Once again, this year’s Salzburg Festival had something for just about every opera lover. Romeo Castellucci’s Don Giovanni presented Mozart’s arch-antihero as a despicable heel and lots of on-stage symbolism underpinning his amorality. Mariame Clément's production of Offenbach’s signature opera turned Hoffmann’s tragic amorous adventures into a kind of filmed documentary. Peter Sellars's busy stage vision of Prokofiev’s The Gambler went hand-in-glove with Prokofiev’s relentlessly frenetic score. For many in the audience, Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Idiot was an intense introduction to the Polish-Soviet composer's gripping story of a man too good for our world. And – spoiler alert – the mob kills the generous monarch in Robert Carsten’s La clemenza di Tito.

From 19 July through 31 August, from dramma giocoso to 'New Simplicity', festival-goers had it all – a pastiche of directing styles in works that seemed to have three things in common despite their diversity – wonderful music, ambitious to good directing, and a gorgeous array of voices.  

Or was there a fourth?  

Markus Hinterhäuser's answer is a vehement 'yes' – a focus on commenting on humankind’s predicaments as they were when the works were written and as they are now.  

'No great work of art, no opera exists that was created in a political vacuum,' says the festival’s artistic director. 'There is always a connection to a social situation, a society’s policies. And so, there is in all of these works a political train of thought a thought ... that we call conditio humana'.

For any artistic director, there are always unavoidable realities that go into determining what works his or her music festival will stage. Budgets are one. The availability of directors, singers, and conductors is another. But ahead of this year’s opening, Hinterhäuser made clear what Leitfaden he sees on the festival’s stages, be they venues for the operas, Jedermann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s morality play, or the festival’s other on-stage productions.  

'I am very much of the meaning that we (as artists) have to focus on the world we live in and which we must survive,' he told Opera Now in a wide-ranging interview over espressos in Vienna’s iconic Hotel Sacher. 'I don’t want to see a Trump on the stage, I don’t want to see a Putin. But I want to have a reflection in these works that has political aspects ... in the sense of the deeply existential questions of who we are, where are we coming from, where are we going.'

Leaning back in the red velvet fauteuil, he cited Camus’s 'I rebel, therefore I am,' when challenged to explain how these thoughts will be expressed in such different works.  

'The revolt described by Camus is metaphysical, a revolt of an individual who has no place in society.' Revolution was the common thread, he said, and we parted with me promising I would look for this theme in my reviews.   

Markus Hinterhäuser (right) with director Krzysztof Warlikowski | Credit: Andreas Kolarik

Mozart – Don Giovanni  

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Hinterhäuser's thesis wasn’t difficult to find in Castelucci’s revived and reworked 2021 Don Giovanni. It hit me in the face, as a matter of fact from the first dark chord served up by the exceptional Teodor Currentzis. Sung and acted by Davide Luciano, the Don was a ruthless iconoclast, a sneering loner, a misogynist for all his professed love of women who sees society as a necessary evil in which he does his own thing. It was difficult to find anything attractive in his portrayal but for his voice, a baritone almost jarring in its warmth and feeling considering the coldness of the character he portrayed. In song and drama, Kyle Ketelsen’s Leporello is his master’s Doppelgänger one moment, his unheeded voice of conscience in the other. The Festspielhaus, with its 2179 seats, was barely large enough for Nadezhda Pavlova’s fierce lyric soprano as Donna Anna.   

All the singing was splendid, whether Federica Lombardi‘s Donna Elvira, Anna El-Khashem’s Zerlina, Dmitry Ulyanov’s Commendatore, Ruben Drole’s Masetto, and  Julian Prégardien’s wonderfully bumbling Don Ottavio. And while some of Castelucci’s devices left too much room for interpretation, others, like his desecrated church with its hellfire and the billy goat as the symbol of the devi wandering cross-stage, left little doubt as to where Don Giovanni was headed in the afterlife even before he began to turn into stone.  

Weinberg's The Idiot at Salzburg Opera Festival | Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Weinberg – The Idiot  

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If Don Giovanni was darkness, then the good Prince Myshkin of Weinberg’s opera was light, so compassionate and caring that he is considered an idiot. Both are strangers in their worlds, perhaps sharing something with the gamers, survivalists, cultists, and conspiracy theorists who have left ours. At first, Myshkin seemed to be Parsifal transported to czarist Russia, a 'pure fool, enlightened by compassion.' But Myshkin remains unenlightened. Parsifal heals Amfortas once he understands the world around him. Myshkin never does, and so he remains, like the Don, an outsider.    

The stage for this new production was sparse but effective. Benches portrayed a rail car compartment, the landscape rolled by in black and white video. The vast stage of the Felsenreitschule theatre allowed room for several of the simple sets at once. Bogdan Volkov’s singing was expressive, lyrical, and – like the character he portrayed – almost childlike in its pureness. His acting was superb, his seizure, in shocked reaction to a near murder, frighteningly realistic. Ausrine Stundyte, as Nastasya, Vladislav Sulimsky as Rogozhin, Clive Bayley, as the General, and Xenia Puskarz Thoas as Aglaya were standouts in a 13-strong cast of excellent voices and dramatics, supported by the Vianna Philharmonic Orchestra’s sensitive rendition of Weinberg’s freely flowing tonal score under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.  

Prokofiev's The Gambler at Salzburg Opera Festival | Credit: Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Prokofiev – The Gambler  

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Little wonder that, like The Idiot, Prokofiev’s The Gambler is a story of lives wasted or misunderstood. Both are based on novels by Dostoyevsky. A gambler is someone on the edge of a society he rebels against. He plays not for riches but to exist, an outsider and a paradigm of our society of gamblers in politics or finance Alexei, the tutor to the General’s children loses Polina, his love and his only anchor to life outside the casino through his gambling. And yet, he doesn’t care. His passion has turned from her to his destructive addiction. But he’s not alone. Almost everyone is caught up in their own world in The Gambler’s dysfunctional society, driven by revenge, manipulation, or greed.   

Asmik Grigorian was underwhelmed as Polina, a role that not only gave little scope for a full display of her superb voice but under Sellars’s direction had her sitting at the back of a darkened stage for much of the performance. As Alexei, Sean Panikkar’s tenor was powerful but lacked nuance. Violeta Urmana was outstanding vocally and dramatically as Babulenka, the General’s feisty, wheelchair-ridden aunt. Also good: Peixin Chen, (the General), Juan Francisco Gatell, (the Marquis), and Nicole Chirka as Blanche, the General’s paramour. UFO-like roulette wheels appeared from and disappeared into the fly loft throughout the performance, in a visual match to Timur Zangiev’s interpretation of the feverish and lucent score.

The cast of Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann | Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Offenbach – Les contes d’Hoffmann  

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Hoffmann like Don Giovanni? Both, in their own way, are slaves to women. And like the Don, Hoffmann exists outside society. In his case, it’s a dream world. Provoked by the crisis of separation from a loved one that seldom intersects with the real one, it makes him a kindred spirit not only to Mozart’s famed libertine but to Myshkin and Alexei. But the hero’s otherworldliness is hard to find in Clément's interpretation of this new production of Les contes d'Hoffmann.  She has him as a film director who flits in and out of the action as he tries to come to grips with his trauma by putting his dream escapades with dream women on celluloid. Her attempt to pull Hoffmann into the real world not only fails but goes against the grain of an opera fantastique defined as focused on romance and fantasy. And although Marc Minkowski brought out much of the score’s rich evocativeness he was occasionally off tempo and cue.  

The singers rose above it all. Benjamin Bernheim’s lyric tenor was the perfect instrument for a title role requiring a feel for French refinement, soaring power,  and tragic tenderness. Kathryn Lewek dealt with Olympia’s stratospheric high notes with the same bravura as she conveyed the languor of Giulietta and the frailty of Antonia. Christian Van Horn’s bass-baritone convincingly conveyed the villainy of Lindorf, Coppelius, Dappertutto, and Dr. Miracle. Kudos as well to Marc Mauillon as  Andrés, Cochenille, Frantz, and Pitichinaccio;  Kate Lindsey (The Muse, Nicklausse), Michael Laurenz, (Spalanzani), Jérôme Varnier, (Cresperl, Luther), Philippe-Nicolas Martin, (Hermann, Peter Schlémil), Paco Garcia, (Nathanaël), and Yehveniy Kapitula, (Wilhelm).  

I didn’t see La clemenza di Tito, (reprised from the Whitsun Festival) so I can’t comment on the performance. But a kind and generous ruler in a society as cruel as his – and ours – is an outcast. The burning of the Capitol needs no further reference to our world after the events of Jan. 6. 2021, in Washington. And Vitellia claiming the throne over Tito’s dead body in this production has to be seen as an act of rebellion, a bow to radical feminism.   

'I tried to group these individuals in a kind of story of revolt against a society they see only as outsiders,' Hinterhäuser told me ahead of the performances. It worked. 

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