［CITY］
Bad Ischl … Austria
［SCHEDULE］
2026：7.11 … 8.30
To the festival site ▷
To the east of Salzburg is the scenic spot “Salzkammergut”. Its central city is Bad Ischl, known as the oldest spa in Austria. The town is still home to Kaiser Villa, the summer residence of the last Emperor Franz Josef I of the Hapsburg Empire.
The villa was presented in 1854 by a former emperor to celebrate the marriage of Franz Josef I and Empress Elisabeth (that, Sissi !). Elisabeth reached a tragic end in 1898 in Geneva, where he was stabbed by an Italian anarchist.
But Franz Josef I did not change her life in a villa full of memories. He signed a declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia on July 28, 1914 at there. The next day he left Bad Ischl and never returned.
This city has another historic building. The villa where composer Franz Lehár spent his later years. Lehar is a German composer born in Hungary, composing a number of operettas such as “Merry Widow” and “The Land of Smiles”. He lead the second golden age (Silver era) of Wiener Operetta in the early 20th century with Kálmán.
In 1934, Juditta was finally picked up by the Vienna State Opera for the first time. Since then, he has moved away from composing and entering an elegant retirement. However, after the war, cooperation with Nazi Germany during the World WarⅡ was Surfaced. It was the story that he gave the score of “Merry Widow” to Hitler. For that reason, he stayed silent in his later years and died in 1948 at the age of 78 and slept in this city.
In such a city, a festival is held every year from July to August to perform Lehar operettas. This is the only music festival based on Lehar in the world. Founded in 1961, 3 works are performed every year. The festival is held in a small theater.
There is no stage structure like a big theater, so there is no big set and no famous singer appears. However, because the capacity is small, a sense of unity is born between the stage and the audience centering on the growing young singer, and it has an at-home atmosphere. Tickets are less than 100 euros, much more reasonable than other music festivals.
