The Salzburg Festival is the world's most important festival for opera, music and drama. In summer 2020, it celebrated its 100th birthday. This year, important productions in opera, theater and concert that were not performed in 2020 will be shown. The 2021 Salzburg Festival presents a varied program with 168 performances in 46 days at 17 venues.
The opera highlights include Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and Strauss' "Elektra". The play "Jedermann" presents itself with a new cast. Lars Eidinger will play Jedermann and Verena Altenberger his Buhlschaft. In the concerts, the Ouverture Spirituelle is entitled "Pax" - peace, referring to the original idea of the festival founders to stage a peace project in Salzburg.
The first major premiere on July 25 is a play that is likely to have gained in complexity and impact due to the postponement: Karin Henkel is staging Shakespeare's royal dramas "Henry VI" and "Richard III" on the Pernerinsel. Tom Lanoye, author of the legendary "Battle" performance in 1999, will write texts for the fusion of the two originals into "Richard the Kid & the King". And Lina Beckmann will play the title role.
This will be followed by Mozart's "Don Giovanni", directed by Romeo Castellucci with Teodor Currentzis conducting. Italian baritone Davide Luciano will make his debut at the festival as the womanizing title character.
And on July 27, "Elektra" by Richard Strauss, the celebrated production of summer 2020, will be revived. Aušrine Stundyte will once again sing the role of Elektra; Asmik Grigorian will only sing in three of the seven performances. The second opera production of the 2020 program, Mozart's "Così fan tutte", will also be performed again; Joana Mallwitz will once again conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
"Intolleranza 1960" by Luigi Nono will premiere a year late. This music theater work, of central importance to artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser, is a passionate appeal against racism, intolerance, oppression and the violation of human dignity. Ingo Metzmacher conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the Felsenreitschule; Jan Lauwers is responsible for direction, stage, choreography and video.
Georg Friedrich Handel's oratorio "Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno" with Cecilia Bartoli will be taken over from the Whitsun Festival, and Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca" with Anna Netrebko from the Easter Festival. There will be concert performances of Morton Feldman's opera "Neither" and Hector Berlioz' "La Damnation de Faust".
The drama program consists exclusively of productions that were already announced for 2020: in addition to the Shakespeare evening, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Das Bergwerk zu Falun", directed by Jossi Wieler, and Friedrich Schiller's "Maria Stuart", a co-production with the Burgtheater, will be performed.
In the concert area, "Zeit mit" focuses on Morton Feldman ("Still life") and Johann Sebastian Bach: the dance production "Mitten wir im Leben sind - Bach6Cellosuiten" by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and the Compagnie Rosas will also be performed as part of the program entitled "Himmelwärts".
Riccardo Muti celebrates his 80th birthday in 2021 and has been invited to come to Salzburg for two concerts with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Berlin Philharmonic will also perform two concerts under its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, while the Vienna Philharmonic will play five programs. And to mark Friedrich Cerha's 95th birthday, the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform his "Spiegel" cycle.
July 17 to August 31, 2021
