“Myths” is the name of the games, the Motto of this year’s festival. Also contemporary topics came to the fore. A small sample of the press.
A season of forces gathering, a kind of breather in the previous year of the great jubilee – the year’s Salzburg festival were perceived in the German press. Really Outstanding, real superlatives, they should expect next Time, one hundred years after the founding of the festival in the year 1920.
The Pianist Igor Levit performs regularly in Salzburg
This, however, acts as a complaining on a high level, were staged in the current Year at least five operas new. In the field of theatre, there were 55 performances of four new productions. With 81 of the concerts was also represented, as always, the Crème de la Crème of the international music scene. Also, the resonance from the audience was large: About 97 percent of the available tickets were sold.
“Orpheus”: a Wonderful Silliness in one hell of a Party
31. August went to the Salzburg festival to the end. Of the total of 199 events at 43 days of play Orpheus in the underworld was to be read in the pages on most of the production to: “” – a piece (in the picture above), the fit to the Motto of “myths” and the composer Jacques Offenbach was born 200 years ago. “Virtuoso Silliness from the Finest, underground, well!” wrote the Bavarian radio about the new production by the Australian Director Barrie Kosky. “The house for Mozart is rocked, and the majority of the audience has a hell of a fun thing.”
“Funny and foul, naughty and kinky, bright and gay, and all in the XXXL Format,” wrote the FAZ about Kosky’s “Orpheus”.
The first operetta in the history of music was apparently in good hands with Kosky, who has for years taken care of at the Komische Oper in Berlin for a Renaissance of the dead genre. Offenbach’s piece is a bitter Satire about the abysmally sad myth of Orpheus, the ventures into hell to get his dead Eurydice back, but then again, loses.
In Offenbach, the protagonists are a bored married couple, and the gods themselves ridiculous. In his colorful dazzling performance Kosky held a true Höllenfete, and partly with the brilliant ballet-deposits: about a Chorus Line of male dancers in bee costumes.
“Idomeneo”: environmental symbolism device next to it
Less enthusiastic, the press of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” was directed by Peter Sellars. In a speech at the beginning of the festival, the Americans gave a passionate plea for climate protection at the Best: “We will show what it means when the tidal wave advancing truly upon us and an entire city can be.”
“Nice designed sea of garbage” in Mozart’s “Idomeneo” by Peter Sellars
The various plastic shaping in stage design had a rather flat and decorative than frightening, so the opinion of the criticism. For the New music newspaper they looked like “nice designed sea of garbage”. “Had it not been for the Teodor Currentzis on the console, would be passed quickly on to the agenda.” The Greece-born in Russia, active conductor to the current, everywhere a splash – in Salzburg, also with his Interpretation of the Seventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Domingo and the Berliners in Salzburg
A further conductor, much attention has been given to: Kirill Petrenko, a newly minted chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and there is not yet two weeks in the office, with the Berliners in Salzburg – with its premiere program, which included Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “The chief conductor Kirill Petrenko in the design of the sound masses in a transparent, had a human dimension ancestors, without any of the listeners which desire be Overwhelmed,” wrote The Standard.
Singer twilight? Not quite: In Salzburg it was for Domingo applause
Also to a further artist was intensively looked, but probably less, from a purely artistic reasons: The 78-year-old Opera star Placido Domingo, the sexual harassment was by recent allegations in the headlines. The transactions date back to the late Eighties. A lot of performances Domingos in the United States were recently cancelled – but not in Salzburg. Helga Rabl-Stadler, President of the festival, turned in front of the singers and conductors. Domingo’s appearance in the Opera “Luisa Miller” by Giuseppe Verdi was celebrated by the audience stormy.
Russian Disappointment
Also the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko was celebrated. The appearance in Francesco Cileas “Adriana Lecouvreur” she had had to spent apparently so much so that they play an additional scheduled appointment in Salzburg – as well as a planned debut at the Bayreuth festival cancellations. Nevertheless, what remained, was one of the Highlights of this Salzburg vintage. The Standard celebrated Netrebkos performance as “unforgettable experience”.
For Netrebkos country man came off less well: “Valery Gergiev has conducted as a Maestro anywhere in the last twelve months, twenty-four operas, had almost throughout the head in the score, leaving the Director alone, abandoned, and/or to the ramp post referenced the singer himself,” wrote the FAZ about the performance of Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra”. And: “The performance was, in terms of the sound contrasts, such as an experienced sight-read.” Also as a conductor at the Bayreuth festival, the star conductor was playing through like that.
The performance of George Enescu’s only Opera, “Oedipe” was the costumes that made the singers as puppets to look