Intermezzo

Watch your Wiener - for free

The Vienna State Opera are kindly giving Intermezzo readers the chance to try out their live streaming service (normally €14 a pop) for free.

The service, launched in late 2013, offers live opera broadcasts in Full HD. While you're watching, you can switch between the standard multicamera setup with close ups and a fixed full screen view (as if you're sitting in the auditorium). Multilingual subtitles are available on a separate device, and you can choose whether you start the stream live, or delay it for a few hours.

Here's the message from the Vienna State Opera:

How to deal with booing

Not everyone is a Franz Welser-Möst fan.

The conductor reveals that one Vienna operagoer, who idolises Christian Thielemann, boos Welser-Möst every time he conducts Wagner. "I find that vaguely touching," he says. "I always crack a smile in his direction".

Even so, he doesn't want the boos to stop. "Opera is like a sport," he says. "[Booing] is part of its lifeblood".

Wiener Wagner Walkout

Conductor Bertrand de Billy has walked out of the new Vienna State Opera Lohengrin just days before the premiere.  After objecting to a third act cut requested by director Andreas Homoki during rehearsals,  he asked Intendant Dominique Meyer to broker a compromise. But when Klaus Florian Vogt pitched in on Homoki's side, de Billy said he felt "let down". 

It's not clear exactly what was disputed, but it could be an add-on to Lohengrin’s In fernem Land monologue. Wagner himself cut this tenor-punishing, dramatically redundant extra at the time of the premiere, and it's generally left out today. When Semyon Bychkov incorporated it into his recent ROH outing, he thought it might be the first time it had been sung at Covent Garden.

However "It's no longer about cuts, but mutual respect and cooperation," de Billy said. "There is a line, and it has been crossed."  

The production was originally planned for Christian Thielemann, who had to pull out when he took over the Salzburg Easter Festival. To step into Thielemann's shoes, De Billy had to cancel a Parsifal in Munich and a Salome in Hamburg. 

Meyer dismissed the dispute as "about two minutes of music in an opera which is four and a half hours long. " Mikko Franck will now conduct it.

Vienna State Opera 2014 - 2015 season is out

This morning the Vienna State Opera put their entire 2014-15 season on sale at the same time they announced it, in case you were wondering why their website's been slow or completely down all day. Well done, Wieners.

The chaos disguises an average 5% price increase, which Intendant Dominique Meyer says is necessary to compensate for the static public subsidy. Unlike standard UK practice, the price rise is helpfully weighted towards the more expensive tickets.

The Four Tenors

Ramón Vargas must have a pretty impressive address book.  After Stephen Costello and Ferruccio Furlanetto pulled out of a charity concert he'd arranged, Vargas wasted no time in grabbing  a couple of top-tier subs.

Jonas Kaufmann and Juan Diego Florez were the surprise guests yesterday morning at the Vienna State Opera event, joining Vargas and fellow tenor Michael Schade in raising €140,000 to help disabled Mexican children. 

It was Verdi nearly all the way - Vargas sang an aria from Luisa Miller, Kaufmann picked La forza del destino and Juan Diego Flórez  La donna è mobile, while Michael Schade went for local boy Mozart and the portrait aria from Zauberflöte.  The original multi-tenor member Plácido Domingo got in on the act too, with a special video message.

Does pay-per-view opera sell?

Looks like a Nein.

The Bavarian State Opera attracted over a million viewers for its free streaming last season. Its most-viewed effort to date, a Don Carlo with Jonas Kaufmann, picked up half a million views all on its own.  

Despite massive advance publicity, the recently-inaugurated Vienna State Opera scheme managed just "several hundred" for its first effort, a Rosenkavalier. And I'd bet at least half of those were just die-hard Renee Fleming fans.  

The likely reason for the difference? Vienna charge 14 euros a pop - more than enough for three separate standing places, a DVD, or a Bier and Bockwurst, take your pick.

Despite this lamentable showing, a spokesman claimed "our expectations were exceeded."  He went on to compare the result with the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall, which he claimed reaches "1500 to 1700" viewers. However other sources suggest the Berliner's figures are more like 7,000- 16,000 (2011-12) or 15,000 (2013).

Vienna has a way to go.