The State Opera brings a treasured legacy to the U.S.
The word for it is Gesamtgastspiel, which, roughly translated, means everybody gets in on the act. And indeed, as the Vienna State Opera unpacked in Washington for its first U.S. visit, everybody—and everything—seemed to have come along. Thirty-seven soloists and 100 chorus members? Check. An orchestra of 95, with all their instruments? Check. Thirty-five stagehands and five staff workers, plus 23 custom-built 40-ft. containers full of scenery and costumes? Check.
The company brought something else too. It did not show up on any check list, but it was essential: the ghostly presence of great composers. The repertory for the visit consisted mostly of works passed down through the company's musical heritage directly from those composers' hands. There was Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, premiered in Vienna in 1786 with Mozart himself conducting from the keyboard. There was Beethoven's Fidelio, also first produced in Vienna with the composer presiding, in 1805. From the 20th century there were Salome and Ariadne auf Naxos, the latter premiered in Vienna in 1916 and both composed by one of the State Opera's long line of distinguished directors, Richard Strauss.
The Vienna is one of the few companies in the world able to claim that such figures move among its ranks as animating spirits. Opera in Vienna goes back to the early days of the form, when the city's cultivated imperial courts began attracting major composers, starting with Gluck. Today the company can work from scores personally annotated by Strauss and another former director, Gustav Mahler. Such authenticity in itself is no guarantee of quality, but to the performances last week in Washington it added a living spark of history. Washington, as history-minded a city as any in the U.S., responded ardently. Shivering against the predawn chill off the Potomac, buffs began lining up outside the Kennedy Center at 4 a.m. for the 50 standing-room tickets that would go on sale six hours later. Sellout crowds packed the center's 2,300-seat opera house and 2,700-seat concert hall. Sprinkled among them, on one night or another, were such dignitaries as President Carter, Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and Henry Kissinger.
The Viennese unveiled three of the four operas, plus orchestral evenings of Schubert symphonies and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To be added to the repertory this week were Ariadne and a Beethoven-Wagner orchestral program. Next week, after a 17-day run in Washington, the company will go to New York, where it will repeat the Ninth and the Beethoven-Wagner program and present a concert version of Fidelio.
The crown of the first week's operatic offerings was the Figaro—tender, witty, effortlessly buoyant. The spectacle of servants outwitting their masters, so inflammatory in Mozart's day, was given charm and point by Baritone Walter Berry, as a rather phlegmatic Figaro, and Soprano Lucia Popp, as his pert fiancee. Baritone Hans Helm and especially Soprano Gundula Janowitz, as the count and countess, played along with aristocratic good grace.