100 years of the Salzburg Festival

The play originally scheduled for the first Salzburg Festival was unfinished as the event drew near, and for lack of wood, a post-WWI problem, no stage could be built. But another play and another setting gave birth to what would become a tradition: The local bishop consented to a open-air performance of Hugo von Hofmannstal's "Everyman" on the steps of Salzburg Cathedral on August 22, 1920.

Director Max Reinhardt's personal copy of "Everyman" shows his long-term involvement with the play: He made handwritten notes in black ink for the premiere in Berlin in 1911, in blue ink for the 1920 performance in Salzburg and in lavender for a later presentation in New York. In simple, gripping words, the story is about a rich and powerful man who is suddenly confronted with his own mortality.

A onetime riding school complex long served as a provisional "Festspielhaus," or festival theater. Now it's called the "little Festspielhaus" or "House of Mozart." Today's main venue opened in 1960, and its construction demonstrated how Salzburg is literally at the edge of the Alps: To make space for the vast stage, 55,000 cubic meters (1,940,000 cubic feet) of granite had to be blasted away.

Along with Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss, Rheinhardt, the famous stage director (seen here at a rehearsal of Goethe's "Faust" in 1933), was a founding father of the Salzburg Festival. Reinhardt's residence at Leopoldskron Palace near Salzburg was a meeting place for the international elite. As anti-Semitic hostility rose, Reinhardt emigrated to the US and died there in 1943.

When Austria was absorbed into Nazi Germany in March 1938, the famous Italian conductor canceled his contract. Authorities tried to persuade him to reconsider, but the message in this telegram is unambiguous: "I am quite astonished that the finality of my answer in the first cable was not understood." Art was soon put in the service of propaganda in Salzburg, as in the rest of Germany.

Right at the end of World War II, American occupying forces made plans to reopen the festival on August 12, 1945. That season was attended mainly by army members and their families. Artists were in short supply: Due to former Nazi connections, the conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler, Clemens Krauss, Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan were not allowed to exercise their professions for a couple of years.

By the late 1940s, operations had returned to normal: Power outings were now rare, so theater and opera performances could go on. Moneyed attendees could purchase a Salzburg gold coin as a memento, but nearly "everyman" could afford a pack of Salzburg cigarettes. On the playbill were Mozart matinees, Mozart and Strauss operas and in 1949, the world premiere of an opera by Carl Orff.

Herbert von Karajan became the artistic director in 1957. In many spectacular opera productions over the next three decades, the staging was often created by Karajan's favorite set designer, Günther Schneider-Siemssen. He designed the above set for a 1965 production of Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov." Working with subtle light projections, his approach was called "painting with light."

After Herbert von Karajan met the 13-year-old violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, he called her a "phenomenon" and invited her to perform in Salzburg. Karajan also promoted the singer Agnes Baltsa, the conductors Mariss Jansons, Seiji Ozawa and Riccardo Muti, and others who rose to world fame after appearing at the Salzburg Festival. Shown here: A critique of Mutter's premiere at the festival.

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld also made a contribution, designing the costumes for a 1991 production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play "Der Schwierige" ("The Difficult Gentleman"), directed by Jürgen Flimm and with scenery by Erich Wonder. It was a delight for the eyes but some criticized the Salzburger Festival as a "state-subsidized fashion show."

The radically new interpretation of Johann Strauss' operetta "Die Fledermaus" by director Hans Neuenfels was a hallmark of the era of Gerard Mortiers (1991-2001), who had been named festival director after Karajan's death. He spoke out against both the Salzburg arts establishment and the far-right populist FPÖ party, then a coalition member in the Austrian government.

After Mortier came Peter Ruzicka, who in 2006 put all 22 Mozart operas on the playbill. His successors were Jürgen Flimm, Alexander Pereira and the current festival director, Markus Hinterhäuser. The Salzburg festival is forever renewing itself, but one thing stays the same: performances of "Everyman" (here in the production first seen in 2013) — the piece with which it all began 100 years ago.