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Salzburg Whitsun Festival
June 6 - 9, 2025
The Salzburg Whitsun Festival has been a highlight of the Salzburg event calendar since 1973. Experience this festival in early summer as a brilliant complement to the Summer Festival!
The History of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival
Herbert von Karajan brought the original Whitsun Concerts to life back in 1973, in order to assuage the demands of potential subscribers to the Easter Festival. Until 1982, three orchestral concerts were performed on Whit Saturday, Whit Sunday and Whit Monday respectively by the Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan.
After the death of Karajan, guest concerts by international orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra were added to the program. In 1998, it was taken over by the Salzburg Festival, who rechristened the Whitsun Concerts as the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. Riccardo Muti became artistic director of the Whitsun Festival in 2007, continuing to serve in that role until 2012, when Italian singer Cecilia Bartoli succeeded him. Since 2012, the main production from the Whitsun Festival is also performed during the Summer Festival.
2025 Salzburg Whitsun Festival – Sounds of la Serenissima
The 2025 Salzburg Whitsun Festival is devoted to the wide variety of Venetian music. From 6 to 9 June, the programme Sounds of la Serenissima will celebrate the city on the lagoon with music from five centuries. Venice was a centre of music printing, home to famous composers including Monteverdi, Verdi and at times Wagner, and site of the world's first public opera house.
Festival highlights:
- Barrie Kosky's opera pastiche Hotel Metamorphosis with music by Vivaldi, illustrating the 18th-century tradition of re-using music.
- Monteverdi's Vespers for the Blessed Virgin, combined with the contemporary work Venetian Morning by Bruno Mantovani.
- A concert performance of Verdi's La traviata, which was premièred in the Teatro La Fenice.
- A chamber music matinée with Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder and Nono's ...sofferte onde serene..., performed by Markus Hinterhäuser and Matthias Goerne.
- John Neumeier's ballet Death in Venice, based on the novella by Thomas Mann, with music by J.S. Bach and Wagner.
"Tutto Mozart", Salzburger Festspiele Pfingsten 2024 | © © Alexia Papadopoulos
