How do you throw a memorable housewarming party? No, we're not talking about the kind where the disco ball ends up at the bottom of the pool's deep end or you wake up in handcuffs (the sexy kind or the cop kind, choose your own adventure).
What we mean is killer guests (Philip Glass), the hottest band (Bruckner Orchester Linz), a ripping MC (Dennis Russell Davies), a troupe of fire-juggling acrobats (La Fura dels Baus) and fireworks, which is how Landestheater Linz inked itself into Austria's modern cultural legacy earlier tonight at Architekt Terry Pawson's sleek, new theater for the upper Austria city of chrome and steel on the banks of the Danube.
OC's in the city of Bruckner and Mozart's Symphony 36 celebrating the 1200-seat Musiktheater am Volksgarten with its three concert halls -- deceptively intimate, unbashfully egalitarian. At tonight's gala concert, Landestheater Linz flexed its muscle and showed off its killer heels & dizzying curves during two hours of speeches by the theater's biggest cheerleaders & advocates framed by inspiring performances -- Piotr Beczala was on hand for Lehar's Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, capped with an open-air Wagner adaptation, Ein Parzival, by aerialists/fire-breathers/puppeteers La Fura dels Baus.
Our first impressions of the new theater (a lethal weapon of opera, ballet, operetta and musical theater)? She's a -beat- heartbreaker, dream maker, love taker -beat- especially excited for tomorrow night's world premiere of Philip Glass' Spuren Der Verirrten (The Lost), based on Peter Handke's play. *flexes, poses, orbits the moon*