SUMMER FESTIVALS IN EUROPE

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GIUSEPPE PENNISI investigates
the fast-evolving festival scene

 

Readers of Classical Music Daily (and, previously of Music & Vision) know that this reporter spends the summer gambolling from festival to festival, especially opera festivals. Indeed, I patronized several Italian festivals and a few European festivals: Aix en Provence in early July, Erl in the Tirol in late July, Salzburg in August and every other year the Enescu Festival in Bucharest in September. Occasionally, I crossed the Channel to reach Glyndebourne.

This Summer, almost all major European festivals are casualties of COVID-19. Only the open air Orange Festival is programmed in mid July. As reported on 17 May, some Italian open air festivals may resist and take place because of climate conditions. In Italy, the sun shines until September - in Sicily until October there are open air performances, mostly in ancient Greek and Roman theatres. In the rest of Europe, rains begins in August. Consequently, decisions on whether a festival can be held must be taken in the Spring.

However, there is hope. The Salzburg festival's directorate - President Helga Rabl-Stadler, Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser and Executive Director Lukas Crepaz - informed the press that the Centenary Festival may take place, although in a revised format to that announced in mid-November 2019.

The Salzburg Festival directorate. From left to right: Lukas Crepaz, Helga Rabl-Stadler and Markus Hinterhäuser. Photo © 2018 Lydia Gorges
The Salzburg Festival directorate. From left to right: Lukas Crepaz, Helga Rabl-Stadler and Markus Hinterhäuser. Photo © 2018 Lydia Gorges

The Austrian Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler and Federal Minister Rudolf Anschober have advised that regulations for cultural events are to be gradually loosened in significant ways from June onwards. According to their statements, in August, events with up to a thousand audience members may be possible if the organization presents an adequate security concept.

This means that after long weeks without live events, artists can once again invite their audiences to experience art together. What exactly will become possible can only be explored after the ordinance has been published. After all, the old saying that 'the devil is in the detail' applies particularly to the current situation. In particular, clarification is needed on the conditions under which stage rehearsals and performances by orchestras and choruses will be permissible.

The Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. Photo © 2017 Nancy Horowitz
The Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. Photo © 2017 Nancy Horowitz

The only thing that is certain is that the new health regulations mean that the festival cannot take place as planned before the outbreak of the pandemic, both in terms of programming and duration. Therefore, the Festival will present an alternative for this extremely challenging year to the Supervisory Board on 25 May 2020.

The Salzburg festival aims to publish the newly arranged programme for the summer in early June. Details on the further procedure for tickets previously purchased will be communicated to all our customers shortly and will also be published on the festival's website. The directorate was justified to pursue a strategy of not cancelling the Festival too early, but waiting and observing the development of the pandemic, setting 30 May as the goal for decision-making.

The festival's Directorate is optimistic that despite the coronavirus, it will be able to send a strong signal for the power of the arts, especially in these difficult times.

Copyright © 21 May 2020 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

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READ OUR PREVIOUS COVERAGE OF THE SALZBURG FESTIVAL

Update: Giuseppe Pennisi, 27 May 2020

Salzburg will have its centenary festival, even though at much reduced scale if compared with the program published in mid-November 2019. The festival's directorate just announced that the 2020 Salzburg Summer Festival will take place from 1 to 30 August, but in a modified and shortened form, due to coronavirus containment measures.

The festival directorate of Helga Rabl-Stadler, Markus Hinterhäuser and Lukas Crepaz as well as Bettina Hering, director of drama, and Florian Wiegand, director of concerts, presented a draft program to the Supervisory Board on 25 May 2020. The program covers thirty days as well as the outline of a security concept for all performance venues. Half an hour before the meeting of the Supervisory Board, the Minister of Health, Rudolf Anschober and the Undersecretary of State for Culture, Andrea Mayer, presented the decree determining important parameters for all presenters in Austria. This gives the Salzburg Festival concrete indications of how to proceed.

Landeshauptmann Wilfried Haslauer commented: 'It is a great relief that this decree has provided greater clarity for all presenters of cultural events. This enables us to present the festival, which is the artistic and economic motor of our region, after all. Fortunately, it also gives the many smaller initiatives which constitute the cultural diversity of our State a chance.'

The summer of 2020 will not see the implementation of the centenary program announced with such joy and received with such empathy by the audience throughout the world this past autumn. However, it will be possible to implement a program that is artistically meaningful and economically justifiable. Instead of two-hundred events over forty-four days at sixteen performance venues, there will be approximately ninety performances over thirty days at a maximum of six venues.

All the productions of the centenary nniversary program that cannot be shown in 2020 will be postponed until 2021. The centenary programme is to begin with the opening of the State Exhibition at the end of July 2020 and end with the closing of the festival on 31 August 2021.

Of course, the centenary of the founding play, Jedermann, will be celebrated on 22 August 2020. Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser will present the details of the modified program at the beginning of June. After the cancellation of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival and the refunding this necessitated, the festival's ticket office now faces an even greater challenge. At the beginning of this year, the festival was proud to celebrate a new record in ticket sales: 180,000 tickets with a total value of 24.5 million Euros have already been sold.

The modified program will feature completely different dates and a significantly reduced number of performances, which now forces the festival to reverse and refund its entire ticket sales. When assigning new tickets, those in possession of tickets for the original program will have priority.

Markus Hinterhäuser said: 'It pains me to be forced to cancel so many artists' appearances for this year, as we had developed special program constellations with many of them. Still, I am glad to have the opportunity to send a vibrant and powerful signal for the arts with this new festival program.'

 

The background image on this page is derived from an illustration of Salzburg from Cosmographia (circa 1544) by German cartographer, cosmographer, and Hebrew scholar Sebastian Münster (1488-1552).

 

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