Last night we went to see Britten's "Billy Budd" at the Vienna Staatsoper. The cast and music were great, but the design and production were lousy. Simon Keenlyside was a very attractive (and beautiful-sounding) Billy Budd, James Morris (Wotan in the Met's Ring) was Claggart, and Michael Roider was an excellent Captain Vere. I think the Captain is the most interesting (and sympathetic) character in a pretty depressing opera. I had heard it on the radio before, but I had never seen it live. I hadn't realized how blatant the homoerotic aspects of the opera are, and I'm amazed by what Britten got away with. At one point Claggart sings about his "depravity" while musing on the beauty of Billy Budd. The audience was much better-dressed than a Met audience, even the teenagers.
Afterward we went to the Palmenhaus, which is a restaurant in a Jugendstil greenhouse with at least 50' ceilings. The food was excellent, but it was SO LOUD.
Oops, I forgot to mention that when we were at the Staatsoper to buy our Billy Budd tickets, we went to Arcadia, the opera CD store on the ground floor. I bought Malcom McLaren's "Fans" album. It seemed appopriate.
We went to see the Vienna Secession building this morning and saw a beautiful work by Gustav Klimt called the Beethoven Frieze. It's a visual interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Klimt has never been one of my favorite artists of that era -- I'm more partial to Egon Schiele -- but this was fabulous. In the shop you could buy a snowglobe with the building in it.
Next we visited the Academy of Fine Arts to see the Bosch Last Judgement Tryptich, and then went on to the Imperial Apartments at the Hofburg. I don't normally do so much museum stuff on vacation, but there are so many important works here that I would never see in NYC. After lunch we saw the Imperial Apartments in the Hofburg. We had drinks afterward at Halle, a beautiful cafe/restaurant at the Kunsthalle filled with attractive people (including the waiters). We also walked around the new MQ (Museum Quartier), a collection of buildings near the Hofburg being changed into spaces to be used for temporary contemporary art projects.
We had dinner again tonight at Neu Wien -- this time for me to have my first Wiener Schitzel in Vienna. It's a really great restaurant, with slightly nouvelle cuisine, good wines and service, and a really attractive space.
All of the public squares and parks in Vienna have statues of famous artists who spent time in Vienna -- composers, writers, poets, etc. New York should really do the same.
