Check it out! We've found a couch for our huge room downstairs! Though that high back in the middle might reach the ceiling in our basement, can't you just imagine a couple of five-year-olds running laps on the seat of that thing?!
Tuesday morning Rob and I had a date, because a brunch date is better than no date. True. We invited Curtis and Katie and went to the opera tour -- I've actually never been, and neither had they. Rob just took his students for their architecture class, but he didn't have his camera because he learned early on that you can't lecture and take pictures at the same time. So here is a rendering of the Vienna State Opera house in candy, which is good, because it is too big and I can't take a picture of this much of it from the outside without a helicopter or a suite at the Sacher Hotel, which is behind it.
Like so many things, this was damaged during WWII (Katie says that it's a necessary phase of sightseeing here to go through American guilt over all of the phenomenally beautiful and historical things we blew up; her kids are going through it now. Tours are always tactfully silent on the identity of the bombers, by the way, we're just guilt-prone). But the Stattsoper was one of the very first things that Vienna rebuilt. I believe it opened just ten years later. So there is an old hall which is original (the part at the left in the photo above), but the other sections are more modern and very fifties (like that wicked cool couch).
This was the emperor's tea room. Like having their own wee chapel to slip in and out of, at the opera, when the Kaiser couldn't take any more extended arias, he'd go back here and recharge, or use it to make an exit. I hadn't realized that operas were performed with the lights on and the doors open. People came to see and be seen, but they would just come and go throughout the performance. Gustav Mahler was director here for several years around the turn of the century, and he changed that. He had the house lights turned off and the doors shut so that the audience would stay and listen to the entire performance. It was an uphill battle at first. As director, he would also often conduct the orchestra, and our guide told us that he would even stop the music when the audience got too loud.
The most amazing part of the tour is actually back here. One of the missions of the state opera is to have a large variety of performances each month. Because of that, they have many, many sets and props which all have to share the same stage. During the regular season, there are three separate performances using the same stage each day. First they break down the last night's performance, then set up for the morning rehearsal. They break down the rehearsal and set up for the matinee. Finally they break down the matinee and set up for the evening's performance. Each day 50 some odd trips are made with trucks between the opera, smack on the Ringstrasse, and the third district where the sets are kept, driving things back and forth to storage. And this gaping hole shows the way that the sets can be readied in the sides, behind, or below, and then slid or raised into place for the next performance. Rob asked how the three little boys in the
Magic Flute are staged here, and there followed a long discussion on Opera Follies We Have Known with
Toscas bouncing back to life after their fall and other strange happenings.
Right now while the opera is on hiatus, the workmen are all still working hard: they are repairing and testing all of the technical equipment to make certain it's ready for the next season. You can imagine that there is no room for hiccups or breakdowns here. You can't cancel sold out performances: you would have to do
Fidelio with the
Marriage of Figaro's sets.
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