Austria eases concerts after minister quits
mainHours after Ulrike Lunacek got on her bike her Green party colleague, Health Minister Rudolf Anschober, issued a new policy authorising public performances from May 29, outdoors and indoors, with an audience of up to 100.
That number will increase to 250 from July 1 and 500 from August 1.
That’s what Salzburg has been waiting for. However, Bregenz will almost certainly cancel.
How does that help? The main venues are all vastly larger than 500 (and the festival starts more than a week before 1st August). The three opera houses have a capacity of 2200, 1580, 1450 respectively; more manageably, the Mozarteum is 800 and the Landestheater is 700. Everything is sold out already. They will have to have a lot of people voluntarily return tickets before having to involuntarily bump off many others, like on an oversold aircraft, to make it work. And the money won’t add up anymore.
Maybe, they could do each concert more than once? Or, in the case of opera, add more performances?
Meanwhile, this is a golden opportunity for the non-superstar performers for whom an audience of 500 would be quite something. Bring on the redistribution of audiences!
The festival as was will be cancelled. All tickets will be refunded. A new programme will issue, that certainly won’t run for six weeks. The demand will be minimal from outside Austria as a lot of countries aren’t allowing travel unless you elf isolate for 14 days on return. Never mind the lack of flights.
Good for them that they’re doing something. 100 years and all that. Would love to be there but almost certainly won’t for the reasons listed above.
One small step on the road back to normality. Things should look much more normal in the Autumn. But lets be cautious and wait and see.