The Salzburg Easter Festival (, sometimes OFS) is a classical music and opera festival held every year over the extended week before Easter (Holy Week) in Salzburg, Austria since 1967.
It was created by the conductor Herbert von Karajan, and for most of its history featured the Berlin Philharmonic, of which Karajan was chief conductor; his successors in Berlin, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, succeeded him in Salzburg as well. The orchestra and Rattle left in 2013, and were replaced between 2013 and 2022 by the Dresden Staatskapelle and Christian Thielemann. It has been announced that the Berlin Philharmonic would return as the resident orchestra in 2026, with its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko. Since 2022, the artistic director has been Nikolaus Bachler.
Each edition includes the production of an opera and a series of orchestral and choral concerts, as well as a complementary programme of performances in other formats.
The Easter Festival is independent from the organization which produces the (summertime) Salzburg Festival and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival.
History
Foundation
The Salzburg Easter Festival was a creation of the conductor Herbert von Karajan. After his 1964 resignation as director of the Vienna State Opera, to where he would not return until 1977, he decided to no longer take charge of a traditional opera company, avoiding the constraints of having to deliver a full season and to oversee a large, conflict-prone organization. His intent, which he credits to a suggestion from Christoph von Dohnányi, was to produce opera in conditions which granted him complete control over music, stage direction, and management, and enabled him enough focus to achieve his designs with the highest possibly quality. This was to be with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was the chief conductor since 1955. Unlike their counterparts of a number of major orchestras of the German-speaking lands which serve as the pit orchestra of their city’s opera house, for example the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic exclusively performed in concert at the time. According to Karajan’s recollections, he initially thought that the newly reconstructed Grand Theatre in Geneva was suitable for his enterprise. However, he realized during rehearsals of Boris Godunov for the 1965 Salzburg Festival that the large stage and modern facilities of the Grand Festival Theatre, recently built at his initiative, made it the ideal venue. A Salzburg native, he lived with his family in nearby Anif.
The new festival was to fit into the “Karajan system”, under which he combined his several positions and partnerships for complete artistic and financial independence. It would work without government subsidy, and although Karajan would act as manager, producer, funder, sole conductor, and stage director, he would ask for no pay. For each edition, the opera would be recorded in studio in Berlin the previous autumn, for one of the three record labels with which Karajan was under contract (Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI), and which he could put in competition in order to obtain the best possible terms. Commercially, this meant that part of the preparation work for the festival would be paid for by the label. It also enabled the orchestra to limit its presence in Salzburg in the middle of its Berlin season; being a corporation of the city-state at the time, it obtained the permission of West Berlin authorities, on the argument that it would promote the city’s international reputation. Artistically, this meant that the musical performance was fully ready long before the short festival, and that the conductor, orchestra and cast avoided doing the bulk of their preparation in a few hasty rehearsals immediately before the festival opened, and could concentrate on the staging when they reconvened in Salzburg. The singers left Berlin with a recording of the full orchestral parts, which enabled them to rehearse in the meantime with more precision and comfort than with a piano accompaniment. Karajan also used the studio tapes when he began to work on sets and stage effects at the theatre. The recording were released in the spring at the same time as the festival, both contributing to the promotion of the other.