Opera in Vienna - Mozart, Nicolai, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev

Not content with being the most important city in the history of western music, Vienna continues to nurture an exceptionally active cultural life of a high level of excellence. Music and opera are cherished by government and citizens in happy concord perhaps more than anywhere else in the world. 

In common with many great cities, Vienna boasts three major opera houses, and our tour takes in all of them. The Staatsoper, Musiktheater an der Wien and Volksoper all have their own distinctive aesthetics and these days are all under dynamic leaderships – witness their vibrant programming.

A special highlight this season will be the opportunity to visit the Musiktheater an der Wien again, after a few years’ closure for renovation. Formerly known as the Theater an der Wien, it occupies a special place in Viennese music history and is the site of many operatic premieres, from Salieri’s last opera onwards. Beethoven lived in rooms at the theatre for a period and many of his works were first heard there, including the first version of his great opera Fidelio. Subsequent premieres there included Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus and The Gypsy Baron, and Lehár’s The Merry Widow.

It’s possible to see Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery (1946) as the Soviet composer’s answer to such operettas. A lighter-hearted work than most of Prokofiev’s operatic output– and said to have been Stalin’s favourite opera – it also draws on an unlikely source for a composer in Stalin’s Russia, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Duenna. Its frothy antics are set (originally, anyway) in 18th-century Seville.

That, of course, is also the setting of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, another opera premiered in Vienna, at the Burgtheater in 1786. These days, the Burgtheater – still a magnificent presence in Vienna – is a drama theatre, so our performance takes place in the venerable Staatsoper, one of the greatest opera houses of the world. The production is by the leading Australian (Berlin-based) director Barrie Kosky.

The Bulgarian star soprano Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role in the Staatsoper’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, the composer’s final opera, which shared a long double bill with his ballet The Nutcracker at its premiere in 1892. Written to a libretto by the composer’s brother Modest Tchaikovsky, the opera tells a symbolic tale of its heroine’s blindness and eventual wonderment as light enters her world.

Best remembered today for its overture, and premiered in 1849 just two months before its composer’s death, Otto Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, drawn of course from Shakespeare) is an appealing rarity and well worth catching on our visit to the Volksoper. 

All will be introduced during the daily session of talks and discussions. There are also guided tours on foot to a choice selection of Vienna’s art, architecture and musical heritage, as well as plenty of free time for rest, recuperation and preparation for the next performance.