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Salzburg Plans a Refurbished Home for Mozart's Operas

27/12/2002 |

 

Salzburg is widely known for two institutions: Mozart and the Salzburg Festival. But the picturesque Baroque city has never had complete success in combining the two. Mozart's statue is situated in one of the town's central squares, named after the great composer. His music, however, cannot boast such an ideal setting.

It becomes evident during the summer festival season that Mozart's operas don't have the venue they deserve in their creator's birthplace. The Great Hall in the Stiftung Mozarteum is the perfect setting for concert performances of Mozart's music but it does not have a stage. While the Landestheater combines fine stage machinery and adequate acoustics, its seating capacity is much too small for economically viable productions. The large hall of the Grosses Festspielhaus would be the site of choice based purely on economic considerations. But with its extra-wide stage opening of more than 130 feet, it distorts the staging of Mozart opera, and its acoustics require an orchestra at least double the size of the standard Mozart orchestra — and far too large to make his music sound lively and transparent. And the smaller Kleines Festspielhaus creates more problems than solutions: its stage is perfect for opera productions, but the hall itself is long and narrow and not particularly inviting for a pleasant evening at the opera.

The Salzburg Festival — as well as those responsible for the maintenance of Mozart's legacy — have long tried to find a solution for this problem. The options discussed have included building a completely new theater, perhaps in the somewhat bucolic setting of the Hellbrunn Castle's gardens; adding a new structure to the Festival district; and remodeling the Kleines Festspielhaus to give it more of an opera-house feeling.

In May 2001, the Salzburg Festival and local and national authorities agreed upon the third option. A number of architects proposed designs, among them Wilhelm Holzbauer, one of Austria's best-known designers and a former student of Clemens Holzmeister, the mastermind of the existing festival district. It soon became apparent that the board of trustees of the Salzburg Festival favored the plans proposed by Holzbauer. Construction could not proceed swiftly, however, since European Union regulations require an EU-wide competition for major projects funded largely by public money.

Earlier this year, a group of experts, including the board of directors of the Salzburg Festival, the governor of the state of Salzburg and several architects, examined a series of proposals and selected three winning designs. First place went to a Swiss-Italian team; Wilhelm Holzbauer and his associates finished second. But Holzbauer launched a lobbying campaign, enlisting the help of high-ranking politicians, directors and board members, and last month his proposal was officially accepted.

The renovation is scheduled to be completed by 2005, in time to celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday in 2006. Nikolaus Harnoncourt is expected to inaugurate the refurbished hall with a new production of The Marriage of Figaro. By then, the Kleines Festspielhaus will seat 1,664 and should have improved views of the stage. Construction costs will amount to about US$30 million, $4.36 million of which has already been contributed by the American philanthropist Donald Kahn. The prominent opera patron Alberto Vilar has also pledged several million dollars, but only his promise has arrived in Salzburg thus far.

László Molnar
andante.com