This is the house where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756. He lived here for the first seventeen years of his life — when he wasn’t off traveling with his father and sister, which was most of the time. In 2006, just in time for Mozart’s 250th birthday, a Read More …
Here’s my list of the operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), including a few that were never completed or are sometimes listed as something else. As on my Verdi list, I have listed the opera titles in different colors: Red means I have seen the opera at least once in Read More …
While Salzburg is full of impressive and significant places to visit, like the fortress, the cathedral quarter, the festival halls and the two Mozart houses, I must admit that my favorite place in this town is the Landestheater (State Theatre), an outwardly inconspicuous building on Makartplatz that you might not Read More …
For nearly two centuries Salzburg’s big tourist draw was Mozart. The great eighteenth century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756 and lived here — when he wasn’t travelling around Europe performing as a child prodigy — until he was literally kicked out (“with a kick in Read More …
The Salzburg Festival is one of the world’s largest and most intensive summer music and drama festivals, with more than two hundred performances packed into six weeks in July and August each summer. I have never attended any of these performances, both because they are beyond my price range and Read More …
The Festungsbahn going up to the fortress overlooking Salzburg is Austria’s oldest funicular railway that is still in operation. It was built in 1892, and now takes people up from the city to the fortress in just 54 seconds. The lower station, on the Festungsgasse, is where you can buy tickets, Read More …
All you loyal readers of my Liège posts might recall that for over eight centuries, from 980–1795, “a large swath of what is now Belgium was ruled from Liège by a succession of Prince-Bishops, who as the name implies were both the secular and the religious rulers. Separation of church Read More …
The Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was born in Vienna, where he also grew up and studied. After the First World War he moved to Salzburg, where he lived for fifteen years, from 1919 to 1934. Later, in his book Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday) he explained Read More …
The poet Georg Trakl was born in Salzburg in 1887. His birth house, at Waagplatz 1a, is now the site of the Trakl Research and Memorial Center. It can be visited on weekday afternoons at 14:00, on guided tours only. The cost as of 2020 is five Euros. The tours Read More …
This Protestant church (Evangelische Christuskirche) on the right bank of the Salzach River is where the future poet Georg Trakl was baptized on February 8, 1887. So even as a baby he was already an outsider, since Protestants were (and still are) a small minority in Salzburg. This church’s website Read More …