His intent, which he credits to a suggestion from Christoph von Dohnányi, was to produce opera in conditions which granted him complete control over music, stage direction, and management, and enabled him enough focus to achieve his designs with the highest possibly quality.

[citation needed] According to Karajan’s recollections, he initially thought that the newly reconstructed Grand Theatre in Geneva was suitable for his enterprise.

[citation needed] The new festival was to fit into the “Karajan system”, under which he combined his several positions and partnerships for complete artistic and financial independence.

It would work without government subsidy, and although Karajan would act as manager, producer, funder, sole conductor, and stage director, he would ask for no pay.

[a] The singers left Berlin with a recording of the full orchestral parts, which enabled them to rehearse in the meantime with more precision and comfort than with a piano accompaniment.

Karajan’s initial focus was the works of Richard Wagner, which were avoided in Salzburg in the summer due to a gentlemen’s agreement with the nearby Bayreuth Festival held at the same time.

[3] Karajan had conducted in Bayreuth in 1951 and 1952 when the festival reopened after the war, before leaving in disagreement with co-director Wieland Wagner, who had taken an abstract and critical approach in staging his grandfather’s works.

[citation needed] Karajan’s first endeavour was a production of Richard Wagner’s four-part Der Ring des Nibelungen over the first four editions, starting in 1967 with Die Walküre, the popular second part.

The music critic Joachim Kaiser wrote of his original Walküre that it was “self-cast, self-financed, self-staged, self-conducted — that Wagner composed the piece almost seems like a blemish”.

[10] His wife Eliette von Karajan acted as an unofficial hostess at the festival, and was usually the last to take her front-row seat jus as the lights went down.

Apart from Wagner’s, these were from the core of Karajan’s lyric repertoire, especially by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, with a few revivals; however, operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss remained reserved to the summer festival.

[15] Karajan, who was enthusiastic about new recording technologies and had started to film opera in studio, formed the design to produce his Salzburg Ring.

[16] His complete control decided René Kollo to leave over creative differences after his first performance in the title role of the 1976 Lohengrin, followed by Karl Ridderbusch.

[17] Despite his initial insistence on independence, Karajan resorted to subsidies from the state and city government from 1969,[18] which he defended by pointing out the benefits to the local economy.

[22] The 1989 edition saw Karajan’s last appearance in an orchestra pit and his last with the Berlin Philharmonic: he resigned as their chief conductor after the festival, and died in July.

Stage directors invited under Abbado delivered more modern productions than Karajan’s traditional style, although the audience made the festival unfit for a full commitment to Regieoper.

[24][25] Abbado’s first edition featured a well-remembered production of Boris Godunov by Herbert Wernicke, which drew political parables with Soviet history.

Additions to the traditional programme under Rattle’s directorship included regular jazz concerts, and special performances of a baroque opera conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm, who had been his assistant (Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas in 2004, George Frideric Handel’s La resurrezione in 2009).

[32] Dewitte and Kretschmer, the latter severely injured during the scandal after a reported suicide attempt, were dismissed, and were later sentenced on criminal charges; they served time in prison, and had to pay more than 2 million euros in damage to the festival.

The Berlin Philharmonic received competing proposals to transfer their Easter residency to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Germany’s largest opera house, which offered funds for four opera performances per edition and an expansion of the chamber music and educational programmes, while the Salzburg management stated that it had no realistic financial perspective to do so.

They considered leaving Salzburg in 2009, with Simon Rattle’s support to the proposal, but a majority of the orchestra voted against the move.

[39] Several concerts of that period were also conducted by Myung-whun Chung, who was the principal guest conductor in Dresden, a position which does not exist with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The composer and conductor Peter Ruzicka, who took over as general manager in 2015, also introduced a contemporary chamber opera, starting in 2017 with Salvatore Sciarrino’s Lohengrin (1982), followed in 2018 by Bruno Maderna’s Satyricon (1973), and in 2019 by Thérèse, a commission to Philipp Maintz.

In 2017, the festival celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special off-Ring “re-creation” of the 1967 Die Walküre, with sets reconstructed by Jens Kilian from Günther Schneider-Siemssen’s, although with a new staging by Vera Nemirova, since the 1967 production was neither filmed nor documented.

[40] Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic were back for a special concert, and Gundula Janowitz and Christa Ludwig, who sang Sieglinde and Fricka at the 1967 festival, were guests of honours at a symposium about the production.

In July 2020, Nikolaus Bachler, the former intendant of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, replaced Ruzicka as general manager.

[43] In January 2023, the festival announced that the Berlin Philharmonic would return as resident orchestra from 2026, with its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, after a final edition in Baden-Baden in 2025.

[44][45][46] Bachler, who remains artistic director, had previously hired Petrenko at the Vienna Volksoper and at the Bavarian State Opera; there had been speculations, when his appointment had been announced, that this was a way to facilitate the return of the Berlin Philharmonic.

For many years, seats were in such high demand that membership was the only way to obtain them, despite their price; tickets left unsold are nowadays put on sale at a later date to the general public.