Salzburg Festival Whitsun 2026
Bon Voyage!
“The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world.”
Dear Friends!
For freelance artists, travel is a way of life: most of the time, when not actually rehearsing or performing, we are on the road. Or in my case, when trains run as they are supposed to, ‘on the rail’, if there is such an expression… I have also crossed the Atlantic on a ship, and enjoy using public transport and walking in well-organized cities. Today, travel is often a commodity, but travelling slowly is a luxury. Your body may move fast, but it recovers at its own pace, and your mind needs even longer to get to grips with fresh surroundings.
During Rossini’s lifetime, the speed at which people moved about increased tremendously due to modern achievements such as the railways. Being the astute man that he was, Rossini integrated some of these developments into his works from very early on. In Il viaggio a Reims, for instance, he plays with
the craze of the upper classes for travelling across Europe to the latest fashionable spa towns, often to gamble or enjoy other unseemly pleasures rather than to undergo medical treatments.
One day, a group of noble guests from various countries get stuck in Plombières-les-Bains, a health resort in the Vosges mountains. There are no horses available to draw their carriages onwards to Reims, and so they end up missing the coronation of Charles X — the real event Rossini wrote this opera to celebrate. I wonder if they might have made it by taking trains, which in that era still ran on time…? But I suppose in that case there would have been no reason for the story of this charming opera.
You see how such things stimulate my mind. As a creative artist I have always been driven by an unending curiosity about composers, musicians and what has surrounded them. And I feel very lucky that this urge has not diminished in recent decades: constantly fuelling oneself with new input generates ideas, maintains creativity and drives one forward personally as well as artistically. Stagnation, conversely, leads to fossilization and death. In my mind, a sustainable artistic career — be it long or short — is an adventurous journey full of ups and downs, surprising turns, wonders and dangers. Don’t worry about being carried away to unknown shores, but do not hesitate to revisit familiar places either! New experiences make you reassess well-known things from a different, enriched perspective.
I love Rossini’s music, but I also admire his personality, his humour, his joie de vivre. Rossini fills me with perpetual excitement and wonder, while his oeuvre still contains plenty of repertory for me to discover. And thus 2026 will see me make my debut as the famous Roman poetess and improviser Corinna in Il viaggio a Reims. For me, the farcical storyline of this merry piece contains novel twists, the work’s emergence is one of the curiosities of opera history, while its performance history resembles an initially fraught but ultimately successful voyage, culminating now in a frolicsome production at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Remembering the enthusiastically applauded collaboration between Barrie Kosky and Gianluca Capuano in 2025, we can expect another joyful and memorable offering from them, once more thrillingly accompanied by Les Musiciens du Prince on period instruments.
Il viaggio a Reims is actually perfect for this Festival: it radiates historical significance, and its artistic challenges are on a par with many of Salzburg’s legendary past theatrical achievements and (why not…?) dazzling glamour. Originally a showcase for stars from the Théâtre-Italien such as Giuditta Pasta, Laure Cinti-Damoreau, Domenico Donzelli and Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur, the work requires ten fantastic singers with great comic acting ability in the principal roles, something that only a festival of great prestige can adequately assemble. I think you will enjoy yourselves enormously, and I also expect that we on stage will have great fun!
Beyond Rossini, let us be your pilots on all kinds of other fascinating journeys. For example, we welcome back the magnificent dancers of the Hamburg Ballet and join them on an extended ocean cruise, where we discover in Die kleine Meerjungfrau (The Little Mermaid) a retelling of Andersen’s famous tale that is a combination of virtuosity, musicality, profundity and humour, something I deeply admire about John Neumeier’s work.
A ten-year-long odyssey through the Greek islands ends with the return of one of the great heroes of antiquity from the Trojan Wars, and his long-awaited reunion with his beloved wife and son. Claudio Monteverdi set the moving story of Ulysses’s arrival home to music in one of his late operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, first performed in 1640. We present it in a newly created staged production by Les Musiciens du Prince, under the baton of Gianluca Capuano, in collaboration with the historic Milanese string-puppet company Carlo Colla & Figli, and a group of expert live singers.
Guided by Davide Livermore and his crew, I will take you on a journey through my own life and career in a specially designed staged gala concert (Voyage de ma vie) on Sunday evening, where we will illustrate the variety of wonderful music and musicians which I have been lucky to encounter on my journey.
Before we close our festival with the second performance of Il viaggio a Reims on the evening of Whitsun Monday, we welcome back Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata. I am excitedly looking forward to one of their famously original programmes, called Übers Meer (Across the Sea). The group will perform music from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods alongside works from Germany, Spain and Latin America, and will portray further mythical journeys from Classical antiquity. The performance will culminate with Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, set in Jerusalem at the time of the great crusades.
I am delighted to think that you may make a trip to Salzburg to join us on a great voyage of the mind, through centuries of wonderful music and theatre, accompanied by so many artists that I deeply admire.
Bon voyage and see you soon!