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When all the Values of the World Rage against Each Other - our Programme 2027

Since 2026 the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Berliner Philharmoniker have renewed their artistic partnership and are once again working together closely as a single entity, just as they did when the Easter Festival was founded by Herbert von Karajan in 1967. In the future, an orchestra whose international standing goes without saying will be returning to the banks of the Salzach every Easter and exchanging its familiar place in the concert hall with a less familiar role in the orchestra pit in order to perform a piece of music theatre, which it will be doing only here and only for this event. Just as the first Easter Festival opened with Richard Wagner’s »Der Ring des Nibelungen«, so we shall be marking this new beginning with this Everest of the operatic canon. And this year we are also celebrating the 60th anniversary of this very special festival.

The »Ring« is a music drama based on Germanic and Old Norse epics and demands what in its own day was an unprecedentedly large orchestra as well as voices unlike anything known at the time of its composition. But behind the mythic action, behind the instrumental splendour and behind a type of voice that is now described as »Wagnerian« lies a keen-eyed analysis of the world’s goings-on.

The Easter Festival’s new production can offer all of this and more. The cast is a blend of experienced Wagner singers and a number of promising debutants, most notably Lise Davidsen singing her first Brünnhilde. And the orchestra is the best in the world. It will be conducted by the brilliant Kirill Petrenko. And finally, the production examines the threats to our earth’s natural beauty.

When he wrote the »Ring«, Wagner set out to shed light on the conditions in his own time. He believed that the old world needed to end before a new and better world could be built on its ruins. Right at the beginning of the »Ring« nature is violated twice, first when Wotan tears a branch from the World Ash and uses it as a spear on which he carves the laws governing his new world order; and Alberich sets himself above the laws of nature by stealing the gold from the bed of the Rhine and using it as money. These events mark the start of a drama in which all of the world’s values vie with each other for supremacy in a raging life-and-death battle that lasts from the very beginning of time and continues into our own future.

The director Kirill Serebrennikov has extended the range of Wagner’s narrative and taken it beyond the confines of Europe. Whereas »Das Rheingold« is set in a barren, ice-covered part of Africa, »Die Walküre« takes us to America and includes references to the Mexican tradition of the Día de los Muertos, the »Day of the Dead«. For the world of nature, which in the »Ring« is symbolized by the World Ash and by the gold in the Rhine, Serebrennikov has found some new and excitingly impressive images.

The excellence of the Berliner Philharmoniker will not only be showcased in the field of music theatre but will also be complemented by a varied programme of concerts and other framing events. In the case of the 2027 Easter Festival, there will be one Orchestral Concert and two major choral works in addition to three performances of »Die Walküre«. The young Israeli conductor Lahav Shani has already appeared on a number of occasions with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In Salzburg, Shani, who has just taken over as principal conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, will be conducting Mussorgsky’s »Pictures at an Exhibition« and Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with Martha Argerich as the soloist, a living legend whose inexhaustible energy almost literally causes the piano to glow with white-hot passion.

The Choral Concerts feature two sacred works which in their very different ways explore the divine element in humankind. Emmanuelle Haïm will be conducting Handel’s »Messiah« in the original English with a team of soloists led by Sabine Devieilhe. The chorus will be Haïm’s own ensemble, Le Concert d’Astrée. Together with the Berlin Radio Chorus and four distinguished soloists – Golda Schultz, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Sebastian Kohlhepp and David Steffens – Kirill Petrenko will be conducting Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. Beethoven himself described this as his »greatest work«. For Kirill Petrenko the most fascinating aspect of the Missa solemnis lies in an entry in one of the composer’s conversation books in which the latter paraphrased the philosopher Immanuel Kant: »›The Moral Law in us, and the starry Heaven above us.‹ … Kant!!!« Even if beyond the recognizable world, forces may be at work that are incomprehensible to us humans, no religion and no philosophy can release us from the obligation to do what is right. Each of us remains responsible for his or her own actions. On this point Beethoven concurs with Wagner, whose own conviction in this matter is so graphically depicted in the »Ring«.
NIKOLAUS BACHLER, Intendant and Artistic Director of the Salzburg Easter Festival

Die Walküre
Richard Wagner

The Berliner Philharmoniker, together with their Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko, continue their new production of Richard Wagner’s »Ring«. In »Die Walküre«, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, Lise Davidsen makes her international debut in the role of Brünnhilde.

Choral Concert I
George Frideric Handel

For the first time at the Easter Festival, George Frideric Handel’s oratorio »Messiah« will be performed. Conductor Emmanuelle Haïm will be bringing her own choir, Concert d’Astrée. With just 26 singers, this unusually small choir promises a unique chamber music experience.

Choral Concert II
Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven’s Missa solemnis was already on the music stands of the Berliner Philharmoniker and Herbert von Karajan in 1967, the year the Salzburg Easter Festival was founded. To mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death, Kirill Petrenko and the orchestra will perform together with the Rundfunkchor Berlin.

Orchestral Concert
Claude Debussy, Sergei Prokofiev, Modest Mussorgsky

Martha Argerich joins the Berliner Philharmoniker to play Sergei Prokofiev’s lively, high-energy Third Piano Concerto. The concert opens with Claude Debussy’s »Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune«, whose impressionistic sounds transport the listener to a sensual dream world, before Modest Mussorgsky’s cycle »Pictures of an Exhibition« is performed in Maurice Ravel’s orchestration. The young Israeli conductor Lahav Shani takes the podium.

Chamber Concerts

Another musical tradition returns to the Easter Festival: the rich chamber music programme with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Details will be announced at a later date.

Dance
Antigone
Alan Lucien Øyen

»Antigone« is a radical reinterpretation of Sophocles’ timeless tragedy. The young Norwegian choreographer Alan Lucien Øyen is staging this production with his company winter guests, as well as former and current members of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Introductory Matinee
»Die Walküre«

With Nikolaus Bachler and artists of the production

Electro

In 2027, we want to continue our newly founded electro section and invite internationally renowned artists to take part in our programme. Details will be announced at a later date.

Artwork for the 2026 Easter Festival

In 2026, the Easter Festival started a collaboration with the Berlin artist Mathias Vef, whose visual worlds will accompany the festival over the coming years. He is developing an ongoing narrative inspired by the epochal ruptures of the present; ruptures that, particularly through artificial intelligence, are becoming a global tremor. The portraits and still lifes he generates in this way are not illustrations of the stage; rather, they open up an autonomous aesthetic space. AI functions like a cultural meat grinder: humanity’s visual heritage is fragmented, deconstructed, and reassembled. Within this field of tension between fascination and apocalypse a visual world emerges that could be seen as an aesthetic swan song for a world in transformation – but also as a tribute to its cultural memory.

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