The Salzburg festival escaped a worldwide wave of cancellations. The 100th edition of the Austrian cultural event opened its doors this weekend, with many protective measures against the coronavirus.
The festival kicked off on Saturday with performances of Elektra , Richard Strauss ' opera directed by Poland's Krzysztof Warlikowski, and the play Everyman , performed annually since the event's inception.
No intermission, no catering
The play was supposed to be performed outdoors in Salzburg's Cathedral Square, but a thunderstorm forced it to be performed indoors, with masked spectators struggling to keep safe distances when going to sit, according to local press. The organizers have promised to respect strict sanitary measures for this light version of the festival - 110 shows are scheduled for August, against 200 initially.
The 80,000 tickets sold - against 230,000 in other years - are personalized to allow contact tracing in the event of contamination. Spectators must wear a mask until they are seated, and there will be no intermission or catering.
Performers who cannot maintain a distance of at least one meter from their colleagues, such as orchestral musicians, must be tested regularly for the coronavirus. The program includes the first performance of a play by Austrian Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke and another opera, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte , staged by the German Christof Loy.
Austria little affected by coronavirus
Austria has been relatively untouched by the pandemic, with some 21,000 officially recorded cases and around 700 deaths. But contamination has been on the rise in recent weeks since the lifting of most of the severe restrictions put in place in the spring. Many contaminations have recently been detected around the picturesque Lake Wolfgang, less than 50 km from Salzburg.
But the authorities assure that the epidemic is under control in the country of nearly nine million inhabitants.
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