Updates

I'm still here, promise!

So what have I been up to this past two weeks that has so thoroughly kept me occupied? Steffie, one of the musicians I made friends with during my first few weeks here, invited me to a private performance that she was doing with one other woman just for a group of their friends. I was thrilled that I got invited to that (and needless to say, it was really good!).

However, more importantly, the real reason I've been MIA is that Andrew has been here, so we've been trying to make the most of Vienna (including a night at the Staatsoper to see Die Zauberflöte - really neat set, really misogynistic... of course). We also took a day trip to Bratislava. 

So, my apologies for the lack of posting, but that will be remedied soon. Also, I've had word that some of you have been trying unsuccessfully to post comments; I've tweaked the settings a bit, so hopefully you can do so now.

Cheers!

I'm Back, Safe and Sound

Dearest Followers,
If you've been wondering about my reticence, fret no longer! I have been off on a five-day journey through Germany and up into Denmark. I had quite a grand time and some surprisingly good food. It's taking a bit of time to sort through the one thousand pictures that I took (okay, nine hundred and twenty three, but who's counting?) to determine what's worthy of posting. Actually the difficult part is choosing what not to post, but I'm making progress and writing as I go and all will be fully updated soon. Anyway, who wants to read an abstract when you can indulge in all the delightful details? Check back tomorrow and you can have just that, promise! I have a couple posts in the works but nothing finalized yet, and it's almost 1:00am here so I should hit the hay for the night.
Until tomorrow,
BMW

Carmen: Nicht so Gut

Continuing to help the Counseling group get as full of a Vienna experience as possible, I got tickets for a fair contingent of them to attend the ballet of Carmen at the Volksoper on Monday evening (a much easier feat than obtaining tickets for Eugene Onegin!). I, too, joined in as I did not see any performances there last summer despite its proximity to the house. I also, well, quite frankly wasn't even aware that Carmen is a ballet as well so I was intrigued; although it's not my favorite, I do like Georges Bizet's score for the opera. As we walked into this slightly bland (though only by Vienna's standards) theater we, or at least I, would never have expected what I was about to sit through for the next hour and forty-five minutes, especially considering the Volksoper's lavish history as being second only to the Staatsoper until about 1955.

 
For starters, once the ballet began there was a large LED screen that would occasionally be revealed throughout the performance to display what were at times distinguishable as out-of-focus human bodies and other times much more abstract body parts, sometimes as though viewed through a hole in the wall. Every time this came on I spent so much time trying to figure out what the shapes were that I wholly forgot about the dancers. Had I been on stage I would have been slightly irked that the spotlight was stolen from me for the sake of ambiguous graphics.

But I do believe I would have been quite nettled if I had been a musician. I think they played for barely half of the ballet! Alright, that might be bordering on hyperbole just a touch, but every time things would begin to reach a climax the orchestra would stop to be replaced by an amalgam of someone whispering, breathing heavily, and cursing in a language long forgotten (and I don't mean Latin) over techno-like sounds - which is being generous.

Now, as far as the dancers go, I was admittedly torn. Even with my neophyte eye and balcony view I could tell that they were superb. Alas! Davide Bombana's, uh, interpretation which he choreographed specifically for the ballet of the Vienna State Opera and the Volksoper did not seem to highlight their abilities. Now, I know some people like a modern approach to the classical arts, but it really just is not my cup of tea. And this was very modern. Perhaps the sketches of the costumes in the program might hint at that:

*

Although their dancing was incredibly controlled and light, and at times (when they did standard ballet movements) beautiful, there were other times when they rolled across the stage (please note that the pronoun is plural).

But if you like that then by all means go see Bombana's Carmen! Even in its one-act version it was hailed by critics for its "artistic, neo-classic, searing language of movement." That means it must be good. Right?


* The 'women' in the red dresses were danced by men. Their title is "Toreros". [tuh-rair-ohz]. Noun, plural. A bullfighter, especially a matador.

A Night at the Staatsoper

I'm quite thrilled that the group which is here now arrived with more or less boundless enthusiasm to explore Vienna. Although it's not really in the job description, I love Vienna so much and want everyone else who comes here to make the most of it so I appointed myself the group's personal tour guide and middleman. I've given some tours of the first district (rather like herding cats, as Dr. Levy put it), taken smaller groups out to dinner at some of my favorite haunts, found a cab company to take someone to the airport with less than seven hour's notice, gotten information about various things, helped people book trains, and generally attempted to disperse my knowledge as much as possible. When they discovered I had plans to go to an opera at the State Opera House

this Saturday past, the majority of them wanted to come, too. Great! I was pretty surprised and excited that I would have company for the event. Except that I didn't know people were interested in attending until Monday night. And they only wanted tickets in the cheapest seated sections. Now, as the Viennese are rather fond of their performing arts, trying to procure tickets a few days before the big night (and a Saturday night at that) was a bit tricky. I woke up early Tuesday morning to go hunt around while they were in class, and lo! After four different ticket offices I was finally in possession of twelve more tickets, all in pairs so no one had to sit alone, and at an even cheaper price than they were expecting. I even discovered roundtrip boat rides down the Danube to Bratislava for €39, a far better deal than the €58 trip that is sold at the departure location for said trip, Schwedenplatz.

I was particularly eager to go to the Staatsoper on Saturday evening both because it was an opera I have long wanted to see live and seeing a performance at that house was one of the things I missed out on last summer, July/August being their off-season. However I had gone on a tour so I was aware of just how much I was missing out on. Interestingly enough, this:

Entrance Hall

 Innocent little pillar hiding off in a corner

Lovely staircase

 Ceiling details

Balcony to catch some fresh air during intermissions

built in the 1860s, was not grand enough for the public! In fact, one of the two head architects, Eduard van der Nüll, committed suicide because he was so upset with his "failure".

But the lack of Saatsoper grandness in the eyes of the Viennese did not deter me from wanting to see:

Ah! How I wish I could describe what a phenomenal performance it was! The orchestra! The voices!! Perhaps my favorite was actually Prince Gremin (Ain Anger) singing bass in Act 3. I was also quite moved by Maija Kovalevska's remarkable performance as Tatyana. Although I was admittedly confused about just which time period they were attempting to portray. Lensky and Onegin remained true to their dueling pistols, yet the ballroom of the Larin household, the set of the party in honor of Tatyana's name day, became a rather hip bar with black lights suspended from the ceiling. And I do believe there were lobsters decorating the bar, though it was a little hard to tell from where I was sitting.

(Yes, I know, that's looking away from the stage)

But all in all it was a wonderful night and spectacular performance! I might just have to go back later this week to see the live broadcast(s) of Eugene Onegin they put on a giant screen outside the Staatsoper for people to enjoy for free!

When You Say One Thing and You Mean Your Mother

Yesterday I went to the Freud Museum (I am with the Counseling Masters group after all) which is just a little ways out from the city center at Berggasse 19. I didn't quite know what to expect, but Vienna has some pretty good museums so I suppose I had higher expectations than I ought to have had. The entrance was promising,

and when we got inside they had big folders filled with information about what you were looking at around the museum. Except they didn't have enough for everyone (granted, we were a group of eighteen). You started out in a rather sparse 'library', although there was a reading area and you could actually pull the books off the shelves and browse through them if you so desired. From there you passed into a room with a silent film from around 1900, The Dream of a Racetrack Fiend,  playing and a bit of information about the ties between dreaming in cinema and Freud's interest in dreaming on the wall. Moving on, you came into a room with this couch:

Not THE couch, mind you, but an artistic rendition of a couch (I certainly wouldn't want to rest on that). Also pictures of Andy Warhol lounging, on a couch, in his warehouse were on the wall. In the next room there was a sort of tribute to Sigmund's daughter, Anna, and her work as the co-founder of child psychology. You could then backtrack a little to go through what used to be Freud's entrance hall, complete with travelling trunk. Then you got to the real heart of the museum as you passed into Freud's old waiting room which maintained the same look that it had almost a hundred years ago.

Through the next doorway you come into a set of rooms brimming with Freudian history and information.

This is where those folders really come in handy as there is a number tag next to everything so you can reference it and get a paragraph or two of information for every picture or object, including his early belief in the curing effects of cocaine.

As you go into the second of these rooms you realize that you've come to the end of your tour and start to feel a bit antsy, as though somehow you missed something and you can't quite put your finger on what it is. Unsettled, you retrace your path back through Freud's entrance hall where you can take a shortcut to the museum's front desk when you spot it: the elusive keystone to all of Freud's work: The Couch.

There's just one little problem. What you're looking at is a picture of a picture. Freud's couch is in fact not in the Freud Museum, but actually resides in London. I tried to convince the professor that their Freudian experience was just not complete without actually being in the presence of The Couch and that we should take a class trip up to London, but to no avail. Alack! But they also directed your course through a charming little shop with all sorts of Freudian things, like this lovely little stationary set:

Anyway, explore the Freud Museum at your own discretion, but think long and hard before spending that € 4,50 (for students) on whether or not it's worth it when you don't even get to see The Couch.

Sommernachtskonzert bei Schönbrunn

Last night was the Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn Palace. I was really excited to go because it promised just about everything I prefer in a concert: good program, sensational conductor, top drawer musicians, absolutely stunning setting, and no entrance fee. This has been advertised all over Vienna for a while (well, at least since before I arrived here) and I had heard that it was a pretty big event, so I figured it would be best to scope things out Wednesday so that I would be on the ball on Thursday. For those of you who have never been to Schönbrunn, the back of the palace normally looks a little something like this:

View from balcony of Schönbrunn looking out towards the Gloriette (pavilion on top of the hill)

Looking back towards Schönbrunn from behind the Neptune Fountain

Looking down at Schönbrunn from in front of the Gloriette (and actually no, that's not Stephansdom on the horizon, though I'm on a quest to discover just what it is)

Well, they were going to extremes for this event in anticipation of approximately 10,000 people, so when I got there on Wednesday it looked a tad bit different:

I meandered around for a bit just enjoying the gardens (what wasn't blocked off) before deciding to track down a security guard or someone setting stuff up to see if I could get an estimate on what time people usually started showing up. To my dismay, not only was I told that all of the seats were reserved for ticket holders (i.e. sponsors), but also that people usually got there as soon as the garden opened at 6:00 in the morning. The concert started at 9:00pm. However, I had a hunch that that fellow was pulling the tourist with the broken German-speaking-ability's leg, so I asked around a little more and got various responses closer to 5:00pm, which I found to be a much more satisfactory answer. But I really did want the best spot possible and nobody really seemed all that certain what time people started to wait, so I thought it would be best to get there bright and early anyway and just spend the day coveting my stellar spot and reading a book. Or two.

Thursday, early o'clock, on a dark and cloudy morning, I gathered my day's supply of food and entertainment and headed out to Schönbrunn to wait. Let's just say I got there unnecessarily early. Thus I decided to go back into the city center and get a real breakfast, then headed back out to Schönbrunn around noon. Still way too early, I knew that, but I figured by that point it would be a huge shame if I wandered off through the grounds for an hour or two and came back to find a throng of people, so I settled in for the long haul. Around 2:30 I gained a companion in the form of a friendly French fellow, Marc, who was studying in Innsbruck for the summer. We read, we chatted, we crowd watched, and we repeated until maybe 3:30 when a couple came over and asked a guard about the seating. We happened to overhear that in fact the back half of the seats would be available for the public, and they would be opening the gates that extended a little ways behind us at 6:00. So Marc and I surreptitiously eased over to the gates and resumed our post. The couple was not pleased to be third in line, but hey, I had put in my fair share of waiting! Not long after a legitimate crowd started forming, and at 4:45 they went ahead and opened the gate for the seats. I secured two spots front and center for Marc and myself (there was an aisle on either side and as I started walking down one aisle the couple brushed past Marc and started running up the other, and I just wasn't about to let them get the best seats). So essentially my view went from this:

to this:

Now at least we were (more) comfortable for the next four hours and fifteen minutes that we would still be waiting. But since we had determined seats, Marc and I could take turns getting up to go get something to drink or just stretch our legs. Sometime during the six o'clock hour it started looking like this:

And this is only the 'seated' section!

...9:00 finally arrived, the Vienna Philharmonic was out on stage, and we were just waiting for Valery Gergiev to make his appearance.

The concert was spectacular, if a little on the pop side; they had a huge light show that would get cooler in color and dance around dramatically during dark pieces, and brighten up festively during lighter pieces. There were also fireworks. The program included:

Franz Liszt - "Les Préludes", Tone Poem
Nicolò Paganini - Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, 1st Movement (arr. Fritz Kreisler)
Jean Sibelius - Scene with Cranes, op. 44/2
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (Instrumentation by Maurice Ravel)

I was rather surprised about how good they sounded considering it was outside and a bit windy. Granted, it was evident that these were phenomenal musicians and it just wasn't possible to hear the nuance of their playing, but for what it was and how it was set up I was very impressed with the sound quality. ASIDE: If you ever have the chance to attend this lovely event, do not sit up on the hill! Perhaps it was just because they were expecting rain, but there were no speakers up there so people were getting excited, anticipating laying out under the clouds and hearing some great music, and instead they heard faint whispers of almost nothing. For your listening pleasure, here's a bit of Wiener Blut which they did as an encore (the Viennese seriously love this song. I don't think I've been to a single concert here when it wasn't performed). I apologize for the fuzziness at first and the photographer that stands up in front of me at the end; luckily he was only there for a few minutes.

They also had huge screens to project the concert for those further back, and there was a really neat shot of Gergiev that they kept showing from the perspective of the orchestra with Schönbrunn in the background. I couldn't get a good picture of it because there was a column of lights right in my line of vision, but it essentially looked like this:

Except at night. And perhaps a little less Photoshopped. The screen also showed ballerinas up on a stage in front of the Gloriette, among other things.

The concert lasted over an hour and a half and despite it being bitterly cold out, I would say it was well worth the wait. And it didn't even take too long to get out after the concert, even when fighting these crowds:

I was expecting it to take nearly an hour to get home with trying to move through/with the crowd back through the palace and out the front gate, then wait in line for the Ubahn (something you never have to do on a regular basis), etc. But I was back by 11:30, so all in all it was a successful, if long, day!