A few minutes before the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert began broadcasting on television, the doorbell rang, M. came to visit, and I woke up. We ate doughnuts, or Berliner as Mama would insist I call them, and drank rose hip tea as well as coffee, M. had brought his lovely homemade cookies as well, and I had a little of the leftover punch with mandarin oranges and peaches from last night.
This year the Vienna Philharmonic's guest conductor was Christian Thielemann. I associated him slightly with German right-wing nationalism, and Mama associated him heavily with Wagner. At any rate he is not Austrian and indeed regularly conducts the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. So (after I played a silly game I've often indulged in since we moved to Germany, of sorting people I briefly see on television into CDU, SPD, Linke, FDP, Grüne or CSU politician personality types, with him, and decided on SPD) we began listening with trepidation.
But there was no galloping nationalism, no heavy Wagnerianism or portentous Beethovenianism in the music he produced — and I felt that with him he was not merely there to let the orchestra express themselves, but was purposely steering the concert and music — whereas some of the repetitious Viennese flourishes that are often emphasized in the Strauss family's music fell by the wayside. To be honest, I welcomed this as a temporary change.
Thielemann clearly wanted to try a mildly different approach, and I didn't feel I was hearing a twice-told tale. The music lacked some of its energy and sparkle, as M. also remarked, but it had gemütlichkeit and I thought Thielemann was adept at making the music tell a tale or describe scenes. I didn't need the hovering camera shots of Austrian pastoral scenery that overlaid some of the music in the televised version to be transported somewhere else.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the Vienna Opera House's opening. So in the intermission, we were transported from the golden rectangular hall of the Wiener Kunstverein hall, with its blingy chandeliers and coffered frescoes, to a stone-walled-and-bronze-roofed birdcage with a grand central staircase, pale sculpture and gilt decorations, other frescoes, and other chandeliers. There was so much opulence that my inner Marxist emerged fully fledged. The Marxist wondered, firstly, where the money for the building came from (banking? exploitation of the peasantry? colonial labour?); and, secondly, whether the original builders could have ordered fewer decorations and redirected more expenditures to food and shelter for the poorer classes.
But the cameras did not only roam in the lobby and amongst the opera-goers. It was nice to peek 'behind the scenes' of the Opera House, even if backstage it was unconvincingly tidy. I think that the traditional aspects of stage work were also played up a little; for example, I don't know how often the crew at the Opera House still use rope made of natural fibers, but they showed one coil of it that happened to have survived, anyway.
Also, when we had left the trolleys and pulleys and washing clotheslines of the towering opera sets briefly behind us, there was an interlude in the room where the ballet troupe was 'practicing' its pairs dancing. Their cute summery garb — the women dancers often wearing what I'd call 'sleeveless crop tops' at work that made me rack my brains trying to figure out how they stayed on — did not look like something dancers would normally practice in. And in the middle of winter the sight of that many bare limbs suggests painful cramps, muscle strains, and breakages, unless the dancers have had a good warm-up; but I'm sure it was filmed earlier in the year.
Anyway, at some point in the intermission, I figured that it might be more interesting to be pushing around backdrops and nailing down canvas onto wooden frames than to be one of the singers on the stage, or to be a musician like the ones trying not to look enervated when the camera crew blocked the exit from the greenroom where they were just practicing.
Chamber music groups taken from the ranks of the Vienna Philharmonic also performed arrangements of opera music by Mozart and Strauss and others, during the intermission. They were scattered inside and outside buildings, yet blessed with the same acoustics whether they were contending with the breeze and traffic noise on a roof overlooking a busy Vienna street, or perched at ease in a serene, lofty hall adorned with white marble sculptures. A quartet of cellos played at the head of the staircase — having watched a lot of Agatha Christie adaptations, I expected one of the four cellists to meet a vertiginous (and not very accidental) death at any moment. A pianist and other musicians were gathered in a room like one of the committee meeting rooms in the British Parliament, surrounded by a choir as if by ranks of courthouse visitors. Sometimes I much preferred the idea of the orchestral originals; but I warmed to the way the Rosenkavalier waltz was adapted for a smaller group of instruments.
Two interludes during the intermission made my hair stand on end.
The first interlude was a 'rehearsal' of an "Uhren-Duett" from Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus. An Anne-Sophie-Mutter-esque soprano sat on a round seat in old-rose plush, dressed in a pale tulle tiered skirt and a black top skin-tight at her bosom. (Her chest is such a significant part of the narrative that I imagine that, in a fairer world, it might have received third billing.) A Roberto-Benigni-esque tenor fiddled around with his fob watch. Then he expressed the most polite annoyance when the soprano filched it and dropped it into her bosom. From a practical standpoint I worried that unless the soprano had an all-encompassing bra, the watch might slip further, wriggling down her skin like an ice cube. Sacrifices must be made for art, however, and either she is an excellent actress or no mishap occurred. Needless to say, my inner gender studies theorist just pretended I didn't see this. Although I felt that there was such an absence of genuine lasciviousness or elementary romantic attraction in the scene* that despite the noxious concept it wasn't as sleazy as it could have been.
The second horror: a soprano and tenor's duetting from the Magic Flute, as Philharmonic musicians with poker faces that would be the despair of Las Vegas stood around them and pretended that all of this was sane. The soprano (Pamina) wore an A-line dress, as plumy and golden as Big Bird from Sesame Street with feathers dribbling off her chest and tufted in her hair, and her demeanour like an irritating version of Zoë Wanamaker. The tenor (Papageno) wore a matching Sesame-Street-yellow suit. In a worse vagary of artistic judgment, both of them wore rope nooses around their necks. Of course the first associations that came to mind ran the gamut from keel-hauling and suicides to lynchings. In fact these ropes were part of a life-saving apparatus that later lifted them into the air above the stage (as the Philharmonic musicians, imperturbable as ever, remained in position); but it takes a battle-hardened soul to find the nooses less than weird.
Of course there were ballet interludes. My inner amateur womyn's studies theorist emerged again: I found the gender politics — the froofy tulle skirts in which the tiny-waisted women were clad as inexorably as if it were the 1950s and Coco Chanel had never designed a pantsuit, and the tendency to treat each man-woman pairing as a romantic pairing — reductive and behind the times. Only a man-man pas de deux, although it had no kissy elements in the least and therefore did not disturb the heteronormative bias, warmed my cold theorist's heart.
The first round of costumes was not bad, I thought. Just a spotted, bustier-style dress paired with affrighting black-speckled white tights underneath unsettled me a bit. But the second round, in which the dancers wore primary colours à la Fisher Price, and the women's tunics ended high above the knees, as if the costumer believed that a glimpse of butt-cheek aesthetically uplifts any balletic effort, was weird. I'd never have thought of dressing ballet dancers in blazers that must restrict their arm movements or of risking their necks by suggesting that they dance on cobblestones, either. Hip-hop dance was woven into the choreography, so that whenever this happened it was neither good hip-hop dancing nor good ballet, but just a middling mixture. The artistic concept of flailing around long limbs and awkwardly seizing the hand and feet of one's partner was a little outré as well. The choreography didn't lack naturalistic moments, like the pas de quatre legs to which we were treated: two dancers sat in niches, hidden from the screen except for their feet and shins, and wiggled their limbs. But at times the choreography felt counterintuitive with regard to how the human body moves, how people gesture when they interact, and to how ballet dancers should use their finely trained muscles to produce something fluid and beautiful.
[Also, there are only so many times that a dancer can rest hands thoughtfully on the balcony of an old Austrian palace, gazing at a view that is never shown (so that we never see how many cars and Edekas there are); can appear in a doorway and stop in amazement at the sight of a fellow ballet corps dancer whom they've known for years; and can rest their hands on a window sill and peer at another colleague beneath them, without running the risk of looking a trifle unoriginal. But this is hardly the choreographer's fault; it is, rather, a hazard of working with the Vienna New Year's Concert format.]
Anyway, although I do dance beginner's ballet, I felt that it has given me no greater insight into the dancing whatsoever, except to make me worry more about dancers injuring themselves. So the previous paragraphs are not at all the result of professional observation.
Returning to the music, there were no 'gimmick' instruments this year, as far as I noticed. That said, the orchestra — not all the musicians; some were tactfully silent — sang 'La-la-la-la' during the 'Egyptian' piece by one of the Strausses. (I could picture Edward Said in the afterlife, whipping out his pen and drafting a new chapter of Orientalism, but it wasn't bad from a musical perspective.) I enjoyed the zither last year, because it required being quiet and attentive and appreciating an instrument that usually only comes into its own full power and glory in the framework of folk music. And, of course, because the music itself was lovely. But I think a year without gimmicks is nice, too.
Lastly, the video footage of castles, ruined or intact, on the banks of the Danube, was a nice accompaniment to the "The Blue Danube." I found the Radetzky March more easy to endure than usual, too.
Prosit Neujahr!
* I googled it, and it looks as if the tenor sings:
Dieser Anstand, so manierlich,Based on the romantic chemistry, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd sung: 'Excuse me, Madam. I believe you have left your wrap on the staircase, and I almost tripped on it. Please guard your belongings more carefully next time.'
diese Taille fein und zierlich,
und ein Füsschen, das mit Küsschen
glühend man bedecken sollt',
wenn sie's nur erlauben wollt'.
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