March | Zihan Wang, 12th grade
On Saturday, February 28, we took the train to Salzburg after brunch. Our supervisors had organized a guided tour of the festival halls and afterwards we had plenty of time to visit the city and especially the coffee houses with their great and special atmosphere.
The tour of the festival halls was really interesting. We visited the different stages and the look behind the curtain was very exciting. It is very surprising how much technology there is in such a stage.
There were many explanations about the origins of the famous Salzburg Festival. The founders included Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss and Max Reinhard. An opera by Richard Strauss is always performed at every festival.
The Festspielhaus offers ideal acoustic and visual conditions for around 2,200 visitors. In addition, all the costumes, including shoes and headgear, needed for opera and theater are made in-house.
The fire protection curtain in the Grosses Festspielhaus is particularly impressive: it is the largest steel curtain in the world. The curtain is 38 m long and 11 m high. Although it weighs several tons, it can be lowered in 15 seconds.
The Felsenreitschule is smaller with around 1450 seats, but is visually very impressive as the real rock face is the back of the stage. The audience tiers can be folded up hydraulically, as there are large storage rooms under the rows of seats.
In addition to the culture that visitors to the houses get to see, there is – as we were able to see – a great deal of work involved, both in terms of craftsmanship and high-tech.
After the tour, we had a lovely afternoon exploring the city.
