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28 July – 31 August

Film footage (151 feet in fact) documents ‘Austria’s greatest artistic event’ in 1948 in word and image: Helene Thimig rehearsing Jedermann/Everyman, Paula Wessely and Horst Caspar in Grillparzer’s Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen/The Waves of Sea and Love, also the summit meeting of the two maestri and artistic rivals: Wilhelm Furtwängler, who conducted a new Fidelio at the Festival Hall, and Herbert von Karajan in his opera début.

While Karl Böhm and Wilhelm Furtwängler were permitted to perform again at the Festival in 1947, Herbert von Karajan was not allowed to appear until autumn 1947. Shortly afterwards, Puthon invited him to be an artistic associate at the Salzburg Festival. Karajan conducted an opera production in Salzburg in 1948 for the first time with Orpheus and Eurydice (the first opera staged in the Felsenreitschule/Summer Riding School) – and simultaneously the last for many years, because he already announced his withdrawal from the Festival management in September 1948.