Salzburg Festival 2023: Valerie Pachner is the new paramour
Created: 12/01/2022, 12:35 p.m
By: Katja Kraft
valerie2.JPG © Marcus Sleep
Michael Maertens and Valerie Pachner will be performing as Jedermann and his paramour at the Salzburg Festival in summer 2023.
Pachner was in the ensemble of the Munich Residenz Theater for many years.
A portrait.
After the departure of Lars Eidinger and Verena Altenberger, who spent two years in the Salzburg Festival's "Jedermann", Michael Maertens will be performing in 2023 as Jedermann and Valerie Pachner as his paramour on Domplatz.
From 2013 to 2017 Pachner was engaged at the Bavarian State Theater in Munich.
Read our portrait here, which first appeared in the summer of 2017 to mark her farewell to the Munich Residenztheater:
A little more than two years ago we had the headline: "First arrived".
What was meant was the then 27-year-old Valerie Pachner.
At the time, she had been a member of the ensemble at the Residenztheater since the 2013/14 season and was about to play her first leading role in Munich.
Ironically, Irina, the youngest of Chekhov's "Three Sisters", was her debut.
The restless one who just wants to get away.
And now?
Has the red-haired tomboy also decided to leave the house on Max-Joseph-Platz.
Was there trouble, did she feel uncomfortable?
Why else would a young actress cancel a secure engagement?
Valerie Pachner announced her engagement in Munich in 2017
Because she can't help it.
For the native Austrian, that has nothing to do with courage.
"I'm just like that.
Of course I could make myself comfortable with a permanent job and so on, but somehow that doesn't really suit me and how I want to do my work in the theater," she says.
She doesn't want it to be easy, she doesn't want to become operationally blind.
The apparent turning away from the stage is therefore not for her.
"It's more of a turn, actually I want to refresh the relationship between the stage and myself," she emphasizes and lets her hearty, honest laughter be heard.
It's like with a person: sometimes it's good not to see each other for a while and then to get back to each other again.
Terrence Malik cast Pachner in his film A Hidden Life
Instead, she dares to do something that she has only been able to do as a summer love, her affair on days when there are no plays: the film.
Last year, she filmed with Hollywood director Terrence Malick.
Her fifth film work ever - and then right away with the celebrated "Poets of Cinema".
"That was artistically one of the most important experiences so far." Although film was never an issue for her.
"When I started after acting school, I was purely into theater, I never thought I would do film," she says.
"It just happened to me.
I didn't think I would fit in there, I thought I was kinda...too weird.” Again, Valerie Pachner laughs charmingly in a mixture of embarrassment and self-mockery.
But in love it's always the same - at some point you have to make a decision.
After several summers in a row in which she was unable to take time off because of film work, Valerie Pachner felt that this couldn't work out in the long run.
And, hand on heart: the Irina in her, hadn't she secretly been nervously shuffling her feet?
"Joah, I have to admit that there is a bit of a vagabond in me that I always have to give in to."
She doesn't even have a place to go to yet.
"It's more of a feeling of being on the go.
That's what I'm really looking forward to, a bit of freedom.” Who guides you, the young artist, on your way?
Family, friends, agents?
She thinks.
“What guides me the most is myself. Some kind of feeling inside.
Where I weigh the different aspects of my life and feel what needs to be now.” And the fear of not getting commissions as a freelance actress?
Pachner does not accept this for himself.
"I think art is good when you're alert and dare.
Everyone has so many fears for safety.
Totally understandable, but I think that sometimes a dose of self-confidence in the form of 'I want to live the way I think is right' is important.
Even if it is more risky – but always worth a try.
"You have to dare, otherwise you're somehow locked in." Vagabond or not, saying goodbye isn't easy for her either.
"Especially in the past two years, a very nice relationship with the Munich audience has developed, I'll miss that." Break.
"But that doesn't stop there.
The stage remains.
And I look forward to rediscovering them again and again.”