March 15, 2023 By ISIAH MAGSINO Town & Country
The hills are alive, and now, so is the Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron‘s Red Salon Room.
Ken Fulk, in partnership with Trevor D. Traina, the former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, has revived one of the estate’s most important rooms in honor of Max Reinhardt, one of the founders of Austria’s Salzburg Festival.
When The Sound of Music aired in 1965, it was unbeknownst to the Von Trapp family (on which the musical is based) that the production would soon become a worldwide phenomenon. Set in Salzburg, Austria, and starring Julie Andrews, it retells the story of Maria Von Trapp, who takes a job as governess to the family while deciding whether or not she should become a nun. She enchants viewers with her soprano voice, from the rolling green hills of Salzburg to the decadent rooms of the Schloss Leopoldskron. This production was, ultimately, a continuation of Reinhardt’s long-lasting musical impact on Austrian culture.
The property was originally commissioned as a family estate in 1736 by the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, but Max Reinhardt, Europe’s most famous theater director and resident of the home from 1918 to 1938, turned it into the nucleus of culture during his time. While there, Reinhardt created four elaborate spaces including the Venetian Room, a baroque two-story library, the Chinese room, and the Red Salon room. The Red Salon is where Reinhardt auspiciously founded the Salzburg Music Festival in 1918, a festival of arts and music that especially championed the works of Wolfgang Mozart.
In the Red Salon room, the estate’s existing cane dining chairs reupholstered in fabrics from historic textile houses Rubelli and Pierre Frey.
“They think of this room as the birthplace of one of the most important music festivals in the world. It came about after World War I, when people needed music to soothe their souls, and knew that there was a need to bring the world together,” Fulk says. “It was a shared higher language.”
During Nazi occupation in World War II, all but one room in the palace was left unscathed: the Red Salon Room. Tragically, Reinhardt fled to America during the war and died penniless. In a letter to his wife, he wrote: “I have lived in Leopoldskron for eighteen years, truly lived, and I have brought it to life. I have lived in every room, every table, every chair, every light, and every picture. I have built, designed, decorated, and planted and I have dreamt of it when I was not there. I have always loved it in a festive way, not as something ordinary. Those were my most beautiful, prolific, and mature years … I have lost it without lamenting. I have lost everything that I carried into it. It was the harvest of my life’s work.”
More than a half-century later, Fulk, Traina, and wallpaper and fabric company, De Gournay, have worked to revive the legend of this room just in time for what would’ve been Reinhardt’s 150th birthday. After a two-year process, the Red Salon room once again beams with Reinhardt’s theatrical spirit. Like a testament of faith, one of Reinhardt’s actual theatre curtains was found in the attic of the estate just as the redesign process began.
London-based De Gournay, known for its hand-painted wallpapers and mastery of antique paper restoration, to help translate Fulk’s vision to all four walls using motifs borrowed from Reinhardt’s historic canvas.
The history of the estate beats on through the use of an elongated wooden Louis XVI-Style cherry table by Salda1870, which is anchored by an Iranian Kirman rug purchased by Traina from the esteemed Dorotheum Auction House. The table is accompanied by a set of the estate’s existing cane dining chairs reupholstered in red fabrics from historic textile houses Rubelli and Pierre Frey. The dash of red plays onto the name, without it being too literal.
The principal element, however, should be awarded to the Klimt-like wallpaper that wraps around the room. The De Gournay wallpaper illustrates an outdoor, tropical setting with lush palms and flying avians. At first, it appears to be a stark contrast from the rest of the decor or even the estate as a whole. But, somehow, it feels appropriate. The drama of the wallpaper is a true testament to the fantastical aura that Reinhardt imbued into the estate while he lived there.
“I think Max, just like me, has illusions of grandeur,” Fulk says. ” He used this space to entertain and to manifest his ideas and talents. Yes, do I love a good party and cozying up with someone and gossiping on the sofa? Of course. But, this is also a room that has proven can change the course of our lives. It sounds dramatic, but the Austrians and Americans deeply attached to this estate see it that way.”
Today, the room will be used to house meetings for the Salzburg Global Seminar, an independent non-profit organization with “a mission to challenge current and future leaders to shape the world.” In fact, according to Fulk, the room felt complete only “30 seconds before [they] showed it to the visiting dignitaries.”
While the room feels complete now, who’s to say what it’ll look like in the next few years, or the next century? ” I think of these things as living and breathing. It’ll constantly be in flux as a salon,” Fulk says.
To visit or book your stay at the Hotel Schloss Leopoldskron, please visit schloss-leopoldskron.com.