Celebrate Mozart's 270th birthday with us with the world's most performed opera: Mozart's The Magic Flute , in a production by Rolando Villazón, with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under the direction of its celebrated chief conductor Roberto González-Monjas and with a top-class ensemble of soloists.

Mozart: The Magic Flute K. 620

House for Mozart

Augustine, Cranach, Rembrandt, Rubens, Shakespeare – the list of interpreters and interpreters who have dealt with the early Roman legend of Lucretia’s rape and suicide is long.

The Rape of Lucretia

Mozarteum University Salzburg

In an extraordinary double performance, the opera class of Florentine Klepper and Kai Röhrig brings two operas to the stage that were created under the most adverse circumstances – and whose artistic power continues to move and warn us to this day.

The Emperor of Atlantis & L'Hirondelle inattendue

Engelbert Humperdinck's musical setting of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, premiered in 1893 , remains one of the most popular and frequently performed operas worldwide. The exciting story of the wicked witch and the world-famous children's songs make the work extremely popular even today. The Salzburg Children's Festival presents this late-Romantic opera in an abridged version, featuring fun interactive opportunities for all ages.

EPSG:4326

Family Concert · Hansel and Gretel

Carmen Würth Forum

University of Salzburg Great Hall of the University

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

The Baroque Festival in the DomQuartier is back! The highlight is the concert performance of L'Orfeo in the Carabinieri Hall—the original venue for the first opera performance outside Italy (1614)—and thus the perfect setting for the long-awaited new edition of the Baroque Festival. Between the two parts of the opera, you can expect baroque dance, a banquet, fine dining, historical parlor games, madrigals from the time of Markus Sittikus, as well as selected promenade concerts and musical rarities. The Lautten Compagney Berlin, the Collegium Vocale Salzburg, and the Monteverdichor Hamburg, under the direction of Antonius Adamske, bring Monteverdi's masterpiece to life at this historic venue.

Claudio Monteverdi: L'Orfeo - Favola in musica. Baroque Festival in the Cathedral Quarter. Intermezzo with numerous walking concerts

DomQuartier Salzburg

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots  —her name will likely forever be linked with another name: Elizabeth I of England. Mary and Elizabeth: two queens, two rivals, two women in the mid-16th century. As "sister and cousin," they never met in person, contrary to literary fiction.

Maria Stuarda

Great Festival House

Jean-Philippe Rameau was already 50 years old when he wrote his first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, in 1733. Although Jean-Baptiste Lully—whose name at the time stood for French opera par excellence—had already died in 1687, the premiere sparked a bitter dispute between the conservative "Lullists" and the admirers of Rameau's daring, modern style. While some found his harmony too dissonant and his break with tradition scandalous, others were enthusiastic about the innovations that emerged from Rameau's long-standing preoccupation with questions of music theory and aesthetics. Les Indes galantes of 1735 was followed two years later by the tragédie en musique Castor et Pollux—Ramaeau's third completed opera. The premiere at the Paris Académie Royale de Musique was eagerly awaited, if only because of its subject matter; the mythical story of the two Dioscuri was a novelty on the musical theater stage at the time. Rameau himself probably suggested the material to the writer Pierre-Joseph Bernard, who wrote his first libretto, Castor et Pollux: The brothers, the mortal Castor and the immortal Pollux, are both in love with Télaïre, who herself prefers Castor. However, before the opera's action even begins, Castor is murdered. Pollux receives permission from his father Jupiter to free his brother from the underworld in order to reunite him with Télaïre, but he would have to pay for this with his own immortality. For Pollux, an inner struggle now begins between his brotherly loyalty to Castor and his desire for Télaïre. In Castor et Pollux, Rameau combined all the compositional elements for which he was equally famous and infamous, impressively conveying the respective dramatic situation musically in the sometimes highly virtuosic vocal lines as well as in the rich harmony and the differentiated timbres.

Castor and Pollux

Felsenreitschule

Oedipus confronts the secrets of the oracle, Macbeth confronts the prophecies of the witches: a sudden utterance from another world—and a few words change an entire life. The moira is revealed. While Oedipus seeks to flee the tragic fate promised to him, a twofold process is triggered in Macbeth. First, he reacts to the announcement that he will soon become king by attempting to ascend to the promised heights and acts accordingly: He kills. Having attained dominion and power, he then defies the second part of the prophecy: He kills again. Afterward, he becomes the plaything of his madness, his fear, his moral fall: He kills again and again.

Macbeth

In his libretto for Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier, Luigi Illica gave the character of Carlo Gérard—once a lackey, now a revolutionary hero—a phrase taken from the Girondist Vergniaud, who was executed in 1793: "The revolution devours its own children." This prominent quote reflects the core of the opera's plot, which premiered at La Scala in Milan in 1896: In a powerful historical narrative, it demonstrates how the French Revolution, in the course of its radicalization, also turned against people who had shared its ideals. Among them is the poet André Chénier (1762-1794), who is introduced in the opera as a guest at a nobleman's feast in 1789. In this decadent atmosphere, musically evoked by Rococo allusions, Chénier dares to denounce the social injustices of the Ancien Régime, provoking outrage but impressing the hostess's daughter, Maddalena, and the rebellious servant Carlo Gérard. After a leap in time of five years, we meet these three characters again under completely different circumstances. In her famous aria "La mamma morta," Maddalena describes how her family and possessions were taken from her, and how only her faith in love, to which Chénier once opened her eyes, kept her alive. However, Chénier cannot offer her the protection she seeks from him; as a critic of Robespierre's Reign of Terror, he, too, is acutely threatened. Even Gérard appears to be a victim of the political situation: after shying away at the last moment from exploiting his current position of power to subjugate the passionately desired Maddalena, he remorsefully tries to save the imprisoned Chénier from the guillotine - in vain.

Andrea Chénier

This new production of one of the most fascinating contemporary works of music theater celebrates its premiere at this year's edition of the Salzburg Festival. Based on Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, Claus H. Henneberg and Peter Eötvös contributed the libretto for the opera in three sequences. The Klangforum Wien Orchestra performs under the direction of Maxime Pascal and Alphonse Cemin.

Salzburger Festspiele – Tri Sestri

Irina can't bear it any longer; it bursts out of her: "My God! Where has it all gone? I've forgotten everything." Then, as if suddenly: "We'll never move to Moscow." Neither the past with its memories nor the future with its hopes offer any support. Time erodes and shrinks to the present—and here emptiness, dissatisfaction, pain, loneliness reign. A condition that haunts almost all the characters in Peter Eötvös' opera Three Sisters (1998)—they are those from Anton Chekhov's drama of the same name. The reactions are varied: repression or relativization, resignation or escape, and, of course, new dreams, hopes, or even plans. Yet a seemingly unbridgeable gap remains between today and the longed-for tomorrow. Why don't these people make it to Moscow, a symbol of a different, better, more meaningful life? What obstacles—internal, external—hold them back? It's a question we continually find ourselves confronting anew, one that brings us so close to Chekhov's and, by extension, Eötvös's characters. It becomes all the more acute in the face of a suddenly spreading fire—a catastrophe that challenges us to take concrete action, that confronts us with destruction and suffering, with death, and the awareness that our own life could end sooner than we imagined.

Three Sisters

After Mozart left Salzburg for the first time in 1777, radical changes occurred in his life: He had a groundbreaking encounter with Haydn, who became his friend, and Mozart became acquainted with Munich and the Mannheim Orchestra. Added to this were his unhappy love affair with Aloysia Weber, a disappointing stay in Paris, and the tragic death of his mother. Mozart returned to his birthplace and, with a heavy heart, once again entered the service of Prince-Archbishop Colloredo. But he had changed profoundly as a person. The great vocal works he now composed are permeated by the spirit of the Enlightenment and by the philosophical and aesthetic currents that were then stirring Europe. Zaide marked the beginning of this new aesthetic, which refused any concession to gallant taste and instead explored the truth of the human soul. The fact that Mozart gradually freed himself from all tutelage — he left Colloredo, Salzburg, his father — and subsequently produced dramatic and sacred masterpieces such as Idomeneo (1780-1781), The Abduction from the Seraglio (1781-1782), and the Great Mass in C minor (1782-1783) is directly and unmistakably connected.

Zaide or The Path of Light

Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, bound by mutual admiration and great respect for one another, decisively shaped the music of the early 20th century and, with their innovative ideas, built a bridge between Romanticism and modernism. This evening, featuring works by both composers, unfolds a dialogue between two significant artistic visions that offer different answers to existential and personal questions while complementing each other.

One Morning Turns into an Eternity

The gruesome image presented right at the beginning of Handel's opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724) would warrant a trigger warning, given today's sensitivities. After the welcoming chorus for Caesar and the solemn declarations of peace, a severed human head appears—the head of Caesar's political opponent, the Senate favorite Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

Giulio Cesare in Egypt

A young woman who desires her own father and is transformed into a tree. A young man who loves himself so much that he fails to notice the advances of a nymph who ultimately exists only as a voice. A goddess who transforms her rival into a spider because of her flawless weaving skills. A man whose statue of a woman perfect for him comes to life. A legendary singer whose return his beloved awaits in the underworld.

Hotel Metamorphosis

Mitridate, re di Ponto

In his libretto based on Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Salvatore Sciarrino offers a fresh perspective on monstrous events. Vimbayi Kaziboni, Conductor in Residence, leads Klangforum Wien and Cantando Admont at this concert performance at the Kollegienkirche, Salzburg.

Salzburger Festspiele – Ouverture Spirituelle · Fatum – Macbeth

Kollegienkirche

Two heavy models hang like the swords of Damocles over the material, a warning to all who would attempt it: Shakespeare and Verdi. Yet Salvatore Sciarrino avoids the trap of classicism and retells the story in a fresh and utterly captivating way. In developing the libretto, Sciarrino adhered closely to Shakespeare's original, but condensed it to a minimum. The portrait of the murderous upstart and his wife, Lady Macbeth, in Verdi's four-act opera Macbeth , premiered in Florence in 1847 and one of his darkest musical dramas, illuminates the depths of the soul with a poignancy that seems to render any further interpretation superfluous.

After the fall of Troy, Princess Cassandra is abducted by Agamemnon to Mycenae, where certain death awaits her. In a final spiritual effort, she recalls past events and emotions, analyzes them, and interprets them: the abduction of Helen, which triggered the war; her own love for Aeneas and her hatred of "Achilles the Beast"; the increasingly authoritarian atmosphere within Troy in the face of external threats; and finally, the death of her family and the end of her hometown. The priestess and seer Cassandra had foreseen the catastrophes, but no one would believe her.

Cassandra

Mozarteum Foundation

Right at the beginning of George Frideric Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto (1724), a gruesome image is shown: the severed head of Gnaeus Pompeius. Caesar's reaction raises questions: Is he outraged by the murder, its brutality, or the loss of control? The image of the head forces us to examine the rationality of political violence. The opera thus becomes a reflection on power, rivalry, and irreconcilability, addressing existential threats in a space dominated by combat. The plot draws on the following historical background: After the Battle of Pharsalus, Pompey fled from Caesar to Egypt, where he was killed by Achillas. Caesar sharply condemned the bloody deed against a Roman and subsequently defeated the Egyptians in the Alexandrian War as a token of atonement. George Frideric Handel and librettist Nicola Franceso Haym created characters that transcend political camps and are humanly touching. In the new Salzburg production, Dmitri Tcherniakov directs, with Emmanuelle Haïm conducting – a constellation of explosive creative power. Featuring, among others, Christophe Dumaux (Giulio Cesare), Olga Kulchynska (Cleopatra), Lucile Richardot (Cornelia), Federico Fiorio (Sesto), Yuriy Mynenko (Tolomeo), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Achilla), Jake Ingbar (Nireno), Robert Raso (Curio), the Salzburg Bach Choir,and the Le Concert d'Astrée Orchestra. At the Festival Opening Ceremony, we invite you to an exclusive insight into the stage orchestra rehearsal. The premiere of Giulio Cesare in Egitto will take place on July 26.

Opera events in Salzburg

Mozart: The Magic Flute K...

Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

The Rape of Lucretia

Universität Mozarteum Salzburg

The Emperor of Atlantis &...

Universität Mozarteum Salzburg

Family Concert · Hansel a...

Kinderfestspiele

The Artelize Podcast and ...

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The Artelize Podcast - A ...

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The Artelize Podcast: A l...

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The Artelize Podcast and ...

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Claudio Monteverdi: L'Orf...

Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum

Maria Stuarda

Salzburger Festspiele

Castor and Pollux

Salzburger Festspiele

Macbeth

Salzburger Festspiele

Andrea Chénier

Salzburger Festspiele

Salzburger Festspiele – T...

Klangforum Wien

Three Sisters

Salzburger Festspiele

Zaide or The Path of Ligh...

Salzburger Festspiele

One Morning Turns into an...

Salzburger Festspiele

Giulio Cesare in Egypt

Salzburger Festspiele

Hotel Metamorphosis

Salzburger Festspiele

Mitridate, re di Ponto

Salzburger Festspiele

Salzburger Festspiele – O...

Klangforum Wien

Macbeth

Salzburger Festspiele

Cassandra

Salzburger Festspiele

Giulio Cesare In Egitto

Salzburger Festspiele