The Indian Queen (Concert Performance)

Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria

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7 PM

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

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You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Important Info

Festival: Salzburg Festival Summer 2023

Type: Opera

City: Salzburg, Austria

Starts at: 19:00

Acts: 5

Sung in: English

Titles in: German,English

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

Festival

Salzburg Festival Summer 2023

In a city that has preserved its baroque architecture in almost perfect condition and therefore is a breathtaking backdrop in itself, the Salzburg Festival presents performances of opera, plays and concerts of the highest artistic standards over a period of five to six weeks each summer. The Salzburg Festival is often described as the greatest and most important festival in the world, and this reputation is confirmed by countless superlatives: witness the number of performances and of annual visitors, or the wide-ranging programme.

Overview

"Why should men quarrel here, where all possess as much as they can hope for by success?". The tragedy embraces a huge emotional range: Sellars and Currentzis have expanded the 50-minute original score of The Indian Queen not only with expressive solo songs and arias by the composer but also with a selection of Purcell’s religious choral pieces — deeply intimate, achingly beautiful music.

"Semi-opera" was the name given in later 17th-century England to a spoken drama with substantial musical sequences — these could be purely instrumental, sung or danced. The music composed for several such works by Henry Purcell in the final years of his short life shows him at the height of his powers as a stage composer. The semi-opera The Indian Queen was based on a play by John Dryden and Robert Howard that was popular at the time — a bizarre ‘heroic drama’ set against the background of fictitious conflicts between the Aztecs and the Incas, with larger than life-sized protagonists and a ludicrously improbable plot devised for the audience’s moral and intellectual edification. While Dryden’s dramatic world could hardly be more alien to us today, Purcell’s music has lost none of its power to move us deeply.

Director Peter Sellars has therefore created a version that places the vocal and instrumental numbers of The Indian Queen in a new dramatic setting: using passages from Rosario Aguilar’s novel La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies (The Lost Chronicles of Terra Firma), he tells the story of the Spanish conquest of Central America from the perspective of three women. Here the ‘Indian queen’ is the daughter of a Maya chieftain who is given as a concubine to a conquistador in order to spy for her people. She falls in love with him and gives birth to a daughter, but is eventually forced to realize that her hopes that love would make him turn away from the frenzy of conquest and destruction are in vain.

History

Premiere of this production: 30 November 1694, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London

The Indian Queen is a largely unfinished semi-opera with music by Henry Purcell, first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in 1695. The exact date is unknown, but Peter Holman surmises it may have been in June.

Venue Info

Felsenreitschule - Salzburg
Hofstallgasse 1

The Felsenreitschule (literally "rock riding school") is a theatre in Salzburg, Austria and a venue of the Salzburg Festival.

History

A first Baroque theatre was erected in 1693–94 at the behest of the Salzburg prince-archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun, according to plans probably designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Built in the former Mönchsberg quarry for conglomerate rock used in the new Salzburg Cathedral construction, it was located next to the archiepiscopal stables (at the site of the present Großes Festspielhaus) and used as a summer riding school and for animal hunts. The audience was seated in 96 arcades carved into the Mönchsberg rock on three floors. After the secularisation of the prince-archbishopric, the premises were used by the cavalry of the Austrian Imperial-Royal Army as well as by Bundesheer forces after World War I.

From 1926, the Felsenreitschule was used as an open-air theatre for performances of the Salzburg Festival. With the auditorium reversed, the former audience arcades now served as a natural stage setting. The first production was Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, directed by Max Reinhardt. In 1933, Clemens Holzmeister designed for Max Reinhardt the "Faust Town", a multiple-stage setting for Reinhardt's legendary production of Goethe's Faust.

In 1948 Herbert von Karajan first used the Felsenreitschule as an opera stage, for performances of Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. This was followed in 1949 by the premiere of Carl Orff's setting of the ancient tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, translated into German by Friedrich Hölderlin, conducted by Ferenc Fricsay. Between 1968 and 1970, the Felsenreitschule was again remodeled according to plans by Clemens Holzmeister and inaugurated with Ludwig van Beethoven's Fidelio under the baton of Karl Böhm.

Architecture

The stage has a width of 40 metres (130 ft), and 4 metres (13 ft) understage. Also renovated was the cantilevered grandstand with the underlying scene dock. A light-tight, rain tarp to dampen the noise and protect the stage was also added. This roof can be opened. The theater holds 1412 seats and 25 standing places.

Between the summers of 2010 and 2011 festival, the roof was renewed: The new design added 700 square metres (7,500 sq ft) of floor space for equipment and rehearsal rooms. The new pitched roof consists of three mobile segment surfaces and is on five telescopic arms and can be extended and retracted in six minutes. Suspension points on telescopic supports for stage equipment (hoists), improved sound and heat insulation, and two lighting bridges optimize the action on stage. The Felsenreitschule shares its foyer with the Kleines Festspielhaus (House for Mozart).

In popular culture
The Felsenreitschule was used as a location for the 1965 film version of The Sound of Music. It appears as the site of the Salzburg music festival from which the von Trapp family disappear.

Important Info

Festival: Salzburg Festival Summer 2023

Type: Opera

City: Salzburg, Austria

Starts at: 19:00

Acts: 5

Sung in: English

Titles in: German,English

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