Dead Opera

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Ariadne auf Naxos is set in the house of the richest man in Vienna. As entertainment is provided, things go horribly wrong. But it's all entertaining and ultimately rather moving. In Peter Konwitschny's production of From the House of the Dead (performed at the Wiener Staatsoper for the first time) the setting is the same and performers are provided. Sadly, neither entertainment nor emotion are on the menu.

Rather than Dostoevsky's Siberian prison camp, Konwitschny has transported us to an oligarch's flat - the frontcloth projections suggest today's Vienna. The brutality of the gulags is seemingly akin to the ferocity of high-end bad behaviour capitalism; Goryanchikov becomes the group's bullied plaything. But once the (apparently) Marxist point is made, the concept has nowhere to go. It railroads over the libretto, provides all-too-liberal translations and bars access to an already difficult piece.

JanáÄ�ek's 1928 opera needs all the help it can get. In it, he often bypassed linear narrative in favour of reflective tableaux. It's open-ended nature troubled the composer's students when they discovered the score after his death (erroneously suggesting it was incomplete). But given a clear production, the opera can pack a terrific punch. Konwitschny ignores the warnings. He places his entire cast in black tie and pumps out skewed translations to support his vision. The effect is woefully misleading. And given that Patrice Chéreau's production started at the Wiener Festvochen (in a co-pro with the Holland Festival), it's perplexing as to why the Staatsoper has opted for this arrogant, cynical nonsense.

For all the posturing on stage, the musical performances remain strong. Franz Welser-Möst drives a hard bargain with the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper. A ferocious overture prepares the ground for harsh exchanges and vivid colouring. Only a passing criticism would be that the musicians make light work of JanáÄ�ek's complex textures; we should feel the effort involved in producing that caustic sound world. Nevertheless, it makes for a rich listening experience.

Sorin Coliban uses that strong orchestral bedrock to project his poetic Goryanchikov. It creates a lyrical counterpoint to the brutality of the opera. Similarly touching is Christopher Maltman's Shishkov. His is a voice in its prime. He offered only a cameo here, but we need to hear Maltman stretched by more diverse repertoire. Herbert Lippert shone as Skuratov, leading an impressive ensemble and strident chorus. Yet however hard they tried, nobody could overcome Konwitschny's die-hard cynicism. JanáÄ�ek wrote that you could not 'extinguish the spark of God' in these characters; the current production at the Staatsoper is a deeply unappealing attempt on the opera's life.

Winter Dreams

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"Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories." Or so An Affair to Remember reminds us. And there is certainly a pervasive chill over the Kunsthistorisches Museum at the moment. The Wintermärchen exhibition offers a vast collation of images inspired by the darkest and coldest months of the year. While there's plenty of cheer against the elements, by the 20th century a more dangerous elision of man and his environment has returned.

Winter has its own mythology. The nativity, an old man warming his hands by a fire with a well-stocked table, the feasts, the slaughtered pig. From the clock faces of the medieval period to Joseph Beuys' own invented self-mythology, the season has created its own images and codes. The exhibition is a grand unlocking of those signifiers and, although it is somewhat crammed with examples, the simple chronology invites further investigation.

The work of the Breugel family dominates the early part of the exhibition, not only by their inherent drama, but through the vividness of their depictions. As the medieval period gives way to the excesses of the 16th and 17th century, the harshness of those canvases - not least the brutal slaughter of the innocents - turns to Rubens and his fecund feasts. Here a corpulent bean king stuffs his face.

Perhaps the most ostentatious work on display is the two sleighs from the late 18th and early 19th century. Gilded gliding fantasies with harnesses studded with bells, winter provided just another excuse to show off. And although they cannot compete with Turner's apocalyptic depiction of Hannibal crossing the Alps, David's picture of Napoleon following in his footsteps seems like a polite society portrait next to these golden playthings.

The real chill sets in after such glitzy glamour and Monet's gestural canvases offer more existential frigidity. Rivers burst their banks and water, ice and snow become one, distinguished only by the smallest shift in brush stroke. And there's an aesthetic cool to Carl Moll's picture of his studio on the Theresianumgasse. Placed in the top right-hand corner of the canvas, the studio appears like a fevered imago in a desolate white waste. Just the kind of place that you'd find Joseph Beuys' 'Schlitten'. Like Schubert's Leiermann, Monet, Moll and Beuys appear trapped in their frosty landscapes. And its with that deathly chill that you leave this dizzyingly encyclopaedic Winterreise.

Blasts from the Past

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Angelo Soliman is like Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put him back together again. But the Wien Museum has attempted reassembly with its latest exhibition. Ironically, such a process has to divide myth and reality. Who was he? A West African slave, brought to Vienna through Sicily, Soliman became a trusted and respected figure in Enlightenment Vienna. After his death, however, he was exhibited in the Imperial Natural History collections as an exotic. As immigration arguments in Austria reach new intensity, the Wien Museum's Soliman exhibition offers historical guidance.

Soliman begins and ends with a cliché. No Austrians had been to Africa. It was a place where enormous monsters roamed the earth and the people wore fantastical clothing. It was 'other', sexual and ornamental (all depicted in gloriously un-PC imagery). By the time that slaves had arrived in Vienna, the distance between origin and orientalism had only widened. Despite expectation, Soliman gained a relatively privileged position in Viennese society. Normally, once an African slave hit puberty, they were cast out to fend for themselves. And although pictures show him as a dwarf or child servant, he was an adult in service to both Prince Lobkowitz and later the Liechtenstein family. He's depicted in the latter Prince's retinue as he goes to woo a wife and the bill for Soliman's uniform lies next to that picture (in one of many brilliant bits of intense research evident in the exhibition).

Winning a huge amount of money by gambling, Soliman married, bought a house and became an independent man (and was fired by the Liechtensteins for breaking contract). A page from a Masonic Lodge guestbook reveals that he spent time with Mozart. He was the quintessence of Enlightenment thinking. And the Liechtensteins asked him to work with them again towards the end of his life. But after his death, the Enlightenment figure became the exotic cliché once more. Soliman's body was placed in a ludicrous savage's costume and displayed for all to see. Whether as revenge for 'inappropriate' assimilation or for curiosity's sake, Soliman the reality disappeared.

To tell this story, an exhibition needs clarity and space and curator Philipp Blom and his team guide us deftly through cliché to reality (and back again). The final section of the exhibition - linking the racial stereotypes of Soliman's lifetime with those of more recent decades in Vienna - perhaps overstates its case. But it offers an essential bridge to the present day and a final film installation where black Viennese residents talk about their stories and the tolerance (or lack thereof) around them. Have we learned from history? The hushed but powerful question hovers over the exhibition. With immigration debates still raging between the SPÖ and FPÖ, Soliman offers an essential blast from the past.

Returning Home?

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It's strange about seeing a picture out of context. I often go into the National Gallery to view Britain's only Klimt - a 1904 portrait of Hermine Gallia. But at the moment you can't see it in London, because it's come to Vienna to be displayed alongside other Klimts and Josef Hoffmann artefacts in an exhibition at the Unteres Belvedere. Seeing it in, what are for me, foreign surroundings was strange. I half expected to walk out of the room onto Trafalgar Square. Of course, it is a return home for the painting. Klimt 'belongs' in Vienna. Like those Aciman 'Shadow City' moments, whenever I see the painting in London it reminds me of Vienna. Seeing it here in Vienna, reminded me of London and the glories of the National Gallery. Loans. Restitution. Returning pictures to those to whom they belong. Adele Bloch-Bauer. The Elgin Marbles. How tedious it would be if all art works were back in their places of origin (largely because they wouldn't be in public collections where people could see them). But there's still a strange tug of the that location on the picture in its new home and vice versa. The 'Beethoven Frieze' also seemed out of place in the Belvedere (although it's officially in their collection). The Secession must surely feel bereft of that masterpiece created for its spaces. But these are just my own projections of homelessness.

You cannot dream things lovelier

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Michael Head is an unaffected composer. Eschewing the harmonic twists of Warlock and, thankfully, Vaughan Williams' modish modality, his songs offer heartfelt utterances from a cluttered century. The great achievement of Hyperion Records new release of 27 of his songs is that they are delivered with untrammelled sincerity. It is a rich and rare disc.

Head will never turns heads. He's a moderate conservative, with a varied taste in poetry and a ballad-like approach to form and sound. While his contemporaries went into the dark recesses of the English psyche, the younger Head preferred a more relaxed and melancholic vein. Roderick Williams is the perfect protagonist for his tales. His fond remembrance in 'Limehouse Reach' and the open appeal of 'Lean out of the window' are a genuine joy to behold.

While Head attempts a more astringent sound world in 'The Viper', it can feel somewhat ersatz when compared with Britten's contemporaneous work. But there's atmosphere aplenty in Catherine Wyn-Rogers' Three Songs of Venice. Her and Williams' ease of communication matches Head's style perfectly. Ailish Tynan is perhaps a little too skittish with occasional blurs in diction, though she too sings beautifully.

Throughout, none of the singers overstates their case and Christopher Glynn is the model of coherence and care at the piano. Collectively, they are great exponents for this handsome list of songs. From the parlando ease of the Margaret Rose poems 'Star Candles' and 'The little road to Bethlehem' to the bravado of 'Tewkesbury Road', this is a great testament to an unpresuming gem of a composer. Click here to order a copy.