Salzburg's Iconic Festivals Lose Artistic Director Amid Leadership Turmoil
Curtain Up on the Salzburg Easter Festival!
The setting between the Mirabell Gardens and the snow-draped Untersberg remains as picturesque as ever, though the atmosphere—once alive with the bloom of spring—has decidedly chilled. The mood between the Kapuzinerberg and Mönchsberg is heavy these days, the air thick with gloom. The fine Salzburg drizzle seems a sign that the heavens above the city—and over the city itself—are weeping.
The Passion of Markus
The festival opened in the Felsenreitschule with the premiere of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first installment of The Ring of the Nibelung. Yet the prologue foreshadowed the cycle's apocalyptic finale: Götterdämmerung had already begun. Lightning and a thunderous storm, its echoes rolling far beyond the Salzach, even reaching the Danube and the Rhine, heralded a tempest that swept through the festival district, carrying off its artistic director in its wake. There will be no da capo for Markus Hinterhäuser.
At the foot of the fortress—Salzburg's own Valhalla—rage had been brewing under Karoline I. and Governor Bernhard, the rulers of land and city, against the cultural impresario. A clash of Valkyries and Siegfrieds. But this intermezzo may not last long. Will the directors of the Easter and Pentecost festivals step into the ring until Everyman once again holds court in the Cathedral Square? For now, Salzburg's open stage presents not Bach's St. Matthew Passion, but the Passion of Markus.
