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The Salzburg Festival thanks for the support 2025

Great thanks are due to all supporters of the Salzburg Festival. Without the active engagement of its sponsors and private patrons, it would be impossible to present the Salzburg Festival in this form.

MAIN SPONSORS
The financial contributions of the main sponsors benefit the entire Festival programme and are essential in enabling it to present such a rich variety of programming.

AUDI
The AUDI AG has been a main sponsor of the Salzburg Festival since 1995. With a fleet of vehicles, the brand with the distinctive four rings offers an exclusive shuttle service during the Festival, available for bookings by private persons and corporate clients.
For more than 60 years, the car manufacturer from Ingolstadt has actively supported culture. The cultural programme Audi ArtExperience supports and fosters creative dialogue and cultural diversity through Audi’s own initiatives, such as the Audi Young Persons’ Choral Academy and the Audi Summer Concerts, but also sponsors renowned and high-carat cultural institutions – always at the highest level.

SIEMENS
The partnership with Siemens began in 1995, when Siemens became a project sponsor; it expanded to become a main sponsor at the highest level in 1999. Thanks to Siemens, in collaboration with ORF Salzburg and UNITEL, the Festival has been able to offer an extraordinary cultural highlight: the Siemens>Festival>Nights. For more than 20 years, the world’s largest public screening event of classical music in the world has used daylight-compatible technology on an LED screen as well as a state-of-the-art sound system to win over art lovers from around the world.
Every year, visitors enjoy screenings of historic and current Festival performances in the highest quality before the picturesque backdrop of Salzburg’s historical city centre, free of charge. This unique cultural offering is complemented by the Siemens>Breakfast>Concerts every Saturday, while children can enjoy age-appropriate opera screenings every Friday at the Siemens>Children’s>Programme. Thus, Siemens enriches Salzburg’s cultural life and sustainably supports access to music for all generations.

KÜHNE FOUNDATION
The Kühne Foundation has been a main sponsor of the Salzburg Festival since 2019. Its main fields of interest are classical opera and support for young vocalists. Since 2013 the Kühne Foundation has supported the Young Singers Project (YSP). The young talents receive a scholarship and thus the opportunity to present themselves to the public in master classes and perform alongside established artists in opera productions. The final concert of the YSP toward the Festival’s end, which takes place at the Haus für Mozart since 2024, is often an important step to a promising career.

WÜRTH
The Würth Group is the global market leader in the development, production, and sale of assembly and fastening materials, and a long-term partner of the Salzburg Festival. Their collaboration began in 2016; from 2018, the corporation supported the concert series Ouverture spirituelle and later extended its support to include the youth programme jung & jede*r. Starting in the 2025 season, Würth is the Salzburg Festival’s newest main sponsor.
The partnership with the Salzburg Festival emphasizes the cultural activities of the corporation, which have been a fixed part of its corporate culture from the very beginning. Würth fosters a vibrant cultural landscape and social wellbeing. The focus of its philanthropy is on the arts, culture, education, sports and social welfare.

BWT
The BWT Best Water Technology Group is Europe’s leading water technology company and launched its engagement as a main sponsor in 2021. With its water treatment technologies, for which it holds the worldwide patents, BWT supports the Salzburg Festival in its sustainability efforts: staff, artists and guests are provided with refreshing, locally mineralized water – enriched with valuable minerals such as magnesium, zinc and silicate – which has helped avoid the use and transportation of one-way plastic and glass bottles and reduce CO2 emissions. Together with the Salzburg Festival, BWT thereby pursues the goal of making the world better with every sip, and keeping it alive and worth living for future generations – in keeping with the claim: BWT – For You and Planet Blue.

ROLEX
The Salzburg Festival is supported by Rolex, who build upon its existing and ongoing relationship with the Festival as Main Sponsor since 2012 as part of its Perpetual Arts Initiative. For more than half a century, Rolex has partnered some of the world’s most talented artists and leading cultural institutions to promote excellence and the transmission of artistic heritage.

PROJECT SPONSORS

Project Sponsors finance projects which are artistically important but could not be implemented without additional financial help.

UNIQA has been an important partner for the Salzburg Festival since 2004. Conversely, the Festival is a fixed programme of UNIQA’s corporate culture. For many years the focus of this collaboration has been on youth programmes. This enables the Salzburg Festival to steadily expand its efforts in this field. The youth programme jung & jede*r and thus the production of selected children’s operas, youth camps and accompanying events for children and teenagers is made possible thanks to UNIQA’s help.

Raiffeisen Salzburg has been a faithful partner of the Salzburg Festival since 2020. Education, social responsibility, ecology, sports, but also culture are part of the corporate self-concept of the Raiffeisen Banking Group. The idea of enabling the Festival to give the children’s and youth programme jung & jede*r as a gift to young Festival visitors and to extend its reach to schools throughout the state of Salzburg corresponds with Raiffeisen’s values. The partnership between the Salzburg Festival and Raiffeisen beyond 2025 signals a clear commitment to sustainable and long-term collaboration.

The Salzburg AG is deeply rooted in the state and city of Salzburg, and is therefore proud to be a part of “life”. Just as culture is an essential part of Salzburg’s identity, the Salzburg AG is a deeply anchored in the region. Eager to provide cultural support for young people in the city and region, it is glad to be a partner of jung & jede*r, the Salzburg Festival’s youth programme. As an innovative, digital and sustainable company, the Salzburg AG does everything to improve the quality of life of Salzburg’s citizens and to design climate-friendly energy for the future.

The Kia-Ora Foundation supports special projects including artists from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa through its scholarships. In 2025, the semi-staged performance of the opera Mitridate, re di Ponto was supported by the Kia-Ora Foundation.

The Ryuji Ueno Foundation is dedicated to promoting excellence in classical music. In 2025, the foundation supported the Mozart Matinee conducted by Kyohei Sorita.

acm (austrian capital management GmbH) supports the repositioning of the Salzburg Festival’s Archive, which reopened in early 2024 in its new location at the Riedenburg. At the core of this financial support is the digitalization of numerous documents, which can now be made available to a broad public thanks to new technology.

PRODUCT SPONSORS

The Salzburg Festival thanks its Product Sponsors, who donate high-quality materials, thereby contributing essentially to the “total work of art” that is the Festival.

Since 2014, Schlumberger has created a special Festival cuvée for the Salzburg Festival. Furthermore, since 2024, the Festival’s visitors can enjoy products of the renowned house of champagne Moët & Chandon and French rosé wine by Miraval.

The Salzburg Festival is particularly proud to have a regional product partner: Salzburg’s Stiegl Brewery donates its very popular Festival pilsener, and since 2024 also a Festival edition of its “Wildshut Bio Perlage”.

Since 2023, Saint Charles Organics GmbH and Werner und Mertz Professional have supported the Festival with high-quality products.

In addition, since 2024, the Festival is grateful to have the support of Peek & Cloppenburg Austria as an exclusive product partner for Jedermann.

ASSOCIATION OF FRIENDS and PRIVATE DONORS
The Austrian Association of Friends of the Salzburg Festival (Verein der Freunde der Salzburger Festspiele), the German Freunde der Salzburger Festspiele e.V. Bad Reichenhall, the American Salzburg Festival Society, the Swiss Schweizer Freunde der Salzburger Festspiele and Les Amis Français du Festival de Salzbourg in France, with their approximately 6,600 members from 60 countries, have become one of the Festival’s main financial pillars. In addition to annual programming contributions, the Associations underwrite most of the international Festival programme presentations and for example the initiative “Festival Ticket = Bus Ticket”, an important measure to reduce individual traffic in the city, as well as the Festival Opening Party. Furthermore, the Association regularly conducts fundraising campaigns for construction and purchasing projects of the Salzburg Festival.

The Salzburg Festival thanks all the Associations of Friends for their generous financial and also idealistic support.

Special thanks are due to the members of the Golden Club and Silver Club from all over the world, as well as the Festival’s many private donors.

Chief among them is Dr. Hans-Peter Wild, one of those people whose love for the arts and for the city of Salzburg have led them to become a great supporter and patron of the Salzburg Festival. His donation is the largest individual gift by a private patron in the Festival’s history. The Festival owes its Festival Centre to this visionary, a building being created as a new space for encounters between all music lovers and Festival friends. Construction began in the autumn of 2024.

“We want to build a bridge for those children who are not from culturally conversant families as well.”

“Oh, if only I had believed my daughter!” laments the father. After all, she had warned him about the king’s suspiciousness. When her father discovers a valuable object, the king accuses him of keeping a part of it for himself. The father is promptly thrown in prison. Hearing his cries of woe, the king summons the man’s daughter. He poses three riddles, which she solves without difficulty. Impressed by her cleverness, he takes her as his wife. But when she exposes another error of judgement by the king, he casts her out and allows her to take only “what her heart holds most dear” with her… Nine performers and an orchestra of 15 musicians will explore pressing questions of justice and injustice, power and powerlessness for a young audience.

Die Kluge is the third opera for children produced by Ursula Gessat, education manager of the Salzburg Festival since 2021, at artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser’s behest. Wilfried Hiller and Paul Leonard Schäffer created a new, reduced musical version of Carl Orff’s opera in 2019 for a smaller orchestra, and this new production is based on this. Armela Madreiter adapted the libretto, which the composer Carl Orff wrote based on the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale The Peasant’s Wise Daughter. After the productions WUT, Ping Pong and Fiesta, this is the fourth time she is collaborating on the Salzburg Festival’s youth programme.

On 26 July, the new production of Die Kluge premieres at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg; nine further performances follow through 25 August. Giulia Giammona directs; the German conductor Anna Handler conducts. The roles will be embodied by participants of the Young Singers Project. Introductory workshops entitled Let’s Play Opera precede the performances.

The Drama Camp allows theatre-loving teenagers aged 14 to 19 to delve into a work and the themes of one of the Salzburg Festival’s drama productions, spending a week in daily workshops and rehearsals on a rehearsal stage and delving into the topics of the drama production Sternstunden der Menschheit.

The popular School Programme and the mobile productions entitled From Abtenau to Zell am See will feature the musical theatre work Zeitzone JETZT and the drama for children Liebe Grüße … oder Wohin das Leben fällt. In this way, students experience music and theatre directly. Both pieces are about topics such as friendship, love, care and loss. In the summer, both productions will be performed at the Schauspielhaus.

Opera Camps will focus on Capriccio, Der Idiot and Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Children and teenagers aged 9 to 17 will spend a week staying at Arenberg Castle with full board and accommodation, playing and singing and delving into the world of opera, and ultimately presenting their own new interpretation, developed with members of the Vienna Philharmonic and pedagogues.

The Festival Mentorships already proved a success last year and continues: experienced Festival visitors take on a mentorship for young adults aged 16 to 26 who have never attended a Salzburg Festival performance.

6,000 youth tickets for young people to opera, drama and concert performances are available with discounts of up to 90 percent for teenagers and young adults under 27. Youth tickets to the Salzburg Whitsun Festival will go on sale in the spring via the Ticket Gretchen App: discounted tickets for the summer Festival will be available at the end of May, those for the Whitsun Festival at the end of April.
https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/en/jung-jeder/u27

“Young Friends” of the Salzburg Festival have access to the comprehensive summer programme of the Friends of the Salzburg Festival and receive preferential treatment when ordering youth tickets. Register at https://www.festspielfreunde.at/EN/.

From 26 July, the Siemens>Children’s>Programme is tailored to the youngest visitors: every Friday at 10 am on Kapitelplatz. Admission is free.

jung & jede*r, the Salzburg Festival’s youth programme, is supported by:UNIQA
As the largest art insurance in Central Europe, art and culture are an essential part of UNIQA’s corporate culture. UNIQA has been an important partner for the Salzburg Festival since 2004; for many years, the focus of this collaboration has been on youth programmes. This enables the Salzburg Festival to steadily expand its efforts in this field. The youth programme jung & jede*r and thus the production of selected children’s operas, youth camps and accompanying events for children and teenagers is made possible thanks to UNIQA’s help. This enables the festival to reach a young audience, awakening the joy of music and keeping it alive for the future.

Würth Group
At the initiative of Prof. Dr. h.c. mult. Reinhold Würth, the Würth Group became the third sponsor of the children’s and youth programme jung & jede*r in 2022. The Würth Group and the Würth Foundation support a living cultural landscape and social wellbeing in many locations – to Reinhold Würth, the arts and culture are a strong link between different social areas.

Raiffeisen Salzburg
Raiffeisen Salzburg has been a partner of the Salzburg Festival since 2020. Education, social responsibility, ecology, sports, but also culture are part of the corporate self-concept of the Raiffeisen Banking Group. The idea of enabling the Festival to give the children’s and youth programme jung & jede*r as a gift to young Festival visitors and to extend its reach to schools throughout the State of Salzburg met with open ears at Raiffeisen. The partnership between the Salzburg Festival and Raiffeisen is designed for many years.

The Festival Centre Becomes Reality Dr. Hans-Peter Wild Enables the Construction of a Glass Pavilion and Event Location on Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz

“Thanks to the largest donation from a private patron in the history of the Salzburg Festival, we will create a new and vibrant space for encounters amidst the historical heart of our city. A place where a transparent pavilion allows insights into the Festival’s inner workings throughout the year, and where daily life and a space for the arts forge an entirely natural alliance,” says Festival President Kristina Hammer.

A Message from Dr. Hans-Peter Wild:
Launching the new Festival Centre

It is a great honour for me to give the signal launching the construction of the new Festival Centre today! I look forward to supporting this project over the coming three years with up to 12 million Euros, for I have felt a strong connection with Salzburg since the days of my youth.

My parents attended the Festival regularly and often took me along to Salzburg. To this day, I try to visit the Festival every year. In the meantime, as you may know, I have also purchased the two hotels Schloss Mönchstein and Goldener Hirsch in Salzburg, so my relationship with this city has become even closer.
The major project “Festival District 2030” was born as part of the celebrations marking the Salzburg Festival’s centenary. The fact that today’s ceremony marks the launch for building the Festival Centre grew from many conversations with Kristina Hammer and her team, and is surely a milestone for the City of Salzburg as well.
The redesign and expansion of the entire Festival District moves the Festival into its second century, preparing and equipping it for future challenges.
The high esteem which the arts are held in here in Salzburg can be preserved and even extended by this monumental undertaking. I am convinced that it will contribute to the longterm attractiveness of this city. The beautiful space around the historical Horse-Well will receive an upgrade, and guests from Austria and abroad will be able to access it in its original form.
To me, supporting the arts is very important. Unlike business, they cannot pursue only efficiency and profit. Rather, their role is to raise enthusiasm and offer inspiration through creativity and emotions. The arts need free space – in reality and mentally – to unfold their full potential. The new Festival Centre aims to contribute to this. It is intended as a place of encounters and exchange.
I am delighted that the Centre will be open year-round in the future, and it is my wish that it can be used for meetings and events outside of the Festival season, throughout the year. This is one of the potential uses of the hall envisioned for its basement floor. I wish all those involved the greatest success in implementing the new Festival Centre.

“Approaching the Festival Centre, the massive entrance gates are visible from afar, shimmering in brass hues, marking the transition into the world of the ‘Salzburg Festival’ like pillars. Visitors enter the new ‘Festival room’, which presents as an abstract composition of individual sculptural elements, flanked by ‘wall panelling’ reminiscent of a living room and complemented by the reopened gate in the back wall. In its midst, a glass pavilion welcomes not only visitors to the Salzburg Festival, but all those traversing the beautiful historical city centre of Salzburg in search of discoveries,” says Stefan Marte of Marte.Marte Architects.

The History of the Herbert von Karajan-Platz
From Vision to Implementation of the Festival Centre

In 1640, invalids sought help at the hospital on Spitalplatz; later, scholars crossed Studentenplatz, heading for the university of the Benedictines; then farmers weighed their harvest on Heuwaagplatz, until the square was renamed Siegmundsplatz, in honour of PrinceArchbishop Sigismund III. Since 1991, the citizens of Salzburg have known it as Herbert von Karajan-Platz.
Directly adjacent to the Festspielhaus and Felsenreitschule, during the Festival weeks, thousands of arts lovers from all over the world congregate here – for the rest of the year, however, little is felt of these jostling crowds.

One reason is that outside its own events, the Salzburg Festival has never had a place which would invite visitors to pass the time, enabling intense exchange.
Therefore, it has long been a cherished goal of the Salzburg Festival to turn this once socentral square immediately outside our performance venues into a vibrant meeting point available year-round to all the inhabitants and visitors to our city, by building a new Festival Centre.
On the occasion of its centenary, the Salzburg Festival therefore initiated an international competition to implement such a building. The winning design, chosen by the jury and created by Marte.Marte Architects, was presented to the public by Helga Rabl-Stadler, the Festival’s President at the time, in early 2020, shortly before the pandemic struck. It foresaw “revolving gates with a brass shimmer” leading into the inner courtyard between the Pferdeschwemme (Horse-Well) and the Schüttkasten, where “a rectangular glass pavilion” would house a modern information centre, while a café open to the street on summer days would create a lowthreshold interface between daily life and high culture.
These plans met with great enthusiasm. However, even at the time it was clear that a new Festival Centre would never be able to be financed from the existing budget. “It is my greatest goal to finance this building through private funding. After all, we urgently need our public funding for the imminent general overhaul of our Festival theatres,” Rabl-Stadler explained.

In early 2020, it did not seem unrealistic to hope that the centenary celebrations might encourage sufficient patrons of the arts to enable such a “great gift to all the Festival’s visitors”.
Therefore, project planning was tackled, with substantial support – not only of the financial kind – from the Association of Friends and Supporters of the Festival, and Marte.Marte Architects, the team of Executive Director Lukas Crepaz and the Project Manager Michael Brandauer worked assiduously to obtain a building permit. Even during the pandemic, after the consent of the Federal Landmark Commission and the Expert Commission on the Preservation of the Historical City Centre had been secured, the Building Authority granted the building permit in the autumn of 2020.

However, the pandemic and its attendant insecurities dampened the ambitious financing goals of the Salzburg Festival.
In early 2022, Kristina Hammer took over the position of President. With her background in business, where relationships and encounters with customers, guests and audiences are an equally important issue, she was immediately convinced that this project offered a unique chance for the Festival to attain the even broader opening she had envisioned from the start.
“We consider it an opportunity to create a space for encounters with the Festival for all citizens and visitors to this city, a space that is open all year round,” says Hammer. “A place where daily life and space for the arts combine in an entirely natural way, and where we can bring our programmes and values even to those who have not yet been in contact with the Festival.”

On the basis of the existing concept, the Directorate refined the possible usage of the Festival Centre once more. The result is an open suite of spaces with flexible functionality, inviting discovery and equally able to host encounters as well as events, lectures, multimedia presentations, receptions, panel discussions and readings.

With this concept in hand, the President once again went in search of sponsors or donors. And found one who wished to share this vision. On 19 May, Kristina Hammer is able to make this public announcement, on behalf of the Directorate: “We will build this Festival Centre.” At the same time, she presents the man who makes this endeavour possible: Hans-Peter Wild, a Swiss entrepreneur with German roots, has been attending the Festival since his childhood and has long been one of its important donors. Hans-Peter Wild will provide a sum of 12 million Euros in total for the construction of the new Festival Centre – the largest donation from a private patron in the history of the Festival so far.
The Directorate of the Salzburg Festival thanks Dr. Hans-Peter Wild for his generous contribution, which it considers a gift not only to the Festival, but to the city as a whole.

“The arts and culture are fundamental; they are essential for our lives. This essentiality goes far beyond the parameters of daily life. In an unprecedented manner, we are confronted with the phenomenon that proximity can only be created through distance. We need the arts and culture more than ever, more urgently than ever. They are what make human beings human.
With the new Festival Centre, we wish to invite visitors to experience what we have to share all year round. People don’t want to be picked up, they want to be invited, and thanks to Hans-Peter Wild’s generous donation, this place becomes a new space for encounters,” says Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser.

“Our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Hans-Peter Wild for making it possible to build the Festival Centre we began planning during our centenary with his extremely generous donation. This will upgrade the entire district, both in terms of function and urban design. Once construction begins after the 2024 Salzburg Festival, this will be a brilliant start for our major project ‘Festival District 2030’,” says Lukas Crepaz, Executive Director of the Salzburg Festival.
The Salzburg Festival thanks all its supporters and sponsors, the Association of Friends and the public authorities for their long-term, continuous funding, enabling both the presentation of the artistic programme and the extraordinary investments of the project Festival District 2030.

 

Dr. Hans-Peter Wild: Curriculum Vitae

The Swiss entrepreneur Dr. Hans-Peter Wild first studied law at the universities in Munich, Tübingen and Heidelberg, graduating with distinction. He then studied economics at the Mannheim University. Wild completed a doctoral thesis at the law faculty of the Mannheim University on “The Market-Dominant Company under French Law” and was awarded the title Dr. iur. in consequence.

The Entrepreneur
After completing his studies, Dr. Hans-Peter Wild first gathered external experience before joining his father’s company in 1974, when this was essentially manufacturing basic materials and machines as well as machinery for the German beverage industry.
Dr. Wild expanded the business in basic materials by acquiring F&C International in Cincinnati, turning the brand Wild Flavors GmbH, headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, into one of the world’s leading manufacturers of natural flavourings for the food industry. In addition, he expanded the worldwide business with Capri-Sonne. The fruit juice products branded as Capri-Sonne, or Capri-Sun today, have been produced in Eppelheim since 1969, and have a presence in more than 100 countries today under various licensing agreements. Wild owns 100% of the company.
His Family Office in Zug is currently responsible for asset management as well as direct investments in established companies and start-ups, especially in the biotechnology and technology sector. This also includes Tokomak Energy, the first company in the world to generate a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees on 22 February 2022, corresponding to approximately six times the temperature of the sun’s inner core.

Social Responsibility
Dr. Hans-Peter Wild feels responsible not only for his companies, but also to society – both regionally and globally. Therefore, Dr. Wild is the chairman of the charitable foundation Leonie-Wild-Stiftung, which he founded together with his mother in 1997. In June 2006, the city of Eppelheim appointed him an honorary citizen for his achievements as a businessman and his regional social philanthropy.
In gratitude and acknowledgment of the liberation of Germany from the Nazis in 1945, Dr. Wild donated 16 million dollars to the US Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation, enabling about 300 children of Marines to pursue university studies.
Dr. Wild continues to provide significant long-term support for projects at the universities in Heidelberg and Mannheim. He helps both universities attract top scientists, thereby further increasing their international standing. In 1996, Dr. Hans-Peter Wild was named an honorary senator of the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg; in 2021, he was honoured in the same way by the Mannheim University. In Switzerland, Dr. Wild supports mainly medical projects at the Zurich University, as he does at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the USA.
Dr. Wild also offers support to multiple cultural projects. The spectrum ranges from support for highly talented young musicians to projects with a global effect – such as the construction of the Salzburg Festival Centre.