The History of the Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival was inaugurated on August 22, 1920, when Hugo von Hofmannsthal's morality play Jedermann was premiered on the Domplatz,
directed by Max Reinhardt. Since that time, the Salzburg Festival has established itself as the most important festival for opera, drama and concerts.

SINCE 2007

A Feast in the heart of Europe

The grand Mozart finale with which Peter Ruzicka brought his successful era as artistic director in Salzburg to an end, is now over. We, the new artistic directors of the Salzburg Festival, Markus Hinterhäuser and Thomas Oberender, responsible for the concert and drama programme, and I myself are looking forward to the coming years. “Everyone expects a festivity” is a quote from Goethe’s Prelude to the Theatre. A festivity in this city, about which Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival said, “Salzburg is the heart of the heart of Europe… Salzburg is an edifice situated between urbanity and the countryside, between the ancient and the modern…”
We look forward to your interest in Salzburg, to your acclaim and to your criticism.

Yours,
Jürgen Flimm
Artistic Director

Details:

2007 2008

2002 – 2006

From Mozart to the Second Modern Age: Peter Ruzicka’s era as artistic director of the Salzburg Festival

Peter Ruzicka based his dramatic concept for the programme of the Salzburg Festival on five pillars. He paid tribute to Salzburg’s most important son with exemplary new productions and the first complete performance cycle of Mozart’s 22 operas; works by Richard Strauss were performed in honour of one of the Salzburg Festival’s founding fathers.

1990 – 2001

The new Salzburg

Gerard Mortier made it his task to overcome the stagnation that had become evident especially in the last years of the Karajan era. “The New Salzburg” that he proclaimed followed a policy of opening up the festival to a broader and modern repertoire, to unfamiliar, occasionally also provocative views as regards aesthetics, to different and a younger generation of audiences.

1945 – 1959

Postwar years

It was nothing short of a miracle: only three months after the end of the war, when Salzburg was crowded with refugees and soldiers, when the wounds caused by the bombing raids were still open, and when many products were only available on the black market, the festival took place again in the summer of 1945, with the support of the American occupying forces.

1938 – 1944

Salzburg beneath the Swastika

On 12 March 1938 German troops marched into Salzburg. The Anschluss – the annexation of Austria by Germany – was now complete, and Nazi ideology immediately began to affect the Festival.

1920 – 1937

The early years

Toward the end of the First World War the idea arose of establishing a festival in Salzburg, a princely baroque town far removed from the everyday bustle of the big cities.

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