Zweigvanshchina

The microcosms that mirror the macrocosms in Salzburg

In his 1942 memoir, The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig describes the Burgtheater in fin-de-siècle Vienna as “the microcosm that mirrored the macrocosm, the brightly colored reflection in which the city saw itself, the only true cortigiano of good taste.” More than a mirror, it was the stage where Imperial Vienna could reinforce the narrative of its own civility, performing stability in an empire that had already begun to fracture underneath its brocade.

Zweig moved to Salzburg shortly after the end of World War I, finding a refuge in the quiet Alpine town from the pressures of life in post-empire and post-exile Vienna, while also taking a keen interest in the city’s growing festival culture (the summertime Salzburg Festival would launch one year after Zweig moved there).

I was reminded of that line from The World of Yesterday last month at the Salzburg Easter Festival’s premiere of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, which I reviewed for the London Review of Books. Zweig was born eight months…