Hofmannsthal

Director Max Reinhardt, composer Richard Strauss and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal founded the festival to promote peace following World War I, an idea they are said to have formed at Reinhardt’s nearby Schloss Leopoldskron.

Throughout, Davidsen alternates between conversational restraint — enunciating each syllable of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s talky libretto with penetrating focus — and white-hot radiance.

She also translated the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and, from Yiddish, the poet and playwright Itzik Manger.

This season, dramatic epics like “Angels in America” and “The Inheritance” share the program with Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “The Tower.”

The Austrian Jewish Hofmannsthal, a leading literary figure in fin-de-siècle Vienna, is also one of Stoppard’s touchstones for recreating that period in “Leopoldstadt,” and comes in for high praise in a monologue extolling how Viennese Jews worship culture.