Photo: © Siegfried Lauterwasser; Karajan Archiv
Salzburg Easter Festival have released initial programming details for 2013, when Christian Thielemann takes over as Artistic Director.
Parsifal will be directed by Michael Schulz, and the cast will include Johan Botha, Stephen Milling and Wolfgang Koch. Myung-Whun Chung will conduct one concert, and Evgeny Kissin will also appear. Big names go some way towards justifying high ticket prices, and so one Easter Festival tradition that appears unlikely to change is the starriness of its guest list.
Another help is the collaboration with the Staatskapelle Dresden, which has opened a useful cost-saving door for the Festival. Operas from 2013 onwards will be co-produced by Dresden Semperoper, where they will appear at a later date.
The spookily prescient photo above comes from the Festival website. Taken in 1982, shows Christian Thielemann (obvs in his Style Council phase) sitting next to the Festival's founder, Karajan, with the current Festival manager, Peter Alward, standing behind them.
