“Summer Night Gala” on June 21st is the start of the most extensive ORF focus of the year – around 500 hours of cultural enjoyment from all federal states
Vienna (OTS) – Even if the weather in Austria is not yet clearly summery, the “ORF Cultural Summer” reliably starts the most extensive program focus of the year just in time for the calendar start of summer. This was presented today, Tuesday, June 11, 2024, at a press conference in the Vienna Theater Museum. The invitation from ORF General Director Roland Weißmann was accepted by a large number of top-class Austrian cultural partners, who are part of the opulent offering with their multi-faceted festival productions. This guarantees around 500 hours of programming on TV and radio from the most important cultural locations between Lake Constance and Lake Neusiedl.
Participants in the event moderated by Teresa Vogl and Peter Fässlacher included: Daniel Froschauer (Board of the Vienna Philharmonic), Rudolf Buchbinder (Artistic Director of the Grafenegg Festival), Markus Hinterhäuser (Intendant of the Salzburg Festival), Jan Nast (Intendant of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra), Daniel Serafin (Intendant Opera im Steinbruch), Nadja Kayali (Intendant Carinthischer Sommer), Clemens Unterreiner (Intendant Oper Burg Gars), Thomas Königstorfer (Managing Director OÖ Theater- und Orchester GmbH), Bernhard Rinner (Managing Director Bühnen Graz), Michael Lakner (Intendant Stage Baden), Andreas Vitásek (Intendant Kultur Sommer Güssing), Simon Ertl (founder and organizer Woodstock of brass music), Ernst Buchrucker (Managing Director Unitel), hostess and KHM director Sabine Haag and many others. Also present from ORF were radio director Ingrid Thurnher, ORF III managing directors Peter Schöber and Kathrin Zierhut-Kunz, Lower Austrian regional director Alexander Hofer, ORF TV cultural director Martin Traxl and Ö1 director Silvia Lahner.
ORF General Director Weißmann: “ORF for everyone, culture for everyone!”
“The ORF Cultural Summer, the most extensive multimedia program package of the year, has been put together!” announces ORF General Director Mag. Roland Weißmann. “I am pleased that we can once again present our audience the best, most exciting, most exciting, most diverse and most worth seeing from Austria’s cultural stages on the largest media stage in the country. That’s 500 hours of programming from the most important cultural hotspots in all federal states with a variety of concerts and stage productions of a wide variety of genres, accompanying documentaries and portraits, magazines, artist discussions and comprehensive reporting on all ORF channels. In doing so, we are once again demonstrating the core competence of public broadcasting as the most important mediator and multiplier of art and culture. Our concern and at the same time our strength is to be able to offer everyone in Austria a cultural offering and to be a reliable and binding partner for local cultural companies in the service of our common audience. In keeping with our motto: ORF for everyone, culture for everyone! I wish everyone involved a wonderful cultural summer with the ORF!” said the ORF boss.
The start of this year’s ORF cultural summer on television is traditionally the Grafenegg Summer Night Gala (live with a time delay on June 21st on ORF 2), which includes around 70 other TV broadcasts and stage productions from all over Austria on ORF 2, ORF III and 3sat as well More than 160 radio broadcasts from more than 30 local festivals follow. The focus is on the diversity and regionality of the Austrian cultural landscape.
The schedule includes numerous concert and stage productions from festival strongholds such as Salzburg, Bregenz and Grafenegg, as well as from venues such as St. Margarethen, Baden, Gmunden and Graz, but also from festivals such as Glatt&Verkehrt, Woodstock der Blasmusik or the Donauinselfest. New to the ORF cultural summer portfolio of TV broadcasts and productions are the Carinthian Summer, the Burg Gars Opera, the Tyrolean Folk Plays from Telfs and the Kultur Sommer Güssing. Exciting documentaries, stimulating cultural magazines and artist discussions as well as comprehensive reporting with more than 1,000 current multimedia articles complement the offering from all federal states.
This year’s highlights of this media festival for Austria’s diverse cultural output include, for example, the new “Everyman” from the Salzburg Festival with Philipp Hochmair in the title role, as well as the operas “The Tales of Hoffmann” and “The Player” from Salzburg, and the new one from the Bregenz Festival Lake stage production “Der Freischütz” and the opera rarity “Tancredi”, “Aida” from the Opera in the St. Margarethen Quarry, from the Styriarte Dvořák’s 9th Symphony “From the New World”, the Carinthian Summer with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra as the new festival orchestra , “The Love Potion” from the Burg Gars opera house, the operetta hit “Wiener Blut” from the Sommerarena Baden, the festival concert 200 years of Anton Bruckner played by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the open air “Klassikstars am Traunsee” from the Salzkammergut, also performed by the Upper Austrian orchestra Gmunden Festival Week.
Current productions in the ORF cultural summer also include: “Klassik unter Sternen” from Göttweig, the Schloßbergbühne Kasematten Graz with the concert performance “The Ring on an evening (almost) without words”, the Tyrolean Volksschauspiele with the further developed new recording of the theater revue “7 Deadly Sins”, the Kobersdorf Castle Games with “The Servant of Two Masters”, the musical Vienna Prater Picnic or “Così fan tutte” from the Vienna State Opera, the new production or last premiere before the summer break, with which star director Barrie Kosky made his debut Da Ponte cycle completed in the Haus am Ring.
Richard Wagner’s “Ring” tetralogy directed by Brigitte Fassbaender will be recorded in full length at the Tyrolean Festival Erl for broadcast on four evenings in autumn. Major events such as the Woodstock of brass music from Ort im Innkreis, the Vienna Danube Island Festival or the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize from Klagenfurt enrich the rich program potpourri of the ORF Cultural Summer 2024.
Further details about the program focus and all broadcast dates can be found in the press kit and in the “ORF Kultursommer 2024” folder at presse.ORF.at. A cultural summer trailer is also available online.