Media Information, July 2020 Everyman's Jews. 100 Years
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Media information, July 2020 Everyman’s Jews. 100 Years Salzburg Festival As of July 14, 2021, the Jewish Museum Vienna is presenting a retrospective of 100 years of the Salzburg Festival and Jewish participation in the world’s most eminent festival of classical music and the performing arts. A city as a stage 100 years ago, the theater producer and visionary Max Reinhardt implemented his vision for Salzburg together with the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. They declared the city a stage and Salzburg became the epitome of innovative theater on open-air stages, music in absolute perfection, and dance as an expression of the avant-garde. Jewish artists played a decisive role in the success – until the Nazi regime came to power in 1938. Today it is important to bring these female and male artists back for a curtain call. Highlights of the exhibition include several never-before-seen objects from the estate of Max Reinhardt and various artworks that trace the rise of the festival to the present day, as well as the lives of the various individuals, their careers, and escape routes. The Great World Theater of Salzburg Hofmannsthal shaped the first phase of the Salzburg Festival from 1920 to 1925 with his plays Everyman and The Great World Theater of Salzburg, written in the Catholic sprit of redemption. Reinhardt staged the latter piece at the Kollegienkirche in 1922, which caused a scandal because he was accused of desecrating the sacred space. While Karl Vollmoeller’s scenic pantomime The Miracle in Reinhardt’s stage production filled huge halls in London and New York to the last seat, the Salzburg adaptation remained rather modest. The Salzburg Festival experienced its heyday from 1926 to 1933: To attract a wider audience, Max Reinhardt began staging comedies such as Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, which playfully integrated music and dance. At the same time, it becomes apparent that actors of Jewish origin were represented, but not the few stars among them, who gladly worked with Reinhardt in other places, however. After the completion of the Large Festival Hall, far more lavish opera productions could be realized. Reinhardt found a visionary set designer in the architect Oscar Strnad, and a world- class conductor in Bruno Walter, who began his career with Gustav Mahler. Mahler’s brother- in-law, in turn, was Arnold Rosé, concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, which performs annually in Salzburg. Not only did the costumes and the scenery come from the Vienna State Opera, but the protagonists as well. The famous Jewish voices at the opera were female: Rosette Anday, Claire Born and Elisabeth Schumann shone brightly as the stars of their time. In 1928, the Leningrad Opera Workshop gave a guest performance of three Mozart opera productions accompanied by anti-communist protests, Tilly Losch performed her Dance of the Hands, while Hofmannsthal’s dance pantomime The Green Flute sparkled with futuristic costumes. On the ballet stage, the choreographer Margarete Wallmann impressed audiences with her staging. The posters for 1938 featuring the stars Toscanini and Reinhardt had already been printed, but after the German troops marched in, the long pent-up anger of the local Nazis erupted in martial actions: They devastated the synagogue and the few Jewish shops in Salzburg. On April 30, 1938, the only book burning in Austria’s history took place on Residenzplatz in Salzburg. Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, however, faced the problem of wanting to take over and redesign an institution he had fought against with all means for years. Catholic program items such as Everyman and church music were canceled, the Jewish protagonists had long since been arrested or had fled. After the outbreak of the war, the staging increasingly lost its opulence, and was finally played almost exclusively in front of soldiers on home leave. The post-war Salzburg Festival The American occupation forces set up their headquarters in Salzburg in 1945 and aimed to normalize civilian life as quickly as possible. Once again, the Festival offered an international backdrop. To guarantee creative quality at the highest level, artists such as Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Attila Hörbiger, Herbert von Karajan, Clemens Krauss or Paula Wessely, incriminated through their collaboration with the Nazi regime, were hired again after a short stage ban. One of the few Jewish protagonists was the actor Ernst Deutsch, who played the character Death in Everyman for the next 15 years. The violinist Yehudi Menuhin made two guest appearances to support the cultural landscape ravaged by the Nazi regime. The opera director Herbert Graf celebrated a number of successful productions and was involved in Clemens Holzmeister’s designs for the Large Festival Hall. “Everyman’s Jews. 100 Years Salzburg Festival” can be seen from July 14, 2021 to November 21, 2021 at the Jewish Museum Vienna, a Wien Holding museum. Appearing along with the exhibition, which was curated by Markus G. Patka and Sabine Fellner, and designed by Fuhrer, Wien, is a catalog in German and English published by Residenz Verlag that costs € 29.90. The Jewish Museum Vienna at Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna, is open Sunday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The second location, Museum Judenplatz, Judenplatz 8, 1010 Vienna, is open Sunday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. (wintertime), respectively 5 p.m. (summertime). Further information can be found at www.jmw.at or [email protected]. The exhibition Everyman’s Jews. 100 Years Salzburg Festival arose in cooperation with the Salzburg Festival. Further cooperation exists with the Salzburg Museum, which invited the Jewish Museum Vienna to design a room in the state exhibition Great World Theatre – The Salzburg Centenary. Queries Mag.a Petra Fuchs, M.Litt., media officer Tel.: +43-1-535 04 31-1513 E-Mail: [email protected] Photos and press material on current exhibitions can be found on the Jewish Museum Vienna homepage at www.jmw.at/de/presse. #SalzburgerFestpiele In partnership with: With the generous support of: .