The misstep went into the plywood of the orchestra pit lining.

Now David Roth's foot is stuck.

But even this collapse in the working environment does not lead the opera director - Simon Schwarz plays him as Rumpelstiltskin with designer glasses - to steer the energy transition in the right direction.

He tears the wood out of its anchorage, throws himself on the rehearsal conductor Karina Samus (Laura de Boer) and then to the ground with her.

Colleagues step in because - he chokes them!

And suddenly, in the hundredth year of its existence, the Salzburg Festival needs a new director for Mozart's “Don Giovanni”.

Roth is disposed of: “For health reasons;

that's always possible, ”says Festival President Hedi Gebetsreuther.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the features section.

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A replacement is needed. And Gebetsreuther (Michou Friesz) suggests director Beate Zierau to the festival director Christoph Winterblum (August Zirner), who is always defensive. However, she is the divorced wife of the conductor Marius Atterson. And that in turn sits in the eye of a hurricane of me-too allegations. The head of the Friends of the Festival smiles away at the allegations, citing the great moments of art that Atterson brought her, and the presumption of innocence.

Michael Sturminger, who wrote the screenplay for the comedy “The Assumption of Innocence” and also directed this SWR production, not only drew a caricature here on the anniversary season of the Salzburg Festival, but also on the current debate about misconduct by management staff in the theater business . And he must have sensed the subject before it got hot this spring. Because filming started as early as September 2020. He has given public entertainment television a speed of reaction that it rarely has. Sturminger is responsible for the festival's current “Jedermann” and has also staged “Tosca” with Anna Netrebko in Salzburg. He knows the company.

For the brilliant venom of Dani Levy in his farce on the Lucerne Festival in "Tatort: ​​Music dies last" (FAZ August 4, 2018), Sturminger lacks pun, perhaps also the courage to take risks. The scene between the director Beate Zierau and the artistic director Winterblum is nevertheless pretty nasty: He asks her to compromise during the rehearsals with her ex-husband. "Without Marius we would be missing five hundred thousand because of Wendell and Frau Rasche."

Ulrich Tukur as Atterson is no longer a sex monster, but an idiot. It may be greasy and complacent, but somehow it remains good-natured, just like the film music by Kyrre Kvam, which with its umpah-umpah in a minor key brings everything down to the tone of a smirking crime thriller. Atterson gets away with a black eye. The real beast in this film has to be played by Catrin Striebeck as director Beate Zierau. It can be used to ensure that executive breakouts are not gender-specific. At the end she is out of the game, which the cheerful festival president and her spineless director bring to a good end. The stage master Schani Karas (Robert Stadlober) may be considered the only honest skin in it. Someone like him used to be called, gender-insensitive, “a fine guy”.

The presumption of innocence runs on Wednesday at 8.15 p.m. in the first.