This is the Pocket Opera Festival Salzburg

The biennial Pocket Opera Festival Salzburg has been premiering contemporary music theater since 2005. In each case, four to five commissions on a central theme are awarded to composers with explicitly different approaches and working methods in order to answer artistic, formal and content-related questions about contemporary music theater in an exemplary and varied manner.
The festival sees itself as a platform and laboratory in which artistic processes of the genuinely interdisciplinary art form of opera are jointly advanced; following this principle, the artistic teams (composition, scene, text/dramaturgy) develop the pieces in close collaboration from the very beginning.

The pocket operas are deliberately aimed at a broad, non-elitist audience. The short, artistically and musically very different pieces, references to the present and the playful appeal of opera as an art form on all sensory levels can act as an attraction in the literal sense of the word, break down fears of contact and turn contemporary music into an experience (without preconceptions). The careful selection and compilation of composers brings together different trends in new music and makes their diversity audible, including the influences of jazz, techno and other styles. The common theme of the pieces gives the audience the opportunity to compare the different musical “translations” of the material.