Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2019 · Voci celesti

( 22 May 2018 ) Cecilia Bartoli dedicates the program of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2019 with the title “Voci celesti – Heavenly voices” to the art of the great castratos. It is no coincidence, that Bartoli is realizing this idea, which she is thinking about for a while already, right now.

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Enshrouded in the Mist of Legends

( 22 May 2018 ) ‘Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato’. (If it is not true, it is very well invented.) – This aphorism, formulated by the philosopher and priest Giordano Bruno, serves as a useful caveat when reading the legends written about castrati. Basking in the rays of international fame, they hold a dual position in music history as heroes and great mysteries.

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This has been the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2018

( 22 May 2018 ) It was the seventh Whitsun Festival under the artistic direction of Cecilia Bartoli. Seven events between 18 and 21 May 2018 took place under the motto “1868 – Year of Ruptures”. Read the results of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2018 on the blog.

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Kent Nagano: Guaranteeing the Extraordinary

( 6 May 2018 ) On 20 July 2018 he opens the Ouverture spirituelle with his Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal, performing Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion. In mid-August, Kent Nagano returns to the Felsenreitschule, where Hans Werner Henze’s opera The Bassarids, which had its world premiere in Salzburg in 1966, will be staged.  

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Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2018

( 6 Jun 2017 ) 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of Gioachino Rossini’s death. The 2018 Salzburg Whitsun Festival is dedicated to his memory.

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This was the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2017

( 5 Jun 2017 ) This has been the Salzburg Whitsun Festival 2017 with the motto “The joy of grief”.

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Anne-Sophie Mutter: 40-year Anniversary

( 4 Jun 2017 ) 40 years ago, on 29 May, Anne-Sophie Mutter, back then 14 years old, performed at the Salzburg Festival for the first time. Now and then she amazes the audience.

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Interview with tenor Norman Reinhardt

( 12 May 2017 ) Rehearsals for the new production of Ariodante have begun – the tenor Norman Reinhardt speaks about his Whitsun engagement.

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Number of Youth Subscriptions Doubled

( 18 Apr 2017 ) Due to high demand, the Salzburg Festival will double the number of its youth subscriptions in 2017. Altogether, 6,000 tickets for operas, dramas and concerts will be reserved for young people up to the age of 26 (i.e. born after June 30, 1990) with discounts of up to 90%.

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Johanna Maier & Sons Cook at the Festspielhaus

( 4 Apr 2017 ) The award-winning chef Johanna Maier and her sons will treat guests to an early-summer menu created especially with the Festival in mind. Johanna Maier’s cuisine is known for her mission to be in synch with the seasons and nature.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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“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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West Side Story Brings Broadway Musical Stars to Salzburg

( 8 Feb 2016 ) The 2016 Whitsun Festival will open for the first time in its history with the performance of a musical. In keeping with the festival’s motto – Romeo and Juliet – the programme features the West Side Story. In addition to Cecilia Bartoli and Norman Reinhardt, numerous great names of the musical business can be found on the cast list. They include Karen Olivo as Anita and George Akram as Bernardo.

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Individual Tickets for 2016 Whitsun Festival Now Available Online

( 12 Oct 2015 ) Starting today, you can purchase tickets for the 2016 Whitsun Festival not only as part of subscription packages, but individual tickets for any performance for which tickets are still available go on sale as well. Join us in looking forward to Cecilia Bartoli’s artistic fireworks!

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Cecilia Bartoli about “Romeo and Juliet”

( 26 May 2015 ) If Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, was merely a distant, dream destination during my childhood, it was to become a very real place in my teenage years – when I performed one of my first roles – Alboino in Fioravanti’s Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno. Unfortunately, the première was a complete disaster (including whistling, roaring, boos and stamping of feet) for all concerned. Such a disaster, in fact, that my boyfriend at the time – who had just arrived, his chest swollen with pride, from Rome – withdrew his affections from his devastated, unsuccessful little girlfriend on the spot. Whispering sweet nothings on Juliet’s balcony or hiding love letters in the cracks of mediaeval walls were therefore no longer the order of the day – I would have loved to give the faithless creature some drops of poison myself…! In other words, “vendetta alla romana” rather than the romance of Romeo and Juliet!

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Whitsun 2016 • Preface by Stephen Greenblatt to “Romeo and Juliet”

( 26 May 2015 ) “In this business,” the great French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote about his sex life,
“I did not let myself go entirely; I took pleasure in it, but I did not forget myself; I preserved entire the little sense and discretion that nature has given me, for their service and mine; a little excitement but no folly.”
“A little excitement but no folly”: Shakespeare’s contemporary Montaigne was echoing the centuries’ old advice of philosophers and moralists. The most rigorous of these preached the complete suppression of desire, but most simply counseled restraint: in matters of love, be temperate; keep yourself under control; avoid recklessness. As the well-meaning friar in Romeo and Juliet advises the rash, love-sick young Romeo near the beginning of the play: “Love moderately.”

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Whitsun Festival under Cecilia Bartoli: A Singer’s Mount Olympus and Audience Magnet

( 26 May 2015 ) With the world star Cecilia Bartoli as Artistic Director, the Whitsun Festival has reached a new dimension. The fact that so many visitors flock to Salzburg at Whitsun to experience Cecilia Bartoli’s energy and her wisely assembled programmes, is a particular joy to me, being economically responsible for this undertaking. Our great thanks go to Rolex, the sponsor of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, said Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler.

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Heroes and Motifs of Greek Mythology with Philippe Jaroussky

( 15 May 2015 ) The French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky is among the most sought-after singers of his fach. He previously performed at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival in 2012, for example, when he joined Cecilia Bartoli in the production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare. This year, he returns for his own aria concert on the stage of the Haus für Mozart.

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“Iphigénie en Tauride” • An Opera of Enlightenment

( 13 May 2015 ) Iphigénie en Tauride, a tragedy in four acts by Christoph Willibald Gluck, will be staged at Whitsun and at the Salzburg Festival in summer. Who is this Iphigénie whose fate inspired not only Christoph Willibald Gluck but also artists like Goethe, Racine, Handel, Tommaso Traetta and Niccolò Jommelli?

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The High Art of Singing at Whitsun

( 17 Apr 2015 ) Although the relationship between fathers and sons may be rather problematic in the realm of the gods of antiquity, the Whitsun Festival matinee recital by Christoph and Julian Prégardien promises a special form of family harmony.

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“Iphigénie en Tauride” • Musical Delight at Whitsun and during the Summer!

( 10 Apr 2015 ) When asked what she finds particularly compelling about the first Gluck role she is to perform on stage, Cecilia Bartoli answers: “On the one hand, it is the precise treatment of the words, or rather the careful balancing of text and music; on the other hand, it is the convincing, human portrayal of a figure who is not a cold Greek statute, but a woman full of doubt and emotion. Compared to Goethe’s Iphigenie, Gluck’s Iphigénie seems more vivid, more passionate, and more rebellious.”

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The ballet version "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" is a jewel

Audiences and the press have never agreed more, and for so long: John Neumeier’s 1977 ballet version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of his most beautiful works. Indeed, it is an absolute jewel. “Entrancing enchantment, a magical mélange” is only one of the many headlines for Hamburg Ballet Director Neumeier’s smashingly successful production, which has once again returned to the stage.

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A Myth without Pathos

( 9 Jan 2015 ) What unites Cleopatra, Norma, Cenerentola and Iphigénie? Cecilia Bartoli creates studies of moving fates with passion. An interview with Cecilia Bartoli about her role debut in the title role of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride.

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