The Vienna Opera
Evans, Bradley Warren
High on Wagner The Vienna Opera by Marcel Prawy Praeger, $25.00 Marcel Prawy took the Vienna Opera to his heart at an early age and to this day remains one of her most faithful paramours. His...
...Art is the expression of the culture, and the present state of Opera is a revealing index...
...I am going to the Opera.' In my case it was exactly the reverse...
...It is rather a love-hymn from the mellifluous pen of an admirer to an elderly yet ageless goddess, a goddess presiding over the world of opera which today sadly enough, is being depopulated...
...Opera today has become, as Prawy tells us, "the plaything of the producers...
...Slezak didn't miss a breath: "And you tell your Papa that if he had my top C he would only be a tenor too...
...if only we can sustain the Opera...
...He lays about him with a literate broom and catches poor Wieland Wagner at alternate thrusts, together with similar advocates of the "theatre of the mind" who would fain transmogrify opera into vague farce or deformed musical doggerel: "For here, there and everywhere, the public invariably comes out on strike when the noblest instrument of all, the human voice, is used like a kettle drum...
...He is too preoccupied with the tragedy of Fritz Wun-derlich, Gigli's missed top C, the queer accompaniment to Oedipus Rex which saw Jean Cocteau narrating with his sleeves rolled up...
...Prawy is not all amusement and scandal...
...schemes of succession a multitude...
...He is too fond of Maria Jeritza, Ljuba Welitsch, Jan Kiepura, Richard Strauss, Vienna and the counterpoint role he has played with all of them...
...In all this I ride like an out-sized Sancho Panza enthusiastically on the heels of Herr Prawy...
...Knappertsbusch condueted right on during the war as did Furtwangler and Karl Bohm...
...Famous conductors, disguised as workingmen, were often reduced to liberating food, coal and other commodities from nearby trucks to appease their stars but "Remember this-the Vienna Opera does not steal...
...If The Vienna Opera were a book one could all too easily lay on...
...He roars out of prayerful contemplation to assail the emergent "dictatorship of scenic production...
...A boy or girl going on the first date often doesn't like to publicize the fact at home...
...Non-aryan" librettists lurked about the resplendent halls...
...I was so embarrassed because of my eternal visits to the Opera that in the end I used to say 'I've got a date...
...The next day, Lauritz Melchior will discover a young Danish helden-tenor in the suburbs of Chicago who will rise to Wagnerian heights and parachute into his girlfriend's courtyard...
...But the Opera was not violated until reduced to a smoldering heap of nobility by an air raid on 12 March 1945...
...and the Vienna Opera went on...
...of interferences from governmental intendants and reichsmusik-dirigenten a surfeit...
...Prawy weaves his words about and through the glorious and tumultuous life of the historic house, supporting her vibrant story much as Melchior sustained the driving lilt of Flagstad's ectasies, and with as fervid a devotion as Parsifal for Kundry...
...Like any honorable lover, Prawy is quick to defend his chosen from those who would lead her into perversions...
...The Met is in new quarters and John F. Kennedy's memorial (The Vienna Opera House was once called "an architectural 'Konniggratz' ") rises to bosom the stars and to preside over the Potomac (like an architectural "Bay of Pigs...
...Bradley Warren Evans...
...The strength of the book lies in the anecdotes, and the champion of operatic anecdote was the renowned tenor, Leo Slezak...
...Meyerbeer's music no longer employs our imaginations to cement castles in the sky and Jess Thomas is from South Dakota...
...His feeling for her borders on the erotic and the transports of his rapture transcend even the most sluggish prose, in which he writes a good deal too much...
...But Professor Prawy is much too much in love to expend his energies in carp and bile...
...La Scala stands, as does the Festspielhaus Bayreuth...
...He does set to rest the malicious assertion that the disastrous production of Casper's The Aunt Slept precipitated the outbreak of the First World War...
...It remains to be seen, though it is doubtful, whether our culture can convincingly sustain in its art, in the reflection of its essence, the words of Guernemanz in Parsifal...
...The facilities have come a long way from the "Imperial and Royal Opera House by the Karnthner Gate," where Beethoven, Donizetti, Nicolai and Verdi conducted their own works in "The Coziest Opera in the World...
...But the Opera went on, supported by loyal troupes and troops, by a succession of brilliant conductors and directors...
...So what does he or she say...
...Marcel Prawy will probably write his own Liebestod and act it out on the magnificent and the people of Vienna will pay him respects where he took leave of Hilbert and Konetzni...
...1945 was a good year for flaming Valhallas...
...Bernstein's most ardent admirers call him "Lenny," Alfred Piccaver's, "Teddy" ; von Karajan is Herr von Karajan and Prawy takes an almost impish delight in recounting the "Propeller Herb" anecdote...
...Slezak, on one occasion in the midst of an impassioned Lohengrin, saw the famous swan begin prematurely to paddle off the stage, whereupon he turned to the left curtain and yelled to the stage manager, "What time does the next swan leave...
...He flings his caustic barbs at modern composers who often can scarce recognize their own cacophonous creations: "After all, with a divertimento for seven broken chamber pots and one viola this is not so easy...
...He recalls too dearly the assault on a photographer by "Propeller Herb (von Karajan), the Shatterbug Smacker" to be delayed in the progress of his paean by the vagaries of innovative quidnuncs...
...But it is not...
...And Prawy never married because he has yet to find the woman who, upon having the conversation interrupted by the Stretta in II Trovatore, would not switch off the radio...
...Plato, no doubt, had he been a Viennese, would have put a stop to the Opera in anticipation of its being the womb of political intrigues and subversions...
...Hier bist du an geweihtem Ort...
...Internal intrigues there certainly were, a plethora of them...
...The last production before the old house's fiery demise had been Gotterdammerung...
...But it has undergone stern tests before...
...though after a few years of American opera-going I question his qualification "invariably...
...To be sure, from 1938-1945 Die Meistersinger enjoyed an uncommon popularity (Hitler, after all, couldn't have seen it over a hundred times only in Berlin) and Der Fuhrer's favorite opera, D'Albert's Tiefland saw more than its usual number of stagings...
...The Vienna Opera has of course been rebuilt...
...The fact that the Opera consistently tried to keep her skirts unsullied by the petty business of the political world, that she devoted her energies to her art, remains the fountainhead of Prawy's admiration...
...Prawy terms it "an exaggeration...
...Another time Dagmar, daughter of Slezak's rival Erik Schmedes, toddled up to the portly singer and said: "Uncle Leo, Papa says he is an artist, but you are only a tenor...
...And our children will flock to see the young tenor, and they will listen with longing to Little Joseph Schmidt- if only we can get them to read the book...
...Un Ballo in Maschera is no longer the subject of political censorship (neither, unfortunately, is Hair), and it is highly unlikely that folks will ever again work themselves into revolutionary lather over La muette de Portici...
...Or there was the time a group of ballerinas complained to the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand that Opera Director Hans Gregor, a Protestant, had scheduled rehearsals during Holy Week to prevent them from going on a pilgrimage...
...In the Opera House or anywhere else...
Vol. 4 • May 1971 • No. 6
