Intermezzo

Sven-Eric Bechtolf takes over Salzburg Festival

For now anway. Following Alexander Pereira's appointment as La Scala superintendant-designate, the Salzburg Festival have decided to boot him out as quickly as possible: September 2014. The festival's theatre head, Sven-Eric Bechtolf, will take over the 2015 and 2016 seasons "in keeping with the committee’s existing budgetary guidelines".  Festival President Helga Rabl-Stadler will take over Pereira's commercial responsibilities for this period. A new artistic director for the 2017 and future seasons will be sought as soon as possible.

This leaves the path clear for the innovative Markus Hinterhäuser, a popular interim director during the season prior to Pereira's arrival. Hinterhauser's current contract as head of the Wiener Festwochen conveniently expires in 2016.

Cecilia's new baby

The Salzburg Whitsun Festival opens on 17 May with a new Leiser and Caurier production of Norma starring the Festival's artistic director, Cecilia Bartoli. Leiser and Caurier revisit their beloved 1950s in the sombre palette of Italian neorealism.

La Ceci has insisted the musical side reflects Bellini's own era instead of reverting to post-Verdian cliche. Her digging around has resulted in a revised score that reverses habitual cuts. The casting of Norma and Adalgisa has been rethought, and Zurich Opera's period orchestra, La Scintilla, has been drafted in.

Naturally the Decca marketing machine has not missed the opportunity to crank into action. A Norma CD follows hot on the heels of the performance, but with a slightly different cast. Read more and listen to the album on the Guardian website.

Ex-Salzburg director lifts the lid on Festival conflicts

A former Salzburg Festival director now working as Daniel Barenboim's right-hand man in Berlin proves an unlikely ally of Salzburg's incumbent, Alexander Pereira.

Jürgen Flimm claims in German tattle-mag  Bunte that the Festival business is dominated by "small minds". Forget all that guff about budgets, balls and musical quality - the real reason for Pereira's conflict with the Board of Trustees is, Flimm says,  "the envy of elderly men." Apparently the Trustees can't bear that Pereira has such an attractive girlfriend (25 year old Brazilian glamour model Daniela Weisser, above with Pereira).

Lest anyone doubt the existence and/or ownership of Flimm's marbles, he points out that doctors tested his smarts following his recent stroke. The results were, he says, in "the upper norm".

Salzburg Easter Festival 2013

Staatskapelle Dresden/Christian Thielemann - Großes Festspielhaus Salzburg, 29 March - 1 April 2013 

The shadow of Herbert von Karajan still hangs over Salzburg. Nowhere more creepily than in this souvenir shop window.

After Simon Rattle's mildly experimental stewardship (by Salzburg standards), the Easter Festival baton passed this year to Christian Thielemann, who seems keener to preserve Karajan's tradition of tradition. 2013 focused on three big guns - Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner.

New Salzburg Parsifal photos

I'm not sure which is scarier - the short guy with the weapon or Johan Botha's pulling outfit.

The pictures were taken at the dress rehearsal for Michael Schulz's new Parsifal, which opens the Salzburg Easter Festival on Saturday 23 March with Christian Thielemann conducting. I'll be there for the second and final show, auspiciously scheduled for 1 April.

Cast:
Amfortas/Klingsor - Wolfgang Koch 
Titurel - Milcho Borovinov 
Gurnemanz - Stephen Milling 
Parsifal - Johan Botha 
Kundry - Michaela Schuster  

*many more photos below*

Give Franz a break

Franz Welser-Möst has pulled out of all future opera engagements at the Salzburg Festival, citing unreasonable scheduling.

He complains that the 2013 plan is not feasible for the singers. The first three of five Così fan tutte performances are spread over five days, leaving just a day's rest between each. He had earlier in the week told an interviewer it's unacceptable to begin one of these at 11 am - "because then the singers would have to get up at three o'clock to prepare."(Probably a good job that it starts at 1pm, not 11am, then. Although most singers can and do manage morning engagements from time to time, but let's not digress).

Welser-Möst's outrage has compelled him to cancel not just the three offending performances, but the whole Mozart-Da Ponte cycle he was supposed to be conducting over over three years from 2013 to 2015.

Oddly, he doesn't mention why he didn't spot the flawed timetabling earlier; it's been public for several weeks, in the unlikely event he wasn't told way beforehand anyway. And while his own Vienna State Opera, like most houses, generally leaves two clear days between shows, they also sometimes schedule performances just a day apart - the very issue he's complaining about.

Coincidentally, Welser-Möst has just started rehearsals in Vienna for Ariadne auf Naxos, the dreadful Salzburg Festival production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, who's also in charge of the Mozart cycle.

Festival management are apparently out of the country at the moment. So sadly we'll have to wait for Alexander Pereira's no doubt feisty response.

Kurtag back on Salzburg menu

György Kurtág's new opera based on Beckett's Endgame wasn't ready for its scheduled debut at the 2013 Salzburg Festival. But the Festival's director is confident the 86 year old composer can pull it together in time for a 2014 premiere .

And if Marc-André Dalbavie brings in the other new opera already planned for 2014 on time - well then, they'll just have two world premieres in the same year.

Salzburg Festival 2013 programme released

Details of the 2013 Salzburg Festival programme have just been released.  Most of the previous leaks have been confirmed, including Stefan Herheim's Die Meistersinger and a concert performance of Rienzi.  Plácido Domingo crops up, not as some bizarre rumours claimed in Il Trovatore, but in a concert performance of Giovanna d’Arco with Anna Netrebko.  Ingo Metzmacher conducts Birtwistle's Gawain - and, yes, John Tomlinson is back.

A full concert programme includes Haydn and Mahler series, and a rare recital from Edita Gruberova.

Full opera details:

Birtwistle's Gawain rides to Salzburg's rescue

One of the perils of presenting brand-new operas is that the composer might not come up with the goods in time for the show. So the Salzburg Festival's Intendant Alexander Pereira, routinely bashed for his conservatism, was actually rather brave in commissioning five world premieres for the next five festivals. 

Of course the inevitable has happened, and György Kurtág's opera, based on Beckett's Endgame, won't be ready in time. The good news is that the well-heeled patrons of the Festspiele will be tapping their toes in time to Sir Harrison Birtwistle's challenging and rarely-seen Gawain instead. Here's what happened when the Royal Opera House first staged it, back in the '90s:

The show that paid the customers

Bad-boy German actor Ben Becker claims that tickets for the Salzburg Festival's packed-out closing ball sold so poorly that management ended up hiring locals for 70 euros a pop, and clothing them from the costume department.

Becker himself was chucked out of the ball mid-way after publically flinging insults at festival director Alexander Pereira. A few days later it was announced that after four highly-acclaimed years, Becker won't be reprising the role of Death in Jedermann at the 2013 festival.

Salzburg boss blames sponsors for poor reviews

It seems Salzburg Festival boss Alexander Pereira has a mouth so big that he can put his foot in it while biting the hand that feeds.

Salzburg Festival - Style barometer

Salzburg's chicest interval retreat, the Karl-Böhm-Saal, has been hosting a wardrobe full of shoes all summer. Thirty-four pairs to be specific, hanging from a ceiling as the centrepiece of an installation  by Javier Perez. Imaginary couples dance in circles around a phonograph which endlessly repeats the same tune.

It's an apt metaphor for the dress sense of the Salzburg audience, to most of whom fashion is a foreign word.

But there were exceptions. Let's start with the most stylish of all.

Salzburg's Soldiers

Die Soldaten - Felsenreitschule, 26 August 2012 (Salzburg Festival)

Amidst the greying audiences of the Salzburg Festival, a 50 year old punter counts as young. And a 50 year old opera can pass as contemporary. It is perhaps with the conservative spectators of Salzburg (and co-producers La Scala) in mind that director Alvis Hermanis has declawed Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s bleak anti-war masterpiece.

Carmen without bull

Carmen - Salzburg Festival, 25 August 2012

Who is Carmen? A seething volcano of unfettered passions? An independent woman with the courage to forge her own destiny? A projection of male nympho fantasies? Or a whey-faced Berlin housewife with the voice of an angel and two left feet?

Older Slower Better

Vienna Philharmonic / Bernard Haitink / Murray Perahia - Grosses Festspielhaus, 25 August 2012 (Salzburg Festival)

Many of this year's Salzburg Festival operas have been, for various reasons, disappointing. The concerts have been anything but.

Das Labyrinth fails to amaze

Das Labyrinth - Residenzhof, 24 August 2012 (Salzburg Festival)

The main reason why Peter von Winter's Das Labyrinth has remained virtually unperformed since its 1798 debut is a simple one. It's not very good.

But as 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of its librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, and the Salzburg Festival has also programmed his eminently more successful Die Zauberflöte this year, it's not unreasonable of them to give everyone the chance to double-check its cash-in sequel for hitherto-hidden qualities.

Nope, still not very good.

Mozart - The Dirndl

Let it never be said that Salzburg overlooks its most profitable son. Hot on the heels of The Mozart Soap comes The Mozart Dirndl.

Debutantes at Salzburg's Festspielball on 1 September will sport specially-designed dirndls incorporating photos of this year's Zauberflöte stars on the apron. Look really, really closely at the photos and you may be able to identify Bernard Richter as Tamino and Markus Werba as Papageno between the voluminous folds.

Die Soldaten at the Salzburg Festival

The last opera premiere of this year's Salzburg Festival takes place this evening, when Die Soldaten opens.

Alvis Hermanis has set his new production (shared with La Scala) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, omitting the tapes and film clips specified by Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Once again, Zurich regulars are prominent amongst the cast, which includes Laura Aikin and Alfred Muff.

*more photos below*

Salzburg Festival 2013 - opera plans

The Salzburg Festival historically steered clear of Wagner under the dubious premise that it might steal away custom from many-times-oversubscribed Bayreuth.

But next year, in celebration of the bicentary of the composer's birth, there will be a fully staged Meistersinger, plus a concert version of Rienzi.

The Verdi bicentenary will be celebrated with three productions: Don Carlos with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, Il Trovatore and a concert version of Nabucco. The Festival will open with Così fan tutte directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf and conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, and La Cenerentola is also on the cards.

Local gossip is that Plácido Domingo will sing the baritone role of Luna in Il Trovatore. Intermezzo on the other hand suspects that if Plácido turns up it is more likely to be in the title role of Nabucco.

Wiener Philharmoniker score on pitch

photo © FMT-Pictures/M.W.

The Vienna Philharmonic, currently in residence at the Salzburg Festival, nipped over to the nearby town of Seekirchen for a quick footie match on Saturday.

The Philharmonischer Fußballclub Wien trounced their rivals 9-3, raising €333 for charity in the process. After tooting their victory horns, they were back in the Grosses Festspielhaus for a 7.30 start of La bohème.