July 27, 2010, 7:00 pm

When the sun begins to set and the skies are clear—a preciously rare occurrence in Salzburg—a single beam of sunlight cuts through the trees along the perimeter wall of the Meierhof, across the Schloss Park and between the two faux Greek columns flanking the small fountain, to illuminate the statue of Leda and the Swan in the Schloss Park. It is a moment of luminous wonder. Along with the magical panoply of crystal, glass, gold, illuminated by the crystal chandelier in the Venetian Room, and enfolding warmth of the Schloss Library, Reinhardt’s choreography of light and leaf and stone with its interplay of the natural and the manmade beauty is one of his most visually stunning if ephemeral experiences at Schloss Leopoldskron. The statue veritably shimmers in ethereal light, when, of course, it is not raining and the stone has been scrubbed of moss and lichen.

Back in August 1931, Max Reinhardt had attempted one of his most ambitious theatrical projects ever, a staging of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in a 250-seat outdoor theatre, deep in the Schloss Park, that used the Untersberg vista as backdrop. Reinhardt engaged his finest actors, hired an orchestra from the Mozarteum and invited 250 select guests, all attired in evening wear, for the evening premiere. Green Chinese lanterns illuminated the footpaths and bridges that led deep into the Schloss Park, as guests carrying torches assembled and took their seats, and the opening lines—“If music be the food love, play on”—were spoken as clouds gathered overhead. It began to drizzle, then rain, then deluge, and “the last lines were blown away with the wind,” as one commentator noted. The crowd stumbled back to the Schloss in the pouring rain. Reinhardt vowed never to use the theatre again and didn’t.

The Seminar used the abandoned theater intermittently across the decades. There were performances by Fellows and faculty in the 1950s that included a performance of HIM, a 1928 play by e.e. cummings. On a spring evening in 1981, 60 Fellows and faculty from Session 205, on contemporary theater, staged a performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, under the direction of Ellen Stewart, the African American theatre director and fashion designer, who worked with Christian Dior and foundedthe La Mama experimental theatre in Manhattan. Brendan Gill from The New Yorker detailed the performance. “It was given the other night, at twilight, in the depths of the park,” Gill wrote, “and the audience moved from one grassy open place to the next, torches flared along the woodland paths, and music was improvised out of kitchen pots and pans and strips of tin roofing.” The skies were clear. “The cast spoke in eighteen languages, but in this production no common language was needed,” Gill continued. “Though Romeo spoke his lines in Maltese, and Juliet hers in Israeli, somehow we heard Shakespeare. His words sang to us under the first stars.”

In summer 2010, Salzburg Global collaborated with the Salzburg Festival in reviving Max Reinhardt’s failed attempt of 80 years previously with a Schloss Park staging of excerpts from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and a screening of Reinhardt’s famous 1935 Hollywood film adaptation. “The Midsummer Night’s Dream was unbelievably beautiful,” an audience member recalled. “The front part of the park was enchanted by fantastic lighting under the large trees. There was a tent where guests picked up their picnic baskets and then lounged on wooden platforms (equipped with blankets and pillows) in front of the stage under the trees.” The Salzburg Festival, and later the Salzburg State Theater, reprised the event in seasons to follow, capturing the spirit that Reinhardt had sought to achieve eight decades earlier.

The most memorable performance, of course, took place on the Meierhof side of the Schloss, back in the early 1960s when Hollywood film director Robert Wise staged scenes from his film, The Sound of Music, on the edge of the Leopoldskroner Weiher, where replicas of the Schloss’ stone seahorses were erected. Although the Schloss itself never appears in the film, the Venetian Room inspired the Von Trapp family ballroom, which was constructed on a Hollywood studio set. The blockbuster transformed the home of Salzburg Global Seminar into a global tourist destination for fans of the Oscar-winning film, which has come to benefit Salzburg Global’s hotel operation and occasionally its Fellows. 

Christian Thomsen, who attended a session on American theater in 1970 and went on to write a book on the Schloss and the Seminar, recalls a group of “American college girls” appearing at the Schloss and asking him and another Fellow whether it really was home to the Von Trapp family. “We told them that we were two members of the of the Trapp family!” Thomsen recalls. “We enjoyed their enthusiastic ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’, and asked the girls whether they would like to see ‘our castle’.” Thomsen says that the young ladies “melted” at the invitation. “The only stupid thing,” he adds, “was the fact that neither Josef nor I had ever seen The Sound of Music.”