RELUCTANT BLOGGER 16: Vienna

I've just returned from four days in Vienna visiting Jeff on tour. It's a city that I have wanted to go to for many years. I was expecting a large version of Salzburg, however found instead a big city more like London or Paris, but with a much more relaxed, confident, and generous air. The 22 degree heat helped create a favourable impression, I must admit!


Vienna is full of cultural opportunities, and is very well set up for the cultural visitor. The Museum Quarter houses most of the big art galleries and anthropological collections all within one block. Very near are also to Hofburg – the residence of the Austrian Imperial Family for six centuries, the Volksoper and the Statsoper, as well as many other large and impressive performance venues. The city parks are many, and the wide boulevards give the whole city a feeling of grandeur and space.

The Johann Strauss memorial in the main city park

There are some stunning buildings too. I visited the three main Hapsburg palaces – the Hofburg, Schönbrunn, the Summer Palace, and Belvedere which now houses a fine art collection including many works by Klimt. These palaces don't quite display the utter decadence of those we saw in St Petersburg last year, but were pretty gorgeous nonetheless.

Belvedere and its elegant gardens

The other art gallery I visited was the Leopolds Museum, a fine new building in the Museum Quarter which houses a large collection of paintings by Schiele (a new artist to me and one I loved) Kolomon Moser (also new and wonderful) and more Klimt's.


The Schatzkammer (treasury) of the Hofburg houses an amazing array of crown jewels and paraphernalia, including coronation vestements from the 12th century and the stunning 10th century crown of the Holy Roman Empire.

The 10th century Crown of the Holy Roman Empire

In search of more heady Klimt glitter I headed for the Secession, a building which houses his Beethoven Frieze. This piece, originally designed for the main exhibition space upstairs, is now housed in a disappointing sub basement room where it can barely be seen. One enters through a side basement door and must go through the rest of the basement before descending further to the Frieze room. I spent a good 20 minutes (as did many other visitors) looking round the basement at what seemed to be a very strange art installation designed to look like a sleazy sex club. It took me quite a while to realise that no, it really WAS a sleazy sex club though mercifully shut for the afternoon. Bizarre!

The golden-topped Secession building

Part of Klimt's Beethoven Frieze

I didn't get to see the famous Spanish Riding School but did see the horses in their elegant stables.

A real highlight was the magnificent Prunksaal (State Hall) of the National Library, formerly part of the Hapsburg Palace. There isn't room here for all the pictures I took of this gorgeous room or the treasures on display in it.

The Prunksaal

I also had to do the real tourist staple – the Riesenrad ferris wheel. Still a very charming thing to do.

The Riesenrad

Finally, Cafe Sperl – the favourite coffee place of Lehar and Hitler (though not together), the interior of which has not changed in many decades. Real faded grandeur and a treat.

  Some final sights:

Easter Market at Schönbrunn Palace

An expensive tourist staple - horse drawn carriage rides

Austrian Parliament building and a lovely Viennese tram

The Danube - surprisingly not the heart of the city

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 15: From Prague

I haven't blogged for nearly 3 weeks, despite being in one of the world's most beautiful cities, and doing a job that many would give their eye teeth for.


The truth is that I've found going back to being 'Number 2' professionally quite difficult. I haven't been very creative over the last few years. Partly because I've needed to take work that pays, partly because the creative work I had been doing had hit an impasse, and partly because the dreaded 'mid-life crisis' made me seriously doubt my own abilities.


Last month in Bolzano I got the taste for it again and hit my stride. Even though it wasn't my own production but a revival, I was able to put a lot of myself into it and, more importantly, was in charge of the whole process. Once again I learnt the lesson that my instincts are good, that my way of working with people is productive and positive, and that this is what I'm really good at. Once again, because I keep learning the same lesson on every job I do.


Taking a step back and being in the supportive role has been difficult. The supportive role is vitally important and, the older I get the better I become at providing the support that is vitally needed. It is an important role but one which, with the demise of experienced staff-producers in the UK, has become little appreciated and not one that many aspire to.


The supportive role is one which, in many ways, suits my skills and talents. I am, by nature, empathetic. I have a wide range of experience and have multiple skills. I work well with people; can be diplomatic, encouraging, instinctive, and a diffuser of tension. So why when I can do this well isn't this enough for me?


I have always felt something of an outsider. I was drawn at an early age to music and loved being involved in practical music making both as a double-bass player and as a singer. I had little talent and even less application, but was very lucky in the chances I had and so worked at a high level. But I still felt an outsider.


It was only when I started directing that I felt at home, though bizarrely it is a lonely profession in many ways. But everything I had done before suddenly made sense. Do you remember when you were young - you had an idea of who you would be and what you would be like when you grow up? I found that person when I started directing. And each time I direct, I find that person again. It's quite an addictive drug. So not being that person for weeks, months, years on end is painful. Literally painful.


So Prague – stunningly beautiful city, lovely people, wonderful opera, great colleagues, everything perfect......and I'm struggling. Struggling to find myself. So this has to be it! A change is needed. I've taken work as Assistant/Associate for next year because the jobs offered are with people I hugely respect and who appreciate what I can offer. There also may be revivals thereafter which I will have more input into. But after that, I think it has to be my own work or I must search for another way to be fulfilled – to find myself. Because life is too short not to spend it being you.


A picture of the first quarter of our dug and planted allotment – because that made me feel good!

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 14: Ciao Bologna

Today I leave Bologna and travel to Prague for Idomeneo rehearsals. I'm sad to be leaving Italy not least because, after spending 5 of the last 6 weeks here, I'm feeling at home and as if something has clicked with the language. 


It's not that I can speak it more fluently, or that I've learned heaps more vocabulary, just that it comes much quicker to mind and I don't panic when someone speaks back to me. It's a nice feeling, and I know that if I stayed for another few months my Italian would improve exponentially. But I have to go, and I don't know when I'll be back. It's frustrating.

After two cold and wet days, we had more beautiful warm Spring weather yesterday. I had forgot to mention Bologna's most famous feature in my last Blog; almost every street in the centre is lined on one or both sides by tall elegant colonnades, raised up out of the wet and dirt of the street. The colonnades keep you dry in Winter and cool in Summer and make shopping in the wet a much more pleasant experience.

I'll leave you with more pictures of Bologna, including some of the delicious sights in the narrow streets full of food shops – wish I could Blog the smells as well as the sights.

The Anatomical Lecture Theatre - the old pine still smells wonderfully like a sauna

A mural on the wall of the courtyard of the Spanish School

 

RELUCTANT BLOGGER 13: Bologna

To Bologna for a bit of a jolly, visiting Jeff on tour with Dinosaurs Live.

Sometimes on tour you get great hotels right in the centre of things – this time however it is a not so great hotel with a view of a MacDonalds, a petrol station, and the Bologna Ring Road. It's only a short bus ride into the city though.

Bologna has a very old centre containing the oldest university in the western world. The layout and majority of the buildings are medieval and ancient towers puncture the skyline. We climbed up the tallest – a nerve-fraying ascent of almost 100 metres up a well worn and narrow staircase. It yielded fantastic views at the top though.

The city is surprisingly unspoiled by tourism and has a busy and vibrant atmosphere in part thanks to the university but also to industry. Its narrow streets contain gob smacking food shops, cosy little bars and coffee shops, and many hidden courtyards and churches. Some real gems here.

The obligatory evening glass of prossecco is enhanced by impressive buffets spread on the bar. I've seen small but delicious offerings elsewhere in the world laid out for the enjoyment of customers, but here the free snack is practically an art form. Of course it isn't done to scoff large amounts, but it is very tempting!

Sorry to those of you stuck in cold old England, but the temperature was in the mid teens here yesterday and it was fantastic to walk out in only a light jacket and feel real heat on one's skin from the Spring sun. If it is any comfort, the weather is a thick chilly mist today.