Venues of the Salzburg Festival

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Domplatz with the grandstands

The venues of the Salzburg Festival are now spread across the entire city of Salzburg . It is played and sung - following the intention of the founding fathers of the Festival Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Max Reinhardt and Richard Strauss - in a wide variety of places: in churches and castles, in historical squares, in the Landestheater and the three festival halls, in the Mozarteum , the puppet theater, the ice arena and the former city cinema. The old salt pans in the neighboring town of Hallein on the Pernerinsel have also been the venue for the festival since 1992 .

"The whole city is a stage"

Map of the venues of the Salzburg Festival.png

The Salzburg Festival was founded after the First World War under adverse circumstances by five men whose thinking was still rooted in the tradition of the multicultural Danube monarchy and who wanted to counter the geographical narrowness of the new state of Austria with cultural breadth and global significance: from Composer Richard Strauss , the Viennese court opera director Franz Schalk , the set designer Alfred Roller , the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the director Max Reinhardt . The search for the universally valid in culture and thinking was at the beginning of the festival - and shapes the program to this day. Hofmannsthal was the ideologist of the project, value conservative and urbane at the same time. As a friend of the superlative, he only wanted to see the noble, the high and the beautiful anchored in Salzburg. Max Reinhardt was the pragmatist who, in his search for effect and catharsis, looked for the appropriate rooms for his games and opened a number of venues for the company that still function today, attracting audiences and conveying a mood.

“The whole city is a stage” is a sentence by Reinhardt, which he implemented in Salzburg as an example. His plans for a festival theater in Hellbrunn, conceived as a “peace work” as early as the First World War, as a contrast to the “world fire”, failed. In Hofmannsthal he found an ally who, in his first call for the festival schedule in 1919, took a stand for the renewal of a “Europeanism that fulfilled and illuminated the period from 1750 to 1850”.

Today there are two festival districts on this side and on the other side of the Salzach . The three festival halls stand on the rock face of the fortress mountain, in the immediate vicinity of the Domplatz as a traditional venue for everyone, and the three baroque churches that are regularly used by the festival. On the other side of the Salzach are the Wilhelminian style buildings of the Salzburg State Theater and the Mozarteum , both of which are considered architectural and acoustic jewels of their era.

Cathedral Square

Open-air stage on the cathedral square

The first venue of the Salzburg Festival was and still is today - for everyone - performances in good weather - the Domplatz . Equipped with a dismantled open-air stage with currently 2,544 seats during the festival season, the baroque square and the church facade provide the backdrop for the game about the dying of the rich man . When Hugo von Hofmannsthal had doubts about the financial viability in 1919, Max Reinhardt replied : “Somehow will Finding the money is a minor matter. I am now thinking primarily of the treasures that we already have: a great poetry, a setting that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. "

Reinhardt was supposed to be right. Hofmannsthal's play Jedermann - premiered by Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 in a circus tent - has been associated with the Salzburg Festival since the beginning and is a crowd puller that is regularly sold out. The Jedermann surpluses cross-subsidize the Salzburg opera business. The spectators of the thirteen Jedermann performances in the 2012 season alone , over 31,000, roughly correspond to the number of regular paying spectators at the entire Wiener Festwochen .

Only during the time of National Socialism in Austria from 1938 to 1944 was the arch-Catholic morality not allowed to be performed because the author had Jewish ancestors.

In bad weather, the move to the Great Festival Hall takes place , whereby the 200 standing places that are available on Domplatz are returned, but most of the seats are relocated. Since there are fewer seats available in the large festival hall with 2,179 seats than the open-air stage offers, spectators are also placed on chairs to the left and right of the panoramic stage. Occasionally, the cathedral square is also used for concerts during the festival - around 1950 for the legendary return of the Trapp family from exile or in 2012 for two opera air benefit concerts with Plácido Domingo and Anna Netrebko . During the Christmas season traditionally the place Christmas Market on Cathedral Square held outside the festival season, the Everyman stands may, exceptionally and for popular music concerts - for example, by Hubert von Goisern - be used.

Mozarteum

Great hall of the Mozarteum

On Mozart's 100th birthday in 1856, a Mozart building association was founded in Salzburg with the aim of building a music school with a library , archive and concert hall dedicated to the genius loci . The Mozarteum was first housed in the Kapellhaus in Sigmund-Haffner-Gasse, and later in the Old University. It was not until 1901 that plans for a house of their own were pursued with vigor. In 1907 the association acquired the villa of the former interior minister Josef von Lasser in Schwarzstrasse. In 1909 an ideas competition was announced, in which 64 architects from home and abroad took part. The renovation took place between 1910 and 1914 according to plans by the award winner Richard Berndl - in the style of Munich late historicism . The quite elegant architecture is of course a potpourri of the local baroque tradition, Art Nouveau and local Salzburg architecture. The foundation stone was laid on August 6, 1910 by the chamber singer Lilli Lehmann .

The building complex is owned by the International Mozarteum Foundation , which has been cooperating closely with the Salzburg Festival since 1921 . The great hall of the Mozarteum with 800 seats has been one of the main venues for concerts since the festival was founded and is ideal for chamber music and smaller orchestras. Have become legendary taking place on Saturday and Sunday mornings, by Bernhard Paumgartner launched, Mozart Matinees . In addition, a series of song recitals as well as soloist , chamber and orchestral concerts are held in the Mozarteum every year, as well as readings and theater productions on a case-by-case basis - such as The Gate and Death as the first festival performance after the end of World War II and the world premiere of Hochhuth's Death in 1977 Jägers with Curd Jürgens .

State Theater

The Salzburg State Theater around 1900
Hermann Helmer and Ferdinand Fellner

The Salzburg State Theater with 697 seats was built from 1892 to 1893 by the Viennese architects Fellner & Helmer in the neo-baroque style, after the Ballhaus - built by Prince Archbishop Paris von Lodron in 1625 - and, since 1775 - by Prince Archbishop Hieronymus Franz Josef von Colloredo- Mannsfeld commissioned - "Prince Archbishop's Court Theater". In 1788 the house was rebuilt because it was too small; from 1803 it was called the Electoral Theater , from 1808 the Imperial-Royal National Theater , from 1810 the “Royal National Theater”. In 1892 the theater had to be demolished due to safety deficiencies.

The new house was opened in 1893 - as the Neues Stadttheater - in the presence of Archduke Ludwig Viktor with Mozart's Titus overture, a prologue by Josef Kollmenn and Ludwig Fulda's play “The Talisman”. The then 20-year-old Max Reinhardt took part - in his first engagement - as an actor in the opening performance. The house was renovated in 1924, rebuilt from 1938 to 1939, and extensively renovated in 2003 and 2004.

The festival has been using the house since 1921. Richard Strauss conducted - as the festival's very first opera performance - Don Giovanni there in 1922 in a production by Hans Breuer and a stage design by Alfred Roller . Since the Festspielhaus , inaugurated in 1925 - two years later - was also adapted for opera performances, most of the opera performances have taken place there. The Landestheater was then mainly used for spoken theater, but occasionally also for operas with a smaller cast - for example, 1939 to 1957 for Die Entführung aus dem Serail , conducted by Karl Böhm and Felix Prohaska , in the post-war period for early Mozart operas , for Britten , Haydn , Donizetti , as well as for a number of world premieres ( Boris Blacher , Helmut Eder , Rolf Liebermann and Frank Martin , see opera productions of the Salzburg Festival ).

Since the 1930s, the focus of the festival productions in the Landestheater has been drama - in particular the Austrian stage work from Grillparzer to Raimund and Nestroy to Schnitzler , Hofmannsthal and Horváth , as well as German classical music, Shakespeare and important contemporary authors. The Annalen record five world premieres by Thomas Bernhard , as well as others by Botho Strauss , Christoph Ransmayr , Roland Schimmelpfennig and Händl Klaus . In addition, readings are held regularly during the festival in the Landestheater.

Festival halls

The Faistau foyer forms the entrance to the Felsenreitschule and the House for Mozart

The three venues built especially for the Salzburg Festival are the Haus für Mozart (1925), the Felsenreitschule (1926) and the Great Festival Hall (1960). The three houses are right next to each other, all with access from Hofstallgasse .

First plans for the construction of a festival hall on the Mönchsberg in Salzburg by the Viennese architects Hermann Helmer and Ferdinand Fellner the Elder. J. , who had already built the State Theater , did not get beyond the planning stage.

In the early 1920s, the Berlin architect Hans Poelzig worked out specific plans for a festival hall with 4,000 seats in the park of Hellbrunn Palace - in the form of a huge stalactite cave . However, the project did not get beyond the laying of the foundation stone - Richard Strauss performed the symbolic three hammer blows, but no more stone was to follow.

The Salzburg festival complex with the three festival halls was finally gradually established on the site of the former prince-archbishop's stables and riding schools. The stables were built under Archbishop Wolf Dietrich between 1606 and 1607 and a winter riding school was added in 1662 . In the 19th century, the complex between Hofstallgasse and Mönchsberg served as a kk cavalry barracks until it was finally taken over by the Salzburg Festival from 1925.

The entrance to the Haus für Mozart and the Felsenreitschule takes place today - as it was between 1926 and 1937 - through the Faistauer foyer. The Salzburg painter and his assistants had painted the foyer of the festival hall in just forty days, around 350 square meters with over 200 figures. In 1938 the frescoes were removed by the National Socialists, some of them willfully destroyed. They could only be reattached in 1956 and were ceremoniously presented to the public in 2006 after a thorough restoration. Today the entrance area to the Faistauer foyer also houses the festival shop, where tickets, program books and souvenirs can be bought.

House for Mozart

House for Mozart
Former small winter riding school, today Karl-Böhm-Saal and break room for Felsenreitschule and house for Mozart
New staircase with a golden wall
Jakob Adlhart's masks in the entrance
Toscanini courtyard with outside organ and six concrete sculptures by Jakob Adlhart
Bronze reliefs by Josef Zenzmaier

When it became apparent that the construction of a festival stage in Hellbrunn could not be realized, parts of the Hofstall barracks were redesigned as a theater hall with a mystery stage at the instigation of Max Reinhardt in 1925 - under the direction of the Salzburg state curator Eduard Hütter . After only four months of construction , the provisional festival hall with Max Reinhardt's production of Hofmannsthal's Salzburg World Theater was opened on August 13, 1925 on the site of the former Great Winter Riding School , which had been adapted as the Imperial and Royal Cavalry Riding Hall in 1842 .

In the first fifteen years of its existence, the Festspielhaus was certainly the most frequently converted theater building in the world. As early as 1926 the house was rebuilt for the first time by the Salzburg architect and set designer Clemens Holzmeister and was now also available as an alternative accommodation for everyone in bad weather.

At the same time, the former Small Winter Riding School , built in 1662 by Prince Archbishop Guidobald von Thun and Hohenstein , was adapted as a break room for the Festival Hall and Felsenreitschule. During the renovation, the conglomerate rock of Mönchsberg was exposed at the southern end of the hall , and the almost 600 square meter ceiling fresco by the Salzburg court painter Michael Rottmayr and his pupil Christoph Lederwasch was restored. The painting is one of the largest of its kind in Central Europe and depicts cavalry attacks on Turkish dolls, as stabbing the Turkish head was part of cavalry training in the 17th century. Holzmeister also designed a wrought iron fender, in which the determination of the room by Landeswappen , Bishop hat , Lyra , horseshoe , treble clef and theater masks are shown symbolically. The theatrical room with its baroque stone balustrade and heavy oak parquet was henceforth called the city hall and - after the death of the important festival conductor - renamed the Karl Böhm hall . In 1976 the ceiling fresco was restored again in the course of the roof truss renewal.

In 1927 new adaptations were made, this time in the stage area: a ramp curtain was attached, the orchestra pit was enlarged, and the stage technology was improved. Now operas could also be played. Beethoven's Fidelio is the first opera to be performed in the Festspielhaus. Lothar Wallerstein's production - in Holzmeister's stage sets - is successful and remains on the program of the festival until 1938.

In 1937 it was rebuilt again - again by Clemens Holzmeister, this time advised by Arturo Toscanini , who then also directed the reopening. The auditorium was rotated 180 degrees, which also made it necessary to add a stage. Governor Franz Rehrl , a committed sponsor of the festival, had his own birthplace demolished to make room for it. The stage dimensions of the Festspielhaus are now identical to those of the Vienna State Opera , which enables the exchange of decorations. On the occasion of Arturo Toscanini's 70th birthday, the place behind the stage was renamed Toscanini-Hof and memorial plaques for Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Anton Faistauer were placed in the vestibule to the Faistauer foyer . However, both should only remain for a year.

While the previous renovations were justified in terms of architecture and performance, the renovations in 1938 and 1939 were made for political reasons. After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, the frescoes by Anton Faistauer , the mosaics by Anton Kolig and the sculptures by Jakob Adlhart were considered degenerate art , Clemens Holzmeister was no longer politically opportune, and the "Reich set designer" Benno von Arent was commissioned to to adapt the festival hall to the Nazi taste. He replaced the wood paneling with a plaster ceiling decorated with gold. The reopening of the house in 1939 with the Rosenkavalier by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss represented a farce, as the Nazis had taken Hofmannsthal's Jedermann from the festival program last year - because of his Jewish ancestors - and the lyricist was not allowed to be mentioned on the program. The production came from Lothar Wallerstein , who was already in exile in the Netherlands and who had to flee again from the Nazis to the USA in 1940.

From 1960 to 1962 the building was known as the Altes Festspielhaus , as the New Festspielhaus opened next door in 1960 . The new building had tied up all financial resources at the end of the 1950s, so that the urgently needed renovation had to be postponed to 1962 and 1963. The unfavorable visual and acoustic conditions should be improved. The Salzburg architects Hans Hofmann and Erich Engels gave the hall the shape it was to retain until 2004: plaster of paris and gold from the Nazi era gave way to a simple room design in light wood. After the renovation, the decision was made to name it Kleines Festspielhaus , and the new house next door became the Great Festival Hall .

Even after the recent renovation, the house was not very popular, but the Mozart performances under Karl Böhm , Ferenc Fricsay , Nikolaus Harnoncourt , Lorin Maazel , Zubin Mehta , Seiji Ozawa , Leif Segerstam , Georg Solti and Horst Stein were all the more popular. Exemplary performances in the small (modest) house provided the counterpoint to Karajan's pompous productions in the large house next door for many years. Soon there were new considerations for a new adaptation and in 1978 Clemens Holzmeister presented plans which he later revised. Holzmeister wanted to enable the Felsenreitschule and the Small Festival Hall to be played at the same time . Despite Herbert von Karajan's intercession , the project was not carried out.

A radical renovation of the long, tubular building, which was basically never predestined as a theater building, did not take place until September 2003. A house for Mozart should also offer excellent acoustics and the best visibility, an intimate atmosphere and as many seats as possible. Completion was scheduled for 2006, the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birthday. The order went to the Holzmeister student Wilhelm Holzbauer and the Luxembourg architect François Valentiny , who widened, shortened and lowered the auditorium. The foyers and break rooms were dramatically redesigned - on the one hand by glass spanning floors, which opened up transparency and new lines of sight, and on the other hand by a 17 meter high gilded lamella wall designed by Michael Hammers , through the openings of which a Mozart head made of crystals can be seen. The previously inaccessible terrace in front of the hall building was opened to the public and a lounge with tapestries, fine woods and a view of the old town was set up on the roof.

The proportions of the Holzmeister'sche external facade from 1924/37 have largely been preserved, admittedly supplemented by three huge bronze reliefs by the Salzburg sculptor Josef Zenzmaier above the hall exits. They show scenes from Mozart's operas Le nozze di Figaro , Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute . The stone masks by Jakob Adlhart (see picture) are now clearly visible in front of the entrance - under a new, widely projecting concrete roof lined with gold leaf.

Opening performances after the renovations:

A large iron gate opens from the back stage of the house into the Toscanini courtyard. The concrete reliefs on the left and right of it, "Mask-Holding Genii", were tapped in 1938, but were reconstructed in 1979 by their creator Jakob Adlhart. Above this is an outside organ that was used in the bad weather performances of Jedermann before the Great Festival Hall was built. After having been silent for decades, it was restored from donations and has been able to sound again since July 2012.

The Haus für Mozart has 1,580 spectator seats, divided into 1,495 seats and 85 standing places. Although a wild potpourri of the opulent 17th century, architecture, sculpture and frescoes from the 1920s, as well as stylish and flavourful designs from the turn of the millennium, the first Salzburg Festival Hall is now a practical and comfortable theater and concert building. It is not only used in the summer from the festival, but also during the season for opera productions - the Salzburg State Theater , the Whitsun Festival or the Mozart Week - and for concerts and conferences. Even before the last renovations - in 1951 - Zarah Leander made a guest appearance with the Heinz Sandauer band in the Festspielhaus. The audience is said to have been so enthusiastic that they could only be persuaded to leave the hall by switching off the hall lights. Also in 1951 Hitler's Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht gave a lecture in the Festspielhaus, protesting listeners were brutally pushed out of the hall. In March 2012, Andreas Gergen staged an unconventional Traviata in the Haus für Mozart (as a production of the Landestheater) and earned heavy applause from the audience and critics.

Felsenreitschule

Felsenreitschule
Coat of arms of Johann Ernst von Thun
stage

The Felsenreitschule is the most idiosyncratic theater building at the Salzburg Festival, difficult to play, loved (because of its appearance and atmosphere) and hated (because of the problematic acoustics). In the first half of the 17th century, conglomerates were broken here for the construction of the cathedral. In 1693, the former quarry was converted into a summer riding school under Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun , according to plans by the baroque master builder Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach with 96 spectator boxes cut into the Mönchsberg.

The beginning of the first festival in 1920 with Jedermann almost took place in the Felsenreitschule, before Reinhardt and Hofmannsthal decided on Domplatz . For the 1921 Festival, the Festspielhaus community wanted the summer riding school to be completely roofed over without supports. The writer and cultural critic Josef August Lux fought against the "planned assassination attempt" - because a continuous roof would have torn the "artistically ennobled natural wall with the great outdoors, the open sky". The Federal Monuments Office refused to give its consent.

In 1926 Max Reinhardt and Goldoni's servant of two gentlemen established what was then simply a riding school as a parody of a festival stage, as a poor theater: it was played on a pawlatschen stage , the floor was made of tamped earth, the audience on wooden benches. The setting corresponded very well to the folk piece from the suburbs, the cast was exquisite - Josef Danegger , Nora Gregor , Harald Kreutzberg , Friedrich Kühne , Dagny Servaes , Hans , Helene , Hermann and Hugo Thimig and, as the first supervisor, Hans Moser , the entrance fees were high . The State Theater acted as an alternative accommodation in bad weather.

For Reinhardt's epoch-making staging of Faust , which was shown in the Felsenreitschule from 1933 to 1937 , Clemens Holzmeister created a veritable Faust city . Again it was a luxury line-up: Ewald Balser as Faust, Paula Wessely as Gretchen, Max Pallenberg , Raoul Aslan , Franz Schafheitlin and Werner Krauss alternated as Mephisto . Even smaller roles were prominently cast - like the witch with Frieda Richard and the evil spirit with Reinhardt's wife, Helene Thimig . In 1948 Gluck's first opera was Orfeo ed Euridice , conducted by Herbert von Karajan and staged by Oscar Fritz Schuh with a set by Caspar Neher .

Clemens Holzmeister , the tireless festival architect, constantly rebuilt, expanded and closed the space between 1926 and 1970 - interrupted by the Nazi regime. The stage still covers the entire area of ​​the former riding school and was roofed over in the first years in the form of a barrack tent tarpaulin construction. The authorities had refused a permanent roof in 1921, but agreed to a provisional closure in rainy weather. In 1934, Holzmeister roofed over the auditorium on the occasion of the Faust production and since his last upgrade in the years 1968 to 1970 only the stage area - a third of the original courtyard area - can be opened. The former Pawlatschentheater was gradually given a lower stage , an orchestra pit , a weatherproof roll-top roof, a spotlight ramp , a real grandstand with upholstered seats and a set depot . In 2004 and 2005 the grandstand was redesigned to be shell-shaped. With Holzmeister's coffered ceiling and wooden wall cladding, the auditorium retained a touch of the temporary until the 2010 summer festival.

Felsenreitschule

The unusual theater building represents the actual nucleus of the Salzburg festival district. With 1,412 seats and 25 standing places, the smallest of the three festival halls, the Felsenreitschule is ideal for some works - for example Mozart's Titus , Verdi's Macbeth or Janáček's Jenůfa - excellent, but hardly for others or not. Since the 1960s, the Magic Flute has been commuting regularly between the Großer Haus and the Felsenreitschule, where the legendary Ponnelle production with James Levine was shown every year between 1978 and 1986 . Many premieres and premieres have taken place here, including by Luciano Berio , Hans Werner Henze , Olivier Messiaen , Luigi Nono and Carl Orff .

But spoken theater also repeatedly takes possession of the impressive stone backdrop, especially for Shakespeare and antiquity. In 1973 and 1974 Giorgio Strahler left in his Heinrich VI. -Collage - under the title The Game of the Mighty - appear en masse on two evenings in a row: the ladies Jonasson and Emo , the gentlemen Böckmann , Boysen , Frey , Hauer-Riedl , Heltau , Hoffmann , von Langheim , Paryla , Quadflieg , Seeböck , Spalinger and Westphal . In 1986 Klaus Michael Grüber directed Aeschylus' Prometheus, tied up with Bruno Ganz in the title role, Angela Winkler , Branko Samarovski , Udo Samel and Peter Simonischek . And in the early 1990s, the new artistic director Gerard Mortier renounced opera productions in the Felsenreitschule - in favor of the Roman dramas Julius Caesar , Coriolan as well as Antonius and Cleopatra , directed by theater directors Peter Stein and Deborah Warner . These productions enjoyed the highest audiences. Concerts also take place regularly in the Felsenreitschule, usually with an orchestra, mostly with works by contemporary composers.

In the winter of 2010/2011, the Salzburg architecture office HALLE 1 equipped the venue with new acoustic walls, a new ceiling and a new sliding roof. The flat pitch of the monopitch roof leaves the silhouette untouched. As before, the Haus für Mozart and the Felsenreitschule cannot be used at the same time - due to shared entrances, foyers, escape routes and inadequate acoustic seals. In 2012, seven horses returned to the stage of the former riding school in Alvis Hermanis ' staging of soldiers .

Large festival hall

Golden asphalt, light channels
Large festival hall , interior view

In place of the former horse stables of the prince archbishops and later the kuk cavalry - with up to 150 horses - the new festival hall was built by Clemens Holzmeister with the advocacy and support of governor Josef Klaus and conductor Herbert von Karajan between autumn 1956 and early summer 1960 . The construction was mainly carried out with funds from the Republic of Austria , which is still the owner today. The large festival hall - with 2,179 seats - is one of the largest venues for classical art in Europe, today only surpassed by the Opéra Bastille (with 2,703 seats, opened in 1989) and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden (with 2,500 seats, opened in 1998).

During the previous Festspielhaus , which from 1960 Old and from 1963 Small Festival Hall was called to be rebuilt several times due to the topographical conditions, the constant lack of funds or for political reasons and adapted had to Holzmeister succeeded this time a building from a single, gigantic in its extents , with excellent acoustics and excellent visibility. Neither expense nor effort was spared, 55,000 cubic meters of rock were blasted out of the Mönchsberg to make room for a stage building measuring 100 by 25 meters, for a maximum portal width of 32 meters and an auditorium that resembles an oversized cinema. For comparison, the portal width of the Vienna State Opera : 14.3 meters.

The gigantomania of the undertaking - at a time when "thousands of families were still living in barracks and health-endangering quarters" - met with heavy criticism in advance. Hilde Spiel criticized Karajan and the “zeitgeist that demands glamor and dimension, abundance and accumulation, for the great spectacle”. Oscar Fritz Schuh , who worked as a director of the festival for many years, thought the house was “completely out of place”, since of the Mozart operas “at most Idomeneo would be suitable for a stage of this size,” but this opera in particular does not enjoy the favor of the public. Even two representatives of the board of directors - Josef Kaut and Gottfried von Eine - opposed the new building. Gert Kerschbaumer accurately predicted that in the new monster building and opera bunker “Verdi and Wagner operas would be performed, but the very last Mozart operas” and “it will become a pilgrimage site for Wagnerians . Karajan will raise the baton to the Valkyrie […] “Indeed, the size of the room and the intimacy of most of the Mozart operas performed in it have been in stark contrast to one another since 1960. And in fact Karajan conducted Verdi in the new house from 1962 and from 1967 - at the Easter Festival - Die Walküre , subsequently the entire Ring , Tristan and Isolde , Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , Lohengrin , Parsifal and finally the Flying Dutchman .

Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich's coat of arms above an entrance
The Fischer von Erlachs portal

The three-century-old facade of the royal stables, built under Archbishop Wolf Dietrich , and the marble portal by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach on the north-facing facade were preserved - as best they could - or were reconstructed and rebuilt. Local materials were primarily used in the design of the house: the reinforced concrete columns in the foyer were clad with the conglomerate obtained when the Mönchsberg wall was removed, and the floors were covered with Adnet marble and green serpentine . The artistic design is lavish and noble: horse mosaics and tapestries by Richard Kurt Fischer , bronze gates by Toni Schneider-Manzell , wall paintings by Wolfgang Hutter and Rudolf Plattner , marble figures by Wander Bertoni , wall bowls made of Murano glass , other tapestries by Giselbert Hoke and Oskar Kokoschka , ceramics by Arno Lehmann and a “12-tone frieze” in homage to Anton von Webern by Rudolf Hoflehner . Recently, four large crosses by Robert Longo adorn the foyers.

In the break room adjoining the entrance foyer, the stone column architecture of the prince-archbishop's stables has largely been preserved. The now glazed "Fischer-von-Erlach-Portal" opens up a view of the Marstallschwemme , in which the cavalry horses used to be washed and watered, and the pouring box (see below for more on this).

Probably also to take some wind out of the sails of the critics, the Rosenkavalier was chosen as the opening performance - on the one hand as a homage to the festival founders Richard Strauss , Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt (who, as a "secret director", had supervised the premiere), on the other hand by the limited playability of the large stage. The opening of the house took place on July 26th, 1960 with a ceremony and the Strauss Opera, pompously staged by Rudolf Hartmann and conducted by Herbert von Karajan . The stage design came from Teo Otto , the costumes from Erni Kniepert . An illustrious ensemble sang, led by Lisa della Casa (as Marschallin), Sena Jurinac (as Octavian), Hilde Güden (as Sophie) and Otto Edelmann (as Ochs von Lerchenau). The following year sang in the same production, now conducted by Karl Böhm , the ladies Schwarzkopf , Ludwig and Rothenberger , as well as Edelmann again.

Since the renovation of the Small Festival Hall in 1963, the building has been known as the Large Festival Hall . The performance practice of the first fifty years then also proved that the building is actually only partially or not at all suitable for Mozart operas, but very well suited for Verdi and Wagner. Up to 2013, nine operas by Verdi and nine by Wagner were performed on the widescreen stage, but only five operas by Mozart - of which Idomeneo and Così fan tutte were only staged in a single production. For many years Richard Strauss was only represented with five music-theatrical works in the Großer Haus, in 2014 the sixth Strauss opera followed with Arabella at the Easter Festival , and in 2016 the seventh with Love from Danae .

Today, a separate entrance to the left of the break room leads directly to the old town garage by means of an escalator, which was set up inside the Mönchsberg . In this way, festival guests can get to all three festival halls comfortably and with dry feet. Nevertheless, the guests of honor arrive and move in largely via Hofstallgasse , in front of a line of photographers and people who vigorously comment on the celebrities and the cloakroom of the festival guests and occasionally also applaud.

The Hofstallgasse is also - when it is not raining - the most popular break room of the Great Festival Hall . It offers a champagne bar, historical facades as a backdrop and a direct view of the Hohensalzburg Fortress . For the Mozart year 2006 , the road surface was renewed for almost 900,000 euros. Golden grit mastic - covering with diagonally crossing light channels the road should improve, but the desired noble tone was certainly after a few weeks away, which led to litigation and liability issues. The loss of the golden color is said to have been caused by brake tests , Fiaker , wrong binding agent or too soft surface structure. The Bavarian Asphalt Works in Munich finally renovated the pavement after the 2010 Festival at their own expense, and the defective light channels were covered. In 2012, the Max-Reinhardt-Platz in front of the house for Mozart was finally covered with golden-yellow asphalt.

The total audience capacity of the three festival halls comprises 5,281 spectators (110 of which are standing). This performance complex thus exceeds the new building of the Opéra Bastille in Paris, where a total of 3,903 audience seats are available at the 4 performance venues there (Opéra 2703, Small Hall 450, Studio 250 and amphitheater with 500 seats).

In addition to the three festival halls , the Salzburg Festival District also includes the nearby Domplatz , Dom , Residenz and Residenzhof , Collegiate Church of St. Peter and Collegiate Church , as well as the Great University Hall - while the Landestheater and Mozarteum on the other side of the Salzach form the second center of the festival.

residence

Main courtyard of the residence
Carabinieri room

The residence of the Salzburg Prince Archbishops with around 180 rooms can neither be identified with a specific architect, nor does it have a uniform construction concept. The first systems go back to the 15th century. Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau (1587–1612) had the residential and representative palace massively rebuilt and expanded the building to include a south wing on the side of the cathedral square, as well as a grand staircase and the Carabinieri hall. Markus Sittikus (1612–1619) built the wing on the Old Market Square and the square on Churfürststraße. In 1614 it was probably Monteverdi's “Favola in musica” L'Orfeo , which was the first opera performance north of the Alps in the Salzburg Residenz. Since the only two-story residence appeared too low after the construction of the cathedral, Cardinal Guidobald von Thun and Hohenstein (1654–1668) had it raised by one story and the attic. Finally, Johann Ernst von Thun and Hohenstein (1687–1709) commissioned the splendid ceiling paintings in the Carabinieri hall.

The Residenzhof , the main courtyard of the old residence, has been used by the Festival for serenades since the 1920s , mostly for works by Mozart. Between 1953 and 1970 Mozart's operas were regularly performed there, mainly early works such as Bastien and Bastienne , Ascanio in Alba or La finta giardiniera . But also Die Entführung aus dem Serail or Pergolesi's La serva padrona were shown with a small orchestra and a modest stage design. The Oscar Fritz Schuh production of Così fan tutte was particularly successful - in the set by Caspar Neher , conducted by Karl Böhm . This production ran almost every summer from 1953 to 1959. When it began to rain, people avoided the Carabinieri hall, which was not very popular with the participants because of its inadequate acoustics.

In 1993, artistic director Gerard Mortier rediscovered the Residenzhof as a performance venue. The removable open-air stage and the grandstand with 740 seats could be made rainproof from 1997 with a temporary roof. Works by Monteverdi , Gluck and Mozart were played . Mortier's successors did without the atmospheric venue - with the exception of two productions for the Mozart year 2006 : Mitridate, re di Ponto and La finta semplice .

Once in 1994, the Tuscany courtyard of the residence - the residence has four inner courtyards - was used for a festival production. Stravinski's L'histoire du Soldat was presented in a tent . In 2007, Heiner Müller's Quartet was shown in the Carabinieri Hall .

Since the beginning of the management of Alexander Pereira in 2012, the residence courtyard - with a new rainproof roof - has been used regularly again. In the first year Pereira presented - parallel to the Magic Flute in the Felsenreitschule - the second part of The Magic Flute. The labyrinth based on a text book by Emanuel Schikaneder and with music by Peter von Winter , 2013 Shakespeare's Midsummer Night 's Dream was performed with Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's incidental music .

Baroque churches

Collegiate Church of the Archabbey of St. Peter
Dom
Kollegienkirche

Salzburg's heyday - politically and architecturally - coincides with the baroque and the reign of Prince Archbishops Markus Sittikus Graf von Hohenems , Paris von Lodron and Johann Ernst von Thun and Hohenstein , whose claim to representation still shapes the cityscape today. Therefore, since the beginning of the festival, both the great gesture and the baroque repertoire have been an important foundation of the festival. While Verdi's theatrical Messa da Requiem finds a suitable venue in the Great Festival Hall , Salzburg's baroque churches provide an ideal setting not only for baroque sacred works, but also for the masses and requiums by Mozart , Schubert and Beethoven .

The collegiate church of St. Peter is essentially a Romanesque basilica, but was heavily baroque between 1605 and 1620 and 1750. The ceiling frescoes of the nave and the chancel were created by Johann Baptist Weiß in 1764, followed by a series of architectural rococo interventions. The collegiate church is still primarily intended for religious services by the Benedictine order. The Archabbey of St. Peter is the oldest existing monastery in the German-speaking area. Like Jedermann on Domplatz, the C minor mass in the collegiate church of St. Peter - first performed in 1927 as part of the festival - has been a fixed point of the Salzburg Festival every year since 1927 and with interruptions since 1950.

After the roof trusses of Salzburg Cathedral burned down on the night of December 11th to 12th, 1598 and the unfortunate several weeks of continuous rain and subsequent snowfalls gradually collapsed the vaults, which led to a total loss, Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau let the Tear down the heavily damaged old cathedral together with 55 surrounding town houses. Vincenzo Scamozzi was responsible for the early planning for the new building . Wolf Dietrich's successor, Markus Sittikus Graf von Hohenems, hired Santino Solari as master builder . The foundation stone was laid in 1614, and the cathedral was inaugurated by Prince Archbishop Paris von Lodron in 1628 . The eight-day cathedral consecration festival was probably the largest historical festival that the city of Salzburg has ever celebrated.

The college or university church was planned by Prince Archbishop Paris von Lodron on the site of the former women's garden, but it was only seventy years later - in 1707 - that it was inaugurated in honor of the Immaculate Virgin Mary , which caused much derision among the population. The architect was Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach , the high altar - designed by Father Bernard Stuart and executed by Josef Anton Pfaffinger - includes allegorical figures of music, poetry, painting and architecture, as well as the four faculties.

While the cathedral is relatively rarely used by the festival, exclusively with sacred works, not only concerts but also scenic productions were held in the Kollegienkirche:

Between 1993 and 2001, the Zeitfluss sub-festival , directed by Tomas Zierhofer-Kin and Markus Hinterhäuser , used the Kollegienkirche for concert series of contemporary music. When Hinterhäuser took over the position of concert director at the Salzburg Festival from 2007 to 2011, the Kollegienkirche was the central venue for the series of continents . Each series was dedicated to a well-known contemporary composer.

When director Alexander Pereira launched the Ouverture spirituelle in 2012 , a concert series of sacred music dedicated to the dialogue of religions at the beginning of the festival, the Kollegienkirche again became an important venue - especially in 2013, when Shōmyō (Buddhist ritual chants) were juxtaposed with Gregorian chant .

Large university auditorium

Furtwängler Park, outside stairs to the auditorium

The Great Aula of the University of Salzburg, also called Aula Academica , has been used annually by the Salzburg Festival for concerts since 1946 , occasionally also for opera performances of smaller works or for readings . It is located in the Old University building in Furtwängler Park on Max-Reinhardt-Platz , in the middle of the festival district in Salzburg's old town.

The University of Salzburg was founded in October 1622 by the Jesuit Paris Count von Lodron , Archbishop of Salzburg, and built up by Benedictines from Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany. The university complex was built from 1631 based on a model by cathedral builder Santino Solari . After 24 years of construction, the Aula Maior was inaugurated in 1654 by Archbishop Paris Lodron. Until the completion of the Kollegienkirche in 1707, the auditorium had a double function: It was used for both church services and theater performances . In 1660 a permanent theater was built. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, the auditorium was an important foster home for spiritual and baroque theater culture. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appeared here in 1761 - at the age of five - in the school drama Sigismundus Hungaria Rex (music: Johann Ernst Eberlin , text: PM Wimmer) as a dancing page. On May 13, 1767, Mozart's youth opera Apollo et Hyacinthus (KV 38) was premiered in the Aula academica, Mozart himself played the clavicembalo. The theater was stopped in 1782, and the university was closed in 1810 after Salzburg was annexed to Bavaria.

The auditorium was already used in the year the Festival was founded in 1920 as an alternative accommodation for everyone in bad weather , but it turned out to be unsuitable for this purpose - which is why the Great Riding School , which later became the Festival Hall , was used from 1921 and the Great Festival Hall from 1961 . From 1946 to 1967, concerts of sacred music were regularly given in the auditorium with the Salzburg Cathedral Choir under the direction of Joseph Messner ; from 1991 the main focus of the concerts in the auditorium was: baroque music , Mozart and modernism .

With Apollo et Hyacinthus , the auditorium was reopened after a thorough renovation on Mozart's 249th birthday, January 27, 2005 . The stage podium was completely renovated, a new steel grandstand with wooden acoustic elements improved the visual and acoustic conditions, and air conditioning was installed in the cavity below. The auditorium now has 624 seats and a new foyer. It is barrier-free accessible. An outside staircase leads to the auditorium from Furtwängler Park. In the Mozart Year 2006 in the auditorium of four performances took place early operas of Mozart, from 2007 to 2010 was in the auditorium School of hearing organized, since 2011, the auditorium is also specific offers for children and adolescents.

Perner Island in Hallein

Old salt works in Hallein

In 1989 the old salt works in Hallein ceased operations. The name Hallein is derived from an Old High German * hal (a) - , mhd. Hal 'Salzquelle, Salzwerk' and the diminutive "-lîn". And the salt gave both the city and the country its name. The salt works on the Perner Island in the middle of the Salzach were built between 1854 and 1862. As a result of an initiative by cultural workers, the Sudhalle der Salinen was rededicated into a theater space, which was integrated into the Salzburg Festival program as a venue by the new theater director Peter Stein in 1992. The adaptation only took eighty days to build. The first production was the trilogy of antiquities by Andrei Serban based on Sophocles , Euripides and Seneca . In 1998 the seating and break room were renewed.

The hall is used in particular for contemporary drama productions, occasionally also singing games, operas, operettas or concerts, whereby the performance and audience area can be adapted to the needs of the respective production. The German-language premiere of Luk Perceval's battles achieved cult status ! (1999), a new version of Shakespeare's Wars of the Roses : it had a duration of twelve hours, of which nine hours were played.

Other venues

Leopoldskron Castle

Bulk box

Bulk box

The bulk box was built in 1697 by Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun and Hohenstein and was formerly the feed store (oats, sugar beets, etc.) for the cavalry horses. The building was acquired by the Festival in 1987. Above all, artists know the upper floors of the bulk box, because these are used as rehearsal rooms. Sometimes small performances (lectures, etc.) also take place there. The Schüttkasten is frequented by festival visitors, as the Salzburg Festival ticket office is on the ground floor.

See also

literature

  • Stephen Gallup: The History of the Salzburg Festival . Orac, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-7015-0164-5 .
  • Josef Kaut: The Salzburg Festival 1920–1981. Salzburg 1982.

Web links

Commons : Venues of Salzburg Festival  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kaut 1982, 176ff, 246
  2. ↑ Date: Title - conductor - director - stage and costume designer - actor or singer of the main roles
  3. ↑ Hedwig Kainberger: Outside Organ: New Sound in the Festival District . In: Salzburger Nachrichten . July 17, 2012 ( from salzburg.com [accessed July 22, 2012]).
  4. ↑ Kaut 1982, 243, 357
  5. ^ Archive of the Salzburg Festival , accessed on November 18, 2012
  6. ↑ Developed from ahd. Hal (a) salt 'Salt from the Salt Spring ' and halhûs ' Boiling House of the Salt Works, Saline'
  7. ↑ SIMs KULTUR: Perner-Insel, Hallein , accessed on April 7, 2016
  8. ↑ hallein.com: Alte Saline as a theater venue , accessed on April 7, 2016
  9. ^ Salzburg Festival: Großes Festspielhaus , accessed on April 7, 2016