Salzburg Fest Artistic Director Is Out

“Due to irreconcilable differences of opinion and disagreements, the Salzburg Festival and Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser are parting ways effective immediately,” the festival has announced. “This is the result of a meeting between the lawyers for the Salzburg Festival’s supervisory board on the one hand and the artistic director and his counsel on the other.”

The 68-year-old creative head will not be on hand for the upcoming summer event. The Kronen Zeitung reports he has been given a leave of absence until the end of his current contract, September 30, 2026.

A report from the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation OFR indicates that Hinterhäuser and Festival President Kristina Hammer’s relationship “has not exactly been harmonious.” Hinterhäuser has been with the festival since 2006, working his way up the ladder and succeeding Gerard Mortier first as interim artistic director, in 2011, and subsequently as the permanent head, in 2016. Hammer, with a background in marketing, arrived in 2022 succeeding mainstay Helga Rabl-Stadler. Her contract expires at year’s end.

The effort to have Hinterhäuser move on has been underway for some time, with the festival initially proposing he stay on just one more year after his current contract expired. Apparently he was not in agreement. As to his successor, as ORF reports, “Finding a suitable candidate is anything but easy, given that opera productions typically require a contractual lead time of several years.”

This year’s festival is scheduled to include 171 performances at 19 venues from July 17 to Aug. 30, plus 37 youth performances.

Salzburg ORF, AP

For its centennial in 2020, the Salzburg Festival was named Musical America's Artist of the Year.