The Salzburg Festival will be one of classical music’s few offerings in the summer of the coronavirus pandemic, staging a reduced 100th anniversary celebration with…
The Salzburg Festival will be one of classical music’s few offerings in the summer of the coronavirus pandemic, staging a reduced 100th anniversary celebration with capacities limited to about 50%.
Europe’s top festival announced Tuesday it will present 90 performances, down from 212 originally intended.
Venues will be cut from 16 to seven and intermissions eliminated to reduce audience interaction. The only operas will be a Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” in the Grosses Festspielhaus, limited to about 1,000 of its 2,300 seats, and Richard Strauss’ “Elektra” in the Felsenreitschule, which will hold roughly 700.
Originally set to run from July 18 to Aug. 30, the festival will now start Aug. 1. Nearly every other major summer festival in Europe and the U. S. has been canceled.
“It would have been much easier not to play, but we were founded as a sign of hope so we want to play,” festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler said in a telephone interview.
