The first Salzburg Festival took place in 1920 — without operas although all concepts for the festival included operas as a main part of the endeavor. The first festival consisted of open air performances of the drama Jedermann [Everyman] by Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal who wrote several librettos for operas by Richard Strauss. The play was performed at the grand square in front of the Salzburg Cathedral. The play describes the life and death of a rich man and is based on several medieval mystery plays. Jedermann was directed by world famous Max Reinhardt and was a stunning success. The play is still today performed every year at the same place.
In 1921, concerts were added to the festival program. Concerts of the world's best orchestras, singers and soloists still today represent an important pillar of Salzburg Festival. In 1922, Richard Strauss and Franz Schalk brought opera to the festival. Both were famous conductors and since 1919 functioned also as general managers of Vienna State Opera. They chose four works of Salzburg born genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for the first season — the three Da Ponte operas and Die Entführung aus dem Serail [The Abduction from the Seraglio]. In the founding years the festival did not have the means to produce entire opera productions. So Strauss and Schalk brought the settings, the singers, the orchestra and the chorus from Vienna State Opera to Salzburg. The press critically noted that the opera program of the festival constituted ″the summer residence of Vienna State Opera″.[1] Nevertheless, the performances were superb due to the orchestra, the chorus and the great singers. They came from all over Europa and created excellent ensembles for the Mozart operas, later on also for works by Donizetti, Johann Strauß and Richard Strauss. An important role was also given to set designer Alfred Roller who dominated the visual aspect of the first Salzburg Festival opera performances.
All perfomances listed took place at the Salzburger Stadttheater.
The Faistauer Foyer was the entrance area to the new Festival House, created in 1926, the venue of most opera productions in the period from 1927 to 1934 at the Salzburg Festival
Salzburg Festival: history and repertoire, 1927-34 lists all opera productions of the Salzburg Festival in its early years.
Josef Kaut: Die Salzburger Festspiele 1920-1981, Mit einem Verzeichnis der aufgeführten Werke und der Künstler des Theaters und der Musik von Hans Jaklitsch. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 1982.Fehler bei Vorlage * Parametername unbekannt (Vorlage:Cite book): "ISBN", p. 244–249.
Michael Levine
In 1984 Levine was a resident designer at the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre, Scotland, where his imaginative costume and set designs first attracted attention for their postmodern evocation of visual styles from the past.
Levine, Michael
Designer of the Canadian Opera Company's production of "Bluebeard's Castle" (courtesy Maclean's).
Michael Levine
In 1984 Levine was a resident designer at the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre, Scotland, where his imaginative costume and set designs first attracted attention for their postmodern evocation of visual styles from the past.
Levine subsequently designed Uncle Vanya (TARRAGON THEATRE, 1985), Spring Awakening (CentreStage, 1986) and five productions at the SHAW FESTIVAL (1984-87). At the Shaw Festival his towering closet of red dresses mirroring the costumes for The Women, the monochromatic cream-coloured set that grew in front of the spectators for Heartbreak House (1985) and the multi-layered set for Arms and the Man (1986) were huge metaphorical designs that redefined perspective and performance space.
In designs for Nabucco (Paris Opera - Bastille, 1995), the acclaimed production of Die Frau ohne Schatten (Vienna State Opera, 1998) and the award-winning Midsummer Night's Dream (Le Festival d'Aix en Provence and English National Opera, 1991), Levine made stunning use of new technologies. For Nabucco, monumental walls extending the height and width of the stage created cavernous environments that in the final scene were revealed onstage as destroyed rubble. For A Midsummer Night's Dream, objects in contrasting scale and the suspension of singers on swings engaged attention to perspective.
Levine's scenography often integrates elements that have their own life on the stage, such as water in Tectonic Plates (Harbourfront, Toronto, 1988), mud in A Midsummer Night's Dream (National Theatre, England, 1992), paper in La Bohème (Antwerp, Belgium, 1994), and leaves in Eugene Onegin (Metropolitan Opera, USA, 1997).
In Mario and the Magician (Canadian Opera Company, 1992) the entire theatre was drawn into the set by the chorus to evoke the increasingly regimented society of pre-fascist Italy.
Michael Levine's designs for opera frequently draw on the chorus as a constitutive component of the stage, as when chorus members became bodies heaped under Oedipus's throne in Oedipus Rex (CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY, 1998) or when the chorus became the human counterpart to the architectonics of the hydraulic platform in Rigoletto (Netherlands Opera, 1996). For Mephistofele (San Francisco, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Geneva Opera, 1988) he extended his design beyond the proscenium arch with figures suspended in the auditorium.
For the internationally acclaimed double bill Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung (Canadian Opera Company, 1993) he characterized the stage as an enormous black box. In Bluebeard he defined the architecture primarily through lighting, while for Erwartung he used slide projections on the stage and downstage scrim to create a collision in perspective.
Based on a previous design for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Levine created a sumptuous Victorian men's club complete with wingback chairs, enormous Persian rugs and gothic fireplaces for Rigoletto (Canadian Opera Company, 2011).
His designs for Jerusalem (1997) and Die Dame Ohne Schaten (Vienna State Opera, 1998) were critically acclaimed for their definition of performative space. Levine's sets for the opera Dr Ox's Experiment and his scenography for Tales of Hoffmann and Rusalka (2002) and Les Boréades (2003) for l'Opéra de Paris are significant re-envisionings of the roles to be played by costumes and sets in opera.
Hyperealism has been the theme of several designs. For a production of Candide (English National Opera, 2008), Michael Levine designed an enormous television screen where scenes of the central character's misadventures abroad unfold as a newsreel. His set design for The Flying Dutchman (Royal Opera House, 2011) featured the hulking iron hull of a ship that dominates the stage.
In 2006 Levine designed all four epic operas comprising Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Canadian Opera Company's highly anticipated opening season at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. He made his debut as a director with the prologue Das Rheingold. In 2004 he contributed the designs for Die Walküre under filmmaker Atom EGOYAN's direction (Canadian Opera Company).
Beginning in the late 1990s, Michael Levine returned to designs for plays with Possible Worlds (THEATRE PASSE MURAILLE, 1997) and, for SOULPEPPER Theatre, Platonov (1999) and Uncle Vanya (2001). His work in other genres includes designs for September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weil (RHOMBUS MEDIA, 1995), The Satie project with DANCEMAKERS (2001), The Contract with the NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA (2002) and Rivers with TORONTO DANCE THEATRE (2012). Yet set and costume design for opera continues to be Levine's main focus and source of acclaim.
Michael Levine is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada, and his designs were featured as part of the Canadian delegation to the Prague Quadrennial in 1999.
Aunszeichnungen
1981: Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in France.
1991: Critics Award, France, (Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream)
1993: Edinburgh Festival Drama and Music Award (Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung)
1997: Toronto Arts Award
1997: Gemini Award for September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill
↑Josef Kaut: 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, ISBN 3-7017-0308-6, p. 41.
