This is a list of the operas performed by Salzburg Festival during the music directorship of Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter (1935–1937). This period was ended by the invasion and annexation of the Republic of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Arturo Toscanini, an avid opponent of the Nazi regime, thereafter declined to return to Salzburg. Bruno Walter was forced to flee to the United States.
New opera productions
The period 1935 to 1937 was extremely successful for the Salzburg Festival. The percentage of tickets sold rose from 53% in 1934 to 89% in 1937. Each year during this period, Arturo Toscanini presented one new production of an opera suitable to the Salzburg atmosphere. He insisted on major funding and the best available singers. In 1935 he presented Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, performed for the first time at the Salzburg Festival. His choice of Wagner's Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1936 was seen as an act of opposition to the Bayreuth Festival, insisting that this opera belongs to the cultural heritage of the world and not to Nazi Germany. His last Salzburg premiere was dedicated to the genius loci, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and his masterpiece Die Zauberflöte. Another political statement of Toscanini was that each year he conducted Beethoven's freedom opera Fidelio, a masterpiece against tyranny.[1]
Meanwhile, Bruno Walter, who was the only conductor fully accepted by Toscanini, concentrated on majors works by Mozart, presented a highly acclaimed production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, and expanded the Salzburg repertory by adding rarely performed operas like Wolf's Der Corregidor and Weber's Euryanthe. He, too, insisted on conducting Wagner in Salzburg – Tristan und Isolde with a splendid cast led by Anny Konetzni and Josef Kalenberg.[2]
Kaut, Josef (1982). Die Salzburger Festspiele 1920–1981, Mit einem Verzeichnis der aufgeführten Werke und der Künstler des Theaters und der Musik von Hans Jaklitsch. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag. ISBN3-7017-0308-6.
References
^Stephen Gallup: Die Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele, Vienna: Orac 1989, ISBN3-7015-0164-5, p. 124–154 (Chapter: Der glorreiche Toscanini).
^Robert Kriechbaumer: Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland. Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele 1933–1944. Vienna: Böhlau 2013, ISBN978-3-205-78941-3, Herein esp. p. 77–79, 125–136, 142–144, 257–262.
