Innsbruck: a successful 50th anniversary

The 50th Innsbruck Festival of Early Music came to a close on 30 August with record-breaking results. In a statement, the Festival announced that, between 24 July and 30 August, more than 20,000 people attended 62 events across twenty venues, 23 of them free of charge, with overall attendance exceeding 95%. With ticket sales up 9% and revenue increasing by 8%, the anniversary edition proved particularly successful.

Guided by the question ‘What do we celebrate?’, Innsbruck looked back at its history without succumbing to nostalgia: Sigiswald Kuijken and La Petite Bande, Alessandro De Marchi, Anna Bonitatibus, as well as Attilio Cremonesi and the Freiburger Barockorchester, recalled some of the defining moments of the Festival’s fifty-year history. Francesco Corti and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Jean Rondeau, Giovanni Antonini and the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal de Versailles were also among the successes, often playing to sold-out audiences.

The high point was the revival of Cesti’s monumental Il pomo d’oro, long considered unperformable, partly reconstructed and conducted by Ottavio Dantone, bringing together Accademia Bizantina, twenty soloists, chorus and dancers. All three performances of Fabio Ceresa’s production received standing ovations. Nor was the future overlooked: all four performances of Handel’s Atalanta by Barockoper:Jung had sold out several months in advance, alongside youngbaroque & Masterclass and several young ensembles.

‘It was important to me that our anniversary should not simply be a retrospective,’ Artistic Director Eva-Maria Sens summed up: taking the past seriously in order to create something new from it. A statement of intent that could well serve as a manifesto for the next fifty years.

Festival’s website: https://www.altemusik.at/de