Since January, Vienna has been giddily
commemorating the Waltz King, Johann Strauss Jr., who died 100 years
ago. His tunes in three-quarter time are still heard all over the city every
day, but now it is getting ready for another centennial.
In 1899 a local neurologist, Dr. Sigmund Freud, published ''The
Interpretation of Dreams.'' Only 123 copies were sold in the first six
weeks, but it marked the foundation of psychoanalysis. (Freud's publisher,
Franz Deuticke, postdated the work on its title page: ''Leipzig and Vienna,
1900.'') An exhibition, ''Sigmund Freud: Relations to the
Unconscious/Psychoanalysis in Progress,'' opens Oct. 22 at the Sigmund Freud
Museum, 19 Berggasse, where Freud lived for 47 years.
In the next few months, many Viennese as well as visitors will make
pilgrimages to the ancient vintners' villages, a 20- or 30-minute trolley
ride from the center, to sample the young wine. Best known of those
picturesque suburbs is Grinzing. The weather usually
remains mild until November, and the fall foliage can rival New England's.
The ancient Romans planted the first vines in this northern province of
their empire, and wine has been grown since then on the green slopes of the Vienna
Woods, sylvan arms that reach into the old city. Drinking the barely
fermented product of the autumn's grape harvest in one of the hundreds of
rustic (or fake-rustic) taverns near the vineyards is an annual Viennese
rite.
Events
''Sigmund Freud: Relations to the Unconscious/Psychoanalysis in Progress,''
Oct. 21 to Feb. 6, organized by the Library of Congress with the Freud
Museum in London, is an enlarged version of the show presented earlier in
Washington and New York. The vast materials -- manuscripts, photos, films
and publications -- will be displayed in two locations: at the Freud Museum
at 19 Berggasse, (43-1) 319-1596, 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday through Sunday;
and at the Austrian National Library, 1 Josefsplatz, (43-1) 534-100, 10 A.M.
to 4 P.M. daily; Sunday until 2 P.M. The $4.60 admission covers both sites.
(Prices are calculated at 13 Austrian schillings to the dollar.)
The ornate State Opera, one of the world's leading shrines of the lyrical
drama, will offer nightly performances of Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini
and Richard Strauss during the next few weeks. Mozart's ''Idomeneo'' has its
first performance Sept. 22 (reprises later), with Bertrand de Billy
conducting and Angelika Kirchschlager and Ruth Ziesak singing. A new
production of ''La Juive'' by Halevy will have its premiere Oct. 23, the
first staging of this work at the State Opera since before the Nazi period.
Simone Young will conduct, and Soile Isokoski will interpret the part of
Rachel. Tickets cost from $10.75 for a balcony seat to $189 in the dress
circle at one of the rare galas; $15.40 will buy a satisfactory seat for
most performances. Advance sales at 3 Hanuschgasse, one block from the
opera, or at (43-1) 513-1513, with a credit card. Standing room ($2.30 to
$3.85) is sold only at the evening box office in the atrium. Information:
(43-1) 514-44-2960.
Vienna Modern, an annual festival of contemporary music, will open
Nov. 2 with compositions by Hans Zender, Giacinto Scelsi and Morton Feldman.
Sylvain Cambreling will conduct the Klangforum Orchestra and Julie Moffat
will sing. The festival, until Dec. 1, will feature 40 concerts, recitals
and discussions. Works by the Chinese composer Ten Dun, Krzysztof Penderecki
and Gyorgy Kurtag will be heard at the Konzerthaus, the nearby Musikfreunde
Hall and elsewhere. Tickets, $10.80 to $52.30, available at the Konzerthaus,
20 Lothringer Strasse, (43-1) 712-1211.
Perhaps inspired by the success of ''Amadeus'' on stage and screen,
''Mozart!,'' a new musical by Sylvester Levay and Michael Kunze, whose work
''Elizabeth'' about the beautiful and highstrung wife of Emperor Franz
Joseph was produced two years ago, will have its premiere at the historic
Theater an der Wien on Oct. 2, with shows daily, except Wednesday, until
April 20. Tickets are $10 to $100 at Vienna-Ticket, 6 Linke Wienzeile,
(43-1) 58 885, fax (43-1) 588-3033; further information at
www.musicalvienna.at.
Works from the world's largest graphics collection, the Vienna
Albertina, now under renovation, will be a part of an exhibition entitled
''From Durer to Rauschenberg,'' drawings from five centuries. Other loans
come from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It will be on view Oct. 1 to
Nov. 11 at the Fine Arts Academy, 3 Makartgasse, (43-1) 53483. Open 10 A.M.
to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Sunday; $5.40.
One critic of psychoanalysis (and a lot of other things) was Karl Kraus,
the brilliant polemicist, who is commemorated at the Jewish Museum, 11
Dorotheergasse, until Nov. 1. Letters, posters, photos, caricatures and
newspapers show the impact of Kraus's devastating attacks on corrupt
officials, the aristocracy, journalists and any perceived sham in his
magazine Die Fackel (The Torch), which he first published in 1899 and
singlehandedly wrote and edited until his death in 1936. Open 10 A.M. to 6
P.M. Sunday to Friday, Thursday until 8 P.M. Admission is $5.40. For
information, call (43-1) 535-0431.
Sightseeing
A free folder describing more than 50 museums -- from art galleries to
collections specializing in circus clowns and burials -- is available at the
tourist information office, 38 Karntnerstrasse, 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. daily;
(43-1) 2111-4222. The Vienna Card ($16.15 at hotels and the tourist
office) provides admission discounts, as well as free rides on the public
transport system for 72 hours.
The world's largest Bruegel collection can be found at the Museum of Fine
Arts, 1 Maria-Theresien-Platz, (43-1) 525-240, with such masterpieces as
''The Hunters in the Snow'' and ''Peasant Dance'' along with works by Durer,
Rubens, Velazquez, Titian and many others. Open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Tuesday to
Sunday, Thursday until 9 P.M.; $7.70.
Paintings of more recent vintage -- 19th- and 20th-century Austrian art
-- can be found in the Austrian Gallery in the upper part of the baroque
Belvedere Palace, at 27 Prinz Eugen-Strasse, (43-1) 7955-7134, with works by
Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. Open 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Sunday;
$4.60.
The Museum of Applied Arts, 5 Stubenring, (43-1) 711-360, has a vast
collection of Biedermeier, Art Nouveau and Art Deco objects, from bentwood
chairs to tableware; the contemporary section includes works by American
artists. Known as MAK, the acronym of its name in German, the museum, with
its elegant coffeehouse, is open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Tuesday to Sunday
(Thursday to 9 P.M.); $2.30.
Where to Stay
Konig von Ungarn, 10 Schulerstrasse, (43-1) 515-840, fax (43-1) 515-848,
a low-slung, yellow Baroque building, was once a guest house for prelates
visiting the nearby Cathedral of St. Stephen, and has been a hotel since
1815. The interior courtyard, where the clerics' coaches were parked, is now
a charming glass-roofed hall where breakfast and drinks are served. None of
the 33 brightly furnished rooms are alike; large, modern baths. Doubles:
$154 to $181, including breakfast.
George Balanchine stayed at Schneider, 5 Getreidemarkt, (43-1) 588-380,
fax (43-1) 5883-821, and the many autographed photos in the lobby attest
that the family-run house was and is a favorite of show business
personalities. There are 35 rooms and 35 kitchenette suites. Doubles: $119
to $151, including buffet breakfast.
Another family-operated hotel, Schweizerhof, 22 Bauernmarkt, (43-1)
533-1931, fax (43-1) 533-0214, occupies the top floors of a late
19th-century building near St. Stephen's. The 55 spacious, comfortable rooms
are decorated in eclectic styles; doubles at $108 to $135, including a
buffet breakfast.
Budget: Suzanne, 4 Walfischgasse, (43-1) 5132-5070, fax (43-1) 513-2500,
is a friendly pension in a turn-of-the-century building near the State
Opera, with 25 comfortable rooms; $68 to $100, with breakfast.
Near the monumental Ringstrasse, the Goldene Spinne, 1A Linke Bahngasse,
(43-1) 7124-4860, fax (43-1) 713-1661, has 41 simply furnished rooms and a
bar. Doubles with bath: $85 to $93 ($100 in November); buffet breakfast
included.
Luxury: The Austrian Government puts up its state visitors at the
128-room Imperial, 16 Karntner Ring, (43-1) 501-100, fax (43-1) 5011-0410,
the opulent 125-year-old hotel. Cherry-wood paneling was recently added to
top-floor rooms; lower rooms have crystal chandeliers and Belle Epoque
furniture. Superb service; refined restaurant, cafe. Doubles: $423 to $923,
breakfast extra.
Palais Schwarzenberg, 9 Schwarzenberg Platz, (43-1) 7984-5150, fax (43-1)
798-4714, off the Ringstrasse, occupies a wing of the 18th-century palace
still inhabited by members of the princely Schwarzenberg family. The 38
rooms, some large, some rather cramped, are furnished with antiques; many
look out on a private park. There are six suites. Doubles: $262 to $446
without breakfast.
Where to Eat
Steirereck, 2 Rasumovskygasse, (43-1) 7133-1680, in an uninspiring
neighborhood 10 minutes from the center, receives you with a wealth of fresh
flowers and great cordiality. The cuisine successfully blends Viennese,
rural Austrian and French cooking; now it's venison season. The wine cellar
contains 500 labels. Dinner for two with a medium-priced wine, $150 to $190.
Open weekdays.
Gosser Bierklinik, 4 Steindlgasse, (43-1) 5356-8970, displays in one of
several cozy dining rooms on two floors a cannon ball that the Turks lobbed
into the city when they unsuccessfully besieged Vienna in 1683.
Backed by a brewery, the restaurant offers reliable Austrian wines in
addition to schnitzel, sausages and other substantial fare in a convivial
atmosphere. Open daily except Sunday. Dinner for two with beer or a glass of
wine, about $50.
Cafe Landtmann, 4 Dr. Karl-Lueger-Ring, (43-1) 533-8485, with a large
terrace, is where Freud used to play cards with friends. The 125-year-old
coffeehouse is one of about 500 in Vienna -- from the elegant, like
the Landtmann, to the plain, where many Viennese seem to live. A cappuccino
costs $3.50, apple strudel a la mode $4.75; a sample $8 lunch menu consists
of beef broth with liver dumplings and stuffed zucchini. Open until midnight
daily.
Hauermandl, 20 Cobenzlgasse, (43-1) 320-3027, in Grinzing (take the No.
38 streetcar), is a typical heuriger (the dialect term refers to ''this
year's wine''), informal with schmaltzy music. A chicken dinner for two with
plenty of the local white wine is about $60. Open 5:30 P.M. to midnight,
Monday to Saturday.
One of a chain of self-service dining spots, the Naschmarkt at 16
Schwarzenberg Platz, (43-1) 505-3115, is next door to McDonald's but far
removed when it comes to menu choices: vegetable soup, halibut with herb
sauce, potatoes and fruit costs $5.50. The restaurants are named after Vienna's
biggest outdoor food emporium: Nosh Market.
June 27, 1999, Sunday
Arts and Leisure Desk
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MUSIC; With a 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, Vienna
Honors a King
By RICHARD TRAUBNER
RETURNING to the city of the allegedly blue Danube this spring was, for this
writer, a sort of hajj to the mecca of Unterhaltungsmusik: entertainment --
or, if you will, pop -- music. The Austrian authorities, with enormous
historical evidence to back their theory, would have
the world believe that Vienna was the birthplace not only of music's
classical wing but also of its ''light'' division, because the Strauss
family came from and remained loyal to Vienna.
Earlier in the decade, Mozart and Schubert were lionized, in honor of
whatever birth or death dates could conveniently be centennialized. This
year, Vienna commemorates the 150th anniversary of the death of
Johann Strauss Sr. and the 100th of Johann Strauss Jr.
Vienna is thus paying tribute to an Austrian
dynasty that has outlasted the Hapsburgs in popular favor. Johann Strauss
Jr., born in 1825 and eternally ''Schani'' to the Viennese, is more than
just the most enduring member of this talented family.
The young man who entered the music business against the wishes of his
father, who practiced before mirrors to perfect his sexy violin bowing, who
made sure that his whiskers were alluring (and, later in life, well dyed)
and who eventually married three times, to the delight of the popular press,
is now seen as the world's first pop music idol, the forerunner of everyone
from Frank Sinatra to the latest punk-rock heroes. The composer and dance
band leader who, before recordings or radio, had all of Europe and even
America waltzing at his feet may have been more popular in terms of audience
numbers and sheet-music sales than the Dorseys, Glenn Miller or the latest
hip-hop group.
In fact, his father had done it all before. Johann Sr., who was born in
1804, perfected the concert waltz and gave it its standard
orchestration. He received royal and imperial stamps of approval, even
playing at the newly renovated Buckingham Palace before Queen Victoria in
1838. He, too, was a handsome, vain fiddler and conductor with a stormy love
life. Schani was conceived out of wedlock, and when he was 10, his father
deserted his wife and brood. The first waltz king died just short of
his 45th year and is today remembered not for a waltz but for a
rousing march.
The ''Radetzky March'' is a symbol of much that is so contradictory about
the Strauss dynasty and Austria's glorification of it in 1999. It was
written in 1848 to honor an imperial army that was fighting revolutionary
nationalist uprisings. But the barely homogenized Austrian army was made up
of Hungarians, Czechs and all the other nationals who would later cause
almost constant problems, right up to 1914 and Sarajevo. Today, this
reactionary march is expected by tradition as a hand-clapping coda to the
annual New Year's concert of the Vienna Philharmonic.
This year there is more Straussiana; much more. It will be laid on with a
trowel between now and December. Two mammoth outdoor concerts opened the
festivities last month: one in the Rathausplatz, between City Hall and the
Burgtheater; another just down the Ringstrasse in the Heldenplatz of the
Hofburg, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by Zubin Mehta. Now come
the indoor concerts, operetta performances, museum exhibitions,
special-edition CD's, books and scores, and even Strauss-Kugeln,
foil-wrapped chocolate balls to vie with the popular Mozart confection.
Music merchandising is just what the Strausses perfected, and one reason
they are being celebrated. Otto Brussati, the historian and curator of ''Johann
Strauss: Thunder and Lightning,'' the impressive exhibit at the Historical
Museum, freely admits that the 1999 festivities are ''already something of a
burden'' to the Viennese but stresses that with their ''brilliant production
business, with its dozens of co-workers,'' the Strausses laid the foundation
of all entertainment music.
The exhibit adroitly places family details and compositions within the
context of a Vienna that was growing from a walled fortress-city to a
grand, worldly melting pot of variably assimilated ethnic immigrants,
nouveau-riche tycoons, the rising bourgeoisie and the retrograde
aristocracy. They were all thirsty for waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, marches,
galops, opera quadrilles and, later, indigenous operettas to dance to at
pleasure gardens, at carnival balls and at court; to whistle, to hum, to
sing; to grind out on barrel organs or play on the pianoforte or harmonium
at home.
The intense, democratic, international popularity of the Strauss family
compositions has challenged sober musicians and editors at the Vienna
Institute for Strauss Research to begin publishing a definitive Johann
Strauss Edition, with scores that correct years of unscholarly accretions.
The schmaltzy Strauss style so often heard in airplanes and elevators
provokes ''serious'' conductors like Nikolaus Harnoncourt to re-examine the
waltzes and operettas and play them with a correspondingly careful attention
to the composer's original markings and colorations.
Mr. Harnoncourt just led a new production of ''Die Fledermaus'' at the
Theater an der Wien, the operetta's birthplace in 1874, and stated in an
article that he approaches Strauss with the precision he gives to Bach's
''St. Matthew Passion.'' To the embarrassment of some Viennese orchestras
and critics, the Hong Kong-based Marco Polo label is issuing the complete
orchestral works of the Strauss dynasty on CD with non-Viennese players.
If Vienna adores and idolizes Strauss Jr., the most Viennese of
all Viennese composers -- some would say the very embodiment of Vienna
-- it cannot do so without a certain degree of Viennese disingenuousness. As
a Strauss lover and operetta propagandist, I came here for the opening
celebrations, coincidentally staying for the first time in the Leopoldstadt,
across the Danube Canal from the Ring, and was delighted to discover that
one of the Strauss houses in the district had been set up as a museum.
I began one morning with a visit to Praterstrasse 54, where Schani lived
from 1863 to 1878, a fertile period in which he produced the ''Blue
Danube,'' ''Artist's Life'' and ''Tales From the Vienna Woods''
waltzes as well as his first operettas. I glanced at the tile work on the
ground floor of the stately apartment building. Were those Stars of David,
perhaps, geometrically arranged in patterns? They instantly reminded me that
the Leopoldstadt was (and is today) one of the main Jewish areas of Vienna.
For much of their lives, both Johann Sr. and Johann Jr. felt comfortable
here: not alogether strange when you know that the paternal Strauss line is
descended from Hungarian Jews, a piece of information that proved
embarrassing to the Nazis before and after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938.
Third Reich arts officials tried to repudiate it, going so far as to remove,
edit and reinsert a page from the registry of St. Stephen's Cathedral (the
very heart of Roman Catholic Vienna) that recorded the marriage in
1762 of the son of ''Wolf Strauss and his wife Theresia, both Jewish.''
''German'' music during the Hitler era could not afford to lose its greatest
confectioner.
Schani himself, although duly baptized and reared as a Catholic, divorced
his second wife and chose as his third Adele Deutsch, a Jew, in 1885. The
church, the aristocracy and even the City of Vienna had trouble
countenancing this marriage, and their affection for Strauss was somewhat
dimmed as a result. Ultimately, he had to give up his Austrian citizenship
and take up residency in the German dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to marry
Deutsch.
The Vienna Festival production of ''Die Fledermaus'' last month at
the Theater an der Wien recalled the work's historical context. Was the
operetta's motto, ''happy is he who forgets what cannot be changed,'' a
reaction to the nasty 1873 stock market crash, for which some blamed Jewish
speculators? The carefree, drunken ''du-i-du'' bonhomie of ''Die Fledermaus''
and other operettas was adored by a wide stratum of Viennese, including the
Eastern European Jews then pouring into the Leopoldstadt and other quarters.
They and their fellow citizens visited the Theater an der Wien and its
rival, the Carltheater, now vanished. The Carltheater is memorialized by a
plaque in an unsightly office building on the Praterstrasse, just down the
street from the Strauss apartment. Strauss operettas like ''Die Fledermaus,''
which made the Viennese genre globally popular, were often imbued with a
very Viennese gemutlichkeit and even obliviousness.
Forgetting was a useful quality for some Austrians during the period 1938
to 1945, when immensely popular 20th-century operettas by Emmerich Kalman,
Paul Abraham and other composers, their librettists and a large part of
their audience were forcibly removed from view. Certainly, the Strauss
operettas flourished under the Nazis, a point driven home when I found
several swastika-adorned theater programs for ''Die Fledermaus,'' ''Der
Zigeunerbaron'' (''The Gypsy Baron'') and other works at an antiquarian shop
near my hotel.
The sheer amount of Strauss available this year means that much of it is
familiar. Vienna will see no fewer than four new productions of ''Die
Fledermaus,'' and a planned revival of ''1001 Nights,'' a true rarity, has
been replaced at the Kammeroper by the more common, though superior, ''Night
in Venice.'' The Venetian operetta will also be presented in a lavish al
fresco production with real gondolas next month at the lakeside theater at
Morbisch, on the Austro-Hungarian border.
''Wiener Blut,'' one of Johann Jr.'s most familiar waltzes, will be heard
everywhere. It also gave its name, referring to the spirit running through
Viennese veins, to an 1899 operetta pastiche, which I caught in a Volks oper
revival. Strauss gave his approval to the project but did not live to see
the first production, which was not a success.
INDEED, it is hard to understand how the stage ''Wiener Blut'' has become
so popular. The story is lame, the comedy unfunny and the music selected
often second-rate. But the Volksoper production was fascinating, reminding
one of the last days of the old D'Oyly Carte Opera performing Gilbert and
Sullivan in the early 1980's, with performance styles and specific gestures
from another age performed by a wildly variable set of players and then
jelled as if in aspic.
In a press conference, the incoming intendant of the Volksoper, Dominique
Mentha, conceded that operetta is the theater's ''most important repertory
base.'' But he did not promise fresh approaches to Viennese operetta
classics with the same conviction with which he promised a new Verdi or
Mozart opera every season. Rather than more Johann Strauss, he wants
exposure to foreign fare: Gilbert and Sullivan, a zarzuela, perhaps.
Such plans may fly in the face of the conservative faction of the
Volksoper crowd, which already experienced a lamentable revue called
''Gilbert und Sullivan'' in the 1980's and barely tolerates post-modern
experimentation with familiar operettas. A new ''Fledermaus'' this season,
set in the 1930's, was critically unadmired, and last year there were bitter
reactions to a dark, punky version of Strauss's other operetta masterwork,
''Der Ziguenerbaron.'' Although one reviewer called this staging ''a black
day for Viennese operetta,'' the Volksoper's Israeli-born chief conductor,
Asher Fisch, said he was delighted at the scandalous reception, because it
attracted new, younger audiences, keen to see what the fuss was about.
The Volksoper has no new production of a rare Strauss operetta. Next
season, Mr. Mentha will stage Franz Lehar's ''Zarewitsch'' at the Volksoper.
Curiously, the Staatsoper this year decided to produce Lehar's ''Merry
Widow'' rather than a Strauss operetta. Why not, instead, Strauss's opera-comique
''Ritter Pasman,'' which had its premiere at the theater in 1892? The
posthmumous Strauss ballet ''Aschenbrodel'' (''Cinderella''), set for next
season, is, at least, a consolation of sorts.
''Wiener Blut'' was also used ironically as the title of a mocking
cabaret at the Burg theater this spring, just in time for the Strauss
festivities. It apparently ribs everything Viennese, from the opera ball to
the Lippizaner stallions, the doomed Empress Sissi as portrayed by the
doomed Romy Schneider, the Nazi-tainted actress Paula Wessely, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, even Mozart-Kugeln.
Never underestimate Viennese cheekiness. In Strauss's day, his operettas
were parodied in vaudeville sketches, and the current Strauss exhibits show
numerous caricatures of Schani's artistic and private life that originally
appeared in the humorous periodicals Der Floh (The Flea) or Kikeriki
(Cock-a-Doodle-Doo).
Perhaps modern dress is as far as one can go with Strauss operettas. Mr.
Harnoncourt's festival ''Fledermaus,'' directed by Jurgen Flimm of the
Hamburg Thalia Theater, was set around 1970. In 1986, I saw a brave but
misguided attempt to juice up ''Cagliostro in Wien'' with all sorts of
gimmicks at the Ronacher, once a famous variety theater. Clearly, Strauss's
stage works could use the same kind of enlivening jolt that Joseph Papp's
''Pirates of Penzance'' gave Gilbert and Sullivan two decades ago.
YOU can see how the operettas looked originally at the Austrian Theater
Museum, just behind the Staatsoper in the stately Lobkowitz-Palais. The
well-documented exhibit on Strauss's stage works, which runs until the end
of November, is called ''Wiener Blut.'' (Naturally.)
Happily, the concert waltzes, polka-schnells and quadrilles show no signs
of diminished power. But the most appreciative audiences may be in Asia. You
can purchase Schani's entire orchestral output in a large CD coffer on the
Marco Polo label, and the company has now moved on to his brothers, Josef
and Eduard. (The current heir to the dynasty, also named Eduard, is a
Viennese judge, but he is an honorary member of the worldwide Strauss
societies.) The Japanese consulate in Vienna issues more than 400
visas annually for Austrian musicians before New Year's Eve. The ''Thunder
and Lightning'' exhibit at the Historical Museum, complete with a band
pavilion, moves to the Forbidden City of Beijing and to Hong Kong later this
year.
There was, as requested, public waltzing at the Rathausplatz open-air
concert (on an evening so cold that the mezzo-soprano Agnes Baltsa canceled
a solo turn). Listeners succumbed to the same waltz motifs that were
once considered sexually charged.
When I saw Viennese teen-agers waltzing with a natural rhythm, even
abandon, I felt that the festivities had already achieved their purpose.
Austrian Unterhaltungs-Kultur lives, and Wiener Blut, obviously heriditary,
still runs through those throbbing veins.
March 14, 1999, Sunday
Travel Desk
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EUROPE '99: FESTIVALS; Vienna Salutes King of Waltz
By PAUL HOFMANN
Vienna loves to look back to its glorious
musical past. This year, it's the King of the Waltz, Johann Strauss
Jr., who is being memorialized with a 12-month marathon of concerts, dances
and stage productions to mark the centenary of the composer's death on June
3, 1899.
Virtually all the 550 works by Johann Strauss Jr. will be performed
throughout 1999, many of them again and again, in his native city.
The Austrian capital's two leading orchestras, the Vienna
Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony, as well as several other
musical bodies, will share in the task. Zubin Mehta will conduct the Vienna
Philharmonic at an unusual outdoor concert in the Heldenplatz facing the
former Imperial Palace (Hofburg) on May 29.
Four theaters -- Staatsoper, Volks oper, Kammeroper and Theater an
der Wien -- will offer multiple performances of their versions
of Strauss operettas, among them,
''Die Fledermaus'' and ''The Gypsy Baron.''
And on Jan. 1, Riccardo Muti will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic
in a Strauss concert to be relayed over a global television hookup. The
glittering auditorium of the Musikverein hall, where the concert is to be
held, is already sold out.
The Historical Museum of the City of Vienna on Karlsplatz near the
Staatsoper is preparing an exhibition, ''Johann Strauss in His Time,'' to be
displayed from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily except
Monday from May 6 to Sept. 26. The exhibits will include portraits of the
composer and members of his family, pictures of his travels to far-flung
places from St. Petersburg to New York, instruments on which he played,
manuscript scores and authentic ball gowns from his era.
The mighty river that Strauss glorified has also been assigned a role in
the festivities. The Admiral Tegetthoff will take passengers on dinner
cruises to the accompaniment of Strauss tunes on Mondays from May 3 to Oct.
25 (for information call 43-1 58-880). If the weather is right, the water
may even be blue. PAUL HOFMANN
February 28, 1999, Sunday
Magazine Desk
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In Vienna, Elegance Comes Readily to Mind
By William Murray
On my first day in Vienna I was accosted
outside the opera house by a scruffy-looking youth dressed in an ill-fitting
18th-century costume. Even the beggars dress up here, I thought, but it
turned out he was only a college student hustling concert tickets. He and
dozens of others like him, all in costume, fan out every day throughout the
tourist areas peddling the arts. In this city, even the very young are into
culture.
Vienna is a vast museum. From the air, it looks very much like any
other large central European hub, a mostly rust-colored carpet of rooftops
punctuated by the spires of churches and a few modest skyscrapers. From
street level, however, one can enjoy its broad boulevards and avenues lined
by the classically proportioned facades of its residential palaces and
public buildings, many of them eccentrically adorned with statuary, friezes
and painted ornamentation. Elegance is the word that comes most readily to
mind, on a scale matched only by parts of Paris and London.
This is a town for walkers: nearly every street inside the inner city,
within the semicircle of the linked series of avenues known collectively as
the Ringstrasse, holds something of interest. The Ring itself, which
replaced the circle of fortified walls that had defended the town primarily
from the centuries-old threat of the Ottoman Turks, was created by a decree
of the Hapsburg Emperor Franz Josef I in 1857; it has ever since defined the
character of the capital and its environs. Along it rise many of its most
famous public buildings, including the Staatsoper, the Parliament, the
Rathaus (City Hall), the Musikverein, a number of the city's best museums
and most of the Hofburg, the enormous sprawling complex of buildings from
which the Hapsburg dynasty presided over an empire that once stretched from
the Atlantic to the borders of Greece and Turkey.
In Vienna appearance is paramount. Although
the empire has long since vanished and Austria is now mere-ly a small
democratic country of six and a half million people, the city remains a
testament to the power of illusion over reality. The Hapsburgs built their
empire more through marriage than by conquest and, with only a few notable
exceptions, the Austrian armies did not distinguish themselves in the field.
But they looked splendid and sometimes overawed their enemies by the
grandiosity of their display. It's appropriate that one of their significant
triumphs was a prize awarded at the Paris Exposition of 1900 for the most
dashing uniforms. It's not by accident that the portraits of the country's
leaders usually depict stern-looking characters attired in sashes, gold
braid and tunics bristling with medals.
The scale of these Viennese buildings is awe-inspiring. The Hofburg is so
large that each succeeding Hapsburg family settled itself into different
quarters without ever duplicating the domestic arrangements of its
predecessors. SchRated PG-13nbrunn, the huge yellow summer palace the
Hapsburgs built for themselves in the mid-18th century to the west of the
inner city, consists of some 1,450 rooms (some sources say only 1,200), with
living quarters for a thousand or so servants. The grounds, too, are vast
and include a formal French garden, greenhouses, wooded slopes and the
Tiergarten, the once private zoo where the Hapsburgs occasionally liked to
picnic among their animals in an octagonal pavilion, decorated by frescoes
depicting Ovid's ''Metamorphoses.'' The Tiergarten is Europe's oldest and
surely most charming zoo and the pavilion is now a public restaurant. Within
the vast expanses of their domiciles Austria's rulers often proved to be
oddly homey types, with a taste for simple domesticity in curious contrast
to the bombastic splendors they flaunted to the outside world. Inside
SchRated PG-13nbrunn's beautifully preserved state apartments are the
personal bedrooms and offices of Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth, small
rooms plainly furnished. The emperor slept in a single iron cot (in which he
also died in 1916) and was usually at his desk in his gloomy office by 5
A.M., signing documents.
Many of the Hapsburg palaces have been converted into museums to house
the treasures and mementos of the empire's glorious past, as well as the
paintings and sculptures produced by its artists. I counted 80 museums of
one sort or another, of which the most splendid is surely the Belvedere, a
complex of two enormous Baroque mansions at opposite ends of a formal garden
with a view over the heart of the city. The estate was built for Prince
Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), Austria's best soldier, who defeated the Turks
and secured Hungary for the empire. An avid collector, he filled his rooms
with works of art, establishing a precedent for the public collection housed
there today. The Upper Belvedere was badly bombed in World War II, but has
been lovingly restored and is now home to some of my favorite paintings,
including most of the major efforts of Gustav Klimt, whose work is in
essence a perfect reflection of the end of the Hapsburg era. Highly sensual,
his canvases glitter with gold and silver gilding, his women often portrayed
in moments of sexual ecstasy. Klimt was only one of a number of Austrian
artists whose best work is on view mainly in Vienna, among them Hans
Makart, Carl Moll, Egon Schiele and Anton Romako. A tour of the Belvedere is
a stroll through one of the unsettling periods when the empire was being
dismantled not only by political events but also by the unflinching
perspectives of its artists. More of their work can be found on the second
floor of the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien on the Karlsplatz and in the
nearby Secession building. Designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1898 to be
the headquarters of a new art movement in revolt against the heavy
Ringstrasse style, the structure, dubbed ''the golden cabbage'' because of
its dome of gilded bronze leaves, houses, among many notable eccentricities,
Klimt's so-called Beethoven Frieze, featuring a giant winged ape, the
Gorgons and a floating sea of sperm cells. Heady stuff for the conservative
Viennese, many of whom were scandalized by it.
For sheer size and comprehensiveness, however, nothing can match the
Kunsthistorisches Museum on the Ringstrasse, one of the world's great art
collections, especially if you fancy the Flemish school. An entire room is
devoted to Pieter Bruegel, the most comprehensive exhibit of his work
anywhere. The first-floor gallery alone displays about 800 paintings at a
time, only about a tenth of the museum's collection. Little effort has been
made to structure the exhibits in any historical sequence, which means that
after a couple of hours of tramping about one large, high-ceilinged room
after another, gazing at picture after picture, the impulse to flee becomes
almost irresistible. My wife, Alice, and I made use of the tactic we use in
the Louvre or the Met, isolating the particular painters whose work we most
wanted to see -- Rembrandt, Veronese, Rubens, D2urer, Holbein, Vermeer,
Raphael, Caravaggio, Canaletto -- and hunting them down rather than allowing
ourselves to drift endlessly and exhaustingly from room to room in the flow
of determined-looking visitors eddying about us.
After several days of wandering through these serious exhibits, it was a
delight to stumble on the Hundertwasser House, an apartment complex near the
Danube that looks like a hastily assembled pile of brightly colored
children's blocks. Designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, a 71-year-old
artist who first became famous in the 1960's for lecturing on his work in
the nude, his Gaudiesque buildings offer a vivid human contrast to the
self-satisfied pomposity of much Viennese architecture. Not surprisingly, he
has been attacked by Vienna's architectural establishment for his
''painted boxes,'' but to the visitor he offers a welcome comic relief.
For lovers of classical music and the opera, Vienna is an
immovable feast. Not even New York, Paris and London offer more, especially
of the works of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Schubert and Mozart,
all composers who lived and worked here during the most intense creative
periods of their lives. Inevitably, the city's favorite musical son is
Johann Strauss, considered by the Viennese themselves to be the city's most
significant composer. His waltzes and operettas, unlike many of the more
demanding works of Beethoven, Bruckner, Mozart and poor Schubert, who didn't
live long enough to hear any of his symphonies performed, were immediately
and enormously popular. During his own lifetime (1825-99), Strauss
established Vienna as the waltz capital of the world. ''The
Blue Danube,'' composed in 1867, has become the country's unofficial
national anthem and his ''Die Fledermaus'' the world's most popular
operetta.
It would be hard to overestimate Vienna's dedication to musical
events. Tourism is by far the country's major industry, but, though aimed at
luring visitors to its concert halls, theaters and opera houses, the
programs offered are also attended annually by an estimated 20 percent of Vienna's
one and a half million residents, a figure matched nowhere else. The
performances, even though almost always sold out, do not pay for themselves,
but the city budget allots about $160 million a year to promote and pay for
its huge repertory of performances. Dr. Peter Marboe, the city councilor in
charge of dispensing these funds, recently recalled the excitement that
gripped the town in the fall of 1955, shortly after the departure of the
last occupation forces. The opera house, badly damaged by bombs during the
war, was scheduled to reopen with a performance of Beethoven's ''Fidelio.''
''Standing-room tickets were to be put on sale two weeks before the opening
on Nov. 5, 1955, but people began lining up for them six weeks before,'' he
said. ''After they had been standing there for three days and nights in the
rain and cold, the tickets were sold prematurely. It was a very intense
time.'' That feeling of intensity, of passionate dedication is still there.
At the performances I attended no one left before the singers had taken
their curtain calls and the enthusiasm was infectious.
Nor is the city's musical life limited to its concert halls and theaters.
The Viennese like to spend time in their many coffee houses, where in the
late afternoons musical fare is sometimes provided. A few, like the
Schottenring on the Ringstrasse, one of Vienna's oldest, feature
well-known local artists and publish a schedule of performances. But even in
the streets, the quality of the music is high. One afternoon, while
strolling up the K2arntnerstrasse, a broad avenue now converted into a long
pedestrian mall, I came across a trio of young musicians playing Haydn. Not
only did they play well, but they were dressed in dinner jackets and bowed
formally to our applause as we showered coins in their direction. It also
served to remind me that in Vienna there is still some resistance to
the new world of Nike and trash fashions. Later that day I spotted a couple
of American Visigoths in tank tops sipping Diet Coke in the elegant
Landtmann Cafe; their presence struck me as a deliberate insult to the
sophisticated modus vivendi Vienna seems dedicated to maintaining.
The biggest challenge to cope with in Vienna is the food. The
basic traditional diet consists of meat, mostly beef or pork, potatoes,
dumplings and cabbage. There are all sorts of soups and many kinds of
freshly baked breads, including croissants, which the Viennese invented and
exported to France during the reign of Louis XVI. And, as if the main
courses weren't heavy enough, there are the desserts -- puddings, strudels,
crepes, pancakes, mousses and cakes, all topped with great gobs of whipped
cream. Eating in Vienna is wonderfully satisfying, as if you had
achieved a notable physical breakthrough, like climbing Pike's Peak or
competing in the Boston Marathon. You will look in vain in Vienna for
joggers; it's a city dedicated to culinary self-indulgence.
At Die Fromme Helene, a tiny, dimly lighted restaurant patronized by
artistic types and theatrical folk, we sat surrounded by photographs of
famous clients, dark oil paintings and a bust of Franz Josef wearing dark
glasses, while we feasted on venison and pheasant. At Vincent's, in a quiet
and formal room in a residential part of town across the Danube canal, we
were served an amazing variety of dishes, including a chamois carpaccio and
an omelette smothered in white truffles, together with samplings of nine
Austrian wines too rare to be exported. The bill was nearly as unforgettable
as the meal. The difficulty in dining out in this city is the smoke; the
Viennese like to puff away all through their meals and in crowded quarters
the air can become hazardous to your health.
A possible alternative to dining out is the coffee houses, most of which
serve relatively modest portions of food. They are havens of peace in the
hurly-burly of the working day, and the Viennese will sit in them for hours,
writing, reading, talking, playing cards, or just hanging out. The older
establishments preserve an air of quiet gentility, with the waiters still
attired in tuxedos, but even in the newer, trendier spots the emphasis is on
relaxation. ''You have troubles of one sort or another -- to the coffee
house,'' goes a line scribbled by a local fin-de-siecle poet, Peter
Altenberg.
Where the coffee house is cherished, can there be much in the way of
night life? Not in Vienna, where the citizens are usually in bed well
before midnight. Apart from some sleazy joints catering to tourists, mostly
off the K2arntnerstrasse, the only active club scene is in an area between
St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Danube canal, in a rabbit warren of narrow
alleys known as the Bermuda Triangle because it is so easy to get lost in
it. These late-night rendezvous, however, attract mainly the very young;
they are hot, crowded and dense with smoke and the music is very loud, not
for the fainthearted.
When the Viennese want to get away from it all, they will whisk
themselves out to the countryside, especially toward the Wienerwald (Vienna
Woods), a vast expanse of forested slopes stretching from the north to the
foothills of the Alps. During the summer months, visitors and Viennese alike
will drop in at the local wine gardens, called Heurigen, around the suburbs
of Grinzing and Nussdorf to sample the local wines and eat yet more hearty
fare. Food is such an obsession in Vienna that it didn't surprise me
when I visited the burial place of the Hapsburgs, in the underground vaults
of the Kapuzinerkirche (Capuchin Church), to find them entombed in what
looked to me like enormous bronze soup tureens.
The Waltz Capital
Vienna is well equipped with hotels in all categories, from the
very grand to the modest. Classics include the 108-room Sacher, 4
Philharmonikastrasse (telephone: 51-456; fax: 51-457-810), lavishly
furnished with antiques, where double rooms, with breakfast, begin at about
$375, and the 128-room Imperial, 16 Karntner Ring (50-11-00; fax:
50-11-04-10), a converted 19th-century palace where double rooms, with
breakfast, begin at about $500. Such chains as Hilton, Marriott and
Inter-Continental are also represented, and rooms, which range in price from
approximately $300 to $400, can be reserved through their offices in the
United States. There are, in addition, more than a dozen smaller, moderately
priced hotels operating under the Best Western aegis. One example is the
45-room Hotel Tigra, centrally located at 18 Tiefer Graben (telephone:
533-9641; fax: 533-9645), where a double room, including taxes, service and
an ample breakfast, is $144.50. All may be booked through Best Western
international reservations, 800-780-7234.
Typical Viennese fare may be had at Plachutta, 38 Wollzeile (512-1577),
where, William Murray reports, ''you can order your meat dishes right off a
diagram of the cow itself, 28 different cuts of beef ranging from
schulferscherzel (succulent and tender') to luegertopf (ox meat with tongue
and calf's head'), served in a clear broth with vegetables and bone
marrow.'' Dinner for two, with wine, is about $80. Closed for two weeks, end
of July to early August.
Die Fromme Helene, 53 Josefstaedter-Strasse (406-9144), has, in addition
to daily specials, a standard menu listing such classics as tafelspitz --
boiled beef -- with apple-horseradish and chive sauces and rRated PG-13sti
potatoes; Wiener schnitzel with vegetables, and desserts that include a rich
chocolate pudding called ''Moor in a shirt,'' served with hot chocolate
sauce and whipped cream. A three-course dinner for two, with wine, is about
$90. Open daily.
Vincent, 7 Grosse-Pfarrgasse (214-1516), offers two set five-course menus
of seasonal delicacies for about $35 (the ''little'' menu) and about $55 a
person; there is also an la carte menu. Austrian wines are about $4 to $8
for a generous glass. Closed Sunday.
Vienna has declared 1999 to be the Year of the Waltz King,
celebrating the life and works of Johann Strauss. ''When the Viennese decide
to pay attention to one of their own they do so exhaustively,'' William
Murray reports. ''In April alone there will be more than 30 presentations,
ranging from vocal concerts to full-scale productions of 'Die Fledermaus,'
'The Gypsy Baron,' 'Vienna Blood' and 'A Night in Venice.' ''A
calendar of events continuing throughout the year is available from the
Austrian National Tourist Office, 500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 800, New York,
N.Y. 10110 (212-575-7723; fax: 212-730-4568), which can also provide
information about obtaining opera tickets.