Wiener Kammeroper
Encyclopedia
Wiener Kammeroper is an opera theatre and opera company founded by conductor Hans Gabor. As early as 1948 he initiated the "Vienna Opera Studio" - a company without a theatre of its own. The new name of the company, "Wiener Kammeroper" (Vienna Chamber Opera), reminiscent of chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 and society plays in an intimate setting, was first used officially in 1953.

History

Initially the company played in the suburbs of Vienna, specially for the "Arbeiterkammer" in Vienna, at Mozart Hall of Vienna's "Konzerthaus" concert hall for young audiences under the patronage of the "Theater der Jugend" and during the summer months at the rococo Schönbrunn Palace Theatre.

Since the early years, works by contemporary composers, such as Boris Blacher's The Deluge (1956), have been a mainstay of the repertory along with opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 and classic Viennese operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

, and many a rarity was discovered, e.g. Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...

's Triumph of Honour (1956).

The dream of a permanent home came true. The first one-year subsidy to Wiener Kammeroper granted by the Ministry of Education and the City of Vienna was the pre-requisite for funding its own theatre. The right place was found soon: located in the heart of the city, at Fleischmarkt 24, a former dance hall, which had also been used for theatre performances earlier, was adapted to fulfil the requirements of an operatic stage. The new theatre was inaugurated with a performance of the one-act operas The Marriage by Martinů
Bohuslav Martinu
Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

, The Gambler
The Gambler
The Gambler may refer to:In music:*The Gambler , a 1978 album by Kenny Rogers**"The Gambler" , a 1978 song featured on the Kenny Rogers album*The Gambler...

 (Il marito giocatore) by Orlandini and Monteverdi's Ariadne's Lament as adapted by Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...

.

Till today, numerous original performances and Austrian premières have remained a trademark of the Wiener Kammeroper repertory. One among many artistic highlights of the past was George Tabori
George Tabori
George Tabori was a Hungarian writer and theater director.-Life and career:Tabori was born in Budapest as György Tábori, a son of Kornél and Elsa Tábori. His father died in Auschwitz in 1944, but his mother and his brother Paul managed to escape the Nazis. His son Peter Tabori and again his son...

's legendary 1986 production of I pagliacci by Leoncavallo; Wiener Kammeroper was invited to present the production at the "Berlin Theatertreffen" festival a year later.

In the early 1980s, Hans Gabor retired from conducting, exclusively acting as the artistic director and manager of his theatre in addition to running the "International Belvedere Singing Competition", which he founded in 1982. Today, the competition is the largest "singers' exchange" in the world, a veritable "Wall Street of Voices".

The series "Studio K" (1983) seeks to offer a platform to contemporary composers. Chamber operas by Tom Johnson
Tom Johnson (composer)
Tom Johnson , is an American minimalist composer, a former student of Morton Feldman.-Career:His pieces are most often based simply on mathematical and logical processes, such as tiling, which he attempts to make as clear as possible...

, Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...

, Luciano Chailly
Luciano Chailly
Luciano Chailly was an Italian composer and arts administrator. He is the father of harpist Cecilia Chailly and conductor Riccardo Chailly. As a composer, Chailly was best-known for his operas, many of which were composed to libretti by Dino Buzzati.-Reference:*...

, Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

 or Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

 saw their premieres in Vienna. Again, George Tabori contributed a production which met with critical acclaim abroad. To address a young audience, classics such as La Bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...

 or Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...

 were translated into the musical language of rock music.

In the summer of 1992 Wiener Kammeroper began producing open-air performances of Mozart operas at the Roman Ruin in the palace gardens of Schönbrunn with the title "Mozart in Schönbrunn". However, in 1999, conservationists found that the monument was in jeopardy, and performances on the unique open-air stage had to be discontinued.

In 1994 Hans Gabor died unexpectedly and Rudolf Berger continued the successful programming.

Present and future/mission

During the 1999/2000 opera season Isabella Gabor and Holger Bleck took over the management of the Kammeroper. In keeping with the Kammeroper's tradition, the main pillars of the Vienna Kammeroper continue to be promoting the young generation of singers with the renamed "International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition" and the opera productions at the Kammeroper's location on Fleischmarkt.

In regard to its mission, a decisive part of the artistic work of the management is finding works that neither figure among the repertory of the big concert and opera houses nor are produced by independent groups. The focus is on rarities, chamber operas, or even opera pieces that have hardly ever or never been performed in Austria, but which reveal a quality that is truly compelling.
"Art in the sense of telling stories, musical theatre that is current, touching, makes us happy, upsets us, makes us want to discuss things, the advancement of young musicians, and last but not least an attentive audience. This, and much more, makes Wiener Kammeroper what it is – music theatre with a unique and unmistakable concept in the artistic environment of Austria and Vienna"

said Isabella Gabor & Holger Bleck at the press conference announcing the season of 2006/07.

Wiener Kammeroper stands for programming which rests on four pillars – chamber music
Chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

al, baroque opera, contemporary musical theater and opera buffa
Opera buffa
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc...

 – including no less than two original productions and an Austria première during the 2006/07 season.

Current season

With each new production, the company has received more and more international media attention for their chamber musical productions, which started successfully with The Cole Porter Story in 2002. After a fully sold out production of the Fats Waller
Fats Waller
Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...

 show Ain’t Misbehavin’ the new season opened with the world-première of a musical by the US composer Ray Leslee, A Good Man, with a libretto and song lyrics by Philip S. Goodman. The composer is by no means unknown to the audience of Wiener Kammeroper since his a cappella musical Avenue X achieved success two years ago.

After a festival of baroque opera during the jubilee season of 2003/2004, which marked a high point in the way Wiener Kammeroper cultivates the genre, and after much acclaimed productions of Venus and Adonis
Venus and Adonis
Venus and Adonis, a classical myth, was a common subject for art during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Some works which have been titled Venus and Adonis are:-Literary works:...

 by John Blow and The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

 by John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...

 and Christoph Pepusch (both in 2005), the thread was taken up again in a production of Agrippina
Agrippina
Agrippina may refer to:In people:* Vipsania Agrippina , daughter of Caecilia Attica and first wife of the Emperor Tiberius* Vipsania Marcella Agrippina , daughter of Claudia Marcella Major and first wife of general Publius Quinctilius Varus* Julia the Younger or Vipsania Julia Agrippina , daughter...

, Georg Friedrich Händel's first major success on the operatic stage.

Contemporary musical theatre has always been a mainstay in the programme of Wiener Kammeroper. In the current season, it is represented by two works from the British Isles which could not offer more of a contrast: the original production of When She Died: Events following the Death of Diana, the stage version of a work by Jonathan Dove originally written for television, and Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies
Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, CBE is an English composer and conductor and is currently Master of the Queen's Music.-Biography:...

, both classics of modernity.

In the opera buffa department, the audience will be able to enjoy a special tidbit at the end of the season. Whilst two years ago, the true surprise was the Austrian première of Dmitri Shostakovitch's musical comedy Moscow, Moscow, which had the audience rolling in the aisles, there is reason to expect that the public will be equally enthusiastic about the Austrian première of the commedia lirica I due timidi
I due timidi
I due timidi is a one-act radio opera composed in 1950 by Nino Rota with libretto by the film writer Suso Cecchi d'Amico.-Performance history:...

, a display of musical fireworks by the Italian composer Nino Rota
Nino Rota
Nino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...

, whose better known piece The Florentine Straw Hat was produced at Wiener Kammeroper six years ago.

During the months of July and August 2007 the "Vienna Summer Opera Festival" will again be on, with a revival of Nino Rota's opera buffa I due timidi.

External links

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