Tickets for one of the 186 performances at the glitzy annual music, opera and theatre festival can cost anything up to 370 euros (520 dollars). But usually well over 90 percent of tickets are sold.
"In principle, I'll think we'll reach around 90 percent this year. Last year, we were over it. That was the best year since the Mozart year," Schwaighofer said.
In 2008, 93 percent of all seats were sold, just short of the record 94 percent in 2006, when Salzburg celebrated the 250th birthday of its most famous son, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
This year's festival, which bears the motto "The Game of the Mighty", sees new productions of Handel's "Theodora", Mozart's "Cosi fan Tutte", Rossini's "Moise et Pharaon" and a 20th century work, "Al gran sole carico d'amore" by Luigi Nono (1924-1990).
There will also be concert performances of Beethoven's only opera "Fidelio" under Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and revivals of Mozart's "Le nozze di Figaro" and Haydn's "Armida".
Separately, the organisers announced Friday that the festival's concert chief, Markus Hinterhaeuser, had decided to quit after 2011.
"After talks with incoming festival chief Alexander Pereira and long deliberations, Hinterhaeuser has decided that he will no longer be available as head of concert programming after 2011," the festival said in a short statement.
"He will, of course, fulfill his current contract for the next three seasons in 2009, 2010 and 2011."
Hinterhaeuser, who took up the position in 2006, will leave the same time as artistic director Juergen Flimm, 67, who threw in the towel last year after a bitter dispute with the festival's drama chief, Thomas Oberender.
Flimm is being succeeded by Alexander Pereira, who has headed Zurich Opera since 1991.
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