Wofford Travels – 2018-10-13 – Vienna, Austria
Day 4, Vienna
We decided to make this a little easier day to offset all of yesterday’s activity. So, we planned two activities: the Haus der Musik in the morning and a tour of the Vienna Opera House in the afternoon.
We got a good start and headed out about 9:30, taking our metro to the music museum. When you walk in, you can already tell that this is going to be a modern, high-tech experience…ironically, or…appropriately…in this land of some great classical composers.
The museum is spread over several floors and has English translations for most of the exhibits. It is unique for its effective use of touch-screen computers and headphones to explore the physics of sound.
The glass-roofed inner courtyard invites you to linger awhile and it is the center point of Haus of Musik.
FIRST FLOOR – Museum of the Vienna Philharmonic
Stairplay – if you walk up the stairs to the first floor, you can perform” a keyboard note on each step. Of course, I did.
History of the Vienna State Opera
Waltz Dice Game- A fun experience, for those who have never composed but wished they could, get the opportunity to do so with the “Waltz Dice Game.” On a screen is a pair of dice. When you place your hand over a small round table and look up at the screen, it shows the outline of your hand. Then you interactively pick up the dice shown on the screen and roll them. You will hear a very brief musical phrase…maybe three to four measures. You do this action four times. The system then downloads your input and plays your composition. Tom and I both ran through it and it sounded pretty good. As we saw many young people in this museum, I can see how it could spark interest in composition.
Otto Nicolai Room– This room contains the founding decree of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
SECOND FLOOR – The second floor houses the “Sonosphere.” There is a Prenatal Listening Room where you can begin to listen to the beginning of hearing in the womb. A Perception Lab enables you to explore the various phenomena of sound. The Instrumentarium presents oversized instruments representing the four instrumental groups. The Sea of Voices demonstrates the human voice as the original instrument. In the Polyphonium area you can experience the perfect surround sound. There is a Sound Gallery where you can listen to sounds from the microcosm, the human body, the environment, and the macrocosm. Finally with the Evolution Machine you can create your own CD. No, we didn’t venture into that one.
THIRD FLOOR – These are the “heavyweights” of classical music. This room brings you back to the days of the great composers with a presentation of their lives, work, and environment. Each room focuses on the life of a different composer and surrounds you with the sound of their music. With NAMADEUS you can playfully turn your name into an original Mozart. With the Virtual Conductor you conduct the world famous orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic. You set the beat. It was fun observing some young students standing in front of a big screen of this orchestra and “seriously” trying to lead the musicians in the best interpretation of the score they could.
FOURTH FLOOR – This area contained the Zoo Conzert – Virto/Stage which was specifically created for young visitors and takes them on a musical adventure trip. The Zeitperlen – Virto/Stage lets you experience how to merge music, vocals, and vision in a unique way: a multimedia opera experience. And then finally, there is the Gift shop, where you can purchase the standard fare of musical products and souvenirs, but also your CD composition (if you created one) and certificate.
For our afternoon experience we went to the Vienna Opera House and stood in line for our tickets about 30 minutes prior to their 2:00 PM tour…as advised. There was certainly a crowd there, and I was curious as to how they would manage all these people. In the end, I would call it “organized chaos.”
We went into a huge entrance room, you know, those palace-like rooms, to wait for a tour guide. It was a sea of people, maybe 200-300. Well, about 10 minutes early, a guide showed up and a certain number of people were counted out (we just made it in) for the first group. It had to be at least 25+. We were taken to a large room where auditions and rehearsals take place. This was not just for singers, but could be for dancers and instrumentalists. Then, we went inside the actual theater.
The Vienna Opera probably puts on more operas than any other opera house. They do about 300 performances a year and have at least 60 operas in their repertoire. We did learn that famous singers, like a Placido Domingo, get about $18,000-$20,000 a performance. And, as you may or may not know, no one is miked. It’s only their own natural voices that you would hear in a performance. Training, training, trainings!
They also have a tradition about not performing the same show on two consecutive nights. Now, why is that? So, I asked the question. It’s mainly to rest their voices. (Tom noted to me afterwards that Joe Cocker never needed to do that!) It’s also to provide more variety to the public. So, if you’re in Prague for a week, you can see a different show every night!
One thing that we found interesting is that part of running the opera house is done through government subsidy. And, because of that, almost anyone can see an opera. You can come in 30 minutes prior to the start and get “standing room” tickets. The center balcony has bars across where people line up to view the performance.
Because there are performances going on daily (except for a few holidays), a tour group can almost always see the stage being set up. And, of course, we did…all kinds of noises… banging and clanging, working with huge stage props. It looked like a small army. And, because there are so many visitors to the city, and many who are from other countries, the seats have small screens which allow the individual to see a translation in his/her own language…very impressive.
About the organized chaos: what was happening to those 200-300 people who came to the 2:00 PM tour? Well, their group was not that many feet away from another group… or a couple other groups. So you couldn’t always hear that well. Groups were continually crossing each other. And, with all the photo taking, you could easily wander into another tour group and not even realize it. No. It didn’t happen to me, but I had to be constantly vigilant.
After all that hubbub, we were ready for a nice quiet evening dinner, and we chose to eat at the Reinthaler’s Beisl (beisl – Vienese bistro dining establishment, down-to -earth, cozy, and traditional). Tom had the Cordon Bleu vom Huhn mit Salat (Chicken Cordon Blue with salad) and I had Leher Geröstet mint Rösti (Sliced Fried Liver with onions and fried potatoes).
We were definitely in the mood to try a Vienese apple strudel, but to our dismay, the restaurant ran out. So we figured we would pick up something on the way back to our hotel. We walked almost to the next metro stop before we found a bakery, picked up a couple of desserts, and headed back “home.”
Tita