MAHLER AND THE OPERA OF VIENNA
The opera of Vienna before Gustav Mahler's direction
On May 25th 1869, the inauguration of the new opera house
of Vienna, designed by Eduard van der Nüll and August Siccard
von Siccardsburg, was celebrated with a new production of Mozart's
„Don
Juan" (only Mahler introduced the original title of the work in 1905).
A year later, the Kärtnertortheater, which had served as court opera,
was definitely closed down.
The director of the opera in the transitional period was Franz
von Dingelstedt, who was a man of the speaking theater and had exclusively
experiences with stage plays. Nevertheless, he developed a great knack
for managing the Viennese opera and reformed decisively the artistic apparatus
in moving into the new house. He worked himself as stage manager and had
great successes with large-scale productions in Makart's style (for instance
with Gounod's „Romeo and Juliet").
In 1869, he appointed as conductor - „to participate in
the direction of the musical affairs" - Johann von Herbeck (1831-1877),
who made his debut on October 16th with „mignon" by Thomas. After Dingelstedt's
assumption to the direction of the Burgtheater, Herbeck became director
of the court opera in December 1870. The repertoire had his main
emphasis on Mozart and
Wagner came personally twice to Vienna and approved the interpretation
of his works. To Herbeck's artistic heydays belonged beside the première
of „Rienzi" also the successful first performance of „Meistersinger"
despite numerous oppositions. To his duties belonged beside the musical
direction also the scenic rehearsals. But Herbeck's real achievement was
to perfect the musical execution of the played works. He succeeded in replacing
more and more the music-making amateurs of his orchestra by versed professional
musicians.
In 1875, Franz von Jauner was appointed as Herbeck's
successor. Through him Hans Richter, who worked with success at the national
theater of Pest (Budapest), came as court opera conductor to Vienna. As
concert conductor Richter was attached to the philharmonic orchestra for
24 years - until the orchestra entrusted its new opera director Gustav
Mahler also with the direction of the philharmonic concerts. During Jauner's
work at the court opera, several new, excellent singers were engaged, for
instance Emil Scaria and Amalia Materna, who were considered
till today as examples for music dramatic stage singing. Beside the Viennese
première of the „Ring", the first performance of Bizet's „Carmen"
stands out particularly from the wealth of first performances of contemporary
operas during Jauner's direction.
In these years, the ballet received also a great impetus. As a
result, even Mahler had to struggle against the habit to round off an opera
performance with an action ballet or a divertissement in his first years
at the opera of Vienna.
To Franz von Jauner, who resigned in 1880, succeeded Wilhelm
Jahn (1834-1900) as court opera director. Jahn's strong point was to
track down young talents, which he trained to be singers and actors. The
three most important opera events under Jahn's direction were the first
performance of Wagner's „Tristan und Isolde" on October 4th 1883,
Hans Richter conducting, the première of Verdi's „Othello"
on March 14th 1888, Jahn himself conducting, and Smetana's „Verkaufte
Braut" on October 5th 1896.
Together with Hans Richter Jahn managed the destiny of the opera
of Vienna for seventeen years, till he left the direction to Mahler in
1897.
1896-1897 - The „conquest" of the Viennese court opera
The opera of Vienna
When Mahler heard in Hamburg that the opera of Vienna was looking for
a new conductor, who should replace Wilhelm Jahn in the direction
sooner or later, he addressed a formal request concerning the post to the
director of the court theaters, Josef von Bezecny, and tried to
win influential intercessors for his goal. At the same time, he turned
Roman Catholic at Michaeliskirche in Hamburg and removed so one of the
most delicate obstacles, his Judaism.
The two most important comrade-in-arms in Mahler's „conquest"
of the Viennese opera were the office director of the court theaters, Eduard
Wlassak, and Mahler's friend, the former singer at the court opera
and singing professor Rosa Papier-Paumgartner, who sang already
at the music festival in Kassel the then twenty-five-year-old Mahler conducting.
Wlassak had expressly secured even Eduard Hanslick's consent
to Mahler and Mahler himself considered it indicated to pay Hanslick a
visit in Bad Ischl.
In Bad Ischl, Mahler met in 1894 and 1896 also Johannes
Brahms, who supported eagerly Mahler's endeavors for the opera
of Vienna.
Mahler received the most impressive endorsement by the notable
Hungarian politician Count Albert Apponyi. His letter to the director
had the character of a complete artistic recognition of Mahler.
In February 1897, the negotiations were in so good progress
that Mahler could not only expect the early conclusion of a contract as
conductor of the Viennese court opera, but also the keeping of an only
secret and verbal promise by the Viennese directorship to make him director
soon after.
On April 15th 1897, director Jahn undersigned in Vienna
the contract engaging Mahler as conductor from June 1st on for one year.
1897-1907 - Director of the opera of Vienna
On May 11th, Mahler conducted his first performances at the Viennese opera
house: „Lohengrin". Only one single rehearsal was conceded to him.
Nevertheless, it was a success, which Mahler attributed not only to his
own efforts: „The principal merit is due to the Austrian musicalness:
the verve and the warmth and the natural gift, which everyone possesses."
Already two months later, Mahler was entrusted with the functions of the
ill director Wilhelm Jahn and on October 12th his appointment as
„artistic director" was publicized. This was a position with outstanding
powers and a life contract. But as a matter of fact, Mahler held the position
only for ten years - till December 31st 1907. He conducted for the
last time at the Viennese court opera on October 15th 1907 „Fidelio".
Mahler last time at the Viennese court opera
Mahler's theater practice
Mahler conducted
(Silhouette)
In Mahler's work as conductor at different opera houses, his conception
of music theater strengthened. He tried to put its fundamental principles
through also in Vienna:
-
Unity of acting and singing
-
Intelligibility of the plot
-
Subordination of the event on stage (and so of the decor and the costumes)
to the dramatic denouement
-
Observance of the priority of the music dramatic truth as against the belcantistic
beauty
While he conducted several times a week (sometimes even every day) during
the first three seasons (till 1900) and worked so from the music stand
as renewer of the musical tradition at the Viennese court opera, he applied
himself in the next four years more and more to causing from the desk a
complete formation of a repertory and an ensemble.
After 1904, exemplary performances with festival character
and interpretation cycles were to the fore. Mahler himself rehearsed and
conducted almost two thirds of all opera premières (62 of 101 in
all) between autumn 1897 and the close of the year 1907.
He conducted none of the 21 ballet premières of the same period.
It was his firm and often stated conviction that the opera has
only a raison d'être when each performance, far from the usual theater
routine, is bearing a festival character: „In every performance the work
has to be born anew", he demanded from his staff members. Notorious was
his saying: „What you, people of the theater, call your tradition is
nothing else than your laziness and slovenliness."
For that reason, rehearsals were the central point of Mahler's
work, to which corresponded on the artistic side the constant wrestle for
music dramatic perfection. Characteristic for his method of working was
the multitude of revivals and new productions.
Mahler's famous ensemble at the court opera
Till 1904, twenty new plays were put on the stage, among
them Smetana's „Dalibor", Tschaikowsky's „Eugen
Onegin", Leoncavallo's „Bohème", Richard
Strauss'„Feuersnot", Offenbach's „Hoffmanns Erzählungen",
but also contemporary operas by Siegfried Wagner, Anton G. Rubinstein,
Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner, Hugo Wolf and others. With
an ensemble, highly praised by the contemporaries, Mahler succeeded in
the most memorable exemplary performances of great operas by Mozart,Webern
und Wagner and finally, in the year of his retirement, by Gluck.
To this ensemble belonged the stage designer Alfred Roller
(from
1903 on), Bruckner's student Franz Schalk (from 1900 on) and Bruno
Walter (from 1901 on) as younger conductors as well as excellent singers,
in some cases „taken along" from Hamburg, like Anna Bahr-Mildenburg,
Bertha Förster-Lauterer, Marie Gutheil-Schoder, Selma Kurz, Lucie
Weidt, Lola Beeth, Hermine Kittel, Laura Hilgermann, Hermann Winkelmann,
Leo Slezak, Theodor Reichmann, Wilhelm Hesch, Erik Schmedes, Hans Breuer,
Richard Mayr, Georg Maikl and Leopold Demuth.
Mahler and the stage designer Alfred Roller
In the second half of his time as director of the Viennese court
opera, Mahler had a congenial fellow combatant: Alfred Roller (1864-1935).
Mahler met Roller through the stepfather of his wife Alma, Karl Moll.
Roller was founder member of the Viennese „Secession", painter,
graphic and poster artist and gave lessons at the arts and crafts school
of Vienna. In him the musician and dramatic adviser Mahler found a stage
designer, who knew how to turn the most secret intentions of the music
into an unity of light, color, form and space.
From June 1st to Mahler's retirement, Roller was the chief of
the decor and costumes at the Viennese court opera. The intensive collaboration
Mahler-Roller entailed a new stage style. Their first common work in February
1903 was intended for Wagner's „Tristan und Isolde" and created
immediately a sensation.
Mahler and Roller demanded a stage, where „everything just means,
nothing has to be" (1903), because: „ The whole modern art has to serve
the theater... The concurrence of all arts is important!"
Mahler's Mozart cycle
Five of the seven premières of the season 1905/06
were operas by Mozart, in view of the Mozart cycle on the occasion of the
150th birthday of the composer: „Cosi fan tutte", „Don Giovanni", „Die
Entführung aus dem Serail", „Die Hochzeit des Figaro" and „Die
Zauberflöte". Roller designed for all of them the scenery and
the costumes.
This large-scale and resolute enterprise by Mahler contributed
much to the rediscovery of the music dramatist Mozart.
(Reintroduction of the sung recitatives accompanied on the harpsichord,
taking back of the voices overgrown by decorations to lines drawn by the
composer as well as the winning of the musical author Max Kalbeck,
who translated anew „Don Giovanni" into German already in 1886, for a new
translation of „Die Hochzeit des Figaro".)
Mahler conducted then „Die Hochzeit des Figaro" also in
a guest performance of the Vienna court opera at the first Mozart festival
in Salzburg. Later, Bruno Walter confirmed Mahler's services to
a new Mozart picture: „He freed Mozart from the lie of daintiness as
well as of the boredom of academic dryness, gave him his dramatic seriousness,
his truthfulness... Through his deed, he turned the present lifeless respect
of the public for Mozart's operas into an enthusiasm, which shook the house
with its demonstrations."
The end of Mahler's direction - the last years in his life
The year 1907 brought a decisive turn of events. During Mahler's
concert tour to Berlin, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, an anti-Semitic press
campaign started aiming finally at the downfall of the director of the
opera.
In the meantime, Mahler came to the conviction „that the permanent
opera stage means an almost contradictory institution to our modern artistic
principles", because it „does not want to meet the conceptions of artistic
perfection" with some hundred performances per year. In addition, he wanted
to have more time for living and creating than the post as opera director
conceded him.
For that reason, he applied for his retirement, which was signed
together with his dismissal on October 5th 1907. On October 15th,
he conducted for the last time at the court opera: Beethoven's „Fidelio".
On December 9th 1907, he departed to America. Till 1911,
he worked as conductor of the Metropolitain Opera Company and of the New
York Philharmonic Orchestra. On May 18th 1911, he deceased in Vienna.
He was interred at the cemetery of Grinzing.
Mahler`s tomb
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