Opera Chic

Linz in Music, City of Bruckner

While nights were spent at Linz’s new Musiktheater Volksgarten, we filled the days tracing Anton Bruckner's footsteps across the Danube. Mornings started at Brandl on Landstrasse for delicious brioche, afternoons were at the city's open, sunny fields, punctuated by retail/supermarket therapy at Billa and Bipa. And lots of Celibidache Bruckner on the iPod.

We visited St. Florian's Baroque Augustine Monastery, inhabited since 1071, now home to the St. Florian Boys Choir, a firefighter museum, Albrecht Altdorfer saturated oils, an antique library, the church where Bruckner played the organ and his Viennese deathbed tucked at the end of the Emperor’s thirteen guest chambers.

We hiked to the top of Pöstlingberg, saw the Stadtpfarrkirche where Bruckner was organist, found Danner instrument store and browsed Pirngruber's classical music discs.

(Brandl for brioche)

(Thank you, Billa)

(Linzer Mariendom)

~Trip to St. Florian~

Bruckner's piano and death bed

Bruckner's organ

(OC hiked in Church’s handmade linen slippers – next time she’ll definitely bring kicks)

(Lang Lang on the road to the airport!)

If You Build It, They Will Come: Linz’s New Musiktheater Volksgarten Recap

 

By way of a 30-seat turboprop plane and a prayer from Vienna, OC passed the weekend in Linz to celebrate the opening of London-based architect Terry Pawson’s new opera house, the Musiktheater Volksgarten (also, we were dying for a hit of Upper Austria supermarket therapy,  simpering orchestral elasticity and fresh Danube-filtered air). Besides, after living in Italy, it’s become intuitive to check out the cultural little leaguers – La Scala’s and Opera di Roma’s sweet, neighboring opera houses set on pedestrian-only cobblestones such as the opera theaters in Parma, Bologna and Torino.

Originally intended to park at the Danube, clustered with other city landmarks like the Ars Electronica Center and the Brucknerhaus, Pawson rallied for an accessible, green site as an organic, living space so he turned to the quaint city’s Volksgarten. At the time, it was burdened with problems – a major road cleaved/rendered it desolate, seedy and pedestrian-unfriendly. But the city obliged Pawson and in four years after breaking ground, the road was moved and the green was crowned with his glass, steel, concrete and wood.

(Musiktheater's upstairs reception hall/bar)

The opera house is rooted in egalitarianism; open to the city, for the people, lacking traditional identifiers of politically-misappropriated opera houses -- no central VIP box (at the gala, the Linz mayor sat in the front row), no unwieldy auditorium chandelier, no proscenium arch collage – it’s an austere, modern theater, the best grosser saal tickets maxing-out at 60/70 euro.

Programming’s malleable, a mix of modern dance, traditional opera, operetta and musical theater.  During the opening weekend, we took in a traditional staging of Der Rosenkavalier, Anne Schwanewilms as the Marschallin, Kurt Rydl as Baron Ochs and Dennis Russell Davies on the podium; an energetic, well-acted, Broadway-inspired The Witches of Eastwick in German translation; a water-soaked modern dance to a soundtrack of Monteverdi and Purcell, Campo Amor; Philip Glass’ opera world premiere of Peter Handke’s bleak, post-trauma dystopian play, Spuren Der Verirrten;  and a cabaret-sourced, performance-driven show, Seven in Heaven. La Fura del Baus threw a few replications of a free, one-hour Wagner pastiche, Ein Parsival, exploding fireworks and stampeding puppets at the foot of the opera house's facade, post-twilight.

The state-of-the-art auditorium meets every flex of artistic muscle. There’s a hydraulic-driven orchestra pit, a stage that rotates on different turntables and a backstage that can hold up to eight simultaneous productions. In the auditorium of burnished gold, dark woods and intimate acoustics, enormous, red plush velvet seats have large touch-screen displays that control subtitles.

Now that you’ve heard about our evenings, we’ll soon share the daylight hours…

(The most comfortable opera house seats that have ever touched OC's butt)

(Intermission snacks -- a glass of white wine and a couple raw slices set you back about 5 euro)

(Top ticket price is around 60/70 euros)

(Wet and wild Campo Amor)

(Polish tenor Piotr Beczała sang at the gala)

(Collage of a 1853 Don Carlos staging in the upstairs hallway)

Representing the 4020, or, Live from Linz

 

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*