review
An atmospheric blend of historical fiction and literary mystery, ‘Death at the Salzburg Festival’ reimagines the forgotten life of actress Else Heims and brings to life the glamour and hidden tragedies surrounding the Salzburg Festival – one of the world’s most prestigious music and theatre festivals – on the eve of the Second World War.
Salzburg, 1937. As Max Reinhardt, theatre director and co-founder of the Salzburg Festival, prepares what will be his final production of Everyman, two actors cast as Death are murdered within days of one another. Detective Breitensee, a melancholy investigator haunted by an earlier unsolved case, is drawn into the city’s theatrical world as he searches for the killer. At the same time, the novel follows the life of Else Heims, Reinhardt’s first wife and one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation. From her childhood in Berlin and meteoric rise on the stage to her passionate but ultimately painful marriage to Reinhardt, Heims emerges as a gifted artist whose career was overshadowed by the fame of the man beside her. When Reinhardt casts her as Death after the murders, history and fiction begin to merge, propelling both narratives towards an unforgettable opening night.
Rather than offering a conventional whodunnit, Reyer uses the murder investigation to illuminate the emotional and artistic world of the theatre. Else Heims becomes the novel’s true centre: a woman of extraordinary sensitivity whose fictionalised return to the stage offers both artistic redemption and a poignant reflection on the women whose achievements have been eclipsed by history. As the two storylines converge, the novel explores memory, performance, and artistic creation, while evoking the final years of a European cultural world on the brink of irrevocable change.
Reyer, herself an acclaimed poet and playwright, writes with lyrical intensity, weaving together suspense, theatrical spectacle and biographical fiction. The dual narrative shifts effortlessly between Berlin and Salzburg before uniting in the iconic open-air performance of Everyman beneath Salzburg Cathedral. Evocative descriptions of the city, the mountains and the theatre create an immersive historical setting, while the novel’s elegant prose brings both the detective plot and Heims’s story vividly to life.
One of Austria’s most celebrated contemporary literary voices, Reyer introduces English-language readers to the remarkable figure of Else Heims while offering a fresh perspective on the cultural legacy of Max Reinhardt. ‘Death at the Salzburg Festival’ will appeal to readers of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and Sarah Perry’s Melmoth for its fusion of historical imagination and literary atmosphere.
Find out more: https://emons-verlag.de/p/tod-bei-den-salzburger-festspielen-7636?number=86753
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