Salzburg Day 3 - Festival Hall

The festival hall itself was another venue that could only be visited by guided tour, and I found myself taking this one with a couple from England who were visiting their daughter in Salzburg – as it turns out, she is the costume designer for an opera that is opening in the festival hall tonight. They were going to the opening night performance, and the father was bemoaning the fact that he was going to have to wear a suit and tie for it, but I thought it sounded tremendously exciting.

First we visited the Rock Riding School, which is the proper name of the Sound of Music stage thingo. It was constructed in the 1600s, and was originally built to function like the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, ie, to be an arena for horse riding exhibitions. At that time the audience would have sat in the arches built into the rock.

Festival hall.

In the 1800s, when the prince-archbishopric came to an end, most of Salzburg’s horses were confiscated by the French and the place was no longer used as a riding arena. It was only in the 1920s when the idea for the Salzburg Festival was being developed that the place again came into use – this time as a concert hall.

When we entered it, the stagehands and lighting technicians were busy with preparations for the night’s show, and the ceiling over the stage was open. However this was closed before we left (apparently it has to be closed in order to ensure the perfect acoustics of the hall). I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the whole front-centre section of audience seats lifted right up to disclose a wide ramp down into a storage area for props etc – with the show being performed on the stage changing from night to night, it was vital that they have a large space to store equipment not being used one night but which would be used again the following evening.

We also visited what was once the indoor riding arena, but which is now the drinks hall for patrons between acts, as well as the huge new (well, 1960s) concert hall which seats 2200 people and was built to accommodate the vast numbers of people eager to attend the Salzburg Festival each year, where we were taken backstage to watch some of the action behind the scenes (literally).

Last Sound of Music-related shot - bridge which appeared in the Do, Re, Mi sequence.

Then it was time to head back to camp – I’m planning to move on to Innsbruck tomorrow so I wanted to spend a bit of time getting all my gear in order, as well as having a long afternoon nap, a hot dinner and shower and writing to you all before I went to bed. J