The Drama Programme

Hofmannsthal‘s Jedermann reviews his life in the face of death, memories coagulating at the hour of his passing – yet he experiences redemption: this character symbolizes the tradition-steeped play of the rich man’s dying, a rich man, a man fearing death – as well as the fact that its presentation in Salzburg is always being re-examined and questioned. Robert Carsen’s celebrated new production of last year, with Philipp Hochmair as Jedermann, Christoph Luser as Good Companion and the Devil and Deleila Piasko as the Paramour, will be revived during the 2025 Festival summer, with a few cast changes.

This play of death is flanked by further “endgames”. They too explore the extreme points of human existence. In his monumental drama for the end of times, The Last Days of Mankind, Karl Kraus offers an incisive analysis of social processes at tipping points. With the help of a gigantic panopticon of characters, he uncovers the mechanisms of violence, power and propaganda, illustrating the abysses of war in all their absurdities.

Quite a different array of characters is assembled by Vladimir Sorokin in his novel The Blizzard, in which he undertakes a fantastical odyssey through rural Russia in a near future. “My novella really has three protagonists: the doctor, his coachman and the blizzard. In the end, the third one wins,” says Vladimir Sorokin.

Julien Gosselin’s piece Le Passé resembles a search for lost time, the much-invoked temps perdu. In his typical amalgamation of theatre, text, image and music, the French director takes works by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev and bundles them in a journey into the past, questioning the notion of the stability of memories, exposing both their pain and their beauty.

Beginnings and endings, destruction and redemption, all-embracing cold and the heart of brightness, life and dreams – our ambivalent experiences, our inner conflicts, the simultaneity of dark and light, end and utopia … the stories of this year’s drama programme recount all these. They are complemented by Four New Works by the legendary choreographer Lucinda Childs and three readings: Dörte Lyssewski gives the victims of the Holocaust a voice, reading the impressive work of the Ukrainian poet Marianna Kiyanovska. Angela Winkler and the delian::quartet undertake a musical and lyrical journey through William Shakespeare’s universe. And Marina Davydova’s Land of No Return will be given its first reading by Regine Zimmermann, Dominik Dos-Reis, Katja Kolm and Christoph Luser.

First published in the Festival insert of Salzburger Nachrichten