Götterdämmerung
Salzburg Easter Festival
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. Rather more than safety, if truth be known. The Salzburg Easter Festival, which concluded on Monday with a performance of Götterdämmerung, topping off a Ring cycle shared with the summer festival in Aix, was an event of considerable beauty. Given the extraordinary prelude to this year’s pageant, with a toxic cloud of scandal hanging over the city amid charges of embezzlement being drawn up against the outgoing director and technical director, it was more than anybody could have hoped for.
As well as conducting the last quarter of Wagner’s mighty tetralogy, Simon Rattle led the Berlin Philharmonic through a St Matthew Passion ‘realised’ by Peter Sellars, and a brilliant gallop through the Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz that saw most of the horses over the course in one piece. Mariss Jansons, supported by superb singers, also conducted a magnificent Verdi Requiem.
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