Post World War II Festivals
The post-war festival slowly regained its prominence as the premier summer opera festival, especially in works by Mozart, with conductor Herbert von Karajan becoming artistic director in 1956. In 1960 the Great Festival Hall (Großes Festspielhaus) opera house opened its doors. As this summer festival gained fame and stature as the premier venue for opera, drama, and classical concert presentation, its musical repertoire concentrated on Mozart and Strauss, but other works, such as Verdi's Falstaff and Beethoven's Fidelio, were also performed.
Upon Karajan's death in 1989, the festival was modernized by director Gerard Mortier, succeeded by Peter Ruzicka in 2001. In 2006, Salzburg celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth by staging all 22 of his operatic works (including two unfinished operas), to great acclaim. All 22 were filmed and were released to the general public in November 2006. Since 2006 the festival is led by intendant Jürgen Flimm and concert director Markus Hinterhäuser. Alexander Pereira is scheduled to succeed Flimm, future director of the Berlin State Opera, after the 2011 summer festival.
Read more about this topic: Salzburg Festival
Famous quotes containing the words post, world, war and/or festivals:
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or, would you prosecute it in future, with elderstalk squirts, charged with rose water?”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)