Dramatic words – Salzburg Festival opened by Van der Bellen

“Our democracy is under attack. With a high level of aggression and a rage for destruction,” the Federal President said. “We are in this situation because a dictator cannot tolerate people wanting to live in individual freedom and independence.” In Ukraine, people fight and die for “what we believe in. For our values! To our way of life. For our freedom. To our peace,” said Van der Bellen in his speech at the end of the ceremony, in which the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra under Duncan Ward and the Salzburg Bach Choir performed the musical part of the program with pieces by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Giacinto Scelsi and the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, born in 1937.

“We are in a kind of community of destiny”
“This struggle between despotism and freedom will not be over in a few weeks or months. It has only just begun.” The realistic scenario is “it will continue like this and could get worse”. “In this situation we are in a kind of community of destiny” that should not be seduced, intimidated or divided. “Austria can do that. Europe can do that.”

Festival president Kristina Hammer referred to the war, pandemic, energy and climate crisis in Ukraine in her welcome speech at her first opening (“Let me introduce myself: I’m the new one”). “We don’t just have to keep giving art its place – we must and must give it a lot of room to develop, especially in view of this global situation,” said Hammer. “We need art. Because education is mind and heart in one – and probably the only tool that strengthens our individuality and sense of community in equal measure.”

Dramatic words also from Governor Haslauer
“All over the world, people are suffering, starving and dying. The Salzburg Festival takes place. Nevertheless,” said Governor Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) of Salzburg. You can’t stay out of it. “No, we can and should do both, sympathize and help as much as we can, but also defend ourselves, our values, which defines us.” capitulate!” At the same time, “it must be emphasized unequivocally: these artists who promote or justify war undoubtedly have no place in the peace work of the Salzburg Festival and its humanist mission.”

“It’s not about inappropriate exuberance, it’s about reflection. It’s about culture as a counter-model to barbarism. We want to fill the silence of powerlessness with art and develop perspectives in a time that seems so hopeless,” said State Secretary for Art and Culture Andrea Mayer (Groenen). “Only together can we change the world for the better. It is the artists who take on an important task: they unfold an image of human possibilities, they show how collaboration can succeed. It is art that allows us to live the idea of ​​a peaceful world.”

Trojanow didn’t mince words
The writer Ilija Trojanow delivered the commemorative speech, which he had given the title “The Tone of War, the Tones of Peace”. ‘Art and war are opposites’, was his central statement. “The relationship between art and power is complex,” he said, pointing out “that war itself is a crime”: “All ambivalence, all shades, all nuances. Advice turns into brutal blows and good advice turns into betrayal in the salute step. People don’t sow and reap, they plunder, they don’t dance, they drill.” He recalled Austria-Hungary’s 1914 invasion of Serbia and how the soldiers involved were celebrated as heroes in monuments across the country.

But Trojanow did not mince his words in his references to the present and the Salzburg Festival. He referred to a video by Alexei Navalny showing the conductor Valery Gergiev “as a big land profiteer”: “Dozens of properties, mainly in Italy – an 18-room villa in a golf club, an entire cape in Amalfi, thirty hectares in Rimini, 800,000 square meters in Milan, a palazzo in Venice and and and and.The trump card of this conductor is his own charitable fund, which he uses at will, financed by the mafia-style banks of his country.And by the government of Moscow.In total four billion rubles.”