Music!- Tuesday in Vienna

We are living large now that the meetings have begun...Jerry goes off to work and we get to eat the fancy-schmancy hotel breakfast that now comes with his room. YUM! Of course there are 25 different sausage and braunschweiger like meats available in every conceivable format, plus eggs, scrambled and hard and soft boiled in those cute little egg cups! 5 kinds of yoghurt, muesli,nuts,etc. Fruit bar including stewed prunes and apricots, and a 12 juice selection including such favourites as beet root, kiwi(consistency and colour of green wallpaper paste),boysenberry,apple, and more! And the breads and pastries-oh my gosh! I have been filling a plastic bag I got when I bought postcards so that we can eat them at night for a bedtime snack. Every crust so flaky, every filling so sweet-YUM! So needless to say we are not been racing out the door today.

yay! Breakfast and a good book!

 The sun is peeking in and out but on the whole it appears to be a mitten free day, hooray! Danny and I stroll through Stephansplatz to the Opera House and sign in for a tour. The tours are based on what operas are being performed and how much rehearsal time they need, and this is the first time in April tours are on. We book the 1pm and do a bit of walking and then line up for the English speaking tour, largest group, but alas, we are not bilingual, so off we go! The tour guide is great, and the stories of the opera house, and the way the Vienna Opera House symphony and chorus works is really interesting. In order to be in the Vienna Symphony you must play for at least three years with the Opera symphony.
The Vienna State Opera is closely linked to the Vienna Philharmonic, which is an incorporated society of its own, but whose members are recruited from the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera.

The Wiener Staatsoper is one of the busiest opera houses in the world producing 50 to 60 operas per year and ten ballet productions in approximately 300 performances. It is quite common to find a different opera being produced each day of a week. As such, the Staatsoper employs over 1000 people.The opera company operates a repertoire system: more than 50 productions are staged every year, and there is a performance nearly every day for ten months of the year. They have a large warehouse across the city and sets are delivered daily by truck. The trucks have a huge lift which can bring them up to the lower or upper stage level to unload. Some set pieces and costumes stay at the opera house, most notably the set for Tosca. The guide told us that Tosca is the "fall back" opera. In case of emergency and the opera scheduled can't go on, they will do Tosca, and "everyone in Vienna can sing Tosca"! We got to go back stage and into the imperial lounges and boxes. This is some beautiful stage. We chose not to see an opera, the one for tonight is over 5 hours long, and though the standing room tickets are only 10euro, we didn't think we could stand that long!

me, as an opera guest from long ago!

with a young admirer!

some of the beautiful fixtures

the boxes

sets backstage, waiting to go on!

1920's mosaic depicting the arts

one of the beautiful doorways

tapestry depicting the Queen of the Night from Mozarts Magic Flute

one of the grand staircases

the stage,being ready for tonight's opera

 Once the tour finished we walked over to the Hausdermusik das klangmuseum. This music museum was Danny's pick and it was a great one. The museum has five floors of exhibition space and houses unique interactive installations, valuable historical documents, a floor dedicated to the great composers and more.We spent about 3 hours there, and enjoyed conducting the philharmonic, rolling dice to make a symphony, being in the audience for the New Years concert and learning about the science of sound/hearing with our own ears and eyes. We did break for a coffee and the requisite salami and cheese pulled from the backpack around 4, then plunged right back in. My favourite floor was the third, where you learned about the great composers with a presentation of their lives,work and environment. Each room focused on one composer and surrounded you with his music. Danny liked being the Conductor, instead of the conductee like he is in band.

listening to some classical music to start off right

the rolling of the dice composes the melody and the harmony of your own unique waltz!

a sample of the many unique momentoes on display

learnig about sound in the instrumentarium

composing

making an operatic dream sequence with your body movements!

Beethoven"s room

Gustav Mahler room, he loved nature and the outdoors

conducting the Vienna Philharmonic!

even I tried it, boy did I stink! who would think waving your arms would be hard?!

On our way home we found a great gourmet supermarkt and picked up salad, a sandwich for Danny, and some great puddings and things, stuffed them in the backpack and had our dinner in our room, happily clustered about our small table. Email from Jerry and his mates had them arriving at the restaurant at 10pm to begin the Viennese feast-thank heavens we weren't invited!