Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor

The Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir appears at major concerts and in opera productions at the Salzburg Festival and also at the Landestheater, offering children and adolescents a thorough, all-round training in singing and music, in addition to giving them a first-hand impression of professional work in the theatre. The Choir was formed in 2008 following a merger between the Salzburg Festival Children’s Choir and the Salzburg Landestheater Children’s Choir. The ensemble is currently directed by Wolfgang Götz. Regina Sgier is responsible for developing and training the choristers’ voices. Depending on their age, the younger children are introduced to singing through various pre-choir groups. At present, the Choir numbers around 200 young Austrian and German singers aged between six and 16, from which smaller groups are formed for individual projects.

In addition to its own concerts, the Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Choir has performed at the Salzburg Festival under such eminent conductors as Riccardo Muti, Christian Thielemann, Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bertrand de Billy, Zubin Mehta, Franz Welser-Möst and Alain Altinoglu, and with orchestras including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. It has participated in such demanding programmes as Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine under John Eliot  Gardiner, Mahler’s Third Symphony under Gustavo Dudamel and Andris Nelsons, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony under Dudamel and Britten’s War Requiem under Antonio Pappano and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. Opera productions in which the Choir has appeared include Die Frau ohne Schatten, Macbeth, Carmen, La bohème, Das Labyrinth: Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil, Der Rosenkavalier, Wozzeck, The Queen of Spades, Œdipe, Tosca and 2022 Puccini’s Suor Angelica, Orff’s De temporum fine comoedia, Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, Rihm’s Jakob Lenz and other works. In 2023 the Choir took part in the award-winning production of Bohuslav Martinů’s The Greek Passion under the baton of Maxime Pascal.

The Choir regularly appears in its own productions at the Salzburg Landestheater, among them Die Kinder des Monsieur Mathieu (2014), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (2017) and Peter Pan (2022) as well as, since 2009, The Sound of Music. The Choir has made guest appearances at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona and has participated in television and film pro-ductions, including Weihnachten mit Rolan-do Villazón (2014) and Die Trapp-Familie: Ein Leben für die Musik (2015).