Program 22.8.-30.8.2026
Vienna Philharmonic/Seiji Ozawa (Salzburg Festival 1999, Großes Festspielhaus). An ORF and NHK production.
SIEMENS BREAKFAST CONCERT
Program
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Suite BWV 1068, 2nd movement: Air
RICHARD WAGNER Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, WWV 90
ANTON BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9 in D minor, WAB 109
Conductor: Seiji Ozawa
Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic
With: Jessye Norman (soprano)
Duration: 109 minutes
Opera in one act with a prelude by Richard Strauss (Salzburg Festival 2026, Haus für Mozart – in German). An ORF, 3sat, NHK and UNITEL production
Ariadne auf Naxos in a Mars theatre – the wealthy Viennese decadence lost in outer space. For his directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival, Ersan Mondtag relocates Richard Strauss’s opera to the dreamworld of today’s billionaires. In an airtight palace on the red planet, the satirical prologue about boundless vanity and the ensuing love opera based on a mythological subject together form a coherent portrait of the present day. In this double opera – combining social satire (in the prologue) and tragic music theatre (in the one-act opera that follows) – Hofmannsthal engages with pointed precision with people who believe that money can buy everything. Strauss, meanwhile, composes the festive ‘opera performance’ after the cheerfully buoyant parlando of the prologue in a classical style that quotes various genres and predecessors, thereby celebrating the triumph of high culture. In this transition from parody to personality, one can feel with great intensity why the accumulation of wealth and the human spirit are two entirely different matters.
Cast
Conductor: Manfred Honeck | Director: Ersan Mondtag | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 135 minutes | With: Kate Lindsey (The composer), Christina Nilsson (The prima donna/Ariadne), Eric Cutler (The tenor/Bacchus), Ziyi Dai (Zerbinetta), Johannes Silberschneider (The Major-Domo), Christoph Pohl (a music teacher), Jonas Hacker (a dance master)
Kate Lindsey in the role of the composer.
Opéra-comique in four acts by Georges Bizet (Salzburg Festival 2026, Großes Festspielhaus – in French). An ORF, BR/ARTE and UNITEL production
LIVE
In Carmen, we encounter an outsider who uncompromisingly seeks freedom in life and love – until her violent death at the hands of her spurned former lover, Don José. José immediately senses the power that Carmen has over him. He will fall for her, with every fibre of his being, deserting and becoming a criminal just to be near her. And when she turns away from him, he will kill her…
In her production, director and choreographer Gabriela Carrizo sets out to explore the identity and motives of this quasi-mythical woman, focusing on the perspectives of both Carmen and José. As in her creations for her Peeping Tom dance theatre company, she zooms in on the psyche and unconscious of the characters. Beyond depicting a fatal relationship, Carrizo is intent on making palpable the part played by the protagonists’ context in the story’s dynamics and tragic outcome.
Cast
Conductor: Teodor Currentzis | Director: Gabriela Carrizo (Peeping Tom) | Orchestra: Utopia | Duration: 165 minutes | With: Asmik Grigorian (Carmen), Jonathan Tetelman (Don José), Kristina Mkhitaryan (Micaëla), Davide Luciano (Escamillo), Iveta Simonyan (Frasquita), Anita Monserrat (Mercédès), Matthias Winckhler (Zuniga), Liviu Holender (Moralès), Michael Arivony (Le Dancaïre), Mingjie Lei (Le Remendado)
Asmik Grigorian as Carmen.
Opéra-bouffon in two acts and four scenes by Jacques Offenbach (Salzburg Festival 2019, Haus für Mozart – in French and German). An ORF, ZDF/ARTE and UNITEL production.
Barrie Kosky, former director of the Komische Oper Berlin and one of the most successful opera producers of the age, furiously introduced himself at the 2019 Salzburg Festival with Orphée aux enfers, the prototype of the “Offenbachiade”, i.e. operetta in its most original form. The “over the top parody on myths”, once described by Émile Zola as a “fire of irreverence”, promises entertainment from start to finish. Because Eurydike, the central figure, hates the music personified by her husband. And Orpheus himself is nothing more than a tiny, boring music teacher from Thebes; Aristaeus, the godly seducer, is a play-acting honey merchant, and Jupiter, “Father of Gods”, is a horny stud permanently looking to get laid. Offenbach’s biting mockery wonderfully puts the spotlight on bourgeois ideals and the institution of marriage.
Cast
Conductor: Enrique Mazzola | Director: Barrie Kosky | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 140 minutes | With: Marcel Beekman (Aristée/Pluton), Martin Winkler (Jupiter), Joel Prieto (Orphée), Kathryn Lewek (Eurydice), Max Hopp (John Styx), Anne Sofie von Otter (L’Opinion publique)
Kathryn Lewek as Eurydice and Max Hopp as John Styx in action.
A German opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Salzburg Festival 2022, Haus für Mozart). A Servus TV and UNITEL production.
The Magic Flute has been so widely heard and so frequently performed, discussed, and scrutinized in a way that scarcely any other piece in the history of opera ever has been. Though it starts out as a heroic tale of the rescue of Princess Pamina involving the comic duo of Prince Tamino and the bird catcher Papageno, the story created by Mozart and his librettist, the highly talented Emanuel Schikaneder, increasingly develops into a journey into the unknown, where the wise Sarastro and the Queen of the Night vie against each other for good and evil. Director Lydia Steier entrusts the telling of the story to a narrator, framing it as a grandfather reading the tale of The Magic Flute to his three grandchildren as a bedtime story. However, reading a story – and listening to one – also involves putting your own spin on it based on personal experience...
Cast
Conductor: Joana Mallwitz | Director: Lydia Steier | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 155 minutes | With: Tareq Nazmi (Sarastro), Mauro Peter (Tamino), Brenda Rae (Queen of the Night), Regula Mühlemann (Pamina), Michael Nagl (Papageno), Maria Nazarova (Papagena)
Die Zauberflöte, directed by Lydia Steier.
Opera in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi (Salzburg Festival 2013, Großes Festspielhaus – in Italian). A joint production by ORF, NHK, ZDF/ARTE, and UNITEL.
“It is true that it is a long opera. But that is how it must be,” said Verdi in 1897, defending the length of Don Carlo. Nevertheless, the constraints of theater production forced him to condense this extensive opera later on. For the Salzburg Festival in 2013, Peter Stein and Antonio Pappano went back to the original version of the opera and reworked it – albeit in Italian and without the ballet element. However, this production does include original sections that had been hastily cut before the opera’s inaugural performance in 1867, such as the opening prelude involving a chorus of woodcutters and their families. The Fontainebleau Act has been retained, making the progression of the plot and the psychological development of Elisabetta di Valois and Don Carlo much more coherent. In the forest of Fontainebleau, where the daughter of the French king meets her betrothed, the Infante of Spain, the pair are granted their one and only moment of happiness. But when peace is declared between France and Spain, Elisabetta learns that it is not Carlo, but his father King Filippo of Spain who she is to marry. Out of duty to the state, she accepts his offer – inadvertently, and devastatingly, becoming a stepmother to Carlo rather than his bride and leaving the characters emotionally scarred from this point onward.
Cast
Conductor: Antonio Pappano | Director: Peter Stein | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 240 minutes | With: Matti Salminen (Filippo II.), Jonas Kaufmann (Don Carlo), Anja Harteros (Elisabetta), Thomas Hampson (Rodrigo), Ekaterina Semenchuk (Eboli), Eric Halfvarson (Il Grande Inquisitore)
Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann.
Opera in four acts by Mieczysław Weinberg (Salzburg Festival 2024, Felsenreitschule – in Russian). A UNITEL production.
The Polish-Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg created his seventh and last opera in the mid-1980s from Fjodor Dostojeskis novel “The Idiot” (1869). Unrecognized for a long period, its importance within the history of the opera in the second half of the 20th century is now undisputed. The plot centers on Prince Myschkin, who has returned to Russia, and is ridiculed as an “idiot”. This is because, despite society being brutal and dishonest, he believes in the good in man, and approaches everyone without guile and with compassion and love. The new interpretation from Salzburg is conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. The artist has been passionate about Weinberg’s music for years, which has in the meantime turned into a “real lifelong passion”.
The interpretation of the story of the unconditionally compassionate prince is Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s fourth festival production.
Cast
Conductor: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla | Director: Krzysztof Warlikowski | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 196 minutes | With: Bogdan Volkov (Prince Myschkin), Ausrine Stundyte (Nastassja Filippowna), Vladislav Sulimsky (Rogoschin), Iurii Samoilov (Lebedjew), Xenia Puskarz Thomas (Aglaja)
Ausrine Stundyte as Nastassja Filippowna Baraschkowa.
Opera for children by Maurice Ravel, arranged for flute, cello and four-handed piano by Didier Puntos (Salzburg Festival 2023, Schauspielhaus Salzburg – in German). A Salzburg Festival production.
SIEMENS CHILDRENS PROGRAM
The child is grumpily brooding over homework. Her mother scolds her — they have a row, doors slam, the child is grounded and a furious tantrum ensues. Exhausted, the child falls into the chair. To her surprise, it moves to the side. What do you do, when the chair and the armchair suddenly form an alliance and start a clanging competition with the grandfather clock? How do you console a cup and a teapot that lament their broken handles? How do you save a picture book princess from the evil wizard when the book is torn? What happens when you can no longer find your way in your own garden? And how can you make it all end? Luckily, a magic word exists …
Cast
Conductor: Anna Handler
Director: Giulia Giammona
Duration: 55 minutes
Johanna Rosa Falkinger as the child and Anthony León as the teapot.
Opera in five acts by Charles Gounod (Salzburg Festival 2008, Felsenreitschule – in French). An ORF and UNITEL production.
Following the premiere in August 2008 the critics were mostly deeply impressed: “Salzburg has a new masterpiece”, read the lines, “captivating protagonists, a great conductor and an intelligent director.” Bartlett Sher, the director, used the large stage of the Felsenreitschule to achieve Lucullan show effects and to stage a fascinating broad set spectacle with major efforts in terms of historical costumes, beautiful arrangements and perfect combat scenes. At the center of this most beautiful of all love stories are naturally the young Georgian soprano Nino Machaidze and star tenor Rolando Villazón, who play the title roles. Villazón was celebrated as the “ideal Romeo with noble, hot-blooded melt”. With regard to Nino Machaidze, it was testified that she had withstood the hyped expectations and had performed enviably. She had, after all, stood in for the pregnant Anna Netrebko.
And even more so, the shooting star was later on able to read in the papers that she had a soprano voice featuring a sparkling, pearly sheen”.
Cast
Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Director: Bartlett Sher | Orchestra: Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg | Duration: 163 minutes | With: Nino Machaidze (Juliette), Rolando Villazón (Roméo), Mikhail Petrenko (Frère Laurent), Russell Braun (Mercutio), Juan Francisco Gatell (Tybalt), Falk
Death: The unavoidable fall of Roméo and Julia.
Vienna Philharmonic/Christian Thielemann (Salzburg Festival 2026, Großes Festspielhaus). A WDR/ARTE, ORF and UNITEL production.
SIEMENS BREAKFAST CONCERT
Program
JOHANNES BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 Interval
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
Conductor: Christian Thielemann
Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic
With: Augustin Hadelich (violin)
Duration: 90 minutes
Dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini (Salzburg Festival 2018, Haus für Mozart – in Italian). A BR/ARTE and UNITEL production.
The production of the director duo Leiser and Caurier transports Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri to the present day and transforms Algiers into a madhouse. Here we find Cecilia Bartoli as Isabella, the camel woman, who plays cat and mouse with the Bey of Algiers. He is completely fed up with his wife and has decided to replace her with exotic excitement: An attractive Italian woman is required. His pirates immediately provide him with the shipwrecked Isabella, who is searching for her lover Lindoro. Is a place as the star of Mustafà’s harem in store for her? He, however, has reckoned without the resolute Isabella. The clash of smug machismo and emancipatory unruliness forms the center of this funny and crazy plot, which is presented in a turbulent, intelligent and funny production – with Cecilia Bartoli in peak condition, and who was given stellar reviews. “Energetical in the lower ranges, she shines in the higher ranges, and is mobile with regard to coloratura gymnastics,” stated the reviews. Furthermore: “La Bartoli continuously comes over as the mistress of vertigo-free virtuosity and simultaneously as a tongue-in-cheek commentator of a gone-by prima donna cult. You just have to see this.”
Cast
Conductor: Jean-Christophe Spinosi | Director: Moshe Leiser/Patrice Caurier | Orchestra: Ensemble Matheus | Duration: 163 minutes | With: Cecilia Bartoli (Isabella), Ildar Abdrazakov (Mustafà), Edgardo Rocha (Lindoro), Alessandro Corbelli (Taddeo), José Coca Loza (Haly), Rebeca Olvera
Cecilia Bartoli is riding into Algiers.
An opera cycle by Giacomo Puccini (Salzburg Festival 2022, Großes Festspielhaus – in Italian). An ORF, ZDF/ARTE, NHK and UNITEL production.
Puccinis Il trittico comprises three one-act operas that each portray individual fates from a world that seems to hold little hope. In Gianni Schicchi we meet a relative who asks the crafty Gianni Schicchi to help with a testament swindle and ends up being the scammed one. Il tabarro, set in the depressing Parisian harbor milieu, tells us the story of the young Giorgetta who starts a hopeless affair to escape her stifling marriage to Michele; and Suor Angelica leads us into a bleak nunnery, where Angelica is forced to atone for the out-of-wedlock birth of her son. With his composition Puccini anticipates modernity and bestows individual musical characteristics on each of his three one-act operas.
Cast
Conductor: Franz Welser-Möst | Director: Christof Loy | Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic | Duration: 170 minutes | With: Misha Kiria (Gianni Schicchi), Asmik Grigorian (Lauretta/Giorgetta/Suor Angelica), Enkelejda Shkosa (Zita/Frugola/Suora Zelatrice), Alexey Neklyudov (Rinuccio), Roman Burdenko (Michele), Joshua Guerrero (Luigi), Karita Mattila (Zia Principessa), Hanna Schwarz (Badessa)
Asmik Grigorian (Lauretta), Alexey Neklyudov (Rinuccio) in Gianni Schicchi.