In Salzburg the lasting contribution from this summer is likely to be the premiere of Thomas Adés’ opera, “The Exterminating Angel,” a work meant to challenge the very essence of status quo - shockingly so in its harsh depiction of stymied high society - which will now be done at Royal Opera in London and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. And to that end, they sponsor education projects, foster emerging artists and commission new work. That kind of bankrolling (most of which is private support) can, of course, lend an air of exclusivity, which both festivals have worked hard to lessen, while becoming much more expansive. ![]() Today Lucerne, which is primarily devoted to concert music, has a budget of around $27 million, while Salzburg, which produces opera and theater as well as concerts, boasts a budget more than double that. An air of exclusivity wafted over both places as new concert halls and opera houses were built and offerings became more lavish. Recordings of concerts and operas from the festivals automatically had the stamp of quality. So the adamant anti-Fascist Arturo Toscanini started a festival on the shores of Lake Lucerne at the foot of the Swiss Alps.īoth festivals enhanced their reputations after World War II with star conductors, notably Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg and Wilhelm Furtwängler in Lucerne. The Lucerne Festival came along 18 years later in reaction to Salzburg having become far too appealing to Hitler and his SS contingent. The Salzburg Festival was founded in 1920 in Mozart’s quaint hometown at the foot of the Austrian Alps to be an international outpouring of opera, concerts and theater from the leading artists of the day. Do we have it in us to do it again by, say, reviving the biannual Los Angeles Festival, the follow-up to the Olympic Arts Festival, which lasted only until 1993 and had ambitions to put us in the league with Berlin and Paris?įirst, though, it might be worth considering how Salzburg and Lucerne did it, and how what they do now reverberates around the world. mounted an Olympic Arts Festival that changed the complexion of performance arts in Los Angeles. What about Los Angeles? As the city weighs the feasibility of its bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, let us remember what it meant in 1984 when L.A. ![]() But Lincoln Center Festival in July comes closest to a big international festival of the performance arts, and it has become less ambitious and less provocative than it once was. A few small, out-of-the-way American cities have small destination festivals of note - Ojai, close to home, is one. The Proms, the Berlin Festival, Paris Autumn and Prague Spring and other city festivals are primarily for residents. It needn’t always be a special destination. So too is the fact that the artistic director designate of the Salzburg Festival is Austrian pianist Markus Hinterhäuser, a modern music specialist known for his penetrating recordings of John Cage’s New York School.Ī festival, on the other hand, is a concentrated excursion away from the computer and the quotidian. ![]() Outside observers have found such queen bee business a wee bit condescending, but given that parts of Switzerland gave women the vote only in the 1970s, this is a statement. This year’s theme of the Lucerne festival is the empowerment of women in classical music, particularly as composers and conductors. ![]() The leading 20 thcentury anti-establishment American artist is - at least in this small Salzburg dominion through which artists, writers and administrators regularly pass - a bastion of the classical music establishment.Īt that other prestigious address for classical music in summertime, Lucerne, Switzerland, posters and program books are centered with the words PRIMA DONNA in large type, the I being a graphic of a conductor’s baton extending from the manicured red nail of a lady’s right hand, which is encircled by bees. Conspicuously tacked on a press office bulletin board at the tony Salzburg Festival is a large photo of John Cage. A tale of two exalted European city festivals begins with surprising signifiers.
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