Salzburg Festival: War and Corona are not the last crises
Seven the director’s voice sounds strangely tired this year, occupied and infinitely distant. Markus Hinterhäuser speaks from the tape, as during the two-year Covid summer, in the conscience of the Salzburg Festival visitors, but please wear a mask. Previously that was an order, now it’s just a recommendation.
Not even an estimated twenty percent stick to it. Not even the old festival president, the current Salzburg Queen Mum Helga Rabl-Stadler, who actually wanted to be on vacation in Italy, but after 26 summers probably can’t let go so easily. And of course her successor Kristina Hammer also wants to be recognizable. Even Markus Hinterhäuser has the mask under his nose.
In the past two years it was Salzburg a pioneer against Corona, where they wanted to show with a defiant “Now more than ever” and taking all security measures into account that the Kulturmanufaktur continues to rotate, that the slowed down and thus seriously endangered operation can be restarted despite the pandemic.
In the meantime, all the major festivals are back and are trying to lay out the nets again in order to recapture customers who may have been strayed with a large number of top-class events. Salzburg’s two major opera competitors in particular scored well this summer. After two years of postponement, Bayreuth has realized a new “Ring des Nibelungen”, as well as a “Tristan”, a play and two open-air concerts.
In Aix-en-Provence they brought out seven musical theater premieres, including two world premieres, in seven days. The big, great, always proud Salzburg is very modest with only three novelties in the opera – plus four usually co-produced premieres. And somehow a moribund vapor seems to be mixed in with the damp, breath-taking sultriness that this year is particularly persistent between the Mönchsberg, Festungsberg and Kapuzinerberg in the old town, which is already bustling with tourists again.
The 64-year-old Markus Hinterhäuser has been present here for 30 years. Of course, at some point the recipes will be well known. In the concert area, the eternally same names cavort. And the participants who bring the money. Nevertheless, even a star like the smart keyboard turbo fairy Yuja Wang only gets a triumphantly recorded solo evening as a stand-in for Evgeny Kissin, while Maurizio Pollini, who has long since died out as an artist, regularly returns. The combinations with modernity, as appreciated by rear houses, also seem to have been played out.
Of course there is always something top-class and exciting to be found in the Salzburg Vollhorn (on the first weekends you can choose from up to nine events per day), but there are few surprises at the seats. Especially in the opera, not quite Hinterhäuser’s thing. So next year there will be a new “Figaro” directed by Martin Kusej, who is currently not very successful.
man and material
The annual Cecilia Bartoli production, taken over from the Whitsun Festival, looks like an alien in the opera boutique stocked with yesterday’s avant-garde. Rolando Villazón’s “Barber of Seville” staged as a silly gag parade, completely senseless in the film studio, is at least a triumph for the singers. Here the people triumph over the material, star charisma brings the house for Mozart to the boil.
On the other hand, the “Magic Flute” at the same venue, which has now been radically revised after a first flop round in 2018, is showing itself to be cold. One is still not really happy with Lydia Steier’s confused interpretation. All the circus and clown references from the animation classic “Little Nemo” have disappeared, but there is now more First World War in the second act – for whatever reason. The family constellation, held in shades of grey, including grandfather telling Mozart fairy tales, would have made it in Katharin Schlipft’s confusingly narrow revolving stage house.
Joana Mallwitz, who is still admired as a miracle animal, rows elegantly and angularly through the heavy, constantly stormy Amadé Sea, with the Vienna Philharmonic often chugging behind. The ensemble is subterranean (the demored Monostatos, the wrong-singing queen of the night), mostly mediocre, only the emotionally genuine Regula Mühlemann and the great Vienna Boys’ Choir stand out. Luckily the shortened, completely joyless Tralala is over after 2 hours 40 (intermission included).
A morning matinee by the Vienna Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons also reveals nothing but top-class routine. Mahler’s Fifth comes with a heavy flow, is spelled out very emphatically from the third movement, but also a little over-the-top. Before that Yefim Bronfman (for the how many times?) with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 2. He knocks away the super-difficult work dryly with virtuosity. “Mei, that was tiring now, but soon the Mahler will be nice,” sighs a lady.
165 euros top price are due in the afternoon for the Jonas Kaufmann song evening. The grizzled star comes in a crumpled suit with a music stand, officially sings in twice 30 minutes from the penultimate Best-Of (first half) and the last Liszt-Lieder CD (second part). The brittle, cracking voice also sounds gray. He doesn’t get many notes, saves himself in falsetto. There are a few bright spots that people like to applaud. The atmosphere only comes up in the six encores. Kind of very sobering.
These may be coincidental observations, Salzburg is buzzing at the checkout. Apparently, people still indulge in aesthetic festival joy at the moment. But art recipes for a complex cultural future will probably not be there for much longer. In addition, there is still the hedgehog attitude of the festival management in the matter of Currentzis. The conductor, who is controversial because of his ambivalent attitude towards world politics, is supported because he is massively supported by Russian political money. The 87-year-old culture talker and the Russophile ex-director Ioan Holender got a single, ultimately meaningless, because not probing interview for Servus-TV.
In Salzburg, the Great Festival Hall is being upgraded for the future for hundreds of millions. A thematic and personal facelift would also do the all too self-contained, despondent-mild festival program quite well. Because Corona, war and climate will not be the last crisis issues. One would like to see them constructively compatible and mirrored in art.