By Dominique Meyer, Director of the Wiener Staatsoper (2010–2020)

Some time ago a journalist described the list of the singers who can be seen at the Wiener Staatsoper during the course of a season as the “Who’s Who of the international opera scene”. It is indeed true that the Vienna opera-goers are particularly keen on applauding the leading representatives of this profession.

The Viennese have always worshipped the singers. Since the early days of the opera, the great singers, who mostly came from Italy, have always been celebrated by the Viennese. Italian was regarded as the language of opera for a long time, which was also the case in Vienna. The then opera directors or impresarios often travelled to Italy to invite the best singers of the Italian peninsula to Vienna. In the early 18th century, the best castrates of those days lived in Vienna, among them Giovanni Carestini who was invited to sing at

the crowning ceremony for Karl IV. Even the great Farinelli, a close friend of the poet and librettist Metastasio (whose house is still situated at the corner of Kohlmarkt and Michaelerplatz) gave regular performances here from 1724 onwards.

Later, the Mozart operas which were world premiered or revived at the Altes Burgtheater on Michaelerplatz were almost exclusively performed by Italians: Francesco Benucci was the first Figaro; the sisters Adriana Ferrarese del Bene and Louise Villeneuve were the first interpreters of Fiordiligi and Dorabella; Francesco Bussani was the first Alfonso and Bartolo; Nancy Storace (whose name was actually Anna Selina Storace) was the first Susanna; Stefano Mandini was the first Conte; and Luigia Laschi-Mombelli was the first Contessa.

However, at that time there were not just Italian, but also Austrian singers, for example Aloisia Weber (Mozart’s sister-in-law and the first interpreter of Königin der Nacht) and Josepha Duschek from Prague.

From 1848, operas were sung exclusively in German in Vienna. This was also the case when the Hofoper on May 24, 1869 was opened with a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. For decades, the ensemble of the Vienna Opera consisted mainly of Germans and Austrians. Apart from a few exceptions almost all the parts were assigned to members of the ensemble. Only a handful of international singers travelled from one theatre to the next, as is the case today, to give guest performances in Vienna, among them Feodor Chaliapin

(3 performances in total), Enrico Caruso (14), Beniamino Gigli (5) or Jussi Björling (14). At times there was not a single singer of the ensemble of the Hofoper, or later the Staatsoper, who was suited for a particular role so that the director was forced to engage a guest soloist for that series of performances.

In general almost all the parts were assigned to the permanent members of the ensemble of the Opera. Today, the singers are not quite so versatile. The Staatsoper, for example, showed Così fan tutte and Die Frau ohne Schatten on September 14 and 16, 1934 in Venice under the musical director Clemens Krauss. Each of the singers had to perform in both operas: Viorica Ursuleac as Fiordiligi and Empress; Franz Völker as Ferrando and Emperor; Gertrude Rünger as Dorabella and Nurse; Josef von Manowarda as Don Alfonso and Barak.

I dare not even imagine what the press and the audience from the standing places would say if we assigned the parts like that today.

Whilst Karl Böhm, who was the director of the Staatsoper at the time of the reopening in 1955, kept the existing system (for example, he conducted Don Giovanni in German), his successor Herbert von Karajan decided to modernize the system, performing the operas in their original language only. At the beginning of his term of office he played a new production of Verdi’s Otello in Italian with the three Italian interpreters Del Monaco, Zampieri and Calzani together with Leonie Rysanek.

The whole repertory was adapted and only played in the original languages, and an increasing number of international artists was engaged. This development really took off in the 1960s due to the progress made in terms of transportation which helped the eminent singers to travel more frequently. This applied, above all, to leading artists whose guest performances brought them from Vienna to the Scala, from Covent Garden to the Salzburg Festival, and from the Metropolitan Opera to the Opéra de Paris: Domingo, Pavarotti, Cappuccilli, Freni, Ludwig, Janowitz, Ghiaurov, Nilsson, to name but a few. Felsenstein invented the term ‘Flugzeugbesetzungen’ in this era with which he described the artists who travelled by airplane from one opera house to the next.

In the 1970s this had become common practice, and as a result, the number of permanent ensembles decreased worldwide.

The Wiener Staatsoper has maintained a unique system over the last few years: a large repertory (about 50 different works in every season), a versatile ensemble (more than 50 singers with a permanent contract) and guest performances of outstanding international singers in almost every season.

The extensive repertory of the Staatsoper makes it possible to engage many singers. Thus an opera house with ten operas per season can engage about ten sopranos, whilst an opera house with 50 titles is able to present a much larger selection of singers. In the course of a season 55 singers with permanent contracts, 15 singers with ‘residence contracts’ and 130 guest soloists, which makes a total of 200 singers, are working here.

The ensemble has also become more international over time as new talents are mostly sourced at auditions and singing contests where singers from all four corners of the world flock together. Initially, most of the singers came from Europe. After the Berlin Wall had come down, a large number of singers from the former Eastern bloc countries like Rumania, Bulgaria, Russia, and the Ukraine, followed by singers from Northern Europe (Finland, Sweden, the Baltic States) and some years later from the Far East (Japanese, then Koreans, and finally Chinese) appeared on the scene. In more recent times we have seen an increasing number of remarkable singers from South Africa.

The present ensemble of the Staatsoper is reflecting this diversity. As far as the contracts with guest singers are concerned, it is very difficult to arrange the programme in a way that the largest possible number of first-class soloists can be engaged in a season. This requires long-term planning (three or four seasons in advance) in order to be able to book the desired singers as early as possible. But this alone does not do the trick. Sometimes it is impossible to reach an agreement with an artist on the planned piece or the collaboration with certain colleagues (singers, conductors, stage directors). As a result, the planning of the cast resembles the laying of a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces do not fit immediately, but have to be moved around and put in the right places.

Moreover, the programme which is planned two or three years in advance often is wishful thinking as artists sometimes change their plans or decide against singing roles which initially was part of their repertory. It might also happen that a virus upsets even the best planning. However, cancellations make it possible to invite new artists to the Opera. Thus the audience of the Staatsoper can prove that it is indeed special: Having overcome their disappointment about the cancellation of a popular and expected singer, they will give the replacement a fair chance – and will celebrate them if they have deserved it.

Thus one generation of singers follows the next one in order to delight the connoisseurs.

Dominique Meyer became Director of the Vienna State Opera on September 1, 2010. He had worked in the cabinet of Minister of Cultural Affairs, Jack Lang, before being appointed, in 1989, as Director General of the Paris Opera, which includes Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille. From 1994 to 1999 he was Director General of Opera Lausanne, from September 1999 until the end of the 2009/2010 season he worked as general manager and Artistic Director of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.

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Last updated on 9.04.2020