Insights into the event programme
For three days, Salzburg residents and festival guests will have the opportunity to get in the mood for the festival summer at the festival opening celebrations. On 18, 19 and 20 July, the celebrations will take place in parallel with the Ouverture spirituelle concert series.
In 2025, to mark the anniversaries of 1945, 1955 and 1995, the Salzburg Festival will be putting on a programme of symposia and exhibitions focusing on the public perception of the Salzburg Festival at significant historical turning points. In this context, Leopoldskron Castle will host readings with Kathleen Morgeneyer and Kristof Van Boven, guided tours of the exhibition AURA – MYTHOS – ZUSCHREIBUNG with Margarethe Lasinger and Oliver Rathkolb, an afternoon of songs with soprano Lydia Rathkolb, and contemporary history tours with Johannes Hofinger. Furthermore, in cooperation with DAS KINO, the multi-award-winning film The Third Man will be shown in its original version with subtitles, 75 years after its premiere in Vienna.
Marion Kalter and Margarethe Lasinger, dramaturge and director of the Festival Archives, will also guide visitors through a photo exhibition in the Karl Böhm Hall, which they conceived together with Johannes Steidl. Elena Denisova (violin) and conductor Alexei Kornienko will present a concert featuring works by Mahler, Schubert, Zemlinsky and Stravinsky with the Gustav Mahler Ensemble in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation.
A guest performance by the Tiroler Volksschauspiele brings last year’s highly successful production of Der zerbrochne Krug (The Broken Jug) from Telfs to Salzburg. Stars such as Corinna Harfouch and Tobias Moretti perform Heinrich von Kleist’s classic on Kapitelplatz.
Four previews of festival performances can be experienced this year: Dmitri Tcherniakov directs the new Salzburg production of Georg Friedrich Händel’s Giulio Cesare, with Christophe Dumaux singing the title role and Olga Kulchynska as Cleopatra. Emmanuelle Haïm conducts the orchestra Le Concert d’Astrée and the Bach Choir Salzburg at the Haus für Mozart. At the beginning of the 2025 Salzburg Festival, the Ouverture spirituelle will take place under the title Fatum. For the festival opening celebration, the performers of the Prophetiae concerts around the Cantando Admont ensemble under the direction of Cordula Bürgi and Timor Dei with Vox Luminis and its director Lionel Meunier have agreed to give a rehearsal preview in the Kollegienkirche. Musical theatre for children can be experienced at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg: in the dress rehearsal for Berge flüstern laut (Mountains Whisper Loudly), the three performers Franca Luisa Burandt, Matteo Haitzmann and Anne-Suse Enßle bring Salzburg’s legends and myths to life for a young audience with a range of instruments including recorders, violin and voice.
In addition, the Salzburg Festival builds bridges to other local cultural institutions: the Residenzgalerie in the DomQuartier offers guided tours of the exhibitions Paradise Lost, where detailed tapestries can be admired, and Face to Face, which deals with Austrian portrait painting of the 19th century. The Museum der Moderne offers guided tours of the exhibitions Slice of Life. From Beckmann to Jungwirth (Rupertinum) and the exhibition Cascade by British artist Nika Neelova (Mönchsberg). Games, fun and workshops for young visitors are offered at the Toy Museum.
The International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum University Salzburg offers intensive masterclasses with artists and educators from the university and the international music industry. Lessons, concerts and a supporting programme provide space for intercultural encounters and musical refinement. Each course period concludes with a competition in which the best students of the week demonstrate their skills before a jury.
The Salzburg Art Association is represented in the programme for the first time. In the performance Deepfake, Danish artist Esben Weile Kjær transforms the costume archive of the Salzburg Festival into a stage. Historical costumes are worn and worn by performers trained in physical theatre. In algorithmic dream logic mode, the question is raised: What does it mean to perform authenticity in the age of deepfakes?
In 2025, the Salzburg Festival’s Young Singers Project will once again offer young, highly talented singers from all over the world a wide range of training opportunities in the special atmosphere of the Festival. They will work with festival artists and international coaches on technique and repertoire and participate in opera productions: in the world premiere of the opera for children Musketiere! by Sebastian Schwab, in the new productions of Giulio Cesare, the revival of Macbeth, the concert performance of Andrea Chénier, and in three concerts of the YCA Award Concert Weekend. As part of the festival opening celebrations, you will have the opportunity to see the participants of the YSP 2025 in their first public performance in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum: accompanied on the piano by Edward Liddall, they will present songs, arias and duets.
The festival opening celebrations will feature a crossover focus with performances by the Viennese ensemble The Erlkings, which takes a new look at the art song genre, the duo formations LILA HOUSE and Sinfonia de Carnaval, a jazz trio entitled Klassik in Havanna, and the ensemble VOIXBRASS with its very own stylistically diverse musical signature.
The oenm · oesterreichisches ensemble fuer neue musik is celebrating 50 years of avant-garde sound this year! To mark the occasion, an anniversary concert full of diversity is in store: works by Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Minoru Miki, Akira Yuyama, Clara Iannotta and other greats of new music are on the programme.
As part of the focus on folk culture, there will be numerous performances such as the Salzburg torch dance, tower trumpeting and concerts by the Leopoldskron Baroque Wind Ensemble and the Bürmooser Brass Ensemble.
