Chronicle
The Carinthian Summer Festival was founded in 1969 as a music festival at Ossiach Abbey on Lake Ossiach. The idea of combining a summer retreat with classical music of the highest caliber captivated artists and audiences from the very beginning. Within just a few years, the Carinthian Summer Festival in Ossiach and Villach established itself as an internationally renowned classical music festival, associated with names such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Leonard Bernstein, Christa Ludwig, Rudolf Buchbinder, and Gottfried von Einem. A highlight of these early years was the first European Leonard Bernstein Festival at the Carinthian Summer Festival in 1977, featuring the world premiere of the revised version of his Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, at the Villach Congress House (now the Villach Congress Center), conducted by the composer himself.
World premieres and contemporary music have always been of paramount importance at the Carinthian Summer Festival, and they remain so today. Numerous compositions by Gottfried von Einem, Ivan Eröd, Kurt Schwertsik, Bruno Strobl, Manuela Kerer, Tamara Friebel, Herbert Lauermann, Johannes Kalitzke, and many others were written for the Carinthian Summer Festival and premiered here. From 2004 to 2015, composer Thomas Daniel Schlee served as the festival's artistic director, while composer and radio manager Nikolaus Fheodoroff was the long-serving president of the association. Like his successor Holger Bleck (2016–2023), Schlee continued a tradition established in Ossiach by his predecessors Helmuth Wobisch (1969–1979) and Gerda Fröhlich (1980–2003): the church opera. Since the Austrian premiere of Benjamin Britten's The Prodigal Son (1975), several world premieres of sacred music theatre works by contemporary composers commissioned by the Carinthian Summer Festival have taken place, most recently the film opera Jeanne d'Arc by Johannes Kalitzke (2020/2021) at the Congress Center Villach with the Klagenfurt Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.
Starting from the festival centers of Ossiach and Villach, further venues have been added since 2003, such as the idyllic mountain church of Tiffen, the dreamy Damtschach Castle, and the Domenig Stone House, which, with its architectural quality as a large stone sculpture, offers a fascinating space, especially for new music. In the 2024 season, the island in Lake Faak will be a venue for the Carinthian Summer Festival for the first time.
Since October 2023, Nadja Kayali has been the artistic director of the Carinthian Summer Festival. Her first festival season, under the motto "Carinthian Summer : A Personal Perspective," took place between July 6 and August 4, 2024. She expanded the program to include numerous new formats, such as morning concerts featuring world premieres of texts by contemporary female authors, readings, and discussions. The condensed festival, with record attendance, offered events every day of the season for the first time.
The 2024 season saw the launch of many new collaborations with other festivals and cultural professionals in Carinthia – the shared enthusiasm for Carinthia as a cultural region opens up new perspectives for cooperation.