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    Musical Performances to See in Europe This Winter

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    Concert halls and opera houses in Vienna, Berlin and beyond are offering fan favorites (“Die Fledermaus”) and surprises (an operatic “Animal Farm”).The winter opera and classical music season in Central and Eastern Europe balances holiday classics with rarities and even some fresh works. Opera houses and concert halls from Vienna to Berlin to Prague are presenting a varied program of old chestnuts and new discoveries. Here is a selection.Munich“Die Fledermaus,” Bayerische Staatsoper, through Jan. 10Barrie Kosky’s new production of Johann Strauss Jr.’s most popular operetta, “Die Fledermaus,” a New Year’s Eve favorite in much of Europe, is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the season here at the Bavarian State Opera. Mr. Kosky, an Australian director with a wide-ranging résumé — his recent successes include “Das Rheingold” in London and “Chicago” in Berlin — stages Strauss’s infectiously tuneful farce with energetic panache and a dash of camp. Vladimir Jurowski, the Munich company’s general music director, leads a spirited cast headed by the German star soprano Diana Damrau. The dynamic performances, carefully controlled chaos of Mr. Kosky’s staging, and a few unpredictable touches make this 150-year-old work seem fresher than ever. The Dec. 31 performance will also be streamed on the State Opera’s online platform. For the more traditionally inclined, the company is also bringing back August Everding’s sumptuous 1978 production of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” (through Saturday).Barrie Kosky’s staging of “The Golden Cockerel,” performed in Lyon, France. The Komische Oper in Berlin, where the production will play this winter, has a long history with Slavic repertoire.Jean Louis FernandezBerlin“The Golden Cockerel,” Komische Oper Berlin in the Schiller Theater, Jan. 28-March 20A new production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel” at the Komische Oper Berlin is the first premiere to be led by the company’s newly minted general music director, the American James Gaffigan. This riotous and surreal take on the fairy-tale opera by Mr. Kosky, who ran the Komische as artistic director from 2012 to 2022, has also graced stages in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon, France, and Adelaide, Australia. In Berlin, it becomes the company’s latest foray into Slavic repertoire after inventive and gripping productions of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel” and Shostakovich’s “The Nose.”“Rusalka,” Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Feb. 4-22Antonin Dvorak’s 1901 opera “Rusalka” hovers on the edge of the standard repertoire. The lyrical and soaring aria “Song to the Moon” is better known than the rest of this dark and symbolically rich adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo directs the first new production of “Rusalka” at the Berlin Staatsoper in over half a century. The British maestro Robin Ticciati, music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducts the lush and frequently melancholy score.Vienna“Animal Farm,” Wiener Staatsoper, Feb. 28-March 10The Russian composer Alexander Raskatov’s “Animal Farm” arrives at the Vienna State Opera in late February, in a production by the Italian director Damiano Michieletto. Reviewing the work’s world premiere in Amsterdam earlier this year, Shirley Apthorp, the Financial Times’s opera critic, praised Raskatov’s “violent, compelling sound-world, percussive and angular, full of unpleasant truths” in this operatic setting of Orwell’s famed allegory of the Russian Revolution. The British conductor Alexander Soddy leads the work’s Viennese premiere.Franz Welser-Möst and the Wiener Philharmoniker, Feb. 22-26In the first of five February concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, Franz Welser-Möst, the former general music director of the Wiener Staatsoper and longtime leader of the Cleveland Orchestra, tackles Mahler’s towering and elegiac Ninth Symphony at the Wiener Konzerthaus. On subsequent programs, performed in the Musikverein, the Austrian maestro leads the Viennese in works by Ravel, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Berg, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.West Side Story, Volksoper Wien, Jan. 27-March 24In late January, music by Leonard Bernstein will resound through Vienna’s opera houses. Shortly after the American director Lydia Steier unveils her “Candide” at the MusikTheater an der Wien, a new “West Side Story” arrives at the Volksoper, the city’s traditional operetta and musical stage on the other side of town. (The house’s other productions this season include “Die Fledermaus” and “Aristocats.”) For the director Lotte de Beer’s rendition of the quintessential American boy-meets-girl musical, performed in a mix of German and English, the Puerto Rico-born, New York-raised choreographer Bryan Arias updates Jerome Robbins’s classic dance moves.“Katya Kabanova” at the National Theater in Prague, featuring, from left, Jaroslav Brezina, Eva Urbanova and Alzbeta Polackova. Zdeněk SokolPrague“Katya Kabanova,” The National Theater, March 22-27Leos Janacek’s searing 1921 opera about the emotional unraveling of an adulterous wife in 19th-century Russia returns to the National Theater in Prague in a production by the provocative Catalan director Calixto Bieito, who is famous for his unorthodox interpretations of classic operas. Jaroslav Kyzlink, a Janacek specialist, leads the psychologically raw score and Alzbeta Polackova, a much-loved soprano with the company, tackles the vocally and emotionally punishing title role.Bratislava, Slovakia“Hubicka (The Kiss),” Slovak National Theater, March 1-June 8In honor of the 200th anniversary of the great Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s birth, the Slovak National Theater presents his 1876 opera “The Kiss.” Once among the composer’s most popular works, “The Kiss” has long been eclipsed by Smetana’s earlier comic opera “The Bartered Bride,” and is remembered mostly for its lilting lullaby. With Andrea Hlinkova’s new production, the Slovak National Theater, which, coincidentally, was opened in 1920 with a performance of “The Kiss,” hopes to change that.Budapest“Bartok DanceTriptych,” Hungarian State Opera, Feb. 1-24Three works by Hungary’s great modernist composer Bela Bartok comprise this new ballet, choreographed by a trio of creatives. Laszlo Velekei, the director of the Ballet Company of Gyor, in northwestern Hungary, tackles “The Wooden Prince,” a pantomime ballet (a work half-danced, half-mimed) that premiered at the Hungarian State Opera House in 1917. Bartok’s second (and last) ballet, “The Miraculous Mandarin,” caused a scandal when it was first performed in 1926 in Cologne, Germany, because it depicted a girl forced into prostitution in a seething modern metropolis. In her production, Marianna Venekei, a longtime member of the Hungarian State Opera, explores the psychology of the work’s motley crew of city dwellers. Rounding out the program is the “Dance Suite” (1923), originally a concert piece and here choreographed by Kristof Varnagy, whose varied résumé includes projects with classical ballet companies, contemporary dance troupes and even Cirque du Soleil. Writing about the short movements that make up the “Dance Suite,” Bartok said his aim was to “present some idealized peasant music.” More

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      The History Behind the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert

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      A global event today, the orchestra’s annual New Year’s Concert took shape during dark days in Austrian history.If the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Concert is a global success, its legacy and reach rest on five pillars: a marvelous orchestra; internationally renowned conductors; a timeless repertoire, by the Strauss family and other composers of the 19th century; a splendid location, the gilded Musikverein; and TV broadcasts watched most recently by some 1.2 million people in 92 countries on five continents.The event, which returns this weekend with Franz Welser-Möst leading the Philharmonic, is by now a familiar one, and a multiday affair with three concerts. Between the preview performance, the New Year’s Eve Concert and the New Year’s Concert, conductors and the orchestra are faced with the extreme demands of an emotionally and physically challenging marathon. Just days after the series of concerts, CDs and DVDs of the Jan. 1 concert are released for sale worldwide.In the 19th century, the repertoire of today’s New Year’s Concert was part of a diverse concert business in the many entertainment venues that existed in almost every district of Vienna, including open-air stages. On weekends, this mixture of Viennese popular music, including swinging waltzes, wild polkas and military marches, enthused thousands of visitors, often as many as 10,000.Gerald Heidegger, the editor in chief of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation’s online services, rightly said in the series “Straussmania” on Topos, produced with the Vienna Institute of Contemporary and Cultural History: “Our image of the Biedermeier era is slightly distorted. It is not completely true that the era of the authoritarian state of Chancellor Metternich only led us to retreat into a private sphere, when one considers the music played in public.”This kind of popular music was revolutionary in terms of its exuberance and the physical proximity encouraged by new forms of dance, and it accompanied Vienna’s booming development into one of the world’s largest cities in the rapid globalization during the years leading up to World War I. Today, in another era of fast-moving developments in technology and politics, the music has not lost any of its emotional impact; people still seem to seek joyful distractions.The ostensible lightness of the countless waltzes, polkas and marches, however, hides a technique that challenges the musicians. Crucial to pulling it off is a nonverbal rapport between the orchestra and the conductor — another characteristic quality of the New Year’s Concert. And the selection of the repertoire requires an exciting dramaturgy in the combination of familiar and unknown pieces. This year, Welser-Möst has dedicated some 70 percent of the program to new works.In the 19th century, the Strauss bands were very much competitors of the Philharmonic, which as the Vienna State Opera orchestra thrilled audiences in the Court Opera Theater while having to play for additional income as the private company known as the Vienna Philharmonic. The conductor Ernst Theis has researched the early interactions between these orchestras and noted that Eduard Strauss gave a New Year’s concert with a 60-person orchestra as early as Jan. 1, 1871, playing not only waltzes and polkas, but also lieder and opera excerpts.A report from 1872 shows, however, that many members of the Philharmonic thought the Strauss clan and their music “harmed the reputation of the Philharmonic concerts.” Still, in 1894, the Philharmonic played at the celebrations marking Johann Strauss II’s 50 years in the business, and a few months before his death in 1899, he conducted the Court Opera orchestra during the performance of his “Die Fledermaus” for the first and last time, the final success of a remarkable career.The conductor Clemens Krauss used relationships with Nazi leaders to further his career in Germany before returning to Austria, where he led the Vienna Philharmonic in an annual “Johann Strauss concert.”Imagno/Getty ImagesThis ambivalence toward the Strauss family would change after World War I. From 1927 onward, the conductor Clemens Krauss in particular repeatedly chose to perform pieces from the Strauss repertoire, including at the Salzburg Festival. It was only in 1934, when he succumbed to the temptations of the Nazi regime and abruptly left Vienna for Berlin, that the Philharmonic’s infatuation with Strauss ended.After the Anschluss in 1938, Krauss returned to Austria and revived the tradition of “Johann Strauss concerts” (a reference to both father and son). The musician Clemens Hellsberg, writing in 1992, and the historian Fritz Trümpi, in 2011, have emphasized Krauss’s role as the initiator of the “Johann Strauss concert” — then termed an “Extraordinary Concert” — as the calendar turned from 1939 to 1940. The proceeds went to the National Socialist wartime winter relief fund.Krauss soon developed the next important pillar of the New Year’s Concert on its way to becoming a global music event: radio broadcasts throughout the German Reich. In November 1940, a contract with the Reich Radio Corporation established that there would be “four Philharmonic Academies in the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna played for Greater German Radio” — on Dec. 13, 1940, and Jan. 1 (a “Johann Strauss concert”), Jan. 25 and March 15, 1941 — conducted by Krauss.Without any intervention by Nazi potentates, the refreshing and emotionally uplifting “waltzing bliss” was a perfect fit with National Socialist propaganda, in particular its broadcasting policy — as were Mozart and Lehár. The program notes for the first of these series performed in Vienna not only stressed the intended mass impact of the contribution to “German music,” but also included ideological emphasis on the early history of waltz compositions in “suburban inns” as an “expression of the East Bavarian tribe that stood here on advance border watch,” which was, of course, a complete distortion and misinterpretation of the cultural developments in Vienna during the Biedermeier period.Joseph Goebbels, third from left, with the opera singer Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, left, the actor Paul Hartmann; the singer Jan Kiepura; the actor Gustaf Gründgens; the Nazi official Walther Funk; and Mr. Krauss, right, at a party in 1935.Heinrich Hoffmann/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesThe politicization of the music of the Strauss family and their milieu was taken to extremes when the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels even had the composer’s partly Jewish descent covered up by falsifying the baptismal registers in Vienna. Incidentally, this act was accompanied by a diary entry in which Goebbels revealed the sheer absurdity of his antisemitic beliefs:Some clever so-and-so has discovered that Joh. Strauss is an eighth Jewish. I forbid this from being made public. For firstly, it isn’t proven, and secondly, I do not want to have German cultural heritage in its entirety gradually undermined in this manner. In the end we will be left with only Widukind, Heinrich the Lion and Rosenberg. That’s not a lot. Mussolini goes about things much more cleverly here. He occupies the entire history of Rome from the earliest days of Antiquity for himself. We are just parvenus in comparison. I’m doing what I can about it. That is also the Führer’s will.The selling point the New Year’s Concert enjoys today as a global event applied neither during World War II nor in the years that followed; it remained limited to Germany and, after the war, Austria. The former Johann Strauss concert was firmly a tradition, and Josef Krips, who conducted the Jan. 1, 1946, concert — the first to be billed as a New Year’s Concert — noted succinctly: “I began 1946 with the first New Year’s Concert in peacetime.”Krips, stigmatized by the Nazis as a half-Jewish conductor, clearly had no problem with the continuation of the concert, whose last performance had taken place when the mood was apocalyptic. The New Year’s Concert lived on as solely Austrian cultural heritage — with Krauss as conductor until 1954, followed by Willi Boskovsky, the Philharmonic’s concertmaster, until 1979.The violinist Willi Boskovsky conducting the New Year’s Concert in 1977.KPA/United Archives, via Getty ImagesIn 1959, the New Year’s Concert began to develop into an international event with its first television broadcast. The first color broadcast took place a decade later; the first overseas one, in 1972. And since 1980, the New Year’s Concert has been led by alternating, international conductors — a move that reflected its global interest.But the formative phase of the New Year’s Concert — the Nazi era — went unexamined in Austria and abroad until the past decade. Today, those years are extensively documented on the Philharmonic’s website. International music history in particular can make an important contribution to a critical assessment of Austria’s role in National Socialism, World War II and the Holocaust.In 2013, for instance, after much preliminary work, Clemens Hellsberg, then the chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic, initiated a critical documentary on the orchestra and commissioned a comprehensive study by a team of historians — including me — on members of the orchestra who were persecuted, murdered or forced into exile. This was followed in 2014 by the international conference “The Arts of Vienna: A Proud History, A Painful Past.”Those artists whose lives were sidelined by the Third Reich will be memorialized with stones, placed at the sites where they last lived, that Daniel Froschauer, the Philharmonic’s chairman, will present to the public on March 23. In 2023, then, the orchestra aims to broadcast not just a rich tradition, but also a message of peace.Oliver Rathkolb is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna in Austria, and the chairman of the Vienna Institute for Cultural and Contemporary History and the Academic Committee of the House of European History in Brussels.Lydia Rathkolb contributed research. More

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      At New Year’s in Vienna, Everything Old Is New Again

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      The Vienna Philharmonic’s annual performance brings to light memories and traditions, both bright and dark.Every year, classical music fans can count on the Vienna Philharmonic to ring in the New Year with style — whether they are among the exclusive crowd that attends in person or one of the millions of viewers who tune in from over 90 countries.The New Year’s Concert at the Musikverein, the concert hall that is the orchestra’s home in Vienna, took place on television and online in 2021 because of pandemic restrictions. For 2022, it returns live and will also be made available as a web stream on medici.tv. Daniel Barenboim conducts for the third time.The program, consisting primarily of dance numbers by the Strauss dynasty, creates a festive atmosphere. But if the waltz rhythms are intoxicating, the numbers are laden with layers of history.“Every work is like a microcosm,” said the Philharmonic’s chairman, Daniel Froschauer, of the period in the mid-19th century when this music emerged. “Austria was increasingly losing political power. The monarchy was in this sense dying away. This melancholy or yearning for the past comes strongly to the fore.”The universality of these emotions, he said, is part of the annual concert’s “recipe for success.”“Everyone carries a longing for something in the past — childhood, a homeland, a love. This music speaks to everyone.”For Mr. Barenboim, the orchestra brings a “seriousness” to the works, which he considers “one of the most wonderful things about conducting them.”“You would think that they know the style and take it lightheartedly,” he said, but that is not the case. “Not at all,” he added, noting that there is deep concentration during rehearsals.The conductor Daniel Barenboim.Jörg Carstensen/picture alliance, via Getty ImagesAt the same time, Mr. Barenboim said, certain turns such as the delay on the third beat of a Viennese waltz are “so deeply installed” that “you don’t really need to talk about them” because they are “deep in the culture.”Such music, he said, “requires quite a lot of freedom” and “it is dangerous to either overdo or underdo it.”Each year’s program is carefully designed by Mr. Froschauer and the general manager Michael Bladerer in collaboration with the conductor. Mr. Barenboim chose to include the Josef Strauss waltz “Sphärenklänge,” which he called “one of my favorite pieces of music in any context,” and the overture of the Johann Strauss Jr. operetta “Die Fledermaus.”Mr. Barenboim said the process was collaborative and comfortable. “They give you the chance to suggest works that you would like to do, and they tell you some pieces that they would like you to do.”Together with the orchestra’s four archivists, Mr. Froschauer and Mr. Bladerer also undertake research about the music’s historic context. Many of the works’ titles reflect everyday events or daily politics at the time.Both the “Phoenix March” by Josef Strauss, which opens the program this year, and the Johann Strauss waltz “Phoenix Wings” are named for a company that manufactured carriages. The march was first performed in 1861 at a concert and garden fair to mark the opening of a new park in Vienna.Josef Strauss, whose “Phoenix March” will open the New Year’s Concert this year.DeAgostini/Getty Images“All these works have a connection to something that happened in Vienna,” Mr. Froschauer said.The Johann Strauss waltz “Morning Papers,” meanwhile, was composed in the 1860s for a journalists’ association, Concordia. The “Champagne Polka” (also by Johann Strauss Jr.) that enters in the second half of the 2022 program was written in 1858 upon the appointment of the diplomat Karl Ludwig von Bruck Jr. to St. Petersburg.The coming program features two works by Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., who both performed as a violinist and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the late 19th century. The character piece “Heinzelmännchen” will be featured for the first time in the history of the concert.Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. not only played violin in the Vienna Philharmonic in the late 19th century but also conducted the orchestra.Imagno/Getty ImagesMr. Froschauer also said he considered it important to include Eduard Strauss, the youngest son of Johann Strauss, with two polkas. Several members Eduard conducted in the Strauss Capelle Vienna, the orchestra founded by his father, would go on to become members of the Vienna Philharmonic.It was not until 1873, however, that the orchestra warmed up to the popular dance style of the Strauss’. The first program of exclusively Strauss works took place in 1925, under the baton of Franz Schalk.The tradition of performing works from this canon for the new year, meanwhile, began in the early months of World War II. A concert of works from the Strauss dynasty on Dec. 31, 1939, served as a fund-raiser for a program of the Nazi Party.Despite their association with the “darkest chapter” in Austrian history and that of the Philharmonic, these waltzes and polkas have also lived on as symbols of Viennese charm.The televised version of the upcoming concert will feature a dance interlude of the Lipizzaner horses, a breed that has been trained since the days of the Hapsburg Empire to execute jumps and choreographed steps.The Musikverein circa 1870.Oprawil/Imagno, via Getty ImagesMr. Froschauer explained the need to juxtapose different kinds of dance numbers — from a classic waltz such as “Morgenblätter,” to the fast polka “Kleine Chronik,” to the chorale-inflected waltz “Nachtschwärmer” of Carl Michael Ziehrer, which will have its premiere at a New Year’s Concert. “We try to keep things interesting for the orchestra,” he said.That also includes bringing in a different conductor every year. A maestro such as Mr. Barenboim, who celebrates his 80th birthday next year, enjoys a relationship based on not only years of artistic partnership but also mutual friendship.“When I’m with them, I feel part of them,” he said. “And I feel they are part of me — knowing very well that in a few days’ time, somebody else will be in a similar situation.”Mr. Barenboim noted that because the self-governed orchestra operates without a general music director, “they have a sense of responsibility. And of historical significance. Therefore, they can treat the guest conductors in a spirit of admiration, knowing that nobody will get jealous about his colleagues.”Mr. Froschauer called the New Year’s Concert “a sign of hope and love” — “that the whole world is a concert hall, that everyone can listen to the concert together.”“It is something reassuring,” Mr. Bladerer added.“Everyone knows they can turn on the television on the first [of January] and hear this music. That would also be important during a pandemic, in this difficult time.” More