Opera in Vienna
Vienna has had a unique position in the history of opera, no less by its curious turn toward popular theater in the latter part of the 19 th century. With extensive holdings in Italy until the 1850s, the Hapsburg Empire had a direct line to opera's very beginnings and hastened its development through some of the genre's greatest composers. Up to the middle of the 19 th century, the Austrian emperors were true champions of the art form, beginning with Ferdinand III ( r 1637-1657), the first of four ?dancing emperors.? The entirely musical Leopold I ( r 1657-1705) regularly programmed theatrical offerings for weddings, birthdays, name days and festive celebrations, a tradition that followed with his sons Joseph I ( r 1705-1711) and Charles VI ( r 1711-1740). Most of the major works of Italian Baroque opera played in the Hapsburg court, and the genre was brought to new heights after the successive appointments of librettists Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Metastasio. The latter's poetry became a literary art form in its own right, set first to music by court composer Antonio Caldara, and later by nearly every major composer of the 18 th century including Handel, Hasse, Jommelli, Traetta, Gluck and Mozart. Hapsburg children were usually musically inclined ? Charles was competent enough to play Caldara's Euristes on the harpsichord while his young daughters Maria Anna and Maria Theresa danced and sang.
Opera seria reached its zenith during the Metastasian age under tutelage of Maria Theresa ( r 1740-1780), and Vienna became a center where new works were created. As her son Joseph II (co-regent since 1765; r 1780-1790) assumed greater power, however, opera buffa entered its golden age by way of libretti penned by the Venetian Carlo Goldoni. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s opera buffa had achieved greater prominence, though opera seria received a new boost in the reform operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck. Joseph followed a mixed program of serious and comic works set to both German and Italian texts. In the decade of his sole rule we see not only the great operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( Abduction, Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte ), but also works by Antonio Salieri, Giovanni Paisiello and Vicente Martín y Soler. The Burgtheater became the epicenter for world premieres, with the Kärntnertortheater running a close second in royal patronage.
Following Joseph's death, Vienna saw a brief return to opera seria under the short reign of his brother Leopold II ( r 1790-1792). There was also a resurgence in Volksoper in the singspiels produced by impresario Emanuel Schikaneder, who is best known for his collaboration with Mozart on The Magic Flute. At the end of the century Schikaneder transferred his operation from the Theater auf der Weiden to the newly built Theater an der Wien. Here he opened negotiations with Beethoven, who eventually was persuaded to write his only opera Fidelio, which premiered in 1805. The Theater an der Wien offered a diverse program ? besides singspiels, there were also concerts and several ?academies? of Beethoven's greatest instrumental music were once held there.
Leopold II's son Francis ( r 1792-1835) came to power during an uneasy period. Following the French Revolution (which had claimed the life of his aunt Marie Antoinette), Francis witnessed Napoleonic aggression right up to his doorstep (he would never return to the Hapsburg summer palace, the Schönbrunn, because Napoleon had once lived there). To maintain the balance of power, he was forced to offer up his daughter, Marie Louise, as Napoleon's second bride. Following the French emperor's fall, she returned to the empire with their son, Napoleon II, assumed the rule of Parma and was later important to Verdi's early career, granting a scholarship so that he could study in Milan .
The city saw one of its few remaining moments of glory when the Congress of Vienna was held in 1814. During the celebrations, diplomats and distinguished guests no doubt danced in the newest fashion, to an adaptation of a stodgy old folk dance from the upper Danube known as the Ländler. The ?waltz? (derived from the German word wälzen, meaning to roll or heave) developed from a rustic, angular romp into its current refined state in works created by dance bandmasters Josef Lanner and Johann Strauss I. The stages of the suburban venues ? the Theater an der Wien, the Carltheater and the Theater an der Leopoldstadt continued to offer singspiels, though these new compositions failed to find their way into the lasting repertoire. The imperial theaters saw a brief resurgence in creative activity with its appointment of Neapolitan magnate Domenico Barbaja as impresario from 1821 to 1827. During the period the Kärntnertortheater saw the premiere of Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe in 1823. Though no new Rossini opera was ever written for the Austrian stage, Barbaja organized a tour of his exiting music featuring the composer himself with his wife, soprano Isabella Colbran, in performance. Years later, Gaetano Donizetti would follow, composing two new works specifically for Vienna , Linda di Chamounix (1842) and Maria di Rohan (1843). Donizetti was also instrumental in getting recently premiered operas by the up-and-coming Verdi at the Kärtnertortheater, which had superseded the Burgtheater's prominence in the early 19 th century.
The city itself entered a cultural and artistic period known as Biedermeir, which specialized in the baser tastes of the growing middle class, the burghers. This could account for the burgeoning popularity of the suburban theaters and greater demand for instrumental music. Another defining moment in the future of new opera at the court was the ascension of Francis II's grandson, Franz Joseph, following the revolutions of 1848. Unlike his ancestors, the new emperor was not especially enthusiastic about the genre.
Francis Joseph did set about redesigning his city. Much like his counterpart, Napoleon III in Paris, the emperor transformed his medieval town into a glittering metropolis. The old city walls (necessary until this relatively late date because of potential Turkish aggression) were torn down and the moat was filled. Suddenly there was no barrier between aristocracy and the suburbanites, and they tenuously began to mix as dance halls became more prominent and numerous throughout the city. Not unlike the grand boulevards designed by Baron Haussmann, the Ringstrasse became an elegant new promenade, crowned by a beautiful new opera house in 1869.
Though the Hofoper continued to entertain local premieres of nearly every important contemporary work by Verdi, Wagner and the French masters, virtually no new material with any lasting merit was created (Wagner's Tristan und Isolde almost made its belated premiere there, but many long months of rehearsals and dealings with a rather demanding maestro, the opera was deemed unplayable and canceled). Operetta became the wave of the future, first with a few tenuous attempts by Italian-trained Franz von Suppé (related to Donizetti) and Karl Millöcker. But it was Jacques Offenbach who took the city by storm during the 1860s, once referring to Vienna as his bankroll. Even the Hofoper, somewhat out of character, offered him a commission for a new serious work, Die Rheinnixen (The Rhine Fairies; 1864). Offenbach 's operettas inspired the others to seek new heights and prompted theater impresarios Max Steiner and Marie Geistinger to nudge Vienna 's waltz king toward the stage. Vienna 's ?golden age? is said to have begun in 1870, yet curiously the era produced only four works of lasting significance: Strauss's Die Fledermaus (1874) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885), von Suppé's Boccaccio (1879) and Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent (1882).
As the Viennese drank champagne and waltzed until dawn, their culture and politics teetered on the edge of destruction. Austria would see huge land losses during the 1850s with the Italian revolution, the Risorgimento, which led to its eventual unification. In 1866 it suffered another humiliating defeat in Sadowa at the hands of the Prussians. On May 1, 1873, the city opened its first World Exhibition, only to fall flat on its face when the stock market crashed eight days later. In 1881, the Ringtheater experienced a disastrous fire on the second night of Offenbach 's Les contes d'Hoffmann, and hundreds perished (the horrific event led to an important improvement in theatrical design ? doors that opened out instead of in ).
Franz Joseph had his share of family problems as well. His brother, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico , was shot by the revolutionaries in support of Benito Juárez in 1867 (famously recorded in a painting by Edouard Manet). In 1889, Francis Joseph's son and heir-apparent, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide in a bizarre scandal with sexual overtones (he may have inherited his darker tendencies from his grandmother, a near relative of Wagner's great patron, the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria ). In 1898, his equally flighty wife, Empress Elizabeth, was knifed by an assassin. It was commonly believed the demise of Johann Strauss II marked the end of the empire, though Franz Joseph would live another 16 years. Just two years before the emperor's own death, his nephew and designated heir-apparent, Francis Ferdinand would be assassinated in Sarajevo , sparking World War I.
Vienna would see a short resurgence in its musical scene at the turn of the century, during operetta's Silver Age in the works of Franz Lehár [ Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow); 1905), Oscar Straus [ Der tapfere Soldat (The Chocolate Soldier); 1908] and Emmerich Kálmán [ Gräfin Maritza (Countess Maritza); 1924]. The Hofoper also saw an upgrade in its status when it hosted the International Exhibition of Music and Theater in 1892. Gustav Mahler's ten-year directorship of the court opera (1897-1907) would have a great impact on the house's reputation. Years later, Richard Strauss would share the leadership of the Staatsoper (as it became known after the war) with Franz Schalk from 1919 to 1924 and programmed ambitious seasons of contemporary opera, including the premieres of his own Ariadne auf Naxos (1914) and Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow; 1919). Over the next two decades, changes in musical taste at the Staatsoper unexpectedly veered toward operetta, with performances of Richard Heuberger's Der Opernball, von Suppé's Boccaccio, Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent and the world premiere of Lehár's most operatic work, Giuditta (1934).
The Anschluss in 1938 and the war that followed drastically changed the musical landscape of Europe , with expatriation or extermination of many of the continent's creative artists. Thus, it provides a definitive marker from which to survey Vienna 's operatic activity for nearly 300 years, as diverse as it was significant.
Courtesy of Minnesota Opera
