Salzburg'07: antevisões

Jürgen Flimm será, doravante, o novo director do Festival de Salzburgo.

«From the 1960s until his death in 1989, Herbert von Karajan, the Austrian maestro of maestros, traded on his personal glamour to create the glittering cosmopolitan franchise as it exists today. Gerard Mortier, the Belgian impresario and provocateur, shook up the decade from 1992 to 2001, fencing merrily with the news media, politicians and the public every step of the way. Then came the composer Peter Ruzicka, an Invisible Man from Germany, who in his first four seasons showcased music suppressed by the Nazis.»

Em linhas gerais, eis as suas propostas para a edição deste ano do célebre evento artístico:

«Mr. Flimm’s first thought for the festival was Weber’s “Freischütz.” “It’s one of those strange German stories of two men who can’t get along without each other,” he said, “just like Faust and Mephistopheles, who has no job unless he steals Faust’s soul.” At the same time, Mr. Flimm wanted operas that would be both new to the festival and pleasing to conductors at the top of his wish list.

Daniel Barenboim asked for Tchaikovsky’s “Yevgeny Onegin.” If the connections to Weber’s world of spells and superstition are not instantly apparent, Mr. Flimm offers a justification for the choice. “What,” he asked, “is more irrational than the sound of a gunshot in a duel?”

Berlioz’s rarely heard “Benvenuto Cellini” attracted Mr. Flimm as a parable of the limits of human striving and the necessity of grace, a power that leaves reason in the dust. Valery Gergiev took the bait.

And as a counterweight to all that Romanticism, Mr. Flimm hit on Haydn’s “Armida.” “It’s all about crusaders heading for the Holy Land, getting caught there, unable to get out,” he said, “We see the same thing happening today.”

True to his rule that the artistic director must abstain from directing individual shows, Mr. Flimm has entrusted the operas to rising directors as yet unfamiliar to Salzburg: Andrea Breth (“Onegin”), Christof Loy (“Armida”), Falk Richter (“Freischütz”) and Philipp Stölzl (“Cellini”). Even the boss isn’t sure quite what to expect.»