Founded by composer Richard Strauss, poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and director Max Reinhardt, the Salzburg Festival was born on August 22, 1920. Nestled in the princely baroque town of Salzburg, far from the everyday bustle of the big cities, the Salzburg Festival was immediately recognized as a major destination by the world’s foremost directors and artists. Visitors from 63 countries gather every summer to enjoy the nearly 180 performances—operatic, symphonic, solo, chamber, and dramatic—spanning six weeks in the numerous concert halls and theaters, including the legendary Felsenreitschule (summer riding school) and the Grosses Festspielhaus.

Having now entered the 21st century, maintaining the excellence established from its infancy, the Salzburg Festival remains the cutting-edge laboratory of artistic development that it was on its founding day. As of 2006, the “Haus fuer Mozart” will open its doors as the world’s most acoustically pleasing environment to experience Mozart’s music, a fitting tribute to the town’s most famous son.

The Kiss of Love and Death

Un bacio... ancora un bacio
Giuseppe Verdi, Otello

Der Liebeskuß ist die erste Empfindung des Todes …
Richard Wagner to Cosima, 15. August 1869

“For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol”, the Bible’s Song of Solomon says (8:6). Death and love, Eros and Hades (in the bible: Sheol) are equally powerful adversaries. They fight each other – just as Don Giovanni resists the Commendatore returning from the other world and the hell that threatens to devour him: a tremendous agon between Eros and Thanatos in the last moments of the “dissoluto punito”…Read whole article here.

Nocturnal Side of Reason (July 27–August 31)

This is a strange title for the Salzburg Festival in 2007. At the end of Così fan tutte, after the terrible experiment on the open heart, the two couples allow themselves to be guided by reason, "da ragione guidar si fa", as that is the solution. No more emotional confusion, no dramas of jealousy, no aggrieved souls. Many operas, not only those by Mozart, end with this kind of appeal to reason; lovers, those who stammer about longing, as well as kings and rulers are overwhelmed by this clear moment of insight into reasonable, indeed moral action. "Che al primo impero la ragione in me ritorni"... is a verse from Mitridate. That's how Amadé approached us last year. Is reason therefore the panacea that now guides us forwards, accompanying us across the black, nocturnal, immense depths of our soul? "The human being is an abyss, when one looks inside", stammered the hunted Woyzeck about 45 years after Mozart's death. Read whole article here.

-Jürgen Flimm, Artistic Director