At the Salzburg Festival on Saturday, Austrian vice chancellor and culture minister Andreas Bäbler’s speech was interrupted by protests, as activists mounted the stage and unfurled banners saying “Stop the genocide” and “Food is a right, not a weapon”.
Austrian president Alexander Van der Bellen was also present to open the festival, as well as other prominent state leaders such as Romanian president Nicușor-Daniel Dan.
President Van der Bellen responded directly to the protestors, saying, “The situation in Gaza is devastating and in no way justifiable on humanitarian grounds. But please don’t forget October 2023”.
Despite heavy police presence, activists were able to gain access to the festival venue relatively easily. The festival and Salzburg police have now alleged that current or former employees of the Salzburg Festival may have assisted the protestors.
Lukas Crepaz, executive director of Salzburg Festival, stated that “It wasn’t, as claimed, that a door that was open; rather, security measures were actively and abusively circumvented.”
Two of the activists claimed in interviews that they had entered the Felsenreitschule using homemade employee IDs, reading “Salzburger Festspeibe” (speib meaning “vomit”).
This is disputed by Austrian police, who also claimed that a former employee assisted the protestors to find their way through the complicated internal passageways of the Felsenreitschule.
Entering from an employee-only door, which requires a magnetic ID to pass, the route to the stage is not obvious. “I walk these routes myself,” Crepaz commented. “They are neither accessible to outsiders, nor would they find them.”
Frequently a highly political occasion, the opening of this year’s Salzburg Festival also included a speech from US commentator Anne Applebaum on “Democracy and Music Festivals”.
In a press release following the protest, the activists quoted the festival’s founder Max Reinhardt, who wrote in 1917 that “This war, above all, has proven that theatre is not a dispensable luxury for the upper ten thousand, but rather an essential necessity for the public at large.”
“While an entire population in Gaza is starving,” the statement added, “in Salzburg, the mood is celebratory.”
As well as making demands of the Austrian government, the protesters addressed the festival directly. “We call on the festival’s leadership to make Palestinian voices visible and to stop turning away from the brutality of what is happening in Gaza. Art must not only be critical when it’s comfortable,” the statement concluded.
