The Salzburg Marionette Theatre was founded in 1913 by Anton Aicher. A wide variety of objects from the theatre’s archives reflects over 100 years of artistic development: numerous designs for puppets and stage sets, audio recordings, video footage, as well as posters, programmes and reports. Valuable documents include, for example, those relating to the theatre’s close collaboration with Günther Schneider-Siemssen, who designed the sets for all productions from 1952 to 1991.

However, the centrepiece of the archive is the collection of approximately 2,500 marionettes. As a trained sculptor, the theatre’s founder Anton Aicher designed his first marionettes with a high artistic standard. Among his most famous characters is the little Kasperl Larifari from 1913. In order to perform on tour in front of bigger audiences, larger marionettes were built from the 1930s onwards. The theatre later gained worldwide recognition for its opera productions. Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’, featuring Josef Magnus’ distinctive puppet heads (e.g. Papageno) from 1952, remains a core part of the repertoire to this day.

The construction and costume design of the marionettes require the utmost precision and many years of experience. These specialised skills are passed down within the company by the ensemble members.

As part of the BMWKMS-funded project ‘Digital Cultural Heritage’, part of the marionette collection was digitised using photogrammetry: For each individual marionette, up to 600 images were taken to generate a high-resolution digital 3D model. Extensive adjustments and post-processing were necessary to reproduce the specific characteristics of the marionettes and their costumes (materiality, surface texture, fabric, colour, transparency).

During guest performances in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in 1936, the Salzburg Marionette Theatre presented a special attraction for the first time: a marionette inspired by the great Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, dancing ‘The Dying Swan’, controlled by 17 strings operated by five puppeteers. For many years, this choreography remained the flagship of Salzburg’s marionette art. Today, the original puppet is too fragile to be used on stage, but can now be experienced again through the 3D model. With a new puppet built in 1978, ‘Anna Pavlova’ remains active on stage to this day as part of the ballet ‘The Nutcracker’.