Salzburg Festival
summer program '24
summer program '24
August 15 – 20, 2024
Between Heaven and Hell –– this is the unspoken motto of the summer program of the Salzburg Festival in 2024. Stuck between Underworld and Paradise are this season's (anti-)heroes, eternal wanderers, prisoners of their passions, victims of their own transgressions. Don Juan and Hamlet, the "Idiot" Prince Myshkin and the "Gambler" Alexei Ivanovich, the unhappy poet Hoffmann and a whole string of bourgeois archetypes of "The Magic Mountain", each at a turning point in history, one foot in the dying, "old" world, the other in the world yet to be born, full of the unknown, threatened by a new order looming on the horizon. This painful balance of human life between past and future, between the burden of nostalgia and the fear of tomorrow, is at the center of all the premieres of the upcoming spectacular season of the most important music festival in the world.
August 15, 19.00
A highly anticipated Salzburg premiere by Krzysztof Warlikowski, the opera director extraordinaire – this time accompanied by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, a rising star in the world of conducting and one of Weinberg's greatest experts; Warlikowski, who is keenly aware of the exceptional depth of Feodor Dostoevsky's novel, turns in his production the closest look at the writer's blind faith in "the Russian Empire as the sole savior of Europe from degeneration."
Featuring Bogdan Volkov, Vladislav Sulimsky, Ausrine Stundite, Iurii Samoilov. Alternative date: August, 18
August 15, 20.00
The potential of artificial intelligence in its scale can only be compared to the level of concern about its unpredictable impact on our lives in general and the art world in particular. During this public talk, star soprano Asmik Grigorian, Rimini Protokoll creator Stefan Kaegi and AI Morpheus will try to find answers to questions about the role and place of AI in the modern world.
In cooperation with CultTech Association and Ars Electronica
August 16, 18.30
Director Mariame Clément and renowned authenticist conductor Marc Minkowski will present their own exploration of the relationship between art and real life, a theme that very much occupied the French composer at the end of his life. Simultaneously, the four women at the epicenter of the narrative, archetypal figures of femininity, will be deconstructed by Clément into real personalities.
Featuring Kathryn Lewek, Benjamin Bernheim, Kate Lindsey, Christian van Horn
August 17, 11.00
A half-century-old Salzburg tradition and the festival centerpiece – a concert series by the legendary maestro Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra during the festival midpoint. The year 2024 is the bicentennial of the birth of the great Austrian composer Anton Bruckner; the occasion will be marked by the performance of his 8th Symphony, the last completed symphony with the informal but well-deserved nickname "Apocalyptic".
August 17, 19.00
Another opera based on a Dostoevsky's novel is programmed for the Salzburg summer – this time in a version by the iconoclast director Peter Sellars, known for his unorthodox approaches to staging hugely complex, rarely performed works. In Prokofiev's The Gambler, Sellars works for the first time with the Salzburg superstar Asmik Grigorian – two names that guarantee an emotional hurricane on the stage of the Felsenreitschule. Russian rising star Timur Zangiev conducts.
Featuring Asmik Grigorian, Sean Panikkar, Violetta Urmana, Ilia Kazakov
August 18, 18.30
Alternative date: August 15
August 18, 20.00
The renowned choreographer Sascha Waltz and the creator of iconic Rimini Protokoll Stefan Kaegi team up for their first collaborative choreographic work with the subtitle "A documentary dance production with audiences"; on a stage designed as one giant "selfie", the creation of the dance flow will take place with the direct participation of the audience. The premiere will take place as part of Marina Davydova's inaugural season as the new head of the festival's drama program.
August 19, 18.30
This Mozart masterpiece, sensationally presented during the 2021 festival program, will return to the Salzburg stage. Romeo Castellucci and Teodor Currentzis, who have never been shy of the most daring interpretations of the most overplayed opera classics, are preparing to rework and reimagine their production. Featuring the Utopia Orchestra and Choir.
Featuring Nadeshda Pavlova, Davide Luciano, Kyle Ketelsen, Dmitry Ulianov, Julian Pregardien, Federica Lombardi
August 19, 19.00
Another literary "madman", Shakespeare's Hamlet, is among the antagonists of the 2024 summer program in Salzburg; French composer Ambroise Thomas' opera fell into the oblivion almost immediately after its premiere in 1868 – undeservedly so, says the festival. The semistage version will be presented by an all-star cast under the baton of maestro Bertrand De Billy.
Featuring Lisette Oropesa, Eve-Maud Hubeaux, Stéphane Degout
August 20, 18.30
One of the key works in German literature is the basis for a new work by Krystian Lupa, the enfant terrible of contemporary European theater. An epic canvas about the decline of the bourgeoisie and the search for an answer to the eternal question "Who am I?", this is the central premiere of Marina Davydova's inaugural season in Salzburg as the festival's new director of drama.
In Lithuanian with German and English surtitles
