Salzburg Festival's leadership crisis deepens under Karin Bergmann's watch
I know you have your hands full: you're steering the upcoming Salzburg Festival, plugging the gaps in the future program, and mediating between yesterday and tomorrow—all while knowing someone else will soon take over your role. Hearings for your successor are already set for September.
And yes—you are the right person for this complicated time! But for all the praise: be careful you don't shrink into the role of the great relativist.
You took office because your predecessor made mistakes. It's understandable that you want to bring the old team along, that you're gilding the past because you know the future will be entirely new. Fine.
But your repeated insistence on standing by Teodor Currentzis, the Hinterhäuser conductor, is puzzling. You argue that music has always been seen as a "bridge-builder," especially in times of crisis. And besides, you say, Currentzis and Netrebko have roots in Russia—something we must understand. Silence, after all, isn't the same as endorsing the war.
Dear Ms. Bergmann: leaving aside the fact that we're not in a Cold War but in a time when Russia is slaughtering Ukrainian civilians daily, Anna Netrebko hasn't performed in Russia for years. Her silence on Putin's war is accompanied by her actions—her choice of Europe. Teodor Currentzis is a different story. He voluntarily became a Russian citizen—after the annexation of Crimea! His art is still bankrolled by war-linked firms like Gazprom and VTB. On European tours, musicians from his MusicAeterna ensemble have slandered German politics and compared German journalists to Nazis. And he? He's stayed silent.
No wonder even the staunchest defenders of Markus Hinterhäuser—whether in the FAZ or the Süddeutsche—now view Currentzis's engagement with skepticism, while Le Monde just devoted a major piece to his Russian entanglements.
Dear Karin Bergmann, look back at the founding charter of the Salzburg Festival, where Max Reinhardt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Richard Strauss wrote of art's cultural and moral responsibility.
Dear Karin Bergmann, naivety is no foundation for resolving past conflicts in the future.
