Alma: Ella Milch-Sheriff's opera based on the life of Alma Mahler premieres Vienna Volksoper

Alma Mahler remains a fascinating figure. Musically active as a composer, albeit for a relatively short time, her life has been rather overshadowed by her relationships. She married the composer Gustav Mahler, the architect Walter Gropius, and the author Franz Werfel, whilst her affairs included the painter Gustav Klimt, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and the painter Oskar Kokoschka. The death of daughter Manon Gropius partly inspired Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. 

Since her death in 1964, her life has inspired a wide variety of art and music. Britten dedicated his Nocturne, Op. 60 to her. American satirist Tom Lehrer described her obituary as “the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read” and he wrote his song, Alma about her [see YouTube]. Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix' opera Beyond the Garden was inspired by Alma Mahler's relationship with her daughter. The opera was commissioned by Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre and premiered by them in Slovenia in 2019, and received its UK in 2022 [see Stephen's article about the opera]

Now, Alma Mahler's life has inspired another composer. Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff's five-act opera, Alma, with a libretto by Ido Ricklin, receives its premiere at the Vienna Volksoper on 26 October 2024. Directed by Ruth Brauer-Kvam and conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, the work asks the question, what happens when a woman is forced to give up her potential as a composer? A portrait opera, the piece focuses on Alma as a mother, with Alma being played by soprano Annette Dasch.

Full details from the Volksoper website.

Summer in Vienna: Jesus Leon's Vienna Opera Festival returns with two Mozart stagings

Vienna Opera Festival 2023

Despite its name, the Vienna Opera Festival (Wiener Festpiele) was only founded in 2019 by tenor Jesus Leon with music director Toby Purser. The festival puts on a Summer season (mid-July to the end of August) in venues such as Mozarthaus Vienna and the Musikverein. The same team runs the Vienna Opera Academy which offers an opera programme and assistant conductor programme, and the festival takes its soloists from the academy, and has its own orchestra.

This year's festival features stagings of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, conducted by Daniel Hoyem Cavazza and Don Giovanni conducted by Toby Purser, along with opera highlights concerts featuring music by Mozart and Verdi. 

Performing whilst the Vienna State Opera and Volksoper are closed for the Summer, the festival provides an opportunity for a weekend of Summer opera in Vienna along with supporting dynamic young artists.

Full details from the festival website.

Carmen in in the Quarry: Arnaud Bernard transforms Bizet's opera into film set in 1930s-era Spain on Oper im Steinbruch's spectacular stage

Bizet: Carmen - Oper im Steinbruch 2023 (Photo: Esterhazy / Katharina Schiffl) 

Bizet: Carmen; Francesca di Sauro, Migran Agadzhanyan, Vanessa Vasquez, Vittoria Prato, director Arnaud Bernard, conductor Valerio Galli: Oper im Steinbruch, Austria
Reviewed 14 July 2023

Carmen on a stage seven times larger than that of the Vienna State Opera in a production that reinvents it as the film production of a story set in 1930s Civil War era Spain

Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents an annual spectacular outdoor opera production in the historic St. Margarethen quarry near Eisenstadt in Austria. In 2019, the opera was Mozart's Die Zauberflöte [see my review] and after a two-year gap, Oper im Steinbruch returned with Bizet's Carmen, directed by Arnaud Bernard with sets designed by Alessandro Camera and costumes by Carla Ricotti. I caught the third performance of the production on 14 July 2023, conducted by Valerio Galli, when Francesca di Sauro was Carmen and Migran Agadzhanyan was Don Jose (both roles are triple cast) , with Vanessa Vasquez as Micaela, Vittorio Prato as Escamillo, Aleksandra Szmyd as Frasquita and Sofia Vinnik as Mercedes. The opera was presented in Ernest Guiraud edition with sung recitatives and the work was performed in French.

Carmen premiered, with spoken dialogue, in the relatively intimate confines of the Opera Comique in Paris, but before his death Bizet had signed a contract with the Hofoper in Vienna (now Vienna State Opera). So, he always knew that the work would need changing and expanding to fit the larger Vienna stage and to suit a cast of non-French speakers. The same process happened to Gounod's Faust and Thomas' Mignon; an opera premiered with dialogue in a smaller French theatre is expanded including sung recitatives for larger, grander theatres.

Bizet: Carmen - Francesca di Sauro - Oper im Steinbruch 2023 (Photo: Esterhazy / Jerzy Bin)

 We can never know what Bizet might have done, but Guiraud's recitatives are creditable and the slowing of the dramatic pace is on a par with the larger scale and loss of dramatic intimacy. Moving the opera onto the huge stage at St. Margarethen (seven times the area of the Vienna State Opera!) means that the work needed expanding again.

I am a child of my era, I first saw Carmen at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1980s with Teresa Berganza and Placido Domingo. That used spoken dialogue, and since then every production I have seen has used spoken dialogue (or no dialogue at all). Whilst familiar with the Guiraud version from disc (notably the Beecham/Victoria de Los Angeles and the Pretre/Callas versions), I had never actually heard it on stage.

A stage seven times the size of the Vienna State Opera: I chat to Daniel Serafin, artistic director of Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) in Austria

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte - Oper im Steinbruch, 2019 (Photo  Raimund Bauer Bühnenbild Media Apparat)

Daniel Serafin (Photo  Lisa Schulcz)

The quarry at St Margarethen im Burgenland (some 50km South-East of Vienna) in Austria has been there since Roman times, and it supplied stone for St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and many of the buildings on the Ringstrasse, and the modern part of the quarry continues to do so. Within this fascinating landscape, opera has been presented since the 1990s. The festival, Oper im Steinbruch, is now supported by the Esterházy Foundation, which owns the quarry, and the local authority, das Land Burgenland. There was no opera last year, and this year Daniel Serafin took over as artistic director and Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presented Mozart's Die Zauberflöte [see my review].

Whilst attending Die Zauberflöte I was able to meet Daniel and chat with him about his ideas for Oper im Steinbruch and his ambitious plans, whilst sampling the hospitality in The Lounge which is one of the catering options on offer at the opera, complete with a wonderful view of the audience arriving down the striking zig-zag corten ramp which leads down from the quarry edge. The opera's audience, as I learn from Daniel, is 96% German-speaking, and one of the festival's raisons d'être is the way it attracts audiences who might not go to an opera house alongside regular opera goers .

Daniel started out as a baritone, studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and then the Juilliard School. But he then did a degree in business administration, which gives him a knowledge of both music and of how to run a business, so he understands how the patchwork of music and business comes together. He has stopped performing as a baritone, in order to concentrate on Oper im Steinbruch, and his artistic directorship of the Viennese Opera Ball in New York (now in its 65th year).

Oper im Steinbruch - 2019

So who comes to Oper im Steinbruch?

Large scale, striking & engaging: Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in an historic quarry in Austria

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte - Oper im Steinbruch (Photo Andreas Tischler)

Mozart Die Zauberflöte; Kateryna Kasper, Michael Porter, Luke Stoker, Danae Kontora, Uwe Schenke Primus, dir: Carolin Pienkos & Cornelius Obonya, cond: Karsten Januschke; Oper im Steinbruch, Austria
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 15 August 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Impressive both in scale and artistic quality, Mozart's opera performed in an historic quarry in Austria

Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents opera in the 2000-year-old quarry at St Margarethen near Eisenstadt in Austria. Opera has been performed there since the late 1990s, but there was no opera last year and this year is the first under the new artistic director Daniel Serafin, himself a former singer but with a degree in business administration and something of a minor Austrian celebrity as he has been on the country's equivalent of Strictly Come Dancing twice.

The quarry is huge, the historic part dates back to the Roman period and houses a 4,780 seater theatre and a 2,500 seater one, and the more modern part still provides stone for St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Access is through a handsome modern building on the edge, followed by a long walk down an elegant ramp which gives superb views and makes you realise that this is no ordinary experience. The site had admirable catering facilities, so visitors vary from those who arrive to picnic, through those sitting at the beer garden like tables for refreshment to those being entertained with wine and canapes in the Lounge. All in all, a complete experience.

Carolin Pienkos and Cornelius Obonya's production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte opened on 10 July 2019, and we caught the performance on 15 August, towards the very end of the run. Sarastro was the Australian baritone Luke Stoker, the Queen of the Night was Danae Kontora, who studied in Munich, Pamina was Kateryna Kasper, who is a member of the ensemble at Frankfurt, Tamino was the American tenor Michael Porter (making his Oper im Steinbruch debut) and Papageno was Uwe Schenke Primus. Stage design was by Raimund Bauer with costumes by Gianluca Falaschi. Karsten Januschke conducted the Orchester der Budapester Philharmonischen Gesellschaft and the Philharmonia Chor Wien.

The stage is huge (seven times that of the Vienna State Opera), but nothing is permanent (no concrete allowed in the historic quarry) so there is no stage machinery. Instead Bauer's massive set created a series of effective and striking acting areas enlivened by Friedrich Rom's lighting. At the centre was the 'cloud portal' a huge styrofoam structure of balls with a central 'eye' and staircase, through which Tamino and many other characters made their entries. This was also Sarastro's domain, and video projected onto it created different atmospheric effects, from Tamino's serpent, to the heavens themselves. Stage right was a huge black globe which housed a darker domain and on top of which the Queen of the Night made her Act Two appearance. Stage left was a stone portal above which was a huge nest from which Papageno was engaged in stealing birds eggs when we first meet him. Far above all this, on the edge of the quarry itself was a series of bird structures taking the 'set' out to the very edge.

A quarry is not a 'dead space' in which to perform opera, there are all sorts of sound reflections from the stone, yet Volker Werner's sound design was some of the best I have come across. No, it was not realistic, but then this was not a typical theatre opera. Instead, we had vivid and immediate sound, with a good sense of direction so you knew who was singing and the off-stage orchestra (with the conductor controlling things via a huge video of himself at the back of the auditorium) was well blended in. Unlike some other outdoor (or semi-outdoor) opera experiences I have had, here I forgot about the amplification and sound design and simply enjoyed the production.

For there was indeed much to enjoy. Most of the roles are double and triple cast, but there was no sense of coming across the second or third cast at the end of a run. Musically, this was a performance most opera houses would have been proud to present.  In one respect, I did not see what audiences would see most evenings. To echo the fact that the opera's librettist, Emmanuel Schikaneder (an actor), was the first Papageno the German actor Max Simonischek was cast in the role. I attended one of the performances at which he did not sing and so saw a trained opera singer.

Mozart: Die Zauberflöte - Oper im Steinbruch, Austria (Photo Raimund Bauer Bühenbild Media Apparat)

Pienkos and Obonya had adjusted and modernised the libretto somewhat. As far as I could tell making it more accessible and less arcane, but also altering the balance of relationships so that Pamina was somewhat less passive. Act One ended with her attempting to follow the men into the temple and being stopped, whilst Act Two seemed more about Sarastro's intention to put both Tamino and Pamina to trial. And at the end, the Queen of the Night and her Ladies were not banished or destroyed, but accepted back and the Queen and Sarastro gestured to each other showing a measure of peace and acceptance. During the second act, the words from the United Nations declaration were projected upon the cloud portal. So whilst modernised, this still had a philosophical bent.