The Austrian city of Salzburg lives up to its reputation as one the world’s great festival cities with the summer long Salzburg Festival season offering more than 4,000 music and theater events.
Beyond the festival events themselves, the medieval streets and the squares of Salzburg’s historic city center comes alive with visitors thronging the sidewalk cafes and restaurants to be entertained by all manner of buskers.
The Salzburg festivals
The Salzburg Whitsun Festival
May 25 to 28
The festival season starts with the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, which takes the theme : Cleopatra — In the Labyrinth of Love and Power and opens with a new production of the opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto by Georg Friedrich Handel.
There will also be a concert performance of Jules Massenet’s opera Cléopâtre, with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and ends with Cleopatra and the Asp, a work by Rodion Shchedrin. Visit: www.salzburgfestival.at.
The Salzburg Literature Festival
May 30 to June 3
The fifth Salzburg Literature Festival has a program of readings and discussions for all ages, held in historic settings within the old city UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visit : www.literaturfest-salzburg.at.
sommerszene
July 5 to 22
Sommerszene, Salzburg’s international dance and theater festival, offers free performances of contemporary dance and theatre productions by young, international and elite performers. Visit : www.sommerszene.net.
The Salzburg Festival
July 20 July to Sept. 2
The 2012 Salzburg Festival, itself, runs for six weeks instead of the previous five, and will see 232 opera, concert and theater performances in 14 city venues, ranging from Mozart to modern and traditional to experimental.
The Festival opening on July 20 and 21 July is a street festival of performances, musical events and the chance to meet festival stars and get behind the scenes views. Visit : www.salzburg.info.
Summer ball
The 2012 festival also sees the staging of a ball in the Summer Riding School as a fitting finale.
Visit : www.salzburgfestival.at.
The Salzburg Festival will be supported by a program of performances, between July 16 and Aug. 25, by the Mozarteum University’s International Summer Academy and the Salzburg International Summer Academy for the Visual Arts. Visit : www.summeracademymozarteum.at and www.summeracademy.at.
Salzburg Festival Nights
The Salzburg Festival Nights, which start on July 27, on Chapter Square will broadcast audio concert performances daily from 6 p.m. and films of Festival productions on the big screen from 8 p.m.
The open air atmosphere of these to the backdrop of Chapter Square at the foot of Hohensalzburg Fortress makes the Festival Nights a unique summer experience. Visit : www.festspielnaechte.at.
Also enjoy the following:
Afternoons in the Hedge Theatre
The traditional open-air afternoons in the Hedge Theater, Mirabell Gardens take place every Friday from the end of June to the end of August, and has dance groups, singers and musicians performing.
Promenade and Fountain Concerts
The Promenade and Fountain brass band concerts in the Mirabell Gardens take place from May to August on a Sunday (10:30 to 11:30 a.m.) and Wednesday (8:30 to 9:30 p.m.).
Street festivals
Salzburg’s street festivals are another very popular fixture and include the Kai District Festival (June 15 and 16) and the Linzergasse Festival (June 29 and 30).
The Steingasse Festival, on Aug. 24 and 25 has a Mediterranean flair at the foot of the Kapuzinerberg, with Italian songs, passionate tango, Schrammel music and fine cuisine, plays and some bizarre performances.
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