Heinrich Spängler
The most successful festival season in history
“The Salzburg Festival has never been so popular” was the title of Werner Thuswaldner’s leading article in the Salzburger Nachrichten on 30 August 2003 and he went on to say, “this was the most successful season in the Festival’s history”.
Heinrich Spängler
President of the Friends Association
In a radio interview Helmut Mayr, divisional representative for tourism in the Salzburg Chamber of Commerce, explained the success: “Visitors were very pleased with the blend of traditional and modern”.
In summer 2003 the revenue from ticket sales amounted to € 23.6 million, thus surpassing the previous highest sales of € 22.4 million in the years 1996 and 2001 by € 1.2 million.
243,820 visitors attended the Salzburg Festival in 2003, an increase of 12,000 or 5% compared with 2002. Although more tickets were available, most performances were almost completely sold out. In 2002 utilisation of capacity amounted to 94.2%, in 2003 it was 94.3%. More tickets were made available for young festival visitors, for instance with a Camerata Family Concert, Donna Leon and the Attersee Institute Orchestra. For “normal” performances 3,920 tickets were sold to 1,383 young people at heavily reduced prices. This was also a clear increase in comparison with 2002 (3,512 tickets for 1,293 participants).
Festival audiences are becoming increasingly international: last summer visitors from 63 nations came to Salzburg. The Salzburg Festival Ticket Office received the highest number of orders from Germany; the greatest increases were registered from France, Italy, Switzerland and Japan (+6%).
Revenue provided by patrons is also extremely satisfying, in 2003 our patrons supported us with € 92,000 more than in 2002, an increase of 4.4%.
On page 2 of this issue you can see that we still request and need support. The conversion of the Kleines Festspielhaus into a “House for Mozart” has begun and we need as much help as possible. Please help us – Mozart is relying on your donation: every note counts! Thank you very much.
This issue also contains reminders of the successful performances at
the 2003 Salzburg Festival in photographs taken by Karl Forster.
We are looking forward to 2004!
Heinrich Spängler