Vienna’s third opera house has more than London’s one
NewsThe Theater an der Wien, back home after a two-year exile, has unfurled a season of 13 new productions.
They include a role debut for Asmik Grigorian as Norma, a piece called Voice Killer by the Czech composer Miroslav Srnka and a rare sighting of Prokofiev’s Betrothal in the Monastery.
Vienna, with a population below 2 million, has three fully functioning opera house. London, pop. 9 million, has just Covent Garden, open ten months of the year.
ENO can no longer sustain a season of more than a few months a year. Poor management and a board led by a narcissist have left their mark. They are left with a part time orchestra and chorus and a lot of gloom and doom.
Don’t forget the destructive anti-culture stance of the chief Philistine, Nadine Dorries.
The West End alone has 38 commercial theatres (you know, the ones that put on stuff that people are willing to pay for without subsidy), many producing work that is staged globally. How many in Vienna, again? And what was their last international hit? I’m guessing The Merry Widow.
London has more football teams than Vienna too…………..
“Globally staged”, since most are rehashes of American Broadway musicals or adaptations of American movies. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Imelda Staunton…).
No, not The Merry Widow, it was The Chocolate Soldier.
Yes, with regular complaints about ticket prices in relation to what is actually happening on stage, and the accusation that third rate musicals are driving out good drama.
I was dragged along to a Fleetwood Mac tribute band a couple of weeks ago, against my better judgement. We didn’t return after the interval. Even the amplification was poor. Merry Widow would have been a better bet.
For that matter, London has a larger population than all of Austria. So to the three in Vienna are added Graz, Salzburg, Linz, Innsbruck, and probably some others I’m forgetting. I’m especially sorry I never got to see an opera in Innsbruck.
The Staatstheater in Linz performed a spoken theater work written by the British playwright Tamsin Oglesby based on the experiences of my wife with egregious sexism in the Munich Philharmonic . Linz didn’t even tell us about it, and Ogelsby never asked permission. I learned about it a few years after the fact when I googled Abbie’s name and a review of the production came up and mention that it was based on Abbie’s story. Naturally it was a shock to us. It’s also interesting that they even used an actress that looks like Abbie, though maybe that was just coincidental. A photo of the actress was in the review or we wouldn’t have known that either.
So did we contact the Staatstheater in Linz? No, by that time life in the German-speaking world had become so absurd for us we didn’t even bother. One just shakes one’s head.
Nothing will ever change as long as the penny-pinching philistines continue to hold sway, the quangos (like ACE) merely do the government’s bidding, and both Tory and Labour MPs recoil from making the case for immigration (yes, there are actual benefits!) or increased taxation (yes, other countries have better everything because they are prepared to pay for it!). The official consensus of the ignorant, deaf, blind and plain stupid amongst our current crop of parliamentary representatives is testament to our national cultural decline.
True, Vienna has more opera than London. But the Staatsoper is packed with tourists who think they have to go to the opera for one time in their life just because they are in Vienna. It comes complete with touts dressed up as Mozart outside the main entrance, flogging scalped tickets all day long to any tourist who will buy.
One should remember that for years now, Theater an der Wien has been producing work of a far more interesting substance than the other two Viennese houses. It certainly has better singers than Volks Oper and often Staatesoper. It has produced a more interesting rep and for the ‘3rd house’ it has punched well above its weight. Vienna is blessed with wonderful cultural institutions which are well funded and enjoy a loyal and young patronage. So sad that London can’t produce any opera worth seeing anymore. Yes there are a lot of shows on in the West End but mainly jukebox, sign-a-long, hen party nights, some tryouts, a few long running classics and a couple new ones worth seeing. Admittedly the UK does them well and the theatres are surviving, just, but interesting quality opera is effectively over in London.
It’s called public funding for the arts. Wait til you see the ticket prices. They’re reasonable! And Theater an der Wien does rare works, in contemporary staging.
Los Angeles, population 10 million, has a 9-month opera season producing only 4 classics (down from 8 classics when Domingo was GM.) The rest of the season is woke-programming.
So the city of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg etc can support three successful opera houses. Not exactly news, is it?
Perhaps the Austrian education system does not systematically denigrate European achievements?
With a metro area of 4.9 million, Boston has ZERO opera houses. So be grateful for what you’ve got!
To add insult, the so-called Boston Opera House is a vaudeville house given the name Boston Opera House by Sarah Caldwell. It was refurbished two decades ago but doesn’t host any opera. WORSE, since this is America its now named after a bank-opera house.
What a joke.
Boston has an excellent early music ensemble called “Boston Early Music Festival & Opera” that puts on rare operas in Sept/Oct.