The Festival Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele

Operas and concerts are presented from the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele ever since 1952. The Palace Theatre and concert halls of Schwetzingen Palace - the former summer residence of the Palatinate Elector Carl Theodor - are the festival locations.

"To rediscover the old, initiate the new, provide opportunities for the young" – this has been the artistic credo ever since 1952. On the one hand, forgotten or little-known 18th-century works are performed, sometimes for the first time in a contemporary production; examples are Henry Purcell’s ballet opera "The Fairy Queen" or Alessandro Scarlatti’s "Telemaco". On the other hand, contemporary art is propagated.

More than 35 operas have been commissioned for the festival and performed at the Palace Theatre. The list reads like a Who’s who of music after 1945. Wolfgang Fortner and Hans Werner Henze, Werner Egk and Günter Bialas, Manfred Trojahn, Udo Zimmermann, Salvatore Sciarrino and Adriana Hölszky – the works they created for Schwetzingen and its annual festival of music.

Concerts are the festival’s second main attraction. Chamber and orchestra concerts, piano and song performances constitute an important part of the programme. Big names like Alfred Brendel, Gidon Kremer, Grigory Sokolov, The Emerson String Quartet and the Hagen Quartett perform on the Schwetzingen stage next to young, little-known artists and ensembles.

Singers like Jessye Norman, Cecilia Bartoli and Teresa Berganza performed at Schwetzingen long before they were stars of the international stage. The Sunday matinées and the "Woche der Begegnung Junger Musiker" are reserved for young newcomers. Thanks to the international exchange of programmes among radio channels the festival attendees are not alone in enjoying the Schwetzingen operas and concerts. Up to 700 transmissions a year, all over the world, have made the Schwetzinger Festspiele the biggest Classical music event on radio

Schwetzingen Palace, with its historic concert halls, its electoral landscape garden and the incomparable atmosphere of its Palace Theatre, is as instrumental as the music itself in making the Schwetzinger Festspiele into the outstanding events they are.