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      At the Vienna State Opera, the Curtain Is an Art Exhibition

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      The “Safety Curtain” series at the Vienna State Opera has put artwork from all over the world in front of audiences since 1998.The Vienna State Opera is not exactly a go-to place for cutting-edge contemporary art: Inaugurated a century and a half ago, it is housed in an ornate edifice with gilded and velvet interiors.Yet every year since 1998, a contemporary artist has been commissioned to deliver a design for the safety curtain that about 600,000 operagoers gaze at before performances and during intervals all season long — for eight or nine months. More than two dozen artists have designed 176-square-meter (nearly 1,900-square-foot) images for the opera house and produced safety curtains that are nothing like what operagoers see elsewhere.Kara Walker, who was the inaugural artist in 1998, delivered a curtain featuring her signature silhouettes of African American figures. Jeff Koons adorned one with toy monkeys and cartoon characters.And Cerith Wyn Evans treated the public to a brief text (in German) that invited operagoers to “imagine a situation that, in all likelihood, you’ve never been in.”The text began: “Permit yourself to drift from what you are reading at this very moment into another situation, another way of acting within the historical and psychic geographies in which the event of your own reading is here and now taking place.”The Vienna State Opera in January.Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesThis season, the Chinese-born multimedia artist Cao Fei is showing a female avatar — a dystopian, pale-white head so imposing that signs have been put up all over the opera house to alert spectators to its presence.The “Safety Curtain” series was started by Museum in Progress, a nonprofit established in 1990 by an Austrian couple: the curator Kathrin Messner and the artist and curator Josef Ortner. Their mission was to showcase contemporary art in unexpected places to audiences that might otherwise not engage with it. In more than three decades, Museum in Progress has displayed contemporary art in the pages of newspapers and magazines, on television, on billboards and building facades, and in concert and performance halls.“The core idea of Museum in Progress is really simple: It’s about developing new presentation formats for contemporary art,” said Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl, managing director of the organization.He said it was necessary to present the public with “really high-class art,” adding that although Austrian museums and cultural institutions do put on exhibitions regularly, they are aimed at attracting crowds. “We feel it’s really important not to popularize, not to choose artists whom everybody would like,” he said.The contemporary safety curtains are not just ornamental: They are placed over a curtain with a dark past. That curtain was designed by Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger, a Vienna-educated artist who went on to become hugely successful in wartime. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933; produced murals for Vienna City Hall showing young Nazi supporters in brown shirts waving swastika flags; and was awarded the title of professor by Hitler himself.The artist Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger in 1955.Votava/Brandstaetter via Getty ImagesEisenmenger’s career continued after World War II. When the Vienna State Opera — which had been heavily damaged by bombings — reopened in 1955 after a major redevelopment, Eisenmenger was selected to design its safety curtain. And that curtain, with a depiction of Orpheus and Eurydice, was never questioned until the mid-’90s, when the opera house’s director at the time suggested that it should be taken down because of Eisenmenger’s Nazi past — and met with strong opposition in public opinion and the media. In 1997, Museum in Progress stepped in to propose the “Safety Curtain” project.Despite its troubled history, the original safety curtain, which can still be seen outside of the opera season, seems to remain popular with some Austrians. Every time the Vienna State Opera gets a new director, he receives “lots and lots of letters trying to convince him” to stop the contemporary-art project, Mr. Mühlemann Hartl said. In 2010, a far-right politician even raised the question in Parliament, he added.The contemporary “Safety Curtain” project has nonetheless managed to continue for 24 years, as it is well liked overall, and every year’s design gets abundant news coverage in Austria.Artists are chosen by a jury of curators, currently composed of Daniel Birnbaum, artistic director of Acute Art (a London-based digital art platform); Bice Curiger, artistic director of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles, France; and Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London.The process of choosing the winning artist is “incredibly fast,” Ms. Curiger said in an interview. Judges draw up a long list and rank each artist based on whether they can “come up with a good idea” that will work for an opera house and speaks to 21st-century audiences.“We want to be contemporary,” she said. “We don’t want to just have nice decorative things.”Ms. Curiger noted that the jury felt “a responsibility,” because the Vienna State Opera’s staff and audience “have to live with a work, which is really big, for a whole year.”Hans Ulrich Obrist, a member of the jury that chooses the artist for each new safety curtain, speaking in front of Carrie Mae Weems’ design for the 2020-21 edition, which featured an image of Mary J. Blige.Andreas Scheiblecker/Museum in ProgressFor the 2020-21 season, the chosen talent was the American artist Carrie Mae Weems. She presented a large photographic image of the singer Mary J. Blige — a version of which had appeared in W Magazine — that showed her wearing a crown and sitting at a table covered with flowers, fruit, glassware and an elaborate tablecloth that were reminiscent of an old-master painting.“Mary is a very careful woman, concerned about how Black women are experienced and understood, and what they look like,” Ms. Weems said of the image in a video interview in 2020 with Mr. Obrist. “So it was perfect.”The project costs 80,000 euros (about $85,000) a year to fund, according to Mr. Mühlemann Hartl, a modest amount by the standards of Western cultural fund-raising. Yet he said Museum in Progress still had difficulty raising the money every year, because in Austria, individual and corporate cultural philanthropy were not very developed.In a recent interview, Mr. Obrist described the project as “an interesting oxymoron,” because in a house where most of the music played is not from the 21st or even from the 20th century, the artists are “bringing something extremely contemporary in relationship to a work from the past.”He said he would love to see the initiative spread to other opera houses around the world, as was the intention of the couple who conceived it.“It’s almost like a model that they created,” he said. 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

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      Using a Pandemic Break to Tackle Bruckner

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      The Vienna Philharmonic records symphonies by Anton Bruckner, a 19th-century composer, whose history with the orchestra is complicated.When the pandemic upended its plans to tour European cathedrals playing symphonies by Anton Bruckner, the Vienna Philharmonic hit the reset button.With more time than ever at home, the orchestra immersed itself in recording the works under the conductor Christian Thielemann, exploring different versions of the scores and digging into the composer’s history with the philharmonic.Symphony No. 3, No. 4 and No. 8 have already been released on the label Sony Classical. A full symphonic cycle will be rolled out both on audio and on DVD, by the classical music production company Unitel, in time for the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 2024.The orchestra’s general manager, Michael Bladerer, said the project allowed the musicians not just “to maintain also but improve their form” during months of lockdown when live concerts were prohibited but the orchestra was allowed to rehearse and record.“The conditions were optimal,” Mr. Bladerer said. “We could concentrate on the recordings, doing a three-hour sitting every day and working calmly.”After listening to a playback of the First Symphony, Daniel Froschauer, the philharmonic’s chairman, concluded that “the quality is simply the best, given that we had the time. The musicians were all well rested. It was the one positive experience during corona.”For the first time, thanks to periods of curtailed travel during the pandemic, the orchestra is performing not only the nine symphonies but also the Symphony in D minor — written between the first and second but never assigned an opus number — and the “Study” Symphony, which is sometimes known as No. 00.Mr. Bladerer, who happens to be a direct descendant of Bruckner through his great-grandmother, called it a “highly interesting” process to learn more about the composer’s origins through this “Nullte” or “Nullified” Symphony: “One hears a bit of [Wagner’s] ‘Lohengrin,’ Schumann, Weber,” he said. “But it is totally Bruckner.”Mr. Froschauer added that “the first day of recording was incredible”: “We were playing a work that the conductor had never led — that our orchestra had never played — by a composer named Anton Bruckner. And nevertheless I have to say that we grew together quickly.”According to Mr. Bladerer, the composer withdrew Symphony No. 00 from his catalog only after the German conductor and composer Felix Otto Dessoff, who worked with the philharmonic, called it “a symphony without a main theme.”In the case of the Second Symphony, Bruckner wanted to dedicate it to the Vienna Philharmonic. But the orchestra never even responded.“That offers a view into how one treated Bruckner at the time,” Mr. Froschauer said. “One didn’t take him seriously in Viennese [high] society,” Mr. Bladerer added. “He spoke a heavy upper Austrian dialect and moved clumsily in these circles.”The Third Symphony, dedicated to Wagner, also has a problematic history: The philharmonic rejected the work three times. At the premiere of a revised version, in 1877, audience members left the Musikverein during the finale. And the influential critic Eduard Hanslick, once a supporter of Bruckner, wrote a scathing review.For the recently released recording, Mr. Thielemann chose to conduct this version (the second of three). Mr. Bladerer said that while the first edition has very long quotes from Wagner’s music, the last contains such substantial cuts that they affect the overall form.Mr. Bladerer summed up the power of Bruckner by quoting the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who likened the composer to “a rock who fell on earth from the moon.”In other words, Mr. Bladerer explained, “after hearing a couple of measures, one knows that it’s Bruckner.” More