The performance of a contemporary work at the Salzburg Festival has become usual and this year the work chosen was Gottfried von Einem's latest opera, The Trial. Franz Kafka's novel of the same name (which, in his will, he directed should be destroyed unpublished) had already been dramatised by Gide and Barrault, and this opera libretto was prepared by the composer's teacher, Boris Blacher, and Heinz Cramer. The authors count it an especial virtue to have used only Kafka's own words, and at the most to have substituted direct for indirect speech. The individual scenes of the opera, furthermore, bear the same titles as the chapters of the novel. The single figure created by the librettists, who appears in both parts of the opera, is the “passer by,” but he, too, accords fully with the spirit of Kafka.