What I did on my holidays, 8 – more Salzburg

Church of Maria Himmelfahrt, Mülln

Today’s plan was to meander along the bank of the river (the Salzach) and then around the top end of the Old Town, before heading for the Marionette Theatre for a performance of Mozart’s Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). The riverbank was just a couple of streets away from the hotel and the riverside path was well provided with shade from the sun and benches to sit and people-watch.

Eventually, we stirred ourselves and wandered towards town, crossing the river by the Müllnersteg bridge. Once on the other side, we found ourselves at one end of an extensive craft and art market that extended all the way down the Franz Josef-Kai. In between the craft stalls were refreshments, and we stopped for a glass of wine.

Once we reached the Old Town, we headed for the Mönschberg lift, which gave access to a viewing promenade that offered a panorama of the whole city.

The view from the Mönschberg

The house on the left of the footbridge was the home for many years of the conductor Herbert von Karajan

Centre left is the Mirabell Palace with the church of St.Andrä to its right

If any of you watched the BBC dramatization of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (now available on DVD), you might be having a moment of deja vue, because a digitally altered version of Salzburg was used to represent Geneva, seat of the Magisterium, in Season 3. Why anyone thought that Salzburg could substitute for Geneva is beyond me. For one thing, Salzburg lacks any sort of lake, let alone Lake Geneva…

We cut short our wanderings to return to the hotel to get ready for our night out.

The Salzburg Marionette Theatre is located in a former casino building, itself of considerable note. The foyer and the corridor to the auditorium has many fascinating displays of the history of puppetry. This is no mere novelty, but rather full-blown theatre in miniature. They have an extensive repertoire of operas, plays and ballets from retellings of fairy tales up to major operatic undertakings, such as Wagner’s Ring cycle (admittedly compressed to two hours’ duration). Their production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel reflects the composer’s background in having worked with Wagner, though from what I’ve seen, I’m unsure how much someone had their tongue in their cheek – the gingerbread house is unmistakeably Wagner’s own Bayreuth Festspielhaus!

The theatre company was founded in 1913 and moved to its present location in 1971. It has toured worldwide, and the decoration in the theatre bar shows examples of the company’s playbills from around the world. The puppetry is of a very high order; even the walking motion, which defeats many marionette designers and operators, is convincing.

The production of The Magic Flute is in no way inferior to a full-scale production except in the matter of physical size. All the characters and effects are there, including intelligent set design, lighting and on-stage pyrotechnics. All the major set-pieces are there, and do not fail to impress – the great aria by the Queen of the Night is as impressive as you could wish for. The recording used is the 1955 performance featuring Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau amongst others, with the RIAS Symphony Orchestra, Berlin (later known as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and now the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin) conducted by Ferenc Fricsay. This was a staple of the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue for years, and in the era of digital transfers, the recording comes up perfectly well. You would not know you were listening to a recording that will soon celebrate its seventieth anniversary.

Attending this performance was one of the highlights of our trip and it did not disappoint. The weather, however, had other plans; the high temperatures we’d experienced up to now were replaced by a downpour of rain, which was to continue for the rest of the holiday. Did we let that stop us? Read on…

Previously: Day 7, Hot Old Town

Next: Day 9, wet Salzburg

More photographs can be seen on my Flickr page.