Tourists In Vienna

   Fri April 18.   time context Nellie, Robt + Emma's new baby Nellie.

   We spent today at the German and Dutch old master paintings and the "kunstkammer" collections  in the Kunsthistorische Museum.   The kunstkammer (art rooms) are filled with "treasures" --  smaller items of precious material and/or intense craftsmanship.   These were items collected by the various emperors. We got giggly trying to find the most outlandish/ugly item.  A lot of contestants.

Bruce offers the carved rock crystal hen with gold fittings and feather cap.

 Leslie's choice, a very difficult decision:

Many items were created from rare animal bits:  sea turtle shell, rhinoceros horns, and ivory:

OK, tastes change.   Still...

Complementing the Kunstkammer was a temporary exhibit of gifts given by tsars.  It was mostly Faberge stuff, including a jeweled egg with a gold model of the Trans-Siberian railroad faithfully reproduced down to the boxcar springs and this:

We saw half the picture gallery.  It is a mass of masterpieces, many very familiar:  Jan Breugel the Elder's  Children Playing Games and Tower of Babel:

   

Vermeer's Artist in His Studio:

and Leslie's favorite, by Jan Bruegel the elder:

We had lunch at the Cupola Cafe, taking in the Museum's opulent decor:

Dinner:  Cafe Amacort; lamb shank and baked goat cheese and strudel.  Very good.

Sat.  Apr. 19    We went to the Naschmarkt, a large collection of food vendors and restaurants near our hotel.  It extends to a huge flea market on Saturdays.

Bought bread and borek and wine for lunch and dinner and a travel vest to replace the one we left in Florence by accident.

A miscommunication with our taxi driver gave us an afternoon at the Schonbrunn Palace.  This was the Habsburgs' suburban palace.  It first served as a hunting lodge, but the Turks destroyed that in the siege of 1683.  It was replaced by a very large and formal baroque building that became the place where Maria Theresa and Franz Josef conducted business.  Huge crowds learned a lot of trivia about the Austrian royals.  Dumb luck netted us a ticket with an entry time in ten minutes instead of the posted wait of 2 1/2 hours.  It was much as to be expected of a rococo palace.  Leslie's favorite was the "rich" room.  It was panelled in rosewood with many gold odd shaped picture frames.  The (royal) kids had cut up Persian miniatures to make collage type pictures for the frames.

We went to a novel performance of Handel's Messiah, where the singers acted out several storylines.  The only way to describe it is to quote the blurb in full:

2009, Handel anniversary year, Claus Guth and his co-authors were looking for situations for their staged version of Messiah in which the subject matter of the oratorio could be portrayed differently from a concert performance. Following painful experiences, a group of people is faced with the biggest questions about human existence: What is guilt? What is the meaning of love? What does death mean? What comes after it? How does one cope with the loss of a loved-one? What is the meaning of redemption? 

Handel’s Messiah, first performed in 1742 in Dublin, is based on passages from the Bible compiled by Charles Jennens. The libretto is abstract; unlike Bach’s Passions and the Christmas Oratorio it tells no story. The Messiah does not appear. Statements made by the prophets in the Old Testament are interpreted in Christological terms and related to Jesus as he is described in the New Testament. He is depicted as the bringer of salvation for whom humankind has waited. The texts’ principal theme is the struggle for faith. Handel’s music turns them into an expansive painting of the “human condition” and finds overwhelming means of expression for human fears and hopes, feelings of guilt, contrition and the joyous certainty of redemption.

A funeral, a baptism, a love story, a suicide, accusations and self-reproach: fragmentary biographies are formed from realistically portrayed scenes that can be read as a kind of family history. The chorus creates a second level, as its formalised gestures form a sharp contrast to the action of the protagonists. A signing soloist and a dancer provide further levels of expression. In this way, the theological vanishing point of Messiah, the Christian message, is linked back to existential experiences from which the work begins to speak anew. After a gap of four years this successful production returns to the Theater an der Wien under the direction of Christophe Rousset and with several new performers.

It takes place in rotating sets, including a hotel (with nighttable/headboard combination), a corridor, a board room, a hospital waiting room, etc.  The singing was terrific, accompanied by a high quality musical performance of historic-type instruments.  But we, and the Viennese woman in the next box, were not enthusiastic about the dramatization.  The stories made no sense of the music to us.  Is that, perhaps, because we understood the text?  The motions of the choir were distracting.  The signer was delightful.