When Alexander Pereira was appointed last week as general manager of Teatro alla Scala, starting in 2015, the presumption was that he would remain in his current post, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, until his contract ended in 2016. But the notion of a one-year overlap did not sit well with the festival’s board, which has decided to let him go at the end of September 2014.
Now instead of an overlapping year Mr. Pereira will have a year to prepare the way for his new job, which will involve finding new sponsors for the celebrated Italian opera house. The festival announced Mr. Pereira’s early departure by posting on its Twitter feed (@SbgFestival): “Contract of Artistic Director Alexander Pereira ends with September 30, 2014.â€
Sven-Eric Bechtolf, the actor and director who has been in charge of the festival’s theater program, will become the interim artistic director. So far, a long-term favorite as a successor to Mr. Pereira is the pianist Markus Hinterhäuser, a former of the Salzburg Festival’s concert series, and a candidate at the time Mr. Pereira was appointed. Mr. Hinterhäuser was recently appointed artistic director of the Vienna Festival, a position he is expected to hold through 2017.
As it turns out, Mr. Bechtolf may have a relatively easy job. He will have to take up Mr. Pereira’s fund-raising responsibilities, and will be under pressure to keep within the festival’s budget of about $80 milllion - which Mr. Pereira overspent by about $6.5 million this year, another cause of friction with the board. But it turns out that Mr. Pereira had already done much of the planning for the rest of his term.
Mr. Bechtolf said in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard that he would honor Mr. Pereira’s plans, which include the premiere of an opera by Gyorgy Kurtag in 2015.
