If you choose to read this, do so after a couple of cocktails on a night when you've found nothing worth watching on television, or read all of your magazines or books and have nothing better to do...
The venue was described as a stately palace. In fact, the Palais Auersburg was the winter residence of Prince Josef of Saxe-Hildburghausen in the mid-1700's. The prince had established apartments to serve as a personal concert hall for house
guests and music students. It had obviously gone through a few hands since
then, looking a bit tired, with layers of paint visible on the walls and
ceilings. Now owned by an old European family, the state apartments are still
used for their original purpose.
I’m a sucker for a young student trying to make tuition
money working odd jobs. Dressing in a Mozart-period costume selling tickets to
a Mozart concert in the middle of a crowded plaza full of tourists is an odd
job. We were walking across the Michaelerplatz in Vienna when he stepped in front of us and directed me to look at his photo-book of period dressed dancers and singers and a
period dressed chamber orchestra set on an elegant stage in what appeared to be
a period dance hall in a period furnished palace somewhere. “Three classes of
only a few seats still available for tonight’s performance,” he said. I looked
to Bonnie for an escape clause, but she was no help.
“Well, we’d have to change our plans for tonight,” I said,
knowing full well we had no plans, hoping Bonnie would play along.
“How about tomorrow night,” he responded. “If tomorrow
night, I could give you the middle class seats for the lowest class price.”
Hmmmm. A discount. Now he’s cleverly appealing to my Dutch
instincts.
“Could we get the middle class seats for the price of lower
class seats tonight,” asked my darling wife, knowing full well I’d have trouble
turning down that kind of deal?
“Of course, we can,” says the young student, “so two tickets
for tonight it is, then.”.
I consider myself a pretty sophisticated traveler, able to spot and avoid touristy traps. However, after I bought the two middle class tickets for the 15%
lower class price, I wondered if I'd lost my touch. Three middle aged fellow hawkers were working the crowd around us, suggesting perhaps my assumption about his status of starving student was flawed and had blinded me into that touristy trap.
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| Slightly Exaggerated Promotional Materials |
After a mandatory coat check (for the one Euro revenue?), we
were escorted upstairs to a relatively small and rectangular hall. Chairs were
aligned in an elongated C shape, with first class chairs in the center front section,
our middle class chairs five rows directly behind them, and the low class
chairs off to the sides. All the chairs were of the same design, looking like
and about as comfortable as those old kitchen chairs of the 1950’s – not ideal
for those of us with marginal padding on our behinds.
As the start time of 6:30 approached, the gentleman who took
our tickets at the entrance, dressed in an average business suit with tie,
still with his paper name tag attached to his lapel, walked up on the stage. More than half of the available 400 seats remained empty. After a long German
language introduction, he switched to English.
“ Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this most unique
experience of Mozart and Strauss, in which you will be entertained by our
prestigious chamber orchestra, joined by opera singers and dancers. You may
notice a number of seats are vacant. Two tour groups from the Danube river boats
were to have joined us, but were unavoidably detained, so you will have a
private concert just for you.”
Then he said something about a television crew setting up
for a special concert later that night or the next day.
“The special concert will inaugurate the latest CD by our
chamber orchestra. You are very much in luck because at the end of our concert
for you, our lead violinist will play the famous Stradivarius violin, one of
the very few known to be in existence in all of Europe.”
“Now please welcome our Chamber Orchestra, under the
leadership of it’s lead violinist, Stanislava Svirac.”
Eight chamber members filed out of a side door and on to the
stage, which reminded me of the kind of stage they used to construct for a
concert in junior high school. Platforms on fold-up legs strung together to
hold the three violins, one viola, one cello, a bass, and a flute. The piano was
set off to the side of the stage. Stanislava was clearly in charge. She
consulted with each member as they sat, and suggested a few work on their
tuning. Then she turned to the audience with a disciplined and practiced smile
with eyes that said, “applause, please…now!” The audience obeyed.
She turned to the Cello player, Olga, who wore what seemed
to be a sincere but permanent smile. She turned to the piano player behind her,
who plunked on a single key. Olga tuned to the same key until Svetlana seemed
satisfied. They spoke together for a bit. I wondered if they were discussing
the frustration of the traffic coming in to work this day. Then Stanislava spoke with the violist in the
same manner, still with a stern face. Then she turned to the tall flautist,
Alan, with his long blond ponytail located at the end of the line, but with a
softer face, as though they might have a more intimate relationship. Stanislava
did not seem to be in a hurry. All of these interactions ignited my
imagination. I started to look at each member of the orchestra and their
interactions with a script starting to form in my mind. Before they even started, my imagination
created the following conversation between members in their dressing room
following the concert.
Stanislava: “Igor,
where on earth did you come up with that story about the missing boat people?”
Igor: “Well I had to
come up with something other than the fact that our street salesmen didn’t meet
their quota’s again today. With all the tourists in town there is no excuse.
Especially since they’ve been giving away middle class tickets for lower class
prices. They’re getting lazy. We need to press them harder.”
Stanslava: “You tell
them if they don’t improve, they will need to answer to me. I’ll bite their
heads off!”
It also occurred to me that there were only eight chamber
members, not the twelve or more that I saw in the pictures. Stanislava was
dramatic in her role, with flourishes and sweeping gestures. As her gaze settled on one or the other of
her concert mates, they would quickly smile and nod, returning to their plain
face when she turned back toward the audience.
As they played, Victor on the bass was working hard to show
a connection with the violist and the cellist, and occasionally with the
pianist. His rehearsed smile would break out of nowhere, as if to share some
kind of inside joke.
Stanislava: “You all need to smile more. There wasn’t
nearly the camaraderie we need in front of the audience. You violins, you need to
watch how Victor mixes it up with Olga. ”
Marcelo: “Why do you
need to always look at me. I just want to concentrate on my violin. Please
spend more time on the others.”
Stanislava: “Marcelo, careful,
or I bite your head off!!”
Between each number (do you call them numbers?), Stanislava
would flip through pages in her music as if trying to decide what to play next.
Once she landed on the page of her choice, she would turn to the orchestra, who
would then go in search of the same page. Wasn’t this all rehearsed, or was it
impromptu, we wondered?
After a couple of instrumentals two singers, one tenor and a soprano, came out
of the audience the dressed in street clothes like the rest of us . Cute, I thought,
an opera that might be understood by the tourists in the audience – which it
appeared we all were. Alas, we couldn’t understand a word. We would see them
again later in the performance, in real costume, in more traditional operatic
roles.
Two dancers also had their shticks. For the first
performance, they mixed ballet with what looked like a country ho-down. Two
dancers and two singers – not quite the vast cast shown in the pictures.
Garlinda: “ Where on earth were Franz and Gertrude? Did
they call in sick again? Dimitri and I had to carry the whole night by
ourselves. They can’t keep doing that!”
Russi: “Well, you only
had to sing. Monika and I had to dance all four roles by ourselves, since Petre
and Olli were missing, too. We should be paid double for that.”
Stanislava: “Enough! Or I bite your head off!”
Within thirty minutes, just as they were getting into a groove
and we were getting comfortable with the program, a “pause,” or intermission
was declared. Beverages were available just outside the hall, along with CD’s,
books and pictures.
The second half, another 30 minutes, was lighter than the
first, with some audience participation. My imagination had been in overdrive. The
reality was that the music quality and performances were very good, and indeed
the cast members were having some fun. They provided just the right mixture of
light hearted humor and a flavor of what such a concert might have been like
back in the time of Mozart. It may have been the “B” team for the organization
that puts on these concerts twice or more times a day every day of the week,
but the troupe is well known and respected. We never did see the Stradivarius, however,
and it ended well short of the one and a half hours suggested by our student
salesman. The lines of emptying tour buses unloading the next audience also suggested the boat-people story might have been real.
Part of the fun of the evening, however, was the exercise of
my cynical imagination. Bonnie even joined in on occasion, and didn't protest as I chuckled randomly during the concert.
Interestingly, for the rest of our visit and throughout our walks around old Vienna, we kept running into guys dressed in
period dress with photo-books tucked under their arms.
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