“What do we want a festival to be? This question motivated the founders of the Salzburg Festival as they set about creating a unique “Salzburg dramaturgy,” first described almost exactly one hundred years ago in their manifesto Festspiele in Salzburg – A Festival in Salzburg.
Helga Rabl – Stadler, photo Salzburg Festival/Franz Neumayr
We have resolved to continue the great ideas of our founding fathers Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Max Reinhardt. As gathering-spots far from the everyday and the distractions of large cities, festivals require nothing less than stepping out of the usual into another context of existence. Festivals should create astonishing artistic constellations, promising not only distraction and spectacle, but challenging their guests to reflect. The Salzburg Festival aims to be an epicentre of the extraordinary. This simple mission, hard though it may be to implement, guides us as we – the new team of directors – go about planning the coming years of this festival.
Markus Hinterhäuser, photo Salzburg Festival/Franz Neumayr
We – Helga Rabl-Stadler and Markus Hinterhäuser – are experienced Festival-makers. After five years, we find ourselves sharing the Directorate once again, supported by Bettina Hering and Florian Wiegand. Bettina Hering, our new Director of Drama, wishes to arouse curiosity by programming works that have never been performed at the Festival, featuring outstanding actor-personalities. Florian Wiegand has already been our imaginative concert dramaturge for five years. In Markus Hinterhäuser, he now has a new source of inspiration and discussion partner in the musical field, strengthening our programme even further.”
Bettina Hering, photo Salzburg Festival/Wildbild
As Director of Drama, Bettina Hering contributes new impulses to the artistic directorship of Markus Hinterhäuser: these include four new productions, the re-staging of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann, four “drama investigations”, three readings and one concert performance.
Tobias Moretti, photo waytofamous.com
Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal is featured fourteen times on the Salzburg Festival’s 2017 programme, its premiere forming part of the Ouverture spirituelle. Tobias Moretti, the new Jedermann, and his Paramour Stefanie Reinsperger were already presented to the press a week ago in Vienna. New ensemble members also include Hanno Koffler as the Devil and Jedermann’s Good Companion, Mavie Hörbiger as Good Works, Edith Clever as Jedermann’s Mother and Roland Renner as the Poor Neighbour. Christoph Franken, who played the role of the Devil during the past two years on Cathedral Square, takes on the role of Mammon in 2017. Johannes Silberschneider, on the other hand, exchanges the Poor Neighbour for the role of Faith.
Andrea Breth, photo Alchetron
Director Andrea Breth brings Harold Pinter’s dark comedy The Birthday Party to the stage of the Landestheater. Harold Pinter has won numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. His figures straddle the border of the absurd. It is a thin ice they tread: indefinable fears and the inability to communicate produce an atmosphere of tension needing to be discharged. Martin Reinke as Petey and Andrea Clausen as Meg play the central couple. Max Simonischek plays Stanley, Andrea Wenzl is Lulu, and Goldberg will be embodied by Roland Koch.
Karin Henkel, photo Schauspielhaus Zürich
Gerhard Hauptmann created a masterwork of socio-critical naturalism in his Rose Bernd, describing the misery and suffering of the protagonist, who, with compelling immediacy, becomes an innocent sinner against her newly-born child. Karin Henkel directs the play at the Perner-Insel; the title role is performed by Lina Beckmann. Michael Prelle, Charly Hübner, Julia Wieninger and Maik Solbach appear in further roles.
Ödön von Horváth, photo Wikipedia
First performed in Leipzig in 1932 before the backdrop of the rise of National Socialism, Ödön von Horváth’s Kasimir und Karoline is set during the time of the 1929 world economic crisis. Here the young generation, threatened with unemployment and faced with an increasing brutalization which registers love and human relationships as mere commodities, finds its voice. The New York-based directors’ collective 600 HIGHWAYMEN led by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone stages the play, working with performers from very different age groups and backgrounds. At the Salzburg Festival, Kasimir und Karoline will become a folk play, a participatory theatrical piece with a cast of amateurs as well as professional actresses and actors.
Athina Rachel Tsangari, photo IMDb
“Lulu is desire, horror, greed, immorality, vulnerability, resilience, freedom, destruction. She is everything and nothing,” says Athina Rachel Tsangari, who directs Frank Wedekind’s Lulu at the Perner-Insel. Lulu rules and is ruled. “My approach to the mystery of Lulu is to apply her own trick: plurality,” Athina Rachel Tsangari continues: “Lulu bears a similarity to the three elements of alchemy: salt, sulphur and mercury.” Anna Drexler, Isolda Dychauk and Ariane Labed will perform the main roles of Lulu. “Sometimes they drift apart, sometimes they are drawn together again; they circle each other, contradict each other, confirm each other.” In addition to the three Lulus, Rainer Bock performs the roles of Schigolch/Dr. Goll, Martin Wuttke appears as Dr. Franz Schöning, Christian Friedel as Alwa Schöning, Philipp Hauß as Eduard Schwarz/Casti-Piani, Benny Claessens as Rodrigo and Fritzi Haberlandt as Countess Geschwitz. Athina Rachel Tsangari, the well-known Greek film director who has won awards for movies such as Attenberg and Chevalier, makes her theatre debut at the Salzburg Festival.
Marijan Zlobec and Press Release