Francesco Albé

Apr 10, 20211 min

Weekly update: Austria's corona 'Comebackplan', Wagner's Parsifal premieres at Vienna State Opera

Politics

The government is preparing a ‘Comebackplan’ for the economy to tackle the current crisis. Within a one-year time frame, the recovery plan aims to re-employ the 500,000 workers who have either been furloughed or lost their job during the pandemic.
 

Handshake. Photo: Tumisu via Pixabay

After submitting questions to members of Orban’s Fidesz party, Austrian profil-journalist Franziska Tschinderle was openly attacked by Hungarian state media, which deemed her questions ‘an act of provocation’. Profil-editor Christian Reinar has condemned the attack as an ‘affront to the freedom of the press from a government towards which Austria is taking an uncritical stance’.

Culture

Wagner’s Parsifal, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, was premiered at the Vienna State Opera. The Russian director and Kremlin critic, who is currently being detained and cannot leave his home country, supervised the works entirely online.

Word of the week

The German word ‘die Kutsche’, ‘(horse-drawn) coach’, is known in Vienna as ‘der Fiaker’.