Resistance Movement

In Austria, where they lavish more money and concern on opera than on foreign affairs, the directorship of the venerable Vienna State Opera is a post of sacred national trust. Its incumbent inherits Vienna's 300-year operatic tradition, directing one of the longest and best-quality seasons in the world. In return, he may receive up to $30,000 a year, plus a liberal expense account, an apartment, a chauffeur-driven car and the run of Vienna's famed Sacher Hotel--free room, meals and entertaining. With the job vacant since the death four months ago of Director Egon Hilbert, it might be thought that opera administrators and conductors the world over would be clamoring for it--ja?

Nein. Not only are qualified candidates not applying; Vienna has not even been able to press anybody into service. Metropolitan Opera General

Manager Rudolf Bing turned it down, even after Austrian Chancellor Josef Klaus personally urged him to accept. The New York Philharmonic's Leonard Bernstein and Cleveland's George Szell were approached, but said no thanks. The Hamburg Opera's Rolf Liebermann declined an offer, and feelers were rejected by former Edinburgh Festival Director Lord Harewood and the West Berlin Opera's Egon Seetehlner.

Sobering Record. What makes Vienna so resistible? Doubtless, the fact that prospective directors are only too familiar with the job. They realize that inside, they would have to wrestle with stultifying traditionalism, intrigues, archaic business practices that date back to the time of Emperor Franz Josef, entrenched labor unions, and a recalcitrant Vienna Philharmonic. Outside, there is a formidable battery of critics, a musically conservative but demanding public, and an unpredictable Parliament that holds the purse strings.

If all that isn't daunting enough, a glance back over the record of previous directors would sober the most sanguine candidate. In 1964, Herbert von Karajan quit in a huff over "bureaucratic interference." Karl Boehm was virtually booed out of the job in 1956. The strain of it all gave Herbert Strohm a nervous breakdown in 1941. As fine a conductor as Felix Weingartner lasted only 20 months in 1935-36--and that was his second fling at the job. Even the demonic Gustav Mahler, who gave the house a decade of discipline and creativity from 1897 to 1907, left with his health broken by the fierce battles he had been forced to wage.

Vienna's predicament was summed up last week by a local critic, who said that the opera needs a gifted director "who is tough, courageous, and does not belong to any of the Vienna cliques." In short, the kind of director that the city has been hounding out of office for nearly a century.

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