61 Best Performing Arts in Austria

Bregenz is pleasant at any time of year, but a great time to visit is during the Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Music Festival) in July and August. Acclaimed artists from around the world perform operas, operettas, and musical comedies on the festival's floating stage, part of the Festspiel und Kongresshaus (Festival Hall and Congress Center) complex. In front of the stage, the orchestra pit is built on a jetty, while the audience of 6,800 is safely accommodated on the 30-tier amphitheater on dry land—a unique and memorable setting for a concert. Reserve your tickets and hotels in advance, as performances and rooms sell out early. In the event of rain, the concert performance is moved indoors to the adjacent Festspielhaus.

The big cultural event in Bregenz is the Bregenzer Festspiele, held mid-July to late August, with the main stage a huge floating platform on the lake. For information and tickets, contact the festival office. Tickets are also available at the Bregenz tourist office. In the event of rain, the concert performance is moved indoors to the massive Festival Hall and Congress Center adjacent to the floating stage (it can accommodate at least 1,800 of the 6,800 seats usually available for performances on the floating lake stage).

Europe's largest contemporary dance festival takes place in venues large and small all over the city between mid-July and mid-August. In 2017, the festival venues were at nearly 100% capacity, with a record-breaking number of visitors; nearly 130,000 people packed into the halls, museums, and theaters to see some of the world's leading companies take the stage. Recent years have brought stars such as Alaine Platel, Jerome Bel, Mathilde Monnier, Anne Teresa De Keersmaker, and Marie Chouinard.

What would La Traviata be like with two soloists and a piano? Or how about a Tosca where you can join in the chorus? Stefan Fleischhacker's Letztes Erfreuliches Operntheater (otherwise known as the Last Enjoyable Opera Theater, or L.E.O. for short) offers marvelously funny and entertaining performances of grand operas that are appropriate for audiences of all ages (and much shorter than their originals). For a small donation, bread and wine are also available.

Two institutions share the address in this building finished just before World War I—the International Foundation Mozarteum, set up in 1870, and the University of Music and Performing Arts, founded in 1880. The former organizes the annual Mozart Week festival in January. Many important concerts are offered from October to June in its two recital halls, the Grosser Saal (Great Hall) and the Wiener Saal (Vienna Hall). Behind the Mozarteum is the famous Zauberflötenhäuschen—the little summerhouse where Mozart composed parts of The Magic Flute, with the "encouragement" of his frantic librettist Emanuel Schikaneder; he locked the composer inside to force him to finish.

The city's most important concert halls are in the 1869 Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, better known as the Musikverein. This magnificent theater holds six performance spaces, but the one that everyone knows is the venue for the annual New Year's Day Concert—the Goldene Saal. Possibly the world's most beautiful music hall, it was designed by the Danish 19th-century architect Theophil Hansen, a passionate admirer of ancient Greece who festooned it with an army of gilded caryatids. Surprisingly, the smaller Brahms Saal is even more sumptuous—a veritable Greek temple with more caryatids and lots of gilding and green malachite. What Hansen would have made of the four subsidiary halls added in 2004 and set below the main theater will forever remain a mystery, but the avant-garde Gläserne, Hölzerne, Metallene, and Steinerne Säle (Glass, Wooden, Metal, and Stone Halls) make fitting showcases for contemporary music. In addition to being the main venue for the Wiener Philharmoniker and the Wiener Symphoniker, the Musikverein hosts many of the world's finest orchestras.

A play on the words music and theater, MuTh is the concert hall and permanent home of the world-famous Vienna Boys' Choir (Wiener Sängerknaben). Since it opened in 2012, the 400-seat theater has become the official music center inside the Augarten, the oldest Baroque garden in Vienna. Here the legendary Vienna Boys' Choir performs music that ranges from classical to world music to pop. The vast stage has some of the finest acoustics in Vienna and is equipped with an orchestra pit, specially designed seating, and distinctive acoustic panels. The building itself combines a unique mix of Baroque and modern architecture and includes a café, shop, and seminar room where musical education and other performances take place.

Three kilometers (two miles) west of Rust, outside the tiny village of St. Margarethen, is Römersteinbruch, a delightful rock quarry used for outdoor opera performances for six weeks during July and August. It's one of the three largest outdoor opera venues in Europe, seating 7,000 nightly. The opera changes annually—previous operas have included Puccini's Turandot and Bizet's Carmen, with a Passion play running every fifth year—and performances also include a dazzling fireworks display. Ticket prices range from around €40 up to nearly €150. It's a good idea to bring a seat cushion, if possible, to soften the metal chairs. Bus trips from Vienna and back to see performances can be arranged through several tour agencies. You can buy tickets online or at the ticket office in Eisenstadt.

The most enchanting place to hear Mozart in Vienna (or anywhere, for that matter) is the exquisite 18th-century Sala Terrena, where Mozart himself played. In this intimate room (it seats a maximum of 80 people), a chamber group in historic costumes offers concerts in a jewel box overrun with Rococo frescoes in the Venetian style. Said to be the oldest concert hall in Vienna, the Sala Terrena is part of the German Monastery, where, in 1781, Mozart lived and worked for his despised employer, Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg.

Classical soloists and chamber ensembles perform in more than 230 concerts each year in the legendary Marmorsaal (Marble Hall) at Mirabell Palace, where Mozart performed. Concerts begin at 8 pm and last 1½ hours.

The beloved Vienna Boys' Choir, known here as the Wiener Sängerknaben, isn't just a set of living dolls out of a Walt Disney film (like the 1962 movie Almost Angels); its pedigree is royal, and its professionalism such that the choir regularly appears with the best orchestras in the world. The troupe was founded by Emperor Maximilian I in 1498, but with the demise of the Hapsburg Empire in 1918, it became its own entity and began giving public performances in the 1920s to keep afloat.

From mid-September to late June, the apple-cheeked lads sing mass at 9:15 Sunday mornings in the Hofburgkapelle. Written requests for seats should be made at least six weeks in advance. Tickets are also sold at ticket agencies and at the box office (open Friday 11–1 and 3–5). Expect to pay a top price of €38 for a seat near the nave, and note that only the 10 side-balcony seats allow a view of the choir. On Sunday at 8:45 am, any unclaimed tickets are sold at the entrance. If you miss hearing the choir at a Sunday mass, you may be able to catch it in a more popular program in the Musikverein.

The Burg's smaller house, the Akademietheater, draws on much the same group of actors for classical and modern plays, but performances are in a more relaxing setting.

The heart of Salzburg's contemporary art and culture scene beats at this modern, multipurpose performance venue. Its two performance spaces host envelope-pushing experimental music concerts, modern dance and theater performances, Austrian cabaret evenings, and poetry slams. The Open Mind Festival in November is the big annual event, featuring productions created especially for the festival.

A former bread factory once slated for demolition is now the site of Vienna's most celebrated contemporary art venue. Ateliers, galleries, showrooms, and studios for artists-in-residence are set up inside, making it akin to an urban artists' colony. It showcases some of the country's premier artists, as well as many up-and-comers.

A vast array of concerts and recitals are presented in the noted Brucknerhaus, the modern hall on the south bank of the Danube. Every September it's home to the International Bruckner Festival. The venue also hosts some events for Ars Electronica, a festival that explores art, science, and society.

Carol Reed's Vienna-based classic The Third Man, with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, is screened two or three times a week in English. Hollywood's latest releases are usually shown here in the original English version.

The Austrian National Theater is among the leading German-language theaters of the world. The Burgtheater's repertoire frequently mixes German classics with more modern and controversial pieces. The Burg also emphasizes works by Austrian playwrights, incluing Elfriede Jelinek, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Burg's smaller house, the Akademietheater, draws on much the same group of actors for classical and modern plays, but performances are in a more relaxing setting.

Between mid-July and late August, the Festival of Early Music highlights music from the 14th to 18th centuries, performed by many of Europe's finest musicians in such dramatic settings as Innsbruck's beautiful Schloss Ambras and the Hofkirche. In summer there are frequent brass-band (Musikkapelle) concerts in the Old Town. During the Renaissance and in the Baroque era, Innsbruck was one of Europe's most important centers for music, and this is the oldest existing festival to celebrate such early music.

Located in the Albertina, the Filmmuseum has one of the most ambitious and sophisticated schedules around, with a heavy focus on English-language films. It's stylish Filmbar serves drinks and snacks spills out onto the street. It's open until well past midnight and often hosts lectures and retrospectives, but note that it is closed in July.

This is one of the most influential of the Schleifmühlgasse galleries.

The Schleifmühlgasse has recently emerged as one of Vienna's most renowned gallery districts. Among the top contemporary galleries here is this one, located inside a former print shop.

A presence at cutting-edge art fairs around the world, this gallery has been going strong since the 1970s, when it pushed Vienna Actionism. Its Krinzinger Projects are among the most important blips on the contemporary Austrian art radar screen. The gallery is close to the MuseumsQuartier.

Joseph Haydn spent the last twelve years of his life at this house and so it is fitting that the permanent exhibition at his final residence-turned-museum focuses on the last years of the composer's life. The museum is small but offers insight into the Vienna of Haydn's last days as well as an opportunity to stand where one of the world's greatest composers stood and imagine him at work in this very space. You'll see his fortepiano and his clavichord (which was later owned by Brahms), as well as medals, certificates, and gifts Haydn had received and displayed with pride. The small garden has been recreated according to historical models, so you can sit here and imagine the great master admiring his fruit trees as he created melodies. Haydn bought the house—which was then considered to be in the suburbs—and added another floor, where his valet stayed. He moved in at the age of 65 in 1797 and lived here until his death on May 31, 1809. He was the most famous composer in all of Europe in the final years of his life and displays on the ground floor of the house show portraits and comments from his many famous visitors. These last years were also one of the most creatively productive periods of his life; Haydn created the two oratorios “The Creation” (1796–1798) and “The Seasons” (1799–1801) while living here. There's a first-edition score of the latter on display.

Much of the Imperial Palace is used today for orchestral concerts. The Festsaal, the largest hall of the Hofburg and originally conceived as a throne room, hosts frequent Strauss and Mozart concerts. If dripping opulence is a must, the Zeremoniensaal, considered the most magnificent hall of the palace, is an unparalleled venue for experiencing Vienna's classical soul.

This morality play, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is famously performed annually (in German) in the front courtyard of the cathedral. It begins with a rousing Medieval parade of performers through the streets of the Altstadt, spilling onto the stage for a colorful, intense, and moving presentation of the allegorical story of wealthy, selfish Jedermann's final journey before death. Few of the thousands packing the plaza are unmoved when, at the height of the banquet, church bells around the city ring out and the voice of Death is heard calling "Jedermann—Jedermann—Jed-er-mann" from the Franziskanerkirche tower, followed by echoes of voices from other steeples and from atop the Fortress Hohensalzburg. An unforgettable experience.

This well-respected theater offers a season of modern dramas and comedies.

A number of events grace the imperial interiors of the Kongress- und Theaterhaus each season. Musical performances are held throughout the year, including Advent concerts. The biggest draw is the summer Lehár Festival. Operetta and classic musical theater lovers flock to Bad Ischl during July and August for favorite standards like The Merry Widow and My Fair Lady. Tickets are sold online, at local tourist offices, and on-site. Pre-sales for the upcoming season begin in October.