Revival

In a contest for the title of the world's greatest opera house, Vienna would probably lose to Milan's La Scala, and might have strong competition from New York's Metropolitan. But Vienna is the heart of Operaland, not only because it was an artistic home to generations of music's greats from Mozart to Richard Strauss, not only because it has devoutly performed opera for more than 300 years through occupation, war and famine, but because in a sense, all Vienna is an opera stage. The baroque palaces no longer signify military power or proud aristocracy --they look like sets waiting for lights and music. The Viennese feel that they have lost just about everything except their musical tradition, and that is why last week's reopening of Vienna's State Opera House had the city in a whirl of emotion.

Somehow the emotion spread to people elsewhere who care about music. Local newspapers were disappointed that Queen Elizabeth, Greta Garbo and Aly Khan were not on hand, but they took comfort from the presence of Secretary of State Dulles, Composer Dmitry Shostakovich, Conductor Bruno Walter, .Industrialists Henry Ford II and Harvey S. Firestone Jr. Above all. the city which can name no less than 28 houses in which Beethoven lived, gloried in the opening-night work: Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, which had had its premiere exactly 150 years before-in occupied Vienna (at that time the occupying armies were Napoleon's).

Special Mellowness. For months before last week's opening, Vienna had been under a kind of siege. The intersection at the brightly refurbished opera building

(TIME, June 13) had been fitted with an underpass and Vienna's first escalators, which contributed their share of excitement (INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE WITH ESCALATORS AND FiDELio headlined one Vienna tabloid). Nearby streets sprouted new arc lights and fresh flowers. Not in years had Vienna's women had a similar occasion for dressing up; archducal and bourgeois jewelry alike came out of hock or hiding. Demel's, Vienna's calorie-proud confectioner, combined Austria's two major treasures--music and food--in an exhibition of sugar figurines representing notable Vienna opera greats, e.g., Sopranos Maria Jeritza, Lotte Lehmann, Vera Schwarz.

Vienna's ancient operatic tradition is less sugary than Demel's. Not since the

Magic Flute (1791) has Vienna witnessed the premiere of a major opera by an Austrian composer, but under such directors as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Clemens Kraus, it provided a unique climate for performance, fusing Italian fire, Teutonic thunder and Slavic melancholy into a mellowness all its own. For years, Vienna considered itself Richard Wagner's second Bayreuth; it took Bizet's Carmen and Massenet's Manon to its heart after Paris had cold-shouldered them.

Opera stars seemed personal friends--or foes--of everyone in town. Once, when Contralto Maria Olszewska spat upon Maria Jeritza during a performance of Wagner's Die Walkuere, partisans were close to rioting in cafes all over Vienna. Even while the war-gutted opera house was being slowly rebuilt during the past decade, Vienna managed to put on 600 opera performances a year in other houses (the Met stages about 200, including tours). And the Vienna telephone company offers each day's opera bill, with recorded excerpts.

Special Aptness. On opening night last week, some 30,000 Viennese crowded against police lines around the opera, listening to Fidelia through loudspeakers. Inside, the work's gloomy sets and stern plot seemed hardly a match for the festive occasion, but the audience cheered the triumphant aptness of its subject: freedom. Of the stars, Bass-Baritone Paul Schoeffler as Don Pizarro was a standout; Soprano Martha Moedl as Leonore was more effective dramatically than vocally. The orchestra, conducted by Opera Director Karl Boehm, won six salvos of applause after it played the famous Leonore Overture No. 3.

When it was all over, Viennese were sure they had staged the musical event of the year.

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