Vienna Continues

The last 3 days have been all about museums - mostly art galleries, but with a few oddities on the way.

A quick summary:

Friday

Again, lots of snow during the day - but at least its much easier to walk through snow than rain.

Fri morning: Kunsthistorisches Museum - an incredible gallery of old masters - even saw some Rembrandt paintings finally!! (see previous post about Rembrandt etchings). The best thing about this gallery (OK, second best behind the pretty incredible collection of paintings) was that you could bookmark your favourite paintings and then print your own personalised catalogue of favourites at the end - very cool!

Fri early afternoon: Schatzkammer - the imperial and ecclesiastical treasure collection of the Habsburgs. Oh my God! Huge jewels, crowns etc, but my favourite stuff was in the ecclesiastical collection. Pieces of the true cross (lots of them - some quite large - and some apparently survived a fire unharmed), 2 of the nails that crucified Christ, the lance that might have pierced Christ´s side, a piece of the manger he was born in, a part of the tablecloth from the last supper, a part of Christ´s loin cloth and the cloth the Veronica wiped Christ´s face with on the way to the crucifixion. Allegedly.

Fri late afternoon: Collection of Musical Instruments. Had to rush through this before it closed unfortunately. Great collection of really interesting instruments, though. A few too many examples of the developing piano and its predecessors, but some with direct connections to Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert which is cool.

Fri night: Rebecca the musical. I was so proud of myself for understanding this new Austrian musical based on the Daphne duMaurier book (which I havent read nor have I seen the Hitchcock movie). It was all in German, of course, and I did get the gist of most of what was said and sung. It was really well staged and had some amazing singers (especially the woman playing Mrs Danvers). There´s something about German pop music and musicals that is comically bad, though - it´s like they´re stuck on the 80s bus and can´t get off (a bit like me, maybe). This show had identifiable aspects of Chess, Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard and Les Miserables, plus pointless chorus numbers purely there for comic relief (in Rebecca?!?). Most of the songs were big power ballads with lots of repeated choruses and only passing reference to the plot. I enjoyed it, though - in 20 years I´ll probably be saying they are stuck on the 2000 bus and can´t get off...

Saturday

No snow today, just lots of rain - a good excuse to stay inside more museums. A slightly later start today after a few too many beers after the show last night...

Sat morning: Leopold museum. An art gallery specialising in Austrian painters. A good collection of Schiele, Klimt and Albin Egger-Lienz, who painted a lot of his work in Laengenfeld where I´ve just finished working! I really like his paintings too! They had a fantastic exhibition of German Expressionis paintings.

Sat afternoon: MUMOK - Museum of Modern Art (Kunst, hence the K in the title). I love modern art museums. They really make me laugh and challenge me all at once. There was a large exhibition of work bw Erwin Wurm. His specialties are dust sculptures, sweater sculptures and 1 minute sculptures where people hold a pose for 1 minute with an inanimate object or two - like lots of pens stuck up their nose and ears. Great stuff!

Sat late afternoon: Schönbrunn palace. Very pretty. Not sure if I could live there though. Certainly good for entertaining. I told the real estate agent I´d consider it and then gave him the wrong phone number.

Sat night: Tosca at the Wiener Staatsoper. Oh my God. Incredible singing and Tosca´s such a good opera. Stood at the back of a box for the whole opera which was a bit tiring after a day of museum walking, but could at least see almost all of the stage this time. Did I mention how amazing the singing was? Even the replacement Scarpia. Tosca was incredible. The tenor (Cavaradossi) cracked on a top note in the first act, with an audible reaction from the audience (almost like a footy match) but was great from then, especially his big sing in the 3rd act. Very exciting.

Sunday

Raining more and really cold and windy now. Last day here before heading back to the Aqua-Dome for a gig tomorrow night.

Sun morning: Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) Early start this morning (didn´t drink last night) to go and see the graves of the great composers. Conquered the public transport system. Beethoven, Gluck, Brahms, Johann Strauss, Wolf, Schubert and a monument to Mozart. Not the most exciting thing ever but something I felt I should do in Vienna as a musician.

Sun late morning: Mass in Karlskirche featuring Mozart Mass in C minor. Another really great )and free) performance and it really worked in the liturgical setting (though it did mean quite a long mass - and in German. Not so succesful in understanding the homily...). Was refreshing, though that the congregational hymn singing was decidedly average - felt just like home.

Sun afternoon: Haus der Musik. A museum devoted to music and how its made. Lots of interactive displays plus info on all the composers. Very well set up but a bit boring. Conducted the Virtual Vienna Philharmonic. They got angry at me... apparently the Blue Danube doesn´t go that fast...

And that´s up to now... tonight I´m going to see a play in German. Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. I have read it before and have the script with me, so it will be interesting to see how much of the language I understand. Then I pack up and get on a train first thing tomorrow morning.

A tiring few days, but an incredible city. I´ll add some pics later when I´m not dealing with net cafes to write posts.