Salzburg Festival Honors Shakespeare with 4-Day Romeo and Juliet Program

The Salzburg Festival dedicates its 2016 Whitsun edition to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, marking 400 years since the Bard's death. Curated by Cecilia Bartoli, who leads the festival through 2019, the event runs May 13–16 in Austria. It opens with Bernstein's West Side Story, adapted for large orchestra and lyric singers, featuring Bartoli as Maria and Norman Reinhardt as Tony, directed by Philipp Wm. McKinley with sets by George Tsypin and choreography by Liam Steel. The Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela performs under Gustavo Dudamel at the Felsenreitschule, a historic riding school carved into rock. The work repeats on May 15 and returns in August. On Whitsun, a concert version of Nicola Antonio Zingarelli's Giulietta e Romeo, a late-18th-century Neapolitan gem, receives its modern premiere with countertenor Franco Fagioli as Romeo and soprano Ann Hallenberg as Juliet. Other highlights include a chamber concert by violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Milana Chernyavska (May 15), John Cranko's ballet Romeo and Juliet in a new staging by Jürgen Rose at the Großes Festspielhaus, a cappella music by The Tallis Scholars at the university church, and a Vienna Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Marco Armilliato with Angela Gheorghiu and Juan Diego Flórez. Prose and film offerings include Ben Power's play Ein zartes Ding at the Landestheater and a film retrospective featuring Franco Zeffirelli's and Baz Luhrmann's adaptations.