Salzburg Festival Sells Out 98.2% Of Seats

As the 104th Salzburg Festival drew to a close this past weekend, its administration reported that 98.2% of the season’s seats had sold out. This year’s festival featured 172 performances ranging from opera to concert.

What’s up: On August 31st, Austria’s famed Salzburg Festival wrapped its 104th season. Over the course of 44 days, the festival mounted 172 performances including 9 different operas, 5 of which were fully staged productions, as well as 85 concerts. The festival reported 250,000 visitors from 77 countries around the world and 6,000 tickets sold to people under the age of 27. Funds were also raised for humanitarian causes including Salzburg’s Children’s Cancer Society, Doctors Without Borders, and the Malteser Hospitaldienst Austria, which supports child refugees from Ukraine.

The deep cut: This year’s Salzburg Festival also celebrated two major Austrian birthdays. They commemorated the 150th birthday of Arnold Schönberg, dedicating a concert series to the Austrian-born Jewish composer who fled Europe in the 1930s. A new archive of works by Schönberg’s fellow 150-year-old Wiener, the Austrian writer and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, also opened. Not a bad time for fin-de-siècle buffs to get their Austrian culture fix. — SS

PS: Schönberg’s official 150th is on September 13th, 2024. Cue up the Sprechstimme.

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Sara Schabas

Sara Schabas is a Dora-nominated soprano, writer and yoga teacher. She has performed and created leading roles with companies including Vancouver Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, the Dayton Opera, and Aspen Opera, and is a former member of Barbara Hannigan’s Equilibrium Young Artists. Currently based in Montreal, she is a doctoral student at McGill University — where she recently received the Wirth Vocal Prize — and editor of Art Song Canada magazine.