Kick-off for the Mozart Forum 2021

27.01.2021
Press release
Oper La Clemenza Di Tito | © Judith Buss
7 world premieres and all works composed by Mozart in 1791, the year of his death. This is the ambitious program that the newly founded Mozart Forum of the Mozarteum University has set itself for 2021, starting with a production of the opera "La clemenza di Tito," which will premiere on February 1 without an audience, but in a livestream.
The networking and stimulation of activities related to Wolfgang Amadé Mozart of all institutes and departments of the Mozarteum University is one of the central concerns to which the newly founded Mozart Forum is committed. "Mozart's work, biography and personality continue to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration across all departments. Even today, the spectrum of creative exploration reaches far to the limits of the unheard of. In order to honor this great wealth of remarkable things, to bundle all of this and make it visible, it was necessary to find a new institutional form," says Rector Elisabeth Gutjahr in the just-published publication "1791" for the Mozart Forum 2021, which contains both the detailed program and contributions by renowned authors on the works. In addition to texts by Rainer Schwob, Wolfgang Niessner, Oswald Panagl, Thomas Hochradner or Jürg Kesselring, the contribution "Herrschaft und Freundschaft" (Rule and Friendship) by the well-known sociologist Armin Nassehi on "La clemenza di Tito" deals with the problem of rule by definition: "It is about a ruler who renounces absolute power, about a ruler who renounces revenge [...] - for the sake of reconciliation. But it is about something much more subtle than a classical critique of rule turned into a positive: namely, the question of whether rule and friendship are compatible [...] or whether rulers always remain corrupted and limited by office." The title La Clemenza suggests mildness, but ultimately it is about power. "Tito can only renounce violence because he has it." Director Alexander von Pfeil, professor of music drama at the University Mozarteum Salzburg, picks up on this aspect and stages - located in the here and now - with powerful images and not without effect. "The fact that we were able to work on the opera despite akteuller circumstances, to bring the production to the end, we have to thank a rectorate and a security management that works tirelessly to make it possible," says Alexander von Pfeil. "We were also able to test the project on Franz Schubert's song cycle 'Winterreise' (Op. 89), which we are staging with Samuel Beckett's 'Texts for Nothing,' under strict security conditions. The project will be on view at uni-mozarteum.at starting February 5."