Art lovers head to Austrian festival in August

Art lovers will be heading to an Austrian festival this August in order to catch some great classical music performances.

From now until the end of the month, the Salzburg Festival will entertain guests with its mix of operatic, dramatic and concert performances.

Throughout the event there will be 43 operas, 68 dramas and 81 concert performances, as well as operatic premieres.

Operas will include Giuseppe Verdi's Othello, Charles Gounod's Romeo and Juliet and Mozart's the Magic Flute.

Meanwhile, drama fans will be able to enjoy Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment on the stage, a performance entitled The Robbers by the After Friedrich Schiller theatre group and Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking.

According to the Lonely Planet, Salzburg is a Baroque "fiesta of churches, plazas, courtyards and fountains", oozing the kind of charm one would expert from the "Mozart Mecca".

The travel guide adds that visitors should expect museums, quaint squares, chocolates bars and a range of liqueurs on sale - all with a Mozart theme.