July 26 – August 31

Baron Heinrich Puthon, the Festival’s longstanding president who stepped down the preceding year, died on 23 April at the age of 91. The Grosses Festspielhaus was given over to spoken drama with a new production by Leopold Lindtberg of Goethe’s Faust, Part 1 – an experiment which, apart from performances of Jedermann during poor weather, was never repeated. A new staging of Jedermann by Max Reinhardt’s son Gottfried, with music by Ernst Krenek and imaginative costumes by the Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, raised many eyebrows: this interesting and timely production, though lauded in the press, was rejected by audiences. The Festival’s tradition of annual world premières came to an end with a production of Rudolf Wagner-Régeny’s Das Bergwerk zu Falun. Already in the mid-50s Karajan proposed mounting only new works that had proved their worth in the repertoire and thus did not harbour any dangers. This view, with its aim of risk avoidance, now found majority support. It opened a period of restoration for which the name of Karajan stands in the annals of the Festival. In contrast, the chamber concert series witnessed the première of a “classical modern composer” as the Borodin Quartet gave the first performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet no. 8.



1961: Leopold Lindtberg’s staging of Faust, Part 1, in the Grosses Festspielhaus.

New production
Ferdinand Raimund
Der Bauer als Millionär ("The Peasant Millionaire")
D: Rudolf Steinboeck
Ds: Lois Egg
Cs: Erni Kniepert
Felsenreitschule

New production
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Jedermann
D: Gottfried Reinhardt
Cs: Tony Duquette
Cathedral Square / Grosses Festspielhaus

New production
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust. Part 1
D: Leopold Lindtberg
Ds/Cs: Teo Otto
Grosses Festspielhaus

New production
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Idomeneo
C: Ferenc Fricsay
D: Paul Hager
Ds: Stefan Hlawa
Cs: Charlotte Flemming
Grosses Festspielhaus

New production
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
C: István Kertész
D: Hans Hartleb
Ds/Cs: Hans Ulrich Schmückle
Residence

New production
Giuseppe Verdi
Simon Boccanegra
C: Gianandrea Gavazzeni
D: Herbert Graf
Ds/Cs: Georges Wakhevitch
Felsenreitschule

World premiere
Rudolf Wagner-Régeny
Das Bergwerk zu Falun ("The Mines of Falun")
C: Heinz Wallberg
D: Paul Hager
Ds/Cs: Leni Bauer-Ecsy
Kleines Festspielhaus

Revivals: Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Der Rosenkavalier

11 orchestral concerts, 6 chamber concerts, 8 serenades, 5 matinées, 4 solo recitals, 5 lieder recitals, 4 concerts of sacred music, 1 church concert, 1 Goethe matinée

Details of the several years:

1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989,