| Salzburg Easter Festival Osterfestspiele Salzburg | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | |
| Begins | Palm Sunday weekend (moveable) |
| Ends | Easter Monday (moveable) |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Venue | Salzburg Grand Festival Theatre International Mozarteum Foundation Felsenreitschule |
| Locations | Salzburg, Austria |
| Inaugurated | 1967; 59 years ago (1967) |
| Founder | Herbert von Karajan |
| Leader | Nikolaus Bachler |
| Website | www |
TheSalzburg Easter Festival (German:Osterfestspiele Salzburg, sometimes OFS) is aclassical music andoperafestival held every year over the extended week beforeEaster (Holy Week) inSalzburg, Austria since 1967.
It was created by the conductorHerbert von Karajan, and for most of its history featured theBerlin Philharmonic, of which Karajan was chief conductor; his successors in Berlin,Claudio Abbado andSimon Rattle, succeeded him in Salzburg as well. The orchestra and Rattle left in 2013, and were replaced between 2013 and 2022 by theDresden Staatskapelle andChristian Thielemann. It has been announced that the Berlin Philharmonic would return as the resident orchestra in 2026, with its chief conductorKirill Petrenko. Since 2022, the artistic director has beenNikolaus Bachler.
Each edition includes the production of an opera and a series of orchestral and choral concerts, as well as a complementary programme of performances in other formats.
The Easter Festival is independent from the organization which produces the (summertime)Salzburg Festival and theSalzburg Whitsun Festival.
The Salzburg Easter Festival was a creation of the conductorHerbert von Karajan. After his 1964 resignation as director of theVienna State Opera, to where he would not return until 1977, he decided to no longer take charge of a traditionalopera company, avoiding the constraints of having to deliver a full season and to oversee a large, conflict-prone organization. His intent, which he credits to a suggestion fromChristoph von Dohnányi, was to produce opera in conditions which granted him complete control over music, stage direction, and management, and enabled him enough focus to achieve his designs with the highest possibly quality.[1]
This was to be with theBerlin Philharmonic, of which he was the chief conductor since 1955. Unlike their counterparts of a number of major orchestras of the German-speaking lands which serve as thepit orchestra of their city’s opera house, for example theVienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic exclusively performed inconcert at the time.[citation needed]
According to Karajan’s recollections, he initially thought that the newly reconstructedGrand Theatre in Geneva was suitable for his enterprise. However, he realized during rehearsals ofBoris Godunov for the 1965 Salzburg Festival that the large stage and modern facilities of theGrand Festival Theatre, recently built at his initiative, made it the ideal venue.[2] A Salzburg native, he lived with his family in nearbyAnif.[citation needed]
The new festival was to fit into the “Karajan system”, under which he combined his several positions and partnerships for complete artistic and financial independence. It would work withoutgovernment subsidy, and although Karajan would act as manager, producer, funder, sole conductor, and stage director, he would ask for no pay. For each edition, the opera would be recorded in studio in Berlin the previous autumn, for one of the threerecord labels with which Karajan was under contract (Decca,Deutsche Grammophon,EMI), and which he could put in competition in order to obtain the best possible terms. Commercially, this meant that part of the preparation work for the festival would be paid for by the label. It also enabled the orchestra to limit its presence in Salzburg in the middle of its Berlin season; being acorporation of the city-state at the time, it obtained the permission ofWest Berlin authorities, on the argument that it wouldpromote the city’s international reputation. Artistically, this meant that the musical performance was fully ready long before the short festival, and that the conductor, orchestra and cast avoided doing the bulk of their preparation in a few hastyrehearsals immediately before the festival opened, and could concentrate on thestaging when they reconvened in Salzburg.[note 1] The singers left Berlin with a recording of the full orchestral parts, which enabled them to rehearse in the meantime with more precision and comfort than with a pianoaccompaniment. Karajan also used the studio tapes when he began to work on sets and stage effects at the theatre. The recording were released in the spring at the same time as the festival, both contributing to the promotion of the other.[3][4][5]
The Easter Festival was in complement to theSalzburg Festival in the summer, of which Karajan was artistic director since 1957. The Vienna Philharmonic traditionally occupies the place of honour at the summer festival; the Berlin Philharmonic had first performed there only in 1957, brought in by Karajan. Karajan’s initial focus was the works ofRichard Wagner, which were avoided in Salzburg in the summer due to agentlemen’s agreement with the nearbyBayreuth Festival held at the same time.[3] Karajan had conducted in Bayreuth in 1951 and 1952 when the festival reopened after the war, before leaving in disagreement with co-directorWieland Wagner, who had taken an abstract and critical approach in staging his grandfather’s works.[citation needed]
The first edition opened on 19 March 1967 (Palm Sunday).[citation needed]
Karajan’s first endeavour was a production ofRichard Wagner’s four-partDer Ring des Nibelungen over the first four editions, starting in 1967 withDie Walküre, the popular second part. TheRing had already been his first stage production in Vienna in 1957, and this made it possible to negotiate a lucrative recording deal from Deutsche Grammophon, as the label was eager to compete with Decca’srecently-completed recording under Georg Solti, the first studio recording of the full cycle. This was Karajan’s first studio recording of a Wagner opera, after three decades conducting them.[6]
The festival reached budget balance on its first edition, even managing to turn a quasi-symbolic profit (given in different sources as 50 schilling[7] or 300 schilling),[8] which Karajan took as his only fee. Another way to fund the festival wasco-productions, reviving Karajan’s idea of a pool of major opera houses, attempted when he started a partnership between the Vienna State Opera and theTeatro alla Scala. The inauguralRing was announced as a co-production with the New YorkMetropolitan Opera; however, onlyDie Walküre andDas Rheingold ended up performed in New York in the winter following the Salzburg premiere as expected, with Karajan in the pit with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Due to a strike,Siegfried (1969 edition) was presented only in 1972 with the recording main cast, but conducted byErich Leinsdorf.[9]
The Easter Festival benefited from the star appeal of Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, which was at its highest during the 1960s and 1970s. As it needed to be privately funded, it heavily relied on an affluent international audience, to which it granted exclusive access; membership of the Association of Patrons was almost indispensable to obtain tickets, despite their high price. It was at the time the only opportunity to hear an opera played by the Berlin Philharmonic. Karajan conducted every single opera and concert performance for almost two decades, and also staged the operas himself, except in 1975 (La bohème byFranco Zeffirelli) and 1987. The music criticJoachim Kaiser wrote of his originalWalküre that it was “self-cast, self-financed, self-staged, self-conducted — that Wagner composed the piece almost seems like a blemish”.[10] His wifeEliette von Karajan acted as an unofficial hostess at the festival, and was usually the last to take her front-row seat jus as the lights went down.[11]
Wagner was the main focus of “Karajan’s counter-Bayreuth” (Robert C. Bachmann)[12] in the first years of the festival. He ended up producing the entireBayreuth canon, concluding in 1982, with the exception ofTannhäuser, for lack of a tenor he felt suitable for the title role. All his studio recordings of Wagner’s operas, except for an earlier recording ofDie Meistersinger von Nürnberg, were part of Salzburg productions; he never recordedTannhäuser in the studio. He had initially envisioned that when the inauguralRing was completed, subsequent editions would enable him to perform two entire cycles, or one cycle and another opera for two or three evenings, with a few concerts in complement.[3] In the event, it became customary to simply perform one opera at every edition. Apart from Wagner’s, these were from the core of Karajan’s lyric repertoire, especially byGiuseppe Verdi andGiacomo Puccini, with a few revivals; however, operas byWolfgang Amadeus Mozart andRichard Strauss remained reserved to the summer festival.[13] The orchestra and choral concerts featured works Karajan frequently conducted in Berlin or ontour, most byLudwig van Beethoven,Johannes Brahms,Anton Bruckner, Mozart, and Strauss; this made it possible to minimize on-site rehearsals, and the concerts were sometimes preceded by a studio recording, as for the opera.
Karajan’s stagings favoured a romantic, naturalistic, illustrative style, which stood in contrast with the new interpretations and social criticism brought about in Bayreuth by Wieland Wagner until his death in 1966, and by the guest directors thereafter invited by his brotherWolfgang Wagner as part of the “Bayreuth workshop”.[5][3][14]
In 1973, Salzburg Whitsun Concerts (now theSalzburg Whitsun Festival) were created by Karajan overPentecost weekend, intended for people who could not obtain tickets for the Easter Festival. At the time, these were a short cycle of three concerts. They were take over by the organization behind the summer festival in 1998.[15]
Karajan, who wasenthusiastic about new recording technologies and had started to film opera in studio, formed the design to produce his SalzburgRing. The orchestral parts forDas Rheingold were recorded during the 1973 festival on the occasion of a revival of the 1968 stage production, but the shooting sessions could take place only five years later in a Munich studio, with a partly different cast. (Singerslip synced.) The project proved too costly to continue.
The Easter Festival was increasingly criticized from the mid-1970s, as the lack of appropriate singers and the rising costs delayed the production of new Wagner operas and forced the revival of productions from the summer festival, including the fifteen-year-oldIl trovatore, leaving it with little of an artistic line apart from Karajan’s central presence.[16] His complete control decidedRené Kollo to leave over creative differences after his first performance in the title role of the 1976Lohengrin, followed byKarl Ridderbusch.[17] Despite his initial insistence on independence, Karajan resorted to subsidies from the state and city government from 1969,[18] which he defended by pointing out the benefits to the local economy. In the face of public criticism and as government representatives started questioning the management and future of the festival, he again renounced their support in 1982.[19] The music critic Reinhard Beuth lamented the “bankruptcy of an idea” in 1978: “The private company has to be subsidised, the Wagner festival became Italianstagione, and festival standards sunk to repertory level. With the transfer of Verdi’sDon Carlo from the summer repertoire to next year’s Easter Festival, the last remnant of independence and significance will be gone.”[20]
The world presentation of thecompact disc (CD) took place during the Easter Festival on 15 April 1981, at a press conference ofAkio Morita andNorio Ohga (Sony), Joop van Tilburg (Philips), and Richard Busch (PolyGram), in the presence of Karajan who praised the new format.[21]
As Karajan’s health declined in the 1980s, he started delegating some of his many duties: one of the concerts had a guest conductor from 1985, starting withKlaus Tennstedt that year, and the 1987 production ofDon Giovanni was staged byMichael Hampe.[22]
The 1989 edition saw Karajan’s last appearance in an orchestra pit and his last with the Berlin Philharmonic: he resigned as their chief conductor after the festival, and died in July.Claudio Abbado was elected to succeed him in Berlin. However, the Salzburg Easter Festival functioned separately for a few years:Kurt Masur conducted in 1990 (exceptionally with theLeipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, of which he was chief conductor, and theVienna Philharmonic) andBernard Haitink in 1991 (again with the Berlin Philharmonic), beforeGeorg Solti served as artistic director in 1992 and 1993.[23] Only in 1994 did Abbado succeed to Karajan’s Salzburg role.
Stage directors invited under Abbado delivered more modern productions than Karajan’s traditional style, although the audience made the festival unfit for a full commitment toRegieoper. This was especially under the influence ofGerard Mortier, who had succeeded Karajan at the summer festival, and demanded to approve the productions which were to be performed, and to a large part funded, by his own festival. Although Abbado and Mortier had similar views (both modernists, both keen on thematic programming), they came in conflict when both festivals announced separate productions ofElektra for 1995, forcing Mortier to postpone his.[24][25] Abbado’s first edition featured a well-remembered production ofBoris Godunov byHerbert Wernicke, which drew political parables with Soviet history.[26] After achamber music concert was trialed in 1989, Abbado also created a chamber music andcontemporary music series, then calledKontrapunkte (“Counterpoints”), featuring members of the Berlin Philharmonic and guest soloists and singers, at theMozarteum. Also experimented were a lied recital in 1992, a children’s concert (Peter and the Wolf) in 1998, and a jazz concert withThomas Quasthoff in 2002. TheGustav Mahler Jugendorchester andMahler Chamber Orchestra, both founded by Abbado, were invited several times for a special concert.[27]
Simon Rattle succeeded Abbado in Berlin at the start of the 2002–2003 season, and directed his first Salzburg Easter Festival in 2003, with a production ofFidelio. In 2007–2010, the festival featured its second production of theRing, staged byStéphane Braunschweig and co-produced with theAix-en-Provence Festival on the occasion of the opening of the newGrand Théâtre de Provence; the operas were premiered by Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in Aix, and were performed in Salzburg the following Easter. Additions to the traditional programme under Rattle’s directorship included regular jazz concerts, and special performances of a baroque opera conducted byEmmanuelle Haïm, who had been his assistant (Marc-Antoine Charpentier’sDavid et Jonathas in 2004,George Frideric Handel’sLa resurrezione in 2009).
Abbado introduced the custom of givingconcert performances of the operas in Berlin before Salzburg as part of the preparation process, since they were no longer recorded in advance as in Karajan’s time, except for the 1994Boris Godunov and the 2001Falstaff. The concert performance opened a thematic series of performances in Berlin, for example Shakespeare in 1995–1996 withOtello or “Love and Death” in 1998–1999 withTristan and Isolde.[27] This was also in consideration to the Berlin audience, as the orchestra was until 2001 overseen and funded by the city-state government. The Berlin performances were moved after Easter in Rattle’s time.[28]
The actressIsabel Karajan, the conductor’s daughter, performed at the 2011 and 2015 festivals.
A financial and political scandal erupted in 2009–2010 when Michaël Dewitte, the general manager, and Klaus Kretschmer, the technical director of the summer festival, were accused of embezzling funds: Dewitte was accused of irregularities in up to 1,5 million euros of spendings,[29] and Kretschmer and a company to which he was linked were paid more than 2,400,000 euros over nine years for a number of services and consulting although the Easter Festival had a separate agreement with the summer festival supposed to cover it, and his managers had not authorized it.[30][31] Part of the sums involved consisted in excessive and discretionary spendings which appeared in company accounts, leading to accusations of improper supervision by government authorities, especially the state governorGabriele Burgstaller, who wasex officio the executive president of the foundation which supports the festival, and as such held the decision-making votes in the governing body of the company which organizes it. An investigation by the State Court of Audit pointed out a number of mismanagement issues as well as conflicts of interest between the company, the foundation, and the patrons association, which had no practical independence from each other.[32] Dewitte and Kretschmer, the latter severely injured during the scandal after a reported suicide attempt, were dismissed, and were later sentenced on criminal charges; they served time in prison, and had to pay more than 2 million euros in damage to the festival.[33] The company was restructured, with an increased involvement of the state and city governments, and the formation of a Board of Supervisors. Peter Alward, the former head ofEMI Classics, took over as general manager in 2010.
The Berlin Philharmonic received competing proposals to transfer their Easter residency to theFestspielhaus Baden-Baden, Germany’s largest opera house, which offered funds for four opera performances per edition and an expansion of the chamber music and educational programmes, while the Salzburg management stated that it had no realistic financial perspective to do so. They considered leaving Salzburg in 2009, with Simon Rattle’s support to the proposal, but a majority of the orchestra voted against the move.[34][35] Following the scandal, they announced in May 2011 that they would withdraw after the 2012 edition, and transfer to a newBaden-Baden Easter Festival, with broadly the same format.[36][37][38] A co-production deal had been announced in April 2011 with Madrid’sTeatro Real for the 2011 to 2013 productions, but fell through.
Shortly after the announcement of the withdrawal of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Salzburg Easter Festival announced that it would be maintained from 2013 with theStaatskapelle Dresden as their new resident orchestra, and its chief conductor,Christian Thielemann, an assistant to Karajan in his youth, as artistic director.[39] Several concerts of that period were also conducted byMyung-whun Chung, who was the principal guest conductor in Dresden, a position which does not exist with the Berlin Philharmonic. It was agreed that the operas would be co-produced with the DresdenSemperoper, where the Staatskapelle serves as pit orchestra. They were also filmed and released on DVD, until 2018.
Starting in 2013, as a consequence of the increased government involvement and in order to reach out to the local public, the festival programme was expanded with a children’s concert, the weekend before the festival, and a “Concert for Salzburg”, off-subscription and at lower prices. The composer and conductorPeter Ruzicka, who took over as general manager in 2015, also introduced acontemporarychamber opera, starting in 2017 withSalvatore Sciarrino’sLohengrin (1982), followed in 2018 byBruno Maderna’sSatyricon (1973), and in 2019 byThérèse, a commission toPhilipp Maintz.
In 2017, the festival celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special off-Ring “re-creation” of the 1967Die Walküre, with sets reconstructed by Jens Kilian fromGünther Schneider-Siemssen’s, although with a new staging byVera Nemirova, since the 1967 production was neither filmed nor documented.[40] Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic were back for a special concert, andGundula Janowitz andChrista Ludwig, who sang Sieglinde and Fricka at the 1967 festival, were guests of honours at a symposium about the production. A documentary,Karajan: The Maestro and His Festival, was made that year about the foundation of the festival and the memorial production.
Due to the spread of theCOVID-19 pandemic in Austria, the 2020 edition was cancelled, and the 2021 edition was postponed toAll Saints’ Day weekend as an “Easter Festival in Autumn”, and shortened with the cancellation ofTurandot, which had tentatively been reduced to a concert performance. The 2022 edition returned to the usual format.
In July 2020,Nikolaus Bachler, the former intendant of theBavarian State Opera in Munich, replaced Ruzicka as general manager.[41] He also succeeded Christian Thielemann as artistic director after the 2022 edition, and decided that his and the Staatskapelle Dresden’s residency would end that year. He initially announced that the festival would host a guest conductor and orchestra every year,[42] starting withAndris Nelsons and theLeipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 2023.
Changes brought about by Bachler to the festival format from 2023 include the addition performances ofcontemporary dance and ofelectronic music, both specially commissioned and performed at the nearbyFelsenreitschule. The children’s concert, chamber opera, and Concert for Salzburg were not maintained. Each edition was given a theme, starting withRichard Wagner in 2023: on the programme wasTannhäuser, the only major Wagner opera never yet performed at the festival, and the dance and electronic music commissions were based on his works. The theme was “theMediterranean South — with Italy at its heart” for 2024,[43] and “Wounds and Wounders” for 2025.[44]
In January 2023, the festival announced that the Berlin Philharmonic would return as resident orchestra from 2026, with its chief conductorKirill Petrenko, after a final edition in Baden-Baden in 2025.[45][46][47] Bachler, who remains artistic director, had previously hired Petrenko at theVienna Volksoper and at the Bavarian State Opera; there had been speculations, when his appointment had been announced, that this was a way to facilitate the return of the Berlin Philharmonic.[41]
A newRing, the third in the festival’s history, staged byKirill Serebrennikov, was announced for 2026 to 2030, withArnold Schoenberg’sMoses und Aron between its second and third part in 2028.[48] TheRing is to be staged at theFelsenreitschule, used for the first time for the main opera of the Easter Festival.[49]
The festival is held over the extended week beforeEaster (Holy Week), beginning onPalm Sunday or the day before, and ending onEaster Monday.
Since its early years, the main programme has been structured in two identical cycles each with one opera performance, two orchestral concerts, and one choral concert. For a long time, all ticket were sold in subscription for a full cycle to the members of the Association of Patrons; tickets for a single performance are nowadays put on sale after the subscription period. The opera performances are usually on the first and last night; there has sometimes been an off-cycle third one. The chamber music series introduced by Claudio Abbado in the 1990s has become a permanent part of the festival programme. Successive directors have experimented with additional types of performance.
All opera performance and orchestral and choral concerts take place at theGrand Festival Theatre, and the chamber music concerts are usually at theMozarteum. Other venues over the city have been used since the 2000s.
The festival is managed as aprivate liability company (GmbH), theOsterfestspiele Salzburg GmbH (until 2010Osterfestspiel Gesellschaft mbH Salzburg), formed on 10 March 1966.[50] Since a restructuring carried out after the2009–2010 scandal, the company is owned by theStiftung Herbert von Karajan Osterfestspiele Salzburg (25%), theState of Salzburg (20%), theCity of Salzburg (20%), the SalzburgerLand Tourismus regional tourist information centre (20%), and the Association of Patrons (15%).[51]
TheStiftung Herbert von Karajan Osterfestspiele Salzburg (until 2018Herbert-von-Karajan-Osterfestspiel-Stiftung) is a foundation created by Herbert von Karajan in 1967 to support the festival and other activities.[52][note 2] Until the 2010 restructuring, it owned 98% of the GmbH; the remaining 2% were initially owned by Karajan’s childhood friend Erich Aigner, who had transferred his shares to his son Christoph Aicher.[51] His widowEliette von Karajan, who was chairwoman of the foundation until 2019, became honorary chairwoman in 2020, and was replaced on the board by their daughtersIsabel and Arabel.[53]
The GmbH had a yearly budget of between 4 and 6 million euros as of the 2000s.[54] Most of the revenues are from ticket sales, which reached 2.5 to 3 million euros in the 2000s (13,500 to 16,500 sold per edition); the Association of Patrons; and commercial sponsors. The festival worked withoutgovernment subsidies until 1996,[33] and remains largely self-sufficient: it has since received subsidies from the state and city governments and the stateTourismusförderungsfonds, which amounted to €375,000 (6,1% of its budget) in 2007–2008.[55]
The Association of Patrons of the Easter Festival in Salzburg (Verein der Förderer der Osterfestspiele in Salzburg) was designed to levy the high interest generated by the festival as a source of revenue: access to tickets is guaranteed to the 2,500 members of the association, who pay a contribution of 300 euros per year (50 euros for young people), and enjoy priority booking for a subscription to an entire cycle. For many years, seats were in such high demand that membership was the only way to obtain them, despite their price; tickets left unsold are nowadays put on sale at a later date to the general public. Members of the association have also been thanked with such perks as entry to public rehearsals and special recordings.[56][3][57] Patrons associations were also created in Germany, in the United Kingdom, and in the United States.
The festival frequently relies on operaco-productions, since it would otherwise need to fund an entirely new show for two or three performances. From mid-1980s until the mid-2000s, this was often with the (summertime)Salzburg Festival. Some productions were also sent on tour in Japan.[58]
The GmbH is independent from the Salzburg Festival Fund (Salzburger Festspielfonds), the body which organizes the summer festival and theSalzburg Whitsun Festival. They have a partnership agreement under which the Easter Festival uses the staff, technical facilities, set and costume workshops, and musical instruments of the summer festival.[59]
In the 1990s,Eliette von Karajan, the conductor’s widow, created aprix Eliette von Karajan reflecting her commitment to the arts, and her practice of painting as a hobby.[24] A Salzburg Easter Festival Literary Prize (Italian:Premio di Letteratura Festival di Pasqua di Salisburgo) was also created as part of the Nonino prizes, funded by theNonino grappa distillery.[60]
In 2015, Eliette von Karajan created aHerbert von Karajan Prize (Herbert-von-Karajan-Preis), to be granted every year to “a musician whose exceptional artistic achievements have found global recognition”, starting in 2017 on the occasion of the festival’s 50th anniversary. It is awarded during the festival, and comes with a grant of €50,000.[61]
As for the summer festival, opera performances and many concerts were broadcast live on the radio by theÖsterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF). Some recordings have been released commercially.
Some productions have also been filmed for commercial release. The 1986Don Carlo and 1987Don Giovanni (summer revival) were filmed by Herbert von Karajan’s company Telemondial, the catalogue of which was bought and released bySony Classical. Most productions during Christian Thielemann’s direction were filmed and released on DVD byUnitel.
… selbstbesetzt, selbstfinanziert, selbstinszeniert, selbstdirigiert — daß Wagner das Stück komponierte, wirkt fast wie ein Schönheitsfehler.
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