SALZBURG.- Austria went into lockdown recently to counter a record number of coronavirus cases. But in Salzburg, where the surge has been sharp, there are plans for a brighter future.
On Friday the Salzburg Festival, classical music and operas most storied annual event, announced its 2022 summer season back to pre-pandemic scale, with more than 200 events over six weeks beginning July 18.
A double bill of Bartoks Bluebeards Castle and Orffs rarely performed De Temporum Fine Comoedia will be staged by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Teodor Currentzis. Soprano Asmik Grigorian will star in all three one-acts of Puccinis Il Trittico. Director Barrie Kosky and conductor Jakub Hrusa will collaborate on Janaceks Kata Kabanova.
Cecilia Bartoli will take the main role in Rossinis Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and Shirin Neshats 2017 production of Verdis Aida and Lydia Steiers 2018 staging of Mozarts Die Zauberflöte will get return engagements. There is a rich lineup of spoken drama, orchestra concerts many featuring the festivals house band, the Vienna Philharmonic and recitals, including the usual enviable array of pianists.
The season will be the first under Kristina Hammer, the festivals new president, whose appointment was announced Nov. 24. A marketing and communications specialist, Hammer follows Helga Rabl-Stadlers quarter-century tenure, and she joins artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser and finance director Lukas Crepaz in a triumvirate that will continue to negotiate the pandemic, as well as oversee a major renovation of the festivals theaters.
Hammers appointment is a conscious step taken by the board in order to further internationalize the Salzburg Festival, Wilfried Haslauer Jr., the regions governor, said in a statement.
Buoyed by government subsidies and sponsorship deals, Salzburg has been able to weather the pandemic, putting on a fairly robust season in 2020 for limited audiences and returning to something akin to normal in 2021. The commemoration of the centennial of the festival, which was established in 1920, ended up being spread over the past two years.
The Overture Spirituelle, a week or so of events originally instituted to draw audiences in the quiet period before the operas are running in earnest, comes into its own next summer as truly a festival in the festival, Hinterhäuser said in an interview.
Some distinguished Overture ensembles include Currentzis MusicAeterna; Klangforum Wien; John Eliot Gardiners Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists; the Tallis Scholars; and Messiah forces led by Jordi Savall. Their performances lead up to the premiere of Bluebeard and De Temporum Fine Comoedia a grand, frantically apocalyptic oratorio unveiled at Salzburg in 1973 and a concert version of Wolfgang Rihms 1979 chamber opera Jakob Lenz. (Among the other highlights: Actress Isabelle Huppert takes the meaty spoken title role in Honeggers oratorio Jeanne dArc au Bûcher.)
Of the six staged operas, two are revivals, and a third (Barbiere) will have premiered in June at the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, which Bartoli directs. This is an unusually high percentage of rehashes for a festival that prides itself on its ambitious slate of new productions. But Hinterhäuser insisted that both the Aida and Die Zauberflöte would be substantially rethought versions of shows that were not wholly successful in their original incarnations.
Im convinced it is the right thing artistically, and from the economic side, he said.
Among the Vienna Philharmonics concerts is an ambitious juxtaposition, led by Daniel Barenboim, of the second acts of Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila and Wagners Parsifal, with Elina Garanca, Brandon Jovanovich and Michael Volle singing in both. Amid a broad reevaluation of touring as the pandemic wears on, the only American ensemble scheduled to appear is the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck, on the final day of the festival, Aug. 31.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.