July 17 — August 31, 2021
The Salzburg Festival, the most eminent festival in the world for opera, music and spoken drama, celebrated its 100th anniversary in the summer of 2020. This year will bring major concerts, opera and theatre productions which were not performed in 2020.
On the programme of the 2021 Salzburg Festival
With 168 performances in 46 days in 17 venues, the Salzburg Festival offers a richly varied programme. Opera highlights include Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Richard Strauss‘s Elektra. The famous annual Jedermann [Everyman] play presents a new cast. The «Ouverture Spirituelle» concerts bear the title Pax [peace], referring to the Festival founders’ original idea of staging a peace project in Salzburg.
OPERA
Genius loci Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is twice represented in the opera programme. In 1922, Don Giovanni was the first opera performed at the Festival; this year it will be directed by Romeo Castellucci and conducted by Teodor Currentzis. Cosí fan tutte comes in last year’s reduced but widely acclaimed version, Richard Strauss‘s Elektra will also be the 2020 production, and the orchestra for both operas is the Vienna Philharmonic. The programme includes three further staged and two semi-staged operas.
DRAMA
The 2021 Festival brings 14 performances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann. The largely new cast is headed by Lars Eidinger as Jedermann and Verena Altenberger – a native of Salzburg – as his paramour. Friedrich Schiller, William Shakespeare and readings from works by Charles Baudelaire and Stefan Zweig make for variety in the drama programme.
CONCERT
The 2021 concert programme looks like a Who’s Who of classical music. Highlights include the Vienna Philharmonic, Mozarteum Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Christian Thielemann, Franz Welser-Möst, Elīna Garanča and Daniel Barenboim. Riccardo Muti celebrates not only his 80th birthday, but also his 50th appearance at the Salzburg Festival. The 2021 programme also offers lieder recitals, chamber and church concerts, the «Ouverture Spirituelle» and the Mozart Matinees.
The Salzburg Festival youth programme
Between May and August 2021, 62 events in 30 venues will be held under the title «jung & jede*r» [open to all young people]. Opera camps, the Young Singers Project, special concerts and the Siemens>Kinder>Festival demonstrate the Festival’s aspiration to inspire enthusiasm for music in the coming generation.
