Salzburg Festival Summer 2024
Salzburg Festival Summer 2024: The festival has a long and established history that dates back to 1920 and has been staged every year since. Having grown in popularity over the years, the modern-day event is now held over six weeks during the summer. It puts on a packed programme of opera, drama and concerts in venues across the city.
The Salzburg Festival is one of the world’s most important festivals for opera, music and drama. The wide-ranging program includes classics and world-famous artists as well as a varied program for young people.
The Salzburg Festival, covering 44 days, presents a varied programme with 172 performances held in 15 venues. Opera highlights include Prokofiev’s The Gambler, Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Drama, besides a new production of Everyman [Jedermann], presents performances based on plays by Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Under the motto “Et exspecto”, the 2024 Ouverture Spirituelle focuses on the comfort of hope and the uncertainty of expectation.
You can roughly divide the performances into three areas:
- Opera ( Fri 26 July – Sun 4 August )
The brilliant performances at the Large Festival Hall are riddled with stars of the scene.
It’s a music festival that embraces the great composers and authors of the last centuries.
The 2024 opera productions centre on people in revolt. Different aspects of revolutionary characters are shown in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Prokofiev’s The Gambler, Weinberg’s The Idiot, and Mozart’s Don Giovanni and La Clemenza di Tito. Five operas will also be presented in concert performance.
Production overview of Salzburg Festival
Based on an idea by Stefan Zweig, Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, his final work for the stage, circles around a problem that is as old as the genre of opera itself: the relationship between words and music. Set in Paris around 1775, the plot combines an aesthetic debate with the rivalry between the poet Olivier and the musician Flamand, who are both wooing Countess Madeleine. Strauss regarded this highly.
- Drama
In three focal areas, Marina Davydova, the new Director of Drama, places human beings in relation to transcendence, their own history and their bodies. She takes texts based on Stefan Zweig, Thomas Mann, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and integrates dance into the drama. The new production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann (the play at the heart of the Festival’s founding) is awaited with keen interest – particularly in Philipp Hochmair in the title role and Deleila Piasko as his paramour. The programme also features a performative discussion with an artificial intelligence named Morpheus, and a reading by Michael Maertens from letters written by Alexei Navalny from prison.
- Concert
The 2024 concert programme is marked by major anniversary celebrations. The “Time with…” series is devoted to Arnold Schoenberg, whose 150th birthday falls in 2024. The Vienna Philharmonic performs five concerts, conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, Andris Nelsons, Riccardo Muti, Gustavo Dudamel and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Visiting ensembles in the Guest Orchestra series include the Orchester Utopia, Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Collegium Vocale 1704, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Berliner Philharmonic, Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Further items on the Summer 2024 programme are the “Ouverture Spirituelle”, Mozart Matinees, lieder recitals, chamber and church concerts.
“jung & jede*r” – The Salzburg Festival youth programme
The youth programme features 53 performances ranging from music theatre to drama, interactions and Young Art, with in-depth opportunities for communication. 2024 will also see “Festival mentoring”, where experienced Festival visitors introduce young adults to the world of the Festival. In addition, the opera camps for children and young people aged 9 – 17 enjoy great popularity.
