Austria's renowned Salzburg Festival has from the outset engaged issues of cultural identity in a country that has difficulty coming to terms with its twentieth-century history. That this is the case was especially apparent in 1999, when the Austrian president opened the festival with a speech attacking its profile under the direction of Gerard Mortier and calling for a return to the ideals of its spiritual founder, Hugo von Hofmannsthal. This proved the opening shot in a renewed debate about the direction of the Festival, which is in fact a debate about the identity of Austria itself. The issues posed foreshadowed the uproar that erupted several months later when Joerg Haider's right-wing Freedom Party joined a coalition with the conservative People's Party, wresting control of the government from the Socialists and provoking the wrath of Austria's partners within the European Union. What accounts for the profound intellectual and cultural ambivalences that have characterized Austrian history in the twentieth century?In this highly regarded book, Michael P. Steinberg investigates the goals and meanings of the Salzburg Festival from its origins in the wake of defeat in World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. He focuses on those aspects that reveal with special clarity the interplay between the Festival's history and the larger problems of Austrian and German ideology and identity. At the heart of his analysis is the problem of "nationalist cosmopolitanism," which he sees as a central element of German and Austrian culture from the period of the German enlightenment on. He shows how the Festival sought to embody and extend this paradoxical tradition and, in the Preface to the Cornell Paperbacks edition, explores the latest chapter in the Austrian culture wars. Steinberg's book is at once a brilliant history of an important cultural institution and a work that deepens our understanding of the unstable relationship between culture and politics in Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In this highly regarded book, Michael P. Steinberg investigates the goals and meanings of the Salzburg Festival from its origins in the wake of defeat in World War I and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. He focuses on those aspects that reveal with special clarity the interplay between the Festival's history and the larger problems of Austrian and German ideology and identity. In the Preface to the Cornell Paperbacks edition, Steinberg explores the latest chapter in the Austrian culture wars. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 galvanized discussion about national identity in the new Republic of Austria. As Robert Pyrah shows in this thoroughly documented study, the complex identity politics of interwar Austria were played out in the theatres of Vienna, which enjoyed a cultural prominence rarely matched in other countries. By 1934, productions across the city were being co-opted to serve the newly patriotic cause of the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg regimes, and the Burgtheater, once known as the ‘first German stage’, had been transformed into a ‘national theatre for Austria’. Using case studies of key productions and a wealth of previously unseen archival material, Pyrah sheds new light on artistic and ideological developments throughout the period, including the neglected earlier years. He documents previously unexplored overlaps in the cultural programmes of Left and Right, and unearths evidence that key institutions were subverted by the Right well before the suspension of parliamentary rule in 1933.

Through examining the interactions between public performance and national identity, it provides a wide-ranging account of one of the defining features of Austrian culture.

This volume not only offers an overview of the theatrical history of the region, it is also a cross-disciplinary attempt to analyse the inner workings and dynamics of theater through a discussion of the interplay between society, the audience, and performing artists."--Jacket.

"The collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918 galvanized discussion about national identity in the new Republic of Austria. As Robert Pyrah shows in this thoroughly documented study, the complex identity politics of interwar Austria were played out in the theatres of Vienna, which enjoyed a cultural prominence rarely matched in other countries. By 1934, productions across the city were being co-opted to serve the newly patriotic cause of the Dollfuss and Schuschnigg regimes, and the Burgtheater, once known as the first German stage, had been transformed into a national theatre for Austria. Using case studies of key productions and a wealth of previously unseen archival material, Pyrah sheds new light on artistic and ideological developments throughout the period, including the neglected earlier years. He documents previously unexplored overlaps in the cultural programmes of Left and Right, and unearths evidence that key institutions were subverted by the Right well before the suspension of parliamentary rule in 1933."

This collection of seventeen articles offers an investigation of some of the most important voices from Austria's theatre world between 1945 and 2001. They are for the most part critical voices engaged in the constantly evolving redefinition of a political state and its private citizens, undermining the status quo and the general complacency. They include both writers, producers and directors, for the written word must take shape on stage and the real debate of drama takes place in a public space. Therefore this volume attempts to include issues of staging and reception where possible. Taken as a whole this volume is intended to show the incredible richness and variety of the theatre scene in Austria.

Around 1900, German and Austrian actresses had allure and status, apparent autonomy, and unconventional lifestyles. They presented a complex problem socially and aesthetically, one tied to the so-called Woman Question and to the contested status of modernity. For modernists, the actress's socioeconomic mobility and defiance of gender norms opened space to contest social and moral strictures, and her mutability offered a means to experiment with identity. For conservatives, on the other hand, female performance could support antifeminist convictions and validate masculine authority by positing woman as nothing but a false surface shaped by productive male forces. Influential male-authored texts from the period thereby disavowed female subjectivity per se by equating "woman" and "actress." S. E. Jackson establishes the actress as a key figure in a discursive matrix surrounding modernity, gender, and subjectivity. Her central argument is that because the figure of the actress bridged such varied fields of thought, women who were actresses had a consequential impact that resonated in and far beyond the theater - but has not been explored. Examining archival sources such as theater reviews and writing by actresses in direct relation to canonical aesthetic and philosophical texts, The Problem of the Actress reconstructs the constitutive role that womenplayed on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought.

A long-overdue reassessment of post-1918 Salzburg as a distinct Austrian cultural hub that experimented in moving beyond war and empire into a modern, self-consciously inclusive, and international center for European culture. For over 300 years, Salzburg had its own legacy as a city-state at an international crossroads, less stratified than Europe's colonial capitals and seeking a political identity based in civic participation with its own economy and politics. After World War I, Salzburg became a refuge. Its urban and bucolic spaces staged encounters that had been brutally cut apart by the war; its deep-seated traditions of citizenship, art, and education guided its path. In Interwar Salzburg, contributors from around the globe recover an evolving but now lost vanguard of European culture, fostering not only new identities in visual and performing arts, film, music, and literature, but also a festival culture aimed at cultivating an inclusive public (not an international elite) and a civic culture sharing public institutions, sports, tourism, and a diverse spectrum of cultural identities serving a new European ideal.

European theatre has been the site of enormous change and struggle since 1960. There have been radical shifts in the nature and understanding of performance, fuelled by increasing cross-cultural and international influence. Theatre has had to fight for its very existence, adapting its methods of operation to survive. European Theatre 1960-1990, first published in 1992, tells that story. The contributors - who in many cases have been theatre practitioners as well as critics - provide a wealth of fascinating information, covering Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain and Sweden, as well as Britain. The book offers an historical and descriptive overview of developments across national boundaries, enabling the reader to compare and contrast acting and directing styles, administrative strategies and the relationship between ideology and achievement. Chapters trace the evolution of theatre in all its aspects, including such elements as the end of censorship in many countries, the upsurge in political and personal awareness of the 1960s, shifting patterns of state artistic policy, and the effects on companies, directors, performers and audiences. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics of theatre studies.