Comments on: Vienna’s New Year’s Concert: Using Johann Strauss As A PR-Tool For Tourism

By: Kevin Clarke

Kevin Clarke — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 14:07:16 +0000

Dear Michael, I could not agree more with you about the ‘authenticity of spirit,’ mostly absent from modern day operetta performances. But the idea that the way to save the genre is giving it the opera treatment, i.e. sing the music with classically trained opera voices and not worry about anything (!) else, kills any ‘authenticity of performance.’ Operetta was always about individuality. Max Raabe and Ute Lemper are highly individual singers, who bring their own version of a historic style to the music they sing. They – or anyone else – do not have to copy Tauber and Massary, but they obviously learned from historic predecessors. And adapted their role models for their own needs. There are countless ways that can be done, for Viennese music as well as for Offenbach or Parisian opéra bouffe. Casting Felicity Lott as Helena (or any other modern-day opera singer in any other Offenbach role, from Vert-Vert to Fantasio etc.) and neglecting the grotesque and over-the-top original aura of these shows makes them incredibly boring, in my view. Because I believe the stories told in these shows can still resonate with us today. Offenbach was not the only genius working in operetta, many of his librettists were genial too. Their mad-cap stories deserve more appreciation, and they need to be acted out accordingly, which is not just about singing the score as accurately as possible. (For me, that’s one of the big problems with the various Opera Rara discs.) Independent of which stylistic approach one prefers, Korngold’s or anyone elses, there is room for many options. Yet, looking at most new operetta releases and performances, there are very few options on offer there, rather an endless repeat of the same out of date classic approach. In a way, this applies to the Strauss music of the New Year’s Concert too. Johann Strauss was so much more radical and interesting than Korngold and Jansons would make you believe. (And Adele had her very good reasons to sign up to the Korngold operetta concept from 1923 onwards. Widows are not the supreme judges of how to play theirs dead husband’s music, as Einzi, Vera & Cosima have proven.)

By: Michael Haas

Michael Haas — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 20:03:45 +0000

Well. . . .spare us from ‘authentic’ operetta, if you mean doing to light music what the early music movement did to Haydn, Mozart, Brahms and even Sibelius. Music is timeless, whereas social and political satire is not. Operetta was primarily a vehicle for the latter using the resources of the former. The best operettas have music that still resonates today, while offering a picture of a social and political milieu that is no longer recognisable. Authenticity thus needs re-defining when it comes to light music. How do you do it? Is Max Raabe with his imitation Curt Bois the way to go, or Ute Lemper with her Broadway take on Mahagonny songs? Where do we find the crooning singers who can act with their voices and make the musical and linguistic jokes both current and funny? Serious music decided that ‘authenticity’ entailed skimming off ‘the fat’ from 19th century traditions, with no clear idea of how much ‘fat’ Bach and Mozart actually appreciated. Light music and operetta is more like journalism: it’s bound by location and era. The only way to make it truly ‘authentic’ is to up-date it so that the risqué of Parisian/Viennese 19th century Offenbach and Strauss is still risqué today in Berlin or Tucson. Korngold and Reinhardt tried it with some success and proved that this might be the way to make these works succeed – and they did so with the blessing of Adele Strauss. What operetta therefore needs is an ‘authenticity of spirit’ rather than an ‘authenticity of performance’. Unlike the first performers of Bach and Mozart, we KNOW what Richard Tauber, or Fritzi Massary sounded like, so trying to sound like Tauber or Massary only results in someone sounding like someone imitating Tauber and Massary. It’s the equivalent of a tableau vivant and doesn’t help the cause of Paul Abraham or Oscar Strauss – let along Leo Fall one bit.
Regarding the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert: I missed it and in any event, pay it little heed. Once Austria lost its port, its agriculture and its industry – in other words, once it lost its Empire, Kitsch was the only commodity it could still sell to the outside world. It’s not as if Austrians aren’t totally unaware of their lack of existential options: just read Thomas Bernhard or even Robert Musil, not to mention writers like Anton Kuh or Karl Kraus. But your real gripe – I suspect – is that Strauss is too easily co-opted into the kitischification of Austrian self-representation. But then again, so are Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms (the last two not even Austrian – but no matter. . . ) Not to mention the ghastly von Trapps who were probably more Austro-fascist than anti-Hitler before Rogers and Hammerstein turned them into a more powerful resistance movement than the Scholl siblings. Nazis and Kitsch are two unavoidable heffalump traps that most non-Austrian observers – both critical and non-critical – fall into. Look deeper! Hitler gave Germany the Autobahn and he gave Austria the New Year’s Concert. Germany fetishizes its Autobahnen virtually free of speed limits and environmental responsibilities, while Austria does the same with its musical past. The tragedy is that there is much to Austria’s musical past that is Kitsch-resistant and remains unfamiliar as a result. Zum Beispiel: I would love to hear Franz Schreker’s Festwalzer one day in the New Year’s Day Concert with its kick-in-the-teeth take on the Kaiserhymne written for Franz Joseph’s 1908 jubilee celebrations. But I suspect Germany will impose speed limits on its motorways first. . . .

By: Dario

Dario — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 19:14:19 +0000

I completely agree! Everything is becoming consumeristic. How many times do we need to hear Emperor Waltz? Boring!