National Review: 2004 Ad

Salzburg, Austria THIS is Mozart's town--and don't you forget it. Of course, you can't: His portrait greets you at the airport, and it's stamped on all the candy. People dress up as him, on the streets (e.g., in woodwind ensembles). Every January, the local Mozarteum holds a "Mozart Week." Truth is, every week's a Mozart week--and not just in Salzburg, but throughout the musical world.

The American Friends of the Salzburg Festival offers a series of talks; your correspondent is their moderator. Our first speaker is Prof. Dr. Rudolph Angermuller, of the Mozarteum. He is a musicologist and a big authority on Mozart--anything and everything about him. His topic for us is "Mozart and Money." You have perhaps heard that Mozart died a pauper, buried without notice. This is bunk.

Mozart, in fact, earned a ton of money--he was both rich and famous. But he lost a lot of money, too, and he was always sponging. How did he lose it? Gambling, mainly. When he wasn't composing, he was gambling--and when he was in arrears, he composed with a special urgency. We have another Mozart scholar on hand, too: Prof. Dr. Gunther G. Bauer. He has just completed a book on Mozart and gambling. "Did he have what today we would call an addiction?" I ask. "Exactly," comes the answer.

Speaking of bunk: That movie, Amadeus? Bunk--false from beginning to end. But an enjoyable flick, many say.

The Salzburg Festival, as usual, is filled with Mozart, and given prominent place is a production of Cosi fan tutte. This is notable for several reasons, one of which is the youth of its cast--and its conductor. This is Philippe Jordan, born in 1974, son of the venerable Swiss conductor Armin Jordan. Philippe made a big impression in New York last summer, at the Mostly Mozart Festival, and he has Salzburg abuzz, too. A major career awaits him. Indeed, he has already begun it.

Also at the beginning of a major career is Elina Garanca, the Latvian mezzosoprano who is part of this youthful cast. She has everything: voice, technique, personality, stage sense, and looks--lots of it. If you don't think this counts in opera, I have coffee for you to smell. As Dorabella, Garanca fairly dominates this Cosi.

And I'd like to mention the tenor, Saimir Pirgu, who is an excellent singer, although that's not the reason I'd like to mention him: He is an Albanian, an unusual thing to be in opera (or anywhere else). But the beauty part? His character, Ferrando, is one of the two guys who, in the elaborate trick of this opera, disguise themselves as "Albanians"--and here we have a real-live Albanian, pretending to be an Albanian.

This may not sound like much to you, but, trust me, opera people find it hilarious.

Along with the youngsters, two veterans appear in this cast, Sir Thomas Allen (Don Alfonso) and Helen Donath (Despina). Helen Donath? Yes, she's still singing, in her mid-60s, and singing well. She has had mainly a European career, married to Klaus Donath, the German pianist and conductor. In fact, many suppose that she is European--Austro-German. But she is from Corpus Christi, Texas, a land she left many decades ago. Chances are, she is better known in Vienna and Berlin than in Corpus Christi.

The next speaker in the American Friends series is Tony Palmer, the British filmmaker. He has made 108 films--count 'em, 108--most of them on musical subjects (Wagner, Stravinsky, Callas, Menuhin). He has also ventured into the popular culture, treating such subjects as Liberace and Hugh Hefner (though not together, alas). In 1974, he made a movie called The World of Miss World, a must-see.

He is currently at work on a film about Korngold, featuring Benjamin Schmid. Who is Korngold? Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the Viennese composer who was hailed--rightly--as the greatest child prodigy since Mozart, and who spent a long exile in Hollywood, writing for the movies. Who is Schmid? A young Austrian violin sensation, who is affiliated with the Mozarteum. The festival is emphasizing Korngold this year: Schmid played the violin concerto at the opening concert; later, he participated in--led, really--the Suite for Two Violins, Cello, and Piano Left Hand (commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist who lost his right arm in World War I).

The biggest Korngold work on offer is the opera Die tote Stadt, based on the Rodenbach novel Bruges-la-Morte. We host a lecture on the subject--the opera and the novel--by another Professor Doktor, Jurgen Maehder, of the Free University in Berlin. He is a musicologist of extraordinarily wide learning. His wife, Kii-Ming Lo, is a second musicologist, at the Normal University in Taiwan. They divide their time between Taipei and Berlin--an amazing commute, so to speak. Present for the Tote Stadt lecture is Korngold's granddaughter and her family, residents of Portland, Ore. She looks uncannily like him. Or am I just willing that? I don't think so.

The festival's production--Willy Decker, director--is a big success, with Torsten Kerl and Angela Denoke making a splendid Paul and Marietta, and Donald Runnicles, the Scottish conductor, doing a competent job in the pit. He currently holds positions in San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta. He was recently quoted in the Austrian press as saying that, if Bush wins reelection, he may well quit those posts--because once would be a "mistake," whereas a second election would mean "they actually want him." If the president wins, I imagine music in America will struggle on. I have a list of others whom I might nominate to shun the country--some of them homegrown!

Speaking of homegrown: The next event in the Friends series is a talk with Chester Patton, a bass from Mississippi. He is appearing in Bellini's Capuleti e i Montecchi, a bel canto Romeo and Juliet. Mr. Patton is not the most famous singer from Mississippi: That would be Leontyne Price, of Laurel (though Elvis Presley, of Tupelo, really takes the cake). Patton is from Columbia, although, as he says, he's not from the town, but "the county"--way out. He grew up in a music-loving family of nine children. Asked which singers he admired back when, he names, somewhat sheepishly, Michael Jackson. He has been compared to Paul Robeson, but he says that that is ridiculous, because their voices are nothing alike: It's just a matter of skin color. This reminds me of the critic who said of a certain young soprano (black), "She's the next Leontyne Price." That girl was as likely to be the next Leontyne Price as I am. But such is the hold of race.

Our final guest is a native Salzburger, Angelika Kirchschlager, the mezzosoprano. She is doing the title role of Der Rosenkavalier, wowing 'em. She first appeared at the Salzburg Festival at the age of ten--she was in the children's chorus for Carmen. Later, she sold Mozart candies at what many of us consider the best cafe in town--Furst. She also sold records, to the likes of Thomas Hampson, who are now colleagues. This summer, she is nearly the toast of the festival, and her parents are "bursting with pride," she concedes. You can go home again (Kirchschlager fled Salzburg 20 years ago), perhaps especially when you're on top of the world.

The Rosenkavalier production is "controversial," to use the polite word for ... well, words that are less polite. The Canadian director Robert Carsen has set the third act, not in a tavern, but in a whorehouse, and we have lots of nudity, which is par for the course in Salzburg--I mean, in the opera productions--and also simulated copulation, fellatio, and other Strauss-Hofmannsthal necessities. Someone says to me, "Did it distract you?" I answer, "I couldn't take my eyes off it." And he guffaws as if to say, "Shame on you--you have only yourself to blame"--to which I retort, "But they [Carsen et al.] wanted me to look at it. That's why they put it there--certainly not to be ignored!"

Anyway, I have been pronouncing my Salzburg Rule: In the audience, they're overdressed; onstage, they're underdressed. But then people like me say, "Quel scandale," and the festival powers-that-be just smile, having achieved their objective. Again.