‘Mythic’ Salzburg Festival celebrates 90th birthday

The curtain rises this Sunday on the Salzburg Festival, that ultra-swank summer extravaganza of high-end entertainment which fetes its 90th anniversary this year.

“Where God and Man Collide” is the magniloquent motto for the month-long series of concerts, operas and plays, where tickets cost anything up to 370 euros (470 dollars).

This year’s theme is ‘myths’, and the list of operatic premieres includes new productions of Richard Strauss’s ‘Elektra’, Gluck’s ‘Orfeo ed Euridice’ and a brand-new work by contemporary German composer Wolfgang Rihm, ‘Dionysos’.

Mythology also features among the spoken-theatre productions, which include Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ in a new translation by German director Peter Stein and ‘Phedre’ by Jean Racine.

Salzburg traditionally opens with the play ‘Everyman’ by the festival’s co-founder, Austrian poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

It has always been a swish affair since Hofmannsthal founded it in 1920 with theatre director Max Reinhardt, composer Richard Strauss, set designer Alfred Roller and opera conductor Franz Schalk.

But legendary conductor, Salzburg’s own Herbert von Karajan, helped turn it into the world’s most exclusive summer festival, imposing sky-high ticket prices.

The festival runs from July 25 until August 30.

AFP