Verein Solothurn Classics

Dino Arici, an opera enthusiast, started the festival in 1991 as a private venture called Classic Openair Solothurn and ran twenty editions himself. Performances took place on the St Ursen bastion above the old town, with the Rythalle as the wet-weather hall; the 2006 season alone held eight operas in eleven performances, and Bulgarian companies supplied much of the casting — Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni and several Verdi titles came that way in 2008. There was no edition in 2011, the year the festival was renamed Solothurn Classics; it continued under new management to 2015, and the association went bankrupt in 2017.