Salzburg Festival opens up to wider public with free concerts





Salzburg - The annual Salzburg Festival started on Saturday with a day of public concerts at various venues across Mozart's birth town.

While tickets for regular performances during the 43-day festival cost up to 440 euros (494 dollars), visitors were not charged for Saturday's programme, which includes Baroque and contemporary music, as well as a DJ set by Vienna Philharmonic violinist Kirill Kobantschenko.



 
Classical music fans have to wait another week for the first opera premiere of this season next Saturday - a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" by US star director Peter Sellars.
Sellars told reporters in Salzburg on Friday that he sees this tale about an ancient Cretan king, his son, and the god of the seas as a parable for current efforts by young people to fight climate change.
Eccentric Greek maestro Teodor Currentzis will conduct, while the Samoan Lemi Ponifasio choreographed the ballet.
The Salzburg Festival is one of the world's largest performing arts events. There are 42 opera and 55 theatre performances, as well as 81 concerts this season, with more than 237,000 tickets on offer.
Greek mythology plays a prominent role this year.
The powerful female figure of Medea will appear in two new productions - in a staging of Luigi Cherubini's classical opera; and in "Medeamaterial" by contemporary French composer Pascal Dusapin.
The tale of Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, will be presented in the 1939 opera "Oedipe," by George Enescu, as well as in Jacques Offenbach's comic operetta "Orpheus in the Underworld."
The latter production will be the Salzburg debut of Australian director Barrie Kosky, who made a splash at the Wagner festival in Bayreut

Saturday, July 20th 2019
(dpa)
           


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