8/10/2020 Salzburg's summer festival: a triumph over adversity or reckless folly?

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Opera
Salzburg's summer festival: a triumph over
adversity or reckless folly?
Excitement and gratitude as festival in Austrian city goes ahead
despite Covid 19

Shaun Walker in Salzburg

Fri 7 Aug 2020 14.11 BST

86

At the performances of Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra in Salzburg this week, the
scene in the auditorium was almost as alarming as the murderous psychodrama
playing out on stage.

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Even with a specially reduced seating capacity, the visual effect produced by 1,000
masked audience members looking on at the city’s music venue Felsenreitschule
was an uneasy one, in a world where distancing has become the norm.

Still, there was an air of excitement and gratitude among those in attendance, aware
that they were some of the few people to be watching live music anywhere in the
world. The massed ranks of the Vienna Philharmonic were packed into the pit, and
the striking production by the Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski involved video
projections, a swimming pool on stage and much non-distanced anguish.

The production is the centrepiece of Salzburg’s month-long summer festival of

music and theatre, one of the few major cultural events to go ahead this summer.
Events in Salzburg are being seen as a trial balloon for theatres and opera houses
across the world, desperate – for both artistic and financial reasons – to find a way to
operate in the age of Covid.

But is holding a festival during a pandemic a powerful artistic response to adversity,

or reckless folly?

“If sportsmen can play and if planes can fly then there should be a safe way for us to
get back on stage,” said Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, the German mezzo-soprano who
sang Clytemnestra in Elektra.

Seats are left empty between guests at the performance of Così Fan tutte at the Salzburg festival. Photograph: Barbara
Gindl/APA/AFP/Getty

As other festivals were cancelled in spring, Salzburg decided to wait, hoping to

salvage at least something from its centenary edition. As Austria’s Covid-19 figures
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improved in April and May, the plans gradually became more ambitious, growing
from a single concert to mark the 100th anniversary to the current 30-day series,
decided upon when the government announced in late May that by August,
audiences of up to 1,000 people could gather.

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The festival’s executive director, Lukas Crepaz, recalled that the founders of the
festival had planned the first one in 1920 in much more difficult conditions than
today, which provided inspiration even as the organisers were aware of the risks.

“You have to find the balance. We said we wanted a festival that makes sense
artistically and is affordable but health and security is above all,” said Crepaz.

The festival engaged a team of medical experts to provide an overview of all their
plans, and, based on their recommendations, it was decided to abandon intervals in
all the productions and have no refreshments for sale inside venues. One thing clear
from the beginning was that singers and musicians could not feasibly practice social
distancing, and the whole cast undergoes a cover swab test after every performance.

“We always knew we could minimise the risk but we also knew there would be cases
of infection,” said Crepaz. After the first week, everything has gone more or less to
plan, and no infections have been reported among performers or attendees, except
for one administrative employee who tested positive before the start.

The pianist Igor Levit, who is playing a cycle of Beethoven concerts at the festival,
praised the careful setup in Salzburg. However, he said the calls from some artists to
simply get back to normal musical life were “beyond stupid” and dangerous.

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A face mask celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Salzburg festival. Photograph: Barbara Gindl/APA/AFP/Getty

“We are in a pandemic, and fewer things annoy me these days more than some of
my colleagues who are shouting out, ‘Open the concert halls!’ You unempathetic
people, shut up and read the news. There are people dying!”

In music-mad Austria, finding a way for classical music and opera to return has been
at the top of the agenda in recent months. For the Vienna Philharmonic, the
festival’s house orchestra, the three-month pause in concerts this year was the
longest break since it was founded in 1842, and the orchestra has been desperate to
get back to playing.

Daniel Froschauer, a member of the board of directors of the Vienna Philharmonic

and one of its violin section leaders, said he had two telephone conversations with
the Austrian prime minister in the spring about the best way for the orchestra to
perform at Salzburg and plans going forward. “Our prime minister comes to our
concerts. It’s an issue for him,” he said.

The orchestra is playing a full programme at the festival as well as being in the pit
for the two operas, but plans beyond that look more hazy. Just this week, autumn
engagements in Athens and Istanbul were cancelled, while the fate of an Asia tour in
October and November is up in the air.

Froschauer said if there was a silver lining from the enforced

break, it was a new appreciation of their privilege. “If you play
an opera every night you get a bit desensitised. But when you’re
pulled out of this whole thing, it becomes very emotional,” he

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From an earth stage said, adding that for him, the two-and-a-half hours of Mozart’s
to a willow Globe:
theatre goes al Così Fan Tutte at the festival “went by in one minute in my
fresco in the UK head”.
Read more
Levit, who attracted thousands of new fans with nightly
streamed concerts from his home during lockdown, said safety
had to be the first priority. He noted, however, how rewarding it was to be back in
front of a live audience. “When I walked out on stage for the first Beethoven night,
simply to hear people breathe just blew me out of my shoes,” he said.

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