The Schwetzingen Festival (German: Schwetzinger Festspiele or Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele) is an early summer festival of opera and other classical music presented each year from May to early June in Schwetzingen, Germany.
In 1952 the South German Broadcasting Corporation founded the festival in the Schwetzingen area. It is located in a beautiful 250-year-old palace and park, Schwetzingen Castle, near the famous city of Heidelberg. The main venue is the historic Schlosstheater Schwetzingen. Nowadays, the successor organization is the Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and it organises a large number of international concerts and music theatre events every year.
One of the festival's characteristics is the world premiere of a new opera, as well as at least one rediscovered opera from former centuries, performed on period instruments.
| Year | World premieres | Early rarities |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Karl-Wieland Kurz: gute miene böses spiel | Giovanni Legrenzi: La divisione del mondo |
| 2001 | Manuel Hidalgo: Bacon 1561–1992 | Joseph Haydn: L'anima del filosofo |
| 2002 | Salvatore Sciarrino: Macbeth | Georg Benda: Il buon marito |
| 2003 | Frederik Zeller: Irma Vep | Ignaz Holzbauer: Il figlio delle selve |
| 2004 | Adriana Hölszky: Der gute Gott von Manhattan | Giovanni Paisiello: Il re Teodoro in Venezia |
| 2005 | Frederik Zeller: Zaubern | Alessandro Scarlatti: Telemaco |
| 2006 | Salvatore Sciarrino: Kälte (Da gelo a gelo) | Joseph Martin Kraus: Proserpina |
| 2007 | Bernhard Lang: Der Alte vom Berge | Giovanni Legrenzi: Giustino |
| 2008 | Adriana Hölszky: Hybris/Niobe | Agostino Steffani: Niobe, regina di Tebe |
| 2009 | Wolfgang Rihm: Proserpina | George Frideric Handel: Ezio |
| 2010 | Michael Jarrell: Le Père | André Grétry: Andromaque |
| 2011 | Georg Friedrich Haas: Bluthaus | Christoph Willibald Gluck: Telemaco |
| 2012 | Enno Poppe: IQ. Testbatterie[1] | Anton Schweitzer: Rosamunda[2] |
Concerts have featured well-known artists such as Gidon Kremer and Cecilia Bartoli, as well as young artists at the start of their careers. Singers of the caliber of Barbara Hendricks, Fritz Wunderlich and Teresa Berganza have performed at the festival as beginners and have all gone on to major careers.