Behind the scenes of the Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival, set amid the gorgeous Alpine hometown of Mozart himself, is now one of the most prestigious yearly events in the classical music world—though the festival’s first performance, on 22 August 1920, was a play: Jedermann by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. More than a century later, the Salzburg stage has become a coveted rite of passage for our greatest classical artists.

In this playlist, you can go behind the scenes of the festival with the likes of Jonas Kaufmann and Cecilia Bartoli; enjoy classic archival footage with legends like Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt; and take in a series of features about the Mozart 22 project—the full cycle of Mozart’s operas, presented in 2006 in honor of the composer’s 250th birthday.