Bowing out of Austria’s Mozart mania

Salzburg and Vienna may be dueling for which city will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth next year with more splendor, but the Austrian province of Styria plans to opt out. Styria has declared itself a “Mozart-free zone,” Bernhard Rinner, head of the province’s Cultural Service, told the APA News Service this month.

“It can be excluded at the present stage of planning that Styria will take part in the Mozart Year 2006, propagated by Austrian advertising,” Rinner said. “We’re offering -- somewhat pointedly -- a Mozart-free zone.”

Salzburg, the city of the composer’s birth, plans to produce, among other events, all 22 Mozart operas, while Vienna will offer nearly 80 performances at the famed Theater an der Wien (site of the “Magic Flute” premiere) as well as a “New Crowned Hope” festival directed by Los Angeles-based Peter Sellars. (Details can be found at www.mozart2006.net.)

The city and province of Salzburg plan to spend more than $110 million on tourism-boosting activities using the name of Mozart in 2006, according to the Austrian News Digest. That probably won’t be a bad investment. Austrian hotels as a whole generated an estimated $29 billion, or 9.8% of the country’s gross domestic product, in 2004. And that wasn’t even a particularly notable celebratory year.