In terms of occupancy, the festival remained one percentage point below the 97 percent mark this year, which was reached in the last three years before the outbreak of the pandemic. In the heavily trimmed 2020 edition, the occupancy rate was 96 percent, compared to only 91 percent in the previous year. If four performances hadn’t had to be canceled for health reasons, a new record would have been set this year, emphasized the commercial director of the festival, Lukas Crepaz. He can look forward to income of 31.1 million euros, which was brought in this summer and thus reached the pre-corona level (2019: 31.2 million euros).
“The exceptional success of this festival summer shows the importance of opera, theater and concerts, especially in difficult times. In view of this world situation, we were allowed and had to give art a lot of room to develop,” summarized neo-president Kristina Hammer, who spoke of “euphoric reactions” from the audience. The high occupancy shows the “unbroken longing of people for cultural live experiences”.
This year’s festival, entitled Dante’s “Divina Commedia”, which will end on Wednesday evening with a concert by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, consisted of a total of 172 performances over 45 days in 17 venues. There are also 54 performances in the youth program “jung & alle*r”. The visitors came from 76 different countries, including 37 nations outside of Europe. Furthermore, around 40,000 viewers of current and previous festival performances were counted at 44 performances of the “Siemens Festival Nights” on Kapitelplatz.
“This summer has also shown most beautifully that nuances are possible in art, that it is art that contributes to the refinement of thinking,” stated artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser. As when the festival was founded following the First World War, the task of the festival today is “to open up other mental spaces and to use the great works of art to ask the essential questions of our time”.