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Opernabend: Trouble at the mill

Tomorrow’s opera from radio klassik Stephansdom is Eugen D’Albert’s Tiefland, which premiered in Prague in 1903. A verismo opera nodding, as the genre does, towards a gritty realism, Tiefland is largely set in a village mill and is described in MusicWeb International as follows:

Tiefland tells the story of Marta, a poor young woman who is the mistress of the local landowner Lord Sebastiano. Sebastiano has money troubles, so is about to marry an heiress, and thus needs to expunge the local notoriety associated with keeping a mistress. He plans to have Marta marry his naïve shepherd Pedro, so that she can live nearby and still serve as his mistress. However, his plan fails when Marta and Pedro actually fall in love, and Sebastiano’s manipulation is revealed. The opera ends in a physical struggle in which Pedro strangles Sebastiano, and then escapes with Marta up into his beloved mountains, and away from the corrupting lowlands.

D’Albert, a noted pianist, was born in Glasgow in 1864 but emigrated to Germany, where he was a student of Franz Liszt. He wrote 21 operas, and his romantic history seems just as prolific as his musical career: he was married six times and died in Riga in 1932, where he was pursuing a divorce from his sixth wife. Tiefland also has the dubious distinction of being the only opera to be adopted to film by Leni Riefenstahl. Says the Wikipedia page for the opera: “The best-known film adaptation of the opera was by the German director Leni Riefenstahl, with Riefenstahl herself playing Marta. The film, begun in 1940, but not released until 1954, used Roma slave labor from a German transportation camp for some of the extras, many of whom were sent to Auschwitz before the end of the war.”

So: a true curiosity, more produced today in Europe than in the United States, and not often there. radio klassik Stephansdom will broadcast a 2002 recording of the opera, with the ÖRF Radio Symphonie Orchester Wien conducted by Bertrand de Billy. You can hear it tomorrow, February 23, at 2:00 pm Eastern time here.

In pursuit

Update, February 23: You can watch the first episode of In Pursuit here. I have also corrected the number of episodes of Philadelphia: The Great Experiment below.

Although I write a great deal about Vienna here, I was born in — and soon will be moving back to — Philadelphia. I don’t think it would do me any good to compare them with each other, but they must have more than my affection for them in common. In any case, I’ve written a great deal about Philadelphia in the past, and you can read that here.

I suppose that one of those traits is that each plays a unique role in history, roles which exhibit affinities: Vienna in Europe, Philadelphia in the United States. Sam Katz’s History Making Productions has followed up Philadelphia: The Great Experiment, its excellent 13-part series about Philadelphia, with In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America, an examination of Philadelphia’s place in history, from the establishment of the city in the seventeenth century to its genius loci today.

The first episode premiered last night at the National Constitution Center and begins streaming today; the others will follow shortly. Credit where credit is due: all ten episodes were directed by Andrew Ferrett and written by author and historian Nathaniel Popkin. You can read more about the series in this Philadelphia Inquirer article (gift link) by Mike Newall.

Opernabend and World Radio Day

A memory of childhood: The crystal radio kit.

It’s an all-Mozart-opera Valentine’s Day coming up tomorrow. On Philadelphia’s WRTI-FM at 1:00 pm Eastern time, you can enjoy a 1986 Metropolitan Opera production of Idomeneo, featuring Frederica von Stade and Hildegard Behrens and conducted by Jeffrey Tate. A hour later on Vienna’s radio klassik Stephansdom at 2:00 pm, Richard Schmitz will review a variety of productions of La Clemenza di Tito, featuring interpretations by conductors such as René Jacobs, Charles Mackerras, Pinchas Steinberg, Christopher Hogwood, and John Eliot Gardiner. A new production of Tito is coming up next month at the Wiener Staatsoper, so it’s a good time to revisit what’s been done with it in the past. Both broadcasts are available for the streaming.

Today is also UNESCO’s World Radio Day. “It is a Day to thank broadcasters for the news they deliver, the voices they amplify and the stories they share,” reads the Web site, and although they’re looking at the heinous use of AI in the medium, it still provides food for thought. I’ve been a radio enthusiast since I built my first crystal radio set as a kid, and in high school I hosted a few “High School Hours” that ran on WAZL, the local AM station. (I was told by the DJ who was running the show, Scott McAndrews, that I had a very good voice for radio — something I’ve often been told since then — which makes me think I may have missed my calling.) I also spent a year as the president of my college radio station, and in the early 1990s, when I lived in Central Europe, the BBC World Service and especially ÖRF’s late, lamented English-language broadcast Blue Danube Radio on shortwave got me through more than a few evenings.

Although television beat out radio as the most popular broadcast medium many years ago, and podcasts have revived the form somewhat, I still retain a weakness for it. Like many kids my age, I enjoyed tuning in to distant radio stations on my small transistor radio when I was 10 or 11 or so, and I think what is best about it is the sense of connection that it engenders between the broadcasters and their listeners, especially when the broadcast is live. First, of course, is the feeling that you’re one of many people listening to the same broadcast in real time, a feeling of community. But second, and maybe just as important, is the sense that there’s a personal relationship between the DJ or radio personality and the individual listener, however many dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles may be separating you in distance — in time, you’re somehow listening to the same things together. The great radio personalities like Jean Shepherd exploited this personal connection in a way that no podcast or television show could emulate, which testifies to the uniqueness of the medium.

So I lift my glass to radio today. I’m not sure anybody else is celebrating, but if they are, I hope they’re listening with me.

Radio love

Valentine’s Day isn’t until Saturday, but tomorrow you can show a little love for Vienna, music, and the spiritual life with a donation to radio klassik Stephansdom. Thursday, February 12, marks this month’s donation day, and rkS is celebrating with a love-themed appeal. Those of my readers who live in Europe will be interested to hear that their prizes this month include a night at an Austrian spa, free tickets to the Theater an der Wien, and candy from the elegant Xocolat Chocolates Kontor. Special guests will be joining rkS hosts all day long, so tune in and donate to support this very special radio station.

For those of my readers who live elsewhere, as unofficial chairperson of the unofficial American Friends of radio klassik Stephansdom, I’d be happy with your donation.

More here.

Way, way back

Like many people I was originally drawn to Vienna and Galicia by the fame and notoriety of its fin-de-siècle period — Freud, Klimt, and all that — but as with anything you love, you want to learn more about its past. So the bookshelves begin to groan with histories of the Habsburgs and the Congress of Vienna. (Ilsa Barea’s Vienna: Legend and Reality remains the best that I’ve read, and I’ve read a few.) On my upcoming visit to the Austrian capital, though, I’ve got two ancient items I’m keen on seeing, and fortunately they’re mere steps apart.

“The Venus of Willendorf is the most important object in the entire NHM Vienna collection and one of the most famous archaeological finds in the world,” boasts the web site of the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien on the outer edge of the Ringstrasse, notwithstanding the suspiciously ironic name of the artifact. Almost 30,000 years old and unearthed in 1908 in Slovenia, the 11-centimeter (four-inch) high object may be the first artistic rendition of the female body in history. The NHM web site continues:

Stylistically, the Venus of Willendorf is most similar to the Venus figures of Eastern Europe. … There was obviously a very specific idea behind such Venus figures – an idea which for the people of the Palaeolithic was expressed by the image of a woman. The creator of the Venus of Willendorf did not represent an obese woman for her own sake. Instead, he or she shaped what they wanted to represent as an obese woman. Which thoughts, wishes and ideas were once associated with the Venus statues? We do not know.

And just across the way, past the Maria Theresa statue, sits the Kunsthistorische Museum Wien. Those of us who are trying to learn the German language can take a look at where it all began, with the “Negauer helmet” on display. Discovered in Slovenia (again) in 1811, the bronze helmet has been dated to the fifth century BC, and most interestingly it features an inscription — likely added to the helmet two hundred years later — which may be the first written evidence of a Germanic language. Ruth Sanders in her German: Biography of a Language writes:

All the experts agree that at least parts of the inscription represent a Germanic language, though they are scratched in the right-to-left alphabet of the Etruscans, non-Roman inhabitants of the western Italian peninsula. … The meaning of the inscription is not settled: “for Harigast of God,” “to Harigast the god,” and “Harigast made this,” among others, have been proposed. … Linguists agree that Harigast (its -i ending possibly indicating the dative case) is Germanic, but is it the name of the helmet maker, the warrior for whom it was made, or an alternative name for Odin or Wotan, the chief Germanic god? … The helmet’s inscription suggests that, in approximately the third century BC, a specifically Germanic language existed.

They were struggling with that dative case even back then. As I am now.

I perfectly understand if others find my enthusiasm for visiting these artifacts is a little peculiar, and perhaps it’s a little too far back into Central European history for most. (I know my kids will be happy not to be dragged along to these.) But not to worry; I’ll be getting to more recent artifacts, museums, and music as well. And I hope to get a bit more of a grasp on the dative case soon.