Salzburger Festspiele

Salzburger Festspiele, an annual festival of music and drama originating in the Salzburger Festspielhausgemeinde, which was founded in August 1917 by H. von Hofmannsthal, R. Strauss, and M. Reinhardt who was until 1938 its director. Among other co-founders was the stage designer A. Roller (1864-1935). The first festival opened with the première of Hofmannsthal's Jedermann in 1920, and this work was performed annually from 1926 to 1937, and again from 1946. Other notable productions have been Goethe's Faust, Hofmannsthal's Das Salzburger große Welt-theater, and a number of operas, among which are the modern works Dantons Tod (1947) and Der Prozeß (1953) by G. von Einem, Antigone (1949) by C. Orff, and Die Bassariden (1966) by H. W. Henze. The festival is well known for its production of Mozart's operas; the first to be performed was Don Giovanni in 1926. A fully documented history of the festival by E. Fuhrich and G. Proßnitz, Die Salzburger Festspiele. Ihre Geschichte in Daten, Zeugnissen und Bildern (2 vols.) appeared 1990 ff.