Blog entries

When sacred music meets percussion and dragons meet klezmer – then you know it’s the Festival Opening Party!

On Friday, July 20 and Saturday, July 21, 2012, the Salzburg Festival celebrates not only the beginning of its Ouverture spirituelle and the Jedermann premiere, but all signals are set for cultural enjoyment and boundless diversity! The 33^rd Festival Opening Party features a dazzling array of extremely different artists at 30 performance venues. Program highlights from various genres await all the citizens of Salzburg and their guests. Come be enchanted, sampling music, literature and of course culinary delights, and celebrate the beginning of the 2012 Salzburg Festival with a mind-boggling party!

For the first time, our guests from abroad will find two English-language events on Saturday: a guided tour of the exhibit Einmal Unterwelt und zurück at 10:30 am at the Residenzgalerie Salzburg, as well as the ingenious comedian John van der Put’s show at republic at 2:30 pm.

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Siemens Festival>Nights 2012: A longer season. More current productions. More live broadcasts.

In the eleventh year of its existence, the Siemens Festival>Nights are looking forward to great innovations: with the broadcasting of 12 current productions – five of them live! – directly from the Festspielhäuser, there will be more current highlights than ever. For the first time, the open-air screenings will take place throughout the duration of the Festival, between July 27 and September 1, 2012, using a large-scale LED wall suitable for daylight screenings as well. Thus, the most advanced technology makes culture available to everyman, within the incomparable ambience of Salzburg’s Kapitelplatz with its view of the Hohensalzburg Castle. All this makes the Siemens Festival>Nights unique throughout the world.

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7th Special Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic with Young Brass and Wind Players from Salzburg and Carinthia

On Sunday, August 19, 2012 the seventh edition of the special concert of the Vienna Philharmonic with talented young brass and wind players takes place. Here, young talents from Salzburg and Carinthia will present themselves under the baton of Prof. Karl Jeitler in a concert program featuring works by Pietro Mascagni, Josef Strauß, Johann Strauß, Josef Bayer and others. Today, the sought-after free tickets became available!

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Swiss Composer Heinz Holliger Is the Focus of Salzburg contemporary

Heinz Holliger is the focus of the new concert series Salzburg contemporary. As a conductor and/or oboist, Holliger performs in no less than six concerts forming part of this series of events at the 2012 Salzburg Festival. Moreover, he conducts a Mozart Matinee and a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. Michael Kunkel spoke to him about interdependencies in music and life, the violence inherent in quietude and the privilege of a jester’s license. 

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An Island of Theater: 20 Years at the “Perner-Insel”

The Salzburg Festival has always been distinguished by the uniqueness of its “exquisite” performance venues. Over the course of its 20 years, the Perner-Insel in Hallein has become an indispensable performance location for the Salzburg Festival. Its unique atmosphere has made it a favorite with many stage directors and audience members.

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Das Labyrinth, der zweyte Theil der Zauberflöte – Insights from Stage Director Alexandra Liedtke

1798 saw the premiere of Das Labyrinth, der zweyte Theil der Zauberflöte in Vienna – the sequel to Die Zauberflöte. Commemorating the 200th anniversary of Emanuel Schikaneder’s death, the Salzburg Festival presents this heroic and comic opera at the Residenzhof. Alexandra Liedtke directs and discusses the preparatory rehearsals and her ideas about the production in a video. 

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The Triumph of an Epochal Work • Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann

Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten, which had its world premiere in Cologne in 1965, is often mentioned in the same breath as Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. Both works share the same high compositional standard, and their protest against violence and perfidy as well as their belief in human dignity send a humane and timeless message. Zimmermann’s stage work, one of the outstanding creations of modern musical theater, provides a characteristic accent in the opera program of this year’s festival. Staged by Alvis Hermanis, featuring a crowd of first-rate soloists and the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Ingo Metzmacher, it will see five performances at the Felsenreitschule – an appropriate location for a work that easily transcends the boundaries of a normal picture-frame stage.

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New Start for a Time-Honored Publication: The Salzburg Festival Almanac Published by the Festival Itself for the First Time

The Salzburg Festival Almanac has existed for 45 years. What began in 1967 as an initiative of the legendary publisher Wolfgang Schaffler went through various incarnations throughout the history of his publishing house, the Residenz Verlag. In 2012, the Festival Almanac is self-published by the Festival for the first time, offering more backstage insights than ever before. 

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Free Rides to the Salzburg Festival!

The Salzburg Festival is about to begin, your tickets are sitting on the dresser and your gala outfit is hanging in your wardrobe, freshly ironed. The only remaining question is the best way of getting to the performance venue? Anyone wanting to avoid traffic jams and the search for a parking space, traveling instead towards the enjoyment of the Festival’s offerings without worries or stress, can take public transportation – for once again, your Festival tickets are valid for free transportation within the City of Salzburg.

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Consecration of the Festival’s Newly Restored Open-Air Organ in Toscaninihof

1925 Construction of the organ
1938 Extension into an open-air organ
1963 Relinquishment
2012 Revival, thanks to Senator DDr. Herbert Batliner 

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