Lydia Steier’s directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival did not quite go as planned. Her 2018 production of “Die Zauberflöte” was savaged by many critics.
“Not magical at all,” hissed the Austrian newspaper Kurier, in the headline of its review. Steier, a native of Hartford, Conn., feared she would never work in Mozart’s hometown again.
“I’ve never been so stung as by the first reactions to the 2018 ‘Magic Flute,’” the 45-year-old director said in a recent phone interview from her home in Dresden, Germany. “I felt like the concept was fantastic and we didn’t nail it,” she said, adding that the production was bedeviled by many challenges, from problematic casting to the choice of venue.
Steier was not alone in thinking that her production had not reached its full potential. Several months after the festival, she heard from Markus Hinterhäuser, the artistic director. He wondered, would she be interested in giving the opera another spin for the summer 2020 festival?
Steier was stunned. “He gave us this insane, like, once in a lifetime shot to rejigger the ‘Zauberflöte,’” she said.
Steier’s “Magic Flute” 2.0 featured completely new sets and costumes. When it eventually premiered in 2022, after a Covid-related delay, it was received far more warmly than its predecessor, with the Austrian broadcaster ORF noting that opening night “was frenetically cheered — and rightly so.”
“Even describing it now, I’m just stunned and so grateful about how much he was the motor for the rethink of this piece,” Steier said of Hinterhäuser’s unstinting belief in her vision.
Hinterhäuser, who took the reins of the high-profile (and notoriously expensive) Austrian festival in late 2016, is fond of giving his audience a second chance to experience much-discussed productions. For the directors that he recruits — among them avant-garde artists — that can mean the rare opportunity to go back and adjust their original stagings. His approach is a marked contrast to the one pursued by his predecessor, Alexander Pereira, who largely banished revivals during his tenure.
The operas that Hinterhäuser has brought back after their premiere runs have included both critical and popular hits, such as Romeo Castellucci’s “Salome” and Krzysztof Warlikowski’s “Elektra,” and outings that, like Steier’s “Zauberflöte,” may have not entirely hit the mark the first time around.
Headlining this summer’s festival are new productions of works by Offenbach, Prokofiev and the 20th-century Polish Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. However, excitement is perhaps greatest for the return of Castellucci’s “Don Giovanni,” which will be conducted by Teodor Currentzis, who led the production’s first run in 2021.
Three summers ago, Castellucci’s densely symbolic and largely non-narrative take on Mozart’s masterpiece had staunch defenders and vociferous detractors. That enigmatic and visually stark production was a first operatic collaboration for the Italian theatermaker and the Greek maestro Currentzis, who are both Salzburg royalty; among festivalgoers, their reunion this summer is highly anticipated. The revival’s six performances are sold out.
“I am very happy to be able to return to this opera,” Castellucci said in a phone interview. Speaking from his home in Bologna, Italy, last month, shortly before rehearsals in Salzburg got underway, the director said that he was planning to make modifications. He suggested that the mystery and multiple meanings of “Don Giovanni” made it an inexhaustibly rich source for a director.
“It is at once a comedy, a tragedy, a psychological drama, a political drama and social drama,” he said. “You can read it on so many levels, and on a formal level, there’s this very complex prism. It’s difficult to hold everything together. It’s an explosive object.”
These difficulties were on Castellucci’s mind the first time he staged “Don Giovanni.” In revisiting the production, he said it was hard not to reassess the piece in light of current events. As he sees it, our world — roiled by the Covid pandemic, horrific wars and renewed nuclear threats — has become another explosive object.
“Normally I don’t make comments in my mise-en-scène,” he said. “I don’t like to transform what is going on around us into something political.” He added, “For me, theater isn’t a report or a comment on what exists. It’s a journey toward the unknown.”
“Nevertheless,” he continued, “we are in this world.” As such, reflections on our fragile reality could make their way into his revised staging. “Despite the fact that the show’s the same, maybe some nuances and details enters in a new form,” Castellucci said, adding that he intends to simplify some scenes in the first act.
Hinterhäuser, whose contract was recently renewed through 2031, said that he had complete faith in the director and his artistic choices. “I’m infinitely glad to have Castellucci here and to see what he does and how,” he said in a phone interview. He added that he did not know what changes Castellucci planned to make for this revival, which is being billed as a “new staging.”
“What I do know is that I’m 100 percent convinced of this production,” he said. “I’m really convinced that we’re dealing with a great work of art here.”
Hinterhäuser stressed that there was no single approach for revivals at Salzburg. Sometimes, new productions are planned from the very beginning to return in a future season, often for financial reasons.
“There are various reasons for bringing an opera production back after two, three or four years,” he said. “There are different points of departure. There’s no general rule.”
The festival sometimes decides to reprise a production by popular demand. A case in point, Hinterhäuser said, was Castellucci’s triumphant festival debut, the 2018 production of “Salome.” Inviting the experimental director to Salzburg was a risk, and Hinterhäuser said that he was surprised at the tremendous acclaim the production received.
“In cases like those, we really need to show it again, both for the many people who haven’t seen it and for those who want to see it again,” he said.
And sometimes, the artistic director admitted, it takes some time and extra work for a production to find its footing, as with Steier’s “Die Zauberflöte” or with the production of “Aida” directed by Shirin Neshat that premiered in 2017 and returned to the festival in a reworked version in 2022.
“Markus believed in her ideas, he believed in her as an artist,” Steier said of Neshat, an Iranian-born photographer, filmmaker and video artist.
“He was just like, this is a blazingly original, wonderful visual artist, and we didn’t give her enough of a framework to do her first opera,” Steier added.
Like Steier’s production of “Zauberflöte,” Neshat’s “Aida” received better reviews the second time around.
“It is sometimes very good for a production if it’s allowed to settle for a couple of years and then be taken up again,” Hinterhäuser said. “The audience’s reception can be different. Sometimes you have to make corrections.”
“It’s not the case that everything is fulfilled right at the beginning,” he said. “It’s not like that in life either. Sometimes it takes time.”
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