Stay safe for Strauss: Salzburg holds music festival despite coronavirus
When the lights go down at Salzburg’s Felsenreitschule theatre on Saturday afternoon, it won’t just be the physically distanced audience that is watching closely. Many of the world’s artistic venues will be looking on, to see if Salzburg has found the magic formula for holding a festival in times of coronavirus.
From Glyndebourne and Bayreuth, to Edinburgh, Cannes and Glastonbury, European festivals this summer were scratched off the calendar during spring, as soon as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic became clear.
In Salzburg, though, the organisers of the annual music and drama festival decided to wait and see, especially given that this is the festival’s centenary year. And as Austria’s coronavirus stats improved, the decision was taken to go ahead.
The number of venues has been halved from 16 to eight, and many productions have been postponed until next year. Nevertheless, the festival will involve 12 performances of fully staged operas, 29 performances of plays and 53 concerts – quite an undertaking as the pandemic continues.
The decision not to cancel the festival immediately was borne of “a mixture of hope, dreaming and perhaps also intuition that the pandemic’s case numbers might move in a direction which enabled people to assemble again,” said the festival’s artistic director, Markus Hinterhäuser.
After an early spike in March when the country was recording more than 1,000 coronavirus cases per day, Austria is currently registering only a handful of new cases each day. Since June, restrictions on gatherings have been relaxed and now up to 1,000 people are allowed to gather, depending on the venue.
The festival will kick off with a performance of the Richard Strauss opera Elektra, on Saturday.
“We know for a fact that almost all of the major opera houses are watching this to see if the Salzburg model is something they can use,” said Derek Welton, the Australian bass-baritone who will sing the part of Orest in Elektra, in a telephone interview.
The festival has sorted all artists and staff into three categories, based on how realistic it is for them to physically distance. All singers are in the
“red” category, meaning they will interact with each other as normal, but are subject to regular testing and have been told to minimise outside contacts for the duration of the festival.
“We’re all keenly aware of our personal responsibility to our colleagues, to the festival and to the whole music industry, to minimise our exposure,” said Welton.
The “orange” category includes some artists and the festival’s temporary staff, who may not be able to physically distance but can wear masks, while the “yellow” group will wear masks and distance at all times. People from all categories are tested for Covid-19 on arrival, but only the red group will undergo repeated, follow-up testing.
At performances, there will be no bars or buffets, and there are no intervals in any of the productions, to avoid people congregating in queues for toilets or champagne. Audience members will be obliged to wear masks except when in their seats, and seating in the auditoriums will be physically distanced, though venues will still be at about 50% capacity.
Although in normal times it might be disheartening to play to a half-empty house, Welton said he expected there to be a special atmosphere inside the theatre.
“The difficult times we are living in mean that the few performances that are happening will be even more intense,” he said. “Those who are there will be really happy to see something after so long.”
In addition to Elektra, there will be six performances of Così fan Tutte, concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic and the premiere of a play by Peter Handke, the Austrian author who won last year’s Nobel prize for literature. The festival will run for a month, closing at the end of August with two concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic.