this literary appraisal, but also the fact that Zingarelli’s opera was staged in ever-changing versions indebted to prevalent operatic tastes from its première in 1796 until the late 1820s, bears witness to the work’s enormous popularity.

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Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” is a “Must” for the Whitsun Festival

( 10 May 2016 ) On May 15 the programme features John Cranko’s ballet version Romeo and Juliet, based on William Shakespeare’s play, set to music by Sergey Prokofiev. Jürgen Rose designed the stage sets and costumes. His extremely harmonious creations are among the factors adding to the special enchantment of Romeo and Juliet. Musically, the soloists and ensemble of the Stuttgart Ballet are accompanied by the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under the baton of James Tuggle. Experience a sun-lit, Mediterranean Verona onstage at the Großes Festspielhaus!

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High-Carat Gala Concert Concludes the 2016 Whitsun Festival

( 11 May 2016 ) The crowning glory of the 2016 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, a gala concert at the Großes Festspielhaus, takes place on May 16 at 4 pm. Conducted by Marco Armiliato, Angela Gheorghiu, Juan Diego Flórez and Benjamin Bernheim enchant their audience with works based on Romeo and Juliet, joined by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

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Joy of grief • Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2017

( 17 May 2016 ) “I look forward to the sixth program by and with Cecilia Bartoli and the fact that the collaboration continues under the new artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser. The diversity of the past six programs shows Cecilia Bartoli’s wide variety of interests as an artistic leader,” says President Helga Rabl-Stadler. “It is a great stroke of good fortune for Salzburg and the Whitsun Festival and a wonderful perspective for my directorship to be able to continue working with this great artist,” says Markus Hinterhäuser, the designated director of the Salzburg Festival from 2017.

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Huge success for the 2016 Whitsun Festival

( 16 May 2016 ) This was the fifth Whitsun Festival under the artistic directorship of Cecilia Bartoli. In keeping with the motto Romeo and Juliet, the programme offered a broad range of selections in various artistic genres: twelve events – concerts, opera, ballet, a reading, three film screenings and a gala dinner – took place between May 13 and 16, 2016.

Standing ovations and thundering applause from the audience marked the beginning of this year’s Salzburg Whitsun Festival on Friday evening. Stage designer George Tsypin transformed the Felsenreitschule into New York’s West Side for West Side Story.

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Ossian and the Birth of Romanticism

( 17 May 2016 ) In 1760, encouraged by the Edinburgh literati, the Gaelic- speaking Highlander, James Macpherson (1736–96), published his Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Galic or Erse language. Like others before him (for instance, the literate Sami, Olaus Sirma), he delivered on demand selective and reworked samples of what he thought a polished audience would be able to take of the literary culture of an unknown and savage people.

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Reinhard von der Thannen in Conversation about “Faust” by Charles Gounod

( 17 Jun 2016 ) “In the early 80ies – while I was a student in Vienna at the University of Applied Arts – I attended innumerable productions at the Salzburg Festival, and I fell hopelessly in love with the beauty and flair of this unique city. Twenty years later, a passionate dream of mine came true: I was invited to work for the Festival as a set and costume designer. It was a wonderful experience for me as an Austrian, and Salzburg has had a very special place in my heart ever since.”

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