Salzburg 2021

 I'm in rather a good mood today after a few weeks of feeling pretty bad from COVID. But Thursday my doctor gave me a clean bill of health so I am getting back to my usual activities with a spring in my step, a twinkle in my eye and just a bit of a lilt in my inégales!

Here is a quote from a new collection of such: "Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation" —W. H. Auden. I would add to that, since books are often dull, "thank God for music as an alternative to both books and conversation."

The program for the Salzburg 2021 summer festival is out, so let's have a look.

It bears a lot of similarities to the unfulfilled 2020 festival which is not surprising. There are eight opera productions including two from Mozart (Don Giovanni and Così Fan Tutte). I don't know if these are new productions or co-productions. All the rest, I suspect, will be new productions originally created for last summer. They include Richard Strauss, Elektra, an oratorio, IL TRIONFO DEL TEMPO E DEL DISINGANNO by Handel, Tosca by Puccini, La Damnation de Faust by Berlioz and two modernist operas, Neither by Morton Feldman with text by Samuel Beckett and INTOLLERANZA 1960 by Luigi Nono.

Operas are the most expensive tickets at Salzburg so I will obviously have to pick and choose. But one thing I came away from with from the last festival is that opera is a huge strength of the festival, so see all you can! Except for the Feldman and the Berlioz, there are multiple performances of all the operas and tickets run from a very modest €15 to €80 for Feldman to €25 to €330 for Berlioz. The top tickets for the big operas will run you €445.

I am mostly familiar with the well-known Mozart operas and in fact have a  lovely box of all his operas from the 2006 Salzburg Festival on excellent DVDs so I strike them from my list. I have never seen a Strauss opera live, so I will request a ticket to Elektra. Same for Berlioz, whom I rather like as a composer. I simply have to see the Feldman as it will likely be my only chance in this life and I am growing more and more conscious of Feldman as an important composer. So I am intensely curious to see what he was up to with this. I will also request a ticket to the Nono as  he is interesting as a composer and 1960 was an odd moment in the history of opera. That leaves Handel who has always been rather dispensable in my book. So, four operas! And all of them interesting. Apart from Vienna, where else on earth could you see four different operas as interesting as this and in this quality of production over a couple of weeks?

Obviously going over the whole program is going to take several posts, but I want to just mention one concert you might miss, but that commentator Marc has already noticed. On July 28 as part of a brief three-concert series titled Church Concerts an extremely interesting program of works by a very odd assortment of composers is offered:

GIACINTO SCELSI

Okanagon for harp, double bass and tam-tam

HEINRICH IGNAZ FRANZ BIBER

Battalia à 10 for strings and basso continuo

GEORGE CRUMB

Black Angels – Thirteen Images from the Dark Land

for electric string quartet

(selected movements)

ANTONIO LOTTI

Crucifixus à 10

JOHN DOWLAND

‘Lachrimae antiquae novae’ from Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares

GALINA USTWOLSKAJA

Composition No. 2 ‘Dies irae’

for eight double basses, woodblock and piano

GREGORIANISCHER HYMNUS

Dies irae

This astonishing program is the concept of conductor and violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and is the kind of thing you can find at the Salzburg Festival and few other places on earth. The other two concerts are of music by Bruckner, Schubert and Mozart, performed by spectacularly gifted artists, of course.