Salzburg Festival

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares99 Views

    Opera Companies Find Savings and Gains Through Collaborations

    by

    Co-productions can help companies across the globe save money, collaborate artistically and ensure that lesser-known works are seen by more audiences.Simon McBurney’s acclaimed production of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina,” which debuted last month at the Salzburg Easter Festival ahead of its Metropolitan Opera premiere, almost didn’t happen.McBurney’s staging, once envisioned as a co-production between the Met and the Bolshoi in Moscow, was in limbo after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response to the war, the New York company severed ties with all Russian state-run institutions.At that time, Nikolaus Bachler had recently taken over as artistic director of the Easter Festival and was looking for other companies to share productions with. One of his ambitions was to present McBurney’s “Khovanshchina” in Salzburg. The Met signed on as co-producer. “For me, it was crucial to find partners from the very beginning,” he said in an interview last month at his office in Salzburg’s picturesque Altstadt, or Old City, shortly before the second and final performance of “Khovanshchina” at the festival, on April 21.“Especially for a festival like ours, it is such a pity — they did this in the past — that you do a production for two times and then it’s over,” he said. “This is an artistic waste and economic waste.”A scene from John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met, a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.Karen Almond/Met OperaIn recent years, the Met has increasingly turned to co-producing not only to share costs, but also as a way to collaborate artistically with other companies. The final premiere of the current season, John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is a co-production with San Francisco Opera and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” a Met commission composed by Mason Bates that adapts Michael Chabon’s novel, will open the 2025-26 season and is a collaboration with the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where it premiered in November. Two further premieres in the new season, “La Sonnambula” and Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence,” are shared among various opera companies in Europe and the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      5 Breakout Artists at the Salzburg Festival

      by

      The Salzburg Festival is synonymous with excellence and fame. But it’s also a place where artists on the cusp of stardom can shine.The Salzburg Festival has, since its founding more than 100 years ago, been known as a gathering place for the world’s finest musicians.That’s still true: During a visit there earlier this month, I heard Grigory Sokolov play Bach with unfussy authority; Jordi Savall lead his period orchestra in magisterial accounts of Beethoven’s final two symphonies; Igor Levit muscle through another Beethoven symphony, the bacchic Seventh, with just a piano.But Salzburg is also a proving ground for artists on the cusp on stardom. The soprano Asmik Grigorian, for example, was busy but hardly world famous until she gave a career-making performance as Salome there in 2018.This year, there were breakthroughs to be found throughout Salzburg’s theaters. If you looked past the top billing, past the Cecilia Bartolis and Teodor Currentzises, they were even at some of the most high-profile events this summer. Here are five of them.Lukas SternathThe pianist Lukas Sternath performing with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, under the conductor Adam Fischer.Marco Borrelli/Salzburg FestivalIn a bit of scheduling serendipity, Levit’s recital took place during the same weekend that the Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath, his former student, was debuting with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. It was touching to see Levit in the balcony of the Mozarteum’s ornate Grosser Saal, looking down as Sternath eloquently performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466) under the baton of Adam Fischer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Has the Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Time Finally Come?

      by

      With an opera at the Salzburg Festival and recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg may be taking root.It’s difficult to define a comeback in classical music. A neglected composer may be championed by the artists of one generation only to be ignored by the next, or resurface during an anniversary only to return underground.Take the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-96), a Polish-born composer who found refuge in Soviet Russia, but whose reputation in the West is largely overshadowed by that of his good friend Dmitri Shostakovich. There has been increasing interest in Weinberg this century, and there are signs that his music is finally taking root in the repertoire.The latest milestone is an excellent revival of his opera “The Idiot” at the high-profile Salzburg Festival in Austria under the baton of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a conductor with a Deutsche Grammophon contract who has, with scholarly authority, brought Weinberg’s works to something like the mainstream.Still, as a figure in music history he remains mostly unknown to modern listeners: a Jewish composer who wrote with unwavering beauty and peace in the face of some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities; whose identity and experiences suffused more than 150 works, as well as dozens of soundtracks that await attention and interpretation; who, under no outside pressure, according to his family, converted to Christianity at the end of his life.Weinberg was born in Warsaw but fled in 1939, after hearing on the radio that a German invasion of the city was imminent. (He traveled alone; it wasn’t until the 1960s that he learned his family had been murdered in a concentration camp.) He went to the Soviet border, and settled in Minsk. Nearly two years later, he left there as the Nazis pushed eastward, joining the wartime refugee community in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.He ultimately made it to Moscow, with the help of composers including Shostakovich, who had secured an invitation for Weinberg from the State Committee on the Arts. He enjoyed some modest prosperity and rising prominence, but a Stalinist crackdown on music, combined with institutionalized antisemitism, led to his arrest in early 1953.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      As Ukraine War Goes On, Where Is Teodor Currentzis’s Red Line?

      by

      Teodor Currentzis, whose MusicAeterna receives funding from a Russian state bank, has eluded censure at the prestigious Salzburg Festival.When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the classical music world’s reaction was swift. Artists with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin, or those who had publicly supported his war efforts, were dropped by orchestras and opera houses across the West.One person who seemed to elude such punishment, though, was Teodor Currentzis, who is leading concerts and a production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria. More than two years into the war, his continued presence there is frustrating to many, raising uncomfortable questions about what is acceptable in service of music.Currentzis, who was born in Greece, was given Russian citizenship by Putin’s government in 2014, the year Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula. Two decades ago, he founded MusicAeterna, a small musical empire that started as an orchestra and now includes a choir and dance company in St. Petersburg.MusicAeterna doesn’t have any direct affiliation with Putin, but it came under scrutiny after the 2022 invasion because of support from the state-controlled VTB Bank (which has been penalized by the United States), as well as other government-related donors. Currentzis has been silent about the war, neither denouncing Russia nor supporting Ukraine.And he has lost some work as a result. Earlier this year, the Wiener Festwochen in Austria canceled an appearance by him and the German SWR Symphony Orchestra after fierce criticism from the Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv, who appeared at the same festival with Ukrainian musicians.Salzburg has stood by Currentzis but not by his Russian musicians. The “Don Giovanni” here is a revival of a production that originated in 2021, with him conducting. Then, the pit ensemble was MusicAeterna. Now it’s Utopia, the all-star group, in the spirit of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, that he started in 2022; pointedly, it is based in Western Europe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      At 97, This Conductor Is Modest and Extraordinary

      by

      When Herbert Blomstedt, the oldest major conductor active today, led the Vienna Philharmonic, age was only one factor in his remarkable artistry.If you’ve been reading news about the U.S. presidential election, you might be forgiven for thinking that age has something to do with ability.But it doesn’t work that way in classical music, a field in which artists often go on as long as they can. Conductors tend to retire only when they decide it’s time. And Herbert Blomstedt, who recently turned 97, clearly doesn’t want to just yet.The oldest major conductor still keeping a regular performance schedule, he was forced to take a break after a fall in December, but was back onstage by the spring and, this week, conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Hardly pushed aside because of his age, he was at the podium of one of the world’s greatest orchestras, at one of classical music’s most prestigious events.Blomstedt has garnered a lot of attention for his longevity and vitality, but that is just one aspect of what makes him a remarkable conductor. As the critic Alex Ross wrote when Blomstedt was 94, equating age with wisdom is a dubious belief, and what he enjoys now is “a belated reward for a resolutely unshowy musician who has gone about his business decade after decade.”Even Blomstedt doesn’t spend too much time making sense of his age in interviews. He values routine, and cooks for himself when he’s not on the road. And he has mentioned that, as a Seventh-day Adventist, he doesn’t eat meat or drink alcohol or coffee; without missing a beat, though, he often adds that Winston Churchill made it to 90 liberally drinking and smoking cigars.Wisdom may not be a given with Blomstedt’s age, but it’s undeniable in his artistry. Perhaps because of physical limitations or personal preferences, or both, his conducting in recent years has had the kind of economy that comes with experience. (You can hear it, too, on the recordings he continues to release, with ensembles including the Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.) He is also a maestro with roots in musicology, who thrills at returning to scores; he has mentioned that it took 66 years to notice a detail in Schubert’s “Great” Symphony for the first time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      A Salzburg Festival Tradition Deserves a Wider Audience

      by

      Robert Carsen’s take on “Jedermann,” a play staged at the festival every year, stands head and shoulders above other recent stagings of the work.The Salzburg Festival attracts an audience of music and theater lovers from around the world. Yet its oldest tradition is a surprisingly local one.In 1920, the director Max Reinhardt and the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal inaugurated the first Salzburg Festival with an outdoor production of “Jedermann,” an adaptation of a medieval morality play. The performance took place on the square in front of Salzburg’s imposing Baroque cathedral.“Jedermann” quickly became a festival fixture. Since the end of World War II, it has been performed here every summer, often with German-speaking acting luminaries tackling the title role of a wealthy and impious bon vivant who, in the prime of life, gets an unexpected visit from death. Faced with his mortality, the title character, whose name translates as Everyman, learns how fleeting fortune and fame are and undergoes a soul-saving conversion.This year, the play’s complete 14-performance run sold out well in advance — even though it is the only production at the festival that is performed without English supertitles.With this gripping new “Jedermann,” directed by Robert Carsen and starring the sensational Philipp Hochmair, it looks like it’s time for the festival to reverse that policy. This gutsy and moving production stands head and shoulders above Salzburg’s other recent stagings of the work, and deserves to be seen — and understood — by more than just the “Jedermann” die-hards.Every director who approaches “Jedermann” must contend with the play’s peculiarities, including the heightened dialogue, whose archaic touches and rhyming couplets make a naturalistic delivery all but impossible. Though a classic, “Jedermann” is not universally acknowledged as a masterpiece. The most successful “Jedermann” productions refrain from excavating subtle or hidden meanings and focus on bringing the play’s memorable episodes and characters to life.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      At Salzburg Festival, Ancient Greek Tragedy Gets Modern Context

      by

      At the Salzburg Festival, a new adaptation of “The Oresteia” will put a classic story of war, democracy and revenge into a modern context.Staging “The Oresteia,” Aeschylus’s epic Greek tragedy, is a daunting task for any theater company, especially if you add a dash of Sophocles and Euripides when portraying one of history’s most dysfunctional families.The Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany, will premiere its nearly four-hour production “Die Orestie” at the Salzburg Festival for eight performances Aug. 3-15 (and in Hamburg starting Oct. 30). It is adapted and directed by Nicolas Stemann, who has staged two plays at the festival: a nine-hour adaptation of Goethe’s “Faust” in 2011 and “Die Rauber” (“The Robbers”) by Friedrich Schiller in 2008.This production, which takes its name from the Aeschylus three-part epic and is to be performed in German with English supertitles, combines three playwrights’ versions of the tragedies that befall the fabled house of Atreus. In the Aeschylus play, first staged in 458 B.C., Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, returns from the Trojan War but is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, to avenge the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia in an effort to win the war. Their son, Orestes, urged by the god Apollo, kills Clytemnestra, only to be pursued by the Furies, the goddesses of vengeance. Only when the goddess Athena intervenes is he granted justice and allowed to live.The Sophocles play “Electra” (its exact date is unknown, but most scholars put it around 420 to 414 or 416 B.C.) explores his sister’s revenge against their mother. And the Euripides play “Orestes,” first staged in 408 B.C., gives a more cynical take on his fate: Only after a bloody rampage and an intervention by Apollo are the condemned siblings allowed to live.In a video interview, Stemann discussed the challenge — and the excitement — of combining these nearly 2,500-year-old plays. The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Nicolas Stemann, who adapted and is the director of “Die Orestie” that will premiere at the Salzburg Festival in August.Diana PfammatWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      At the Salzburg Festival, Revivals Take Center Stage

      by

      The festival’s chief loves inviting productions back, giving attendees another shot at seeing a beloved show, and allowing directors a chance to nail it on the second try.Lydia Steier’s directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival did not quite go as planned. Her 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte” was savaged by many critics.“Not magical at all,” hissed the Austrian newspaper Kurier, in the headline of its review. Steier, a native of Hartford, Conn., feared she would never work in Mozart’s hometown again.“I’ve never been so stung as by the first reactions to the 2018 ‘Magic Flute,’” the 45-year-old director said in a recent phone interview from her home in Dresden, Germany. “I felt like the concept was fantastic and we didn’t nail it,” she said, adding that the production was bedeviled by many challenges, from problematic casting to the choice of venue.Steier was not alone in thinking that her production had not reached its full potential. Several months after the festival, she heard from Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic director. He wondered, would she be interested in giving the opera another spin for the summer 2020 festival?A rehearsal for Steier’s 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte.” “I felt like the concept was fantastic and we didn’t nail it,” she said.Andreas Schaad/EPA, via ShutterstockSteier was stunned. “He gave us this insane, like, once in a lifetime shot to rejigger the ‘Zauberflöte,’” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      At Salzburg Festival, a Polarizing Composer Brings Artists Together

      by

      A concert series at the Salzburg Festival, along with other events, will celebrate Arnold Schönberg’s 150th birthday and bring his music to new audiences.The composer Arnold Schönberg revolutionized the course of Western classical music. By dismantling the tonal system of major and minor keys as he self-consciously placed himself in the German tradition, he is also one of the 20th century’s most polarizing figures.The 150th anniversary of his birth is being celebrated this year with exhibits, concerts and workshops. The official birthday concert is scheduled for Sept. 13 at the Musikverein in Vienna, with the monumental “Gurre-Lieder” (“Songs of Gurre”) performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and conducted by its music director, Petr Popelka. Also in September, the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York will unveil an exhibit to commemorate the anniversary.And from July 27 to Aug. 24, the Salzburg Festival will present the concert series “Time With Schönberg,” juxtaposing the composer with everyone from his contemporary Maurice Ravel to his disciple Alban Berg.Schönberg’s theories emerged from a forward-looking intellectual climate in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century that included Sigmund Freud and painters such as Oskar Kokoschka and Gustav Klimt. The composer would write some of his most important works in Berlin, however, which he also established as a home base starting in 1912. After Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933, Schönberg emigrated to Los Angeles, where he spent the last two decades of his life.In Salzburg, the soprano Anna Prohaska, 42, will sing in the expressionist String Quartet No. 2, a work that she has been performing since 2007 and considers a “cornerstone of her career.” Georg Nigl, 52, a bass-baritone, will take on the song cycle “The Book of the Hanging Gardens,” a score that has been sitting on his shelf for three decades, and will return to the satirical, late-period work “Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte.” The pianist Tamara Stefanovich, 51, will (together with Nenad Lecic) perform the Second Chamber Symphony in a version for two pianos written by the composer after he left Germany.The following conversations have been edited and condensed. Prohaska and Stefanovich were interviewed by phone from Aix-en-Provence, France, and Berlin; Nigl was interviewed in person in Vienna.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More