A pilgrimage to the composer’s Austrian birthplace should be on the travel wish-list of any lover of Mozart (or, ahem, The Sound of Music).

The Stiftskeller St Peter in Salzburg is presenting some light dinner theatre: excerpts from three Mozart operas. The musicians and singers are in fine form; rarely is opera presented so intimately. The tenor plays the audience like a Vegas cabaret star. The soprano recruits unsuspecting audience members into the action. Bold as it sounds, however, this candlelit dinner concert is designed to hearken back to Mozart’s own era. 

The acoustics in the restaurant’s Baroque Hall are outstanding, but the hall (and the restaurant) were not designed with opera in mind. Hidden away in a huge square, this is almost certainly the world’s oldest restaurant, already serving patrons for almost a thousand years before the Mozart family dined there. The menu at these concerts, held throughout the year, also emulates a Classical-era menu: white lemon soup with curd cheese-rosemary dumplings...