Patrick Bade
Ringstrasse: Vienna

Patrick Bade - Ringstrasse: Vienna

- Right. Thank you, Judi. Well, I thought I’d share my lunch with you. Well, I can’t really share it with you, because I’ve eaten it, but this is what I had today. La Fresque, they have wonderful starters, and what you can do is have three starters. This was roast cauliflower, satay chicken, and rouge, red mullet. And this is what my friend Martine had. She had marinated fish with beetroot and pintade, which is guinea fowl, I think. Anyway, to get to business, Vienna. 1873, Vienna staged its first ever world exhibition. Of course, London was first off the mark in 1851, Crystal Palace exhibition. And then Paris followed in 1855, in 1867. And then all the big cities wanted to get in on the game. They all wanted to be in the big league. So, Vienna, 1873, and Vienna was followed by Brussels, Budapest, Prague, Barcelona, and Chicago. It was a real demonstration of the position of these cities in the world. And so this enormous construction, this central palace of the exhibition, was actually the largest domed space in the world right up till 1937 when it burnt down. It’s very strange, how these big exhibition buildings turned out to be terrible fire hazards, because the Crystal Palace burnt in 1936 and the Glaspalast in Munich also burnt in the 1930s. Here is that central space. Now, I think one of the reasons they wanted to to put on this exhibition again, it was to show the progress that the Habsburg Empire had made since the revolutions of 1848, which very nearly destroyed it, came very close to independence for Hungary and overthrowing the monarchy in Vienna. This is the centre of Vienna. You may recognise in the background little Burgtheater, which I’ve shown you before, where Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro was first performed. And you can see a lot of destruction in this image, again, of the 1848 revolution in Vienna. So, the Emperor Ferdinand was forced to abdicate and his son, Franz Joseph, took over and had one of the longest reigns of any monarch, I think only surpassed by our own dear queen.

So, he was monarch from 1848 to 1916, and certainly in the later part of his reign, he had that … I think people sort of felt as they felt about our queen until very recently, that they were immortal, that they were a kind of guarantee of stability and continuity. It didn’t really start that way. He started off as very repressive, very right wing, determined to stomp out revolutionary tendencies. But he mellowed as he got older. And actually he was a very remarkable man. He would have liked very much to give different minorities in the empire more freedom than he was able to. He was hampered in this partly by the Hungarians, and he was, as I’m sure you’ve heard many times over, in Trudy’s lectures, actually very largely sympathetic to the Jews. So after 1848, slightly belatedly, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, industrialises. So, this is a pattern we see in many other countries of course. Britain was the first to industrialise, followed by Belgium, then France and Germany. And so all these countries, it’s largely due, a lot of it is due, to railways. And you could say that the construction of the railway system throughout the Western world in the mid 19th century was rather like the internet in our own age. It was something that incredibly changed the world. But there was a very serious setback in 1866 when Bismarck concocted a war with Austria. It was a brief war, but a very brutal one. And at the Battle of Koniggratz in 1866, the great and previously invincible Austrian army was completely shattered by the much more modern and industrialised Prussian army.

And this prompted a big rethink, that the Austrians realised that they had to withdraw really from Germany. It was now obviously Prussia that takes over as the big boss and the leader in most of the German-speaking world. This is very powerful, very terrible. I think one of the really great and terrible images of warfare. And this is the aftermath of the battle, depicted by the Prussian artist Adolph von Menzel. So, I think one of the remarkable things about Franz Joseph in the end was his flexibility, and following on from this disastrous defeat, he really rethinks the whole Habsburg Empire, and he creates the dual monarchy, the dual monarchy, which gives a large measure of home rule and independence to the Hungarians. And here he is being crowned King of Hungary. There you’ve got Sisi, you’ve got Elisabeth, next to him. So, as well as being emperor of the Habsburg Empire, he was King of Hungary. A lot of bling and pageantry. Hungarians really like all this kind of stuff. How about this for a uniform? This is a Hungarian uniform of the time. And so actually before this, and that was 1866, but in 1857, Franz Joseph made one of the most momentous decisions of his reign, which was to demolish the mediaeval walls of Vienna, which had protected it twice from the Turks in 1529 and 1683, but had entirely failed to protect Vienna from the French. Napoleon took the city twice in 1805, and then in 1809. And so a decree was issued with the title “Es ist mein Wille,” “It is my wish.” And this is one of the very last images of the walls before their demolition. This is actually 1858. This is the following year. And it shows the funeral of the famous General Radetzky, who’d been a victorious general in the Napoleonic Wars and in the wars against Italy. This is a map of Vienna that shows the fortifications. And as you can see, outside those walls, there was a field of fire. The suburbs spread on out much further. You can see Leopoldstadt right up at the top, on the other side of the river. So there was a very large empty area around the wall.

So this gave great opportunity for the redevelopment of the city. And there were two models really throughout Europe for the redevelopment of cities in the 19th century. One was the Haussmann Paris version. You needed a very, very tough authoritarian government for that because Haussmann just drove these wide streets through the dense, ancient areas of Paris. But an alternative, if you had a system of mediaeval walls, was to build a big circular boulevard round the old city. Vienna is the most spectacular example, but other cities did it too. Munich did it. And there are plenty of other cities in Europe that followed the Vienna model. So, here is a map of Vienna that shows the famous Ringstrasse, that was constructed on the area of the walls and the field of fire outside the area of the walls. And I always like to say that this, oh, here you see a bird’s eye view, that the Ringstrasse is the most spectacular architectural fancy dress ball in the world. Because, well, you’ve got these massive, incredible, monumental buildings and they’re all in different historical styles according to their purpose. So, you see up top right, you can see what looks like a gothic cathedral. It’s actually the Votivkirche. This is by an architect called Heinrich von Ferstel. And then towards the left, about midway down, you can see the Rathaus, the town hall, and that’s by an architect called Friedrich von Schmidt. Nearly all these architects you’ll see have the “von” of nobility. It was a very prestigious thing to be an architect on the Ringstrasse, and they were pretty well all of them ennobled.

And bottom right hand side, you can see the Burgtheater, so you can see they’re in different historical styles. You chose the historical style that you thought was appropriate to the purpose of the building. A church, gothic, obviously. Town hall, you’re thinking of the great town halls of Flanders and Northern France in the late middle ages. For a theatre, a Renaissance style seems to be more appropriate. This is, I suppose, the most famous building on the Ringstrasse. This is the Hofoper, the Imperial Opera. And it’s, I suppose, the most important building in Vienna. Was then, it is today. I think most people in the world are more familiar with whoever is directing the Vienna Opera than they are with who is Chancellor of Austria. Well, who’s the main conductor there. And they’re probably more familiar with the politics of the Opera House than they are with the politics of Austria. This was, of course, a very urgently needed building and it was the first building that was completed on the Ringstrasse. And the two architects who designed it had actually not really taken into account the final level of the street. It was higher than they thought it would be. So the building has an oddly squat proportions. I actually don’t think it’s one of the most beautiful opera houses in Europe. And when Franz Joseph saw it, he said, “Hmm, "looks to me like somebody sat on it.”

This was repeated to the two architects. And they were of course absolutely devastated by the emperor’s criticism. Here are the architects. On the left is Eduard van der Null, and on the right hand side is August Sicard von Sicardsburg. And Eduard van der Null was so upset by the emperor’s comment that he hanged himself. And this is 1868, the building was nearly completed, hadn’t actually been officially opened. And around the same time, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, he died, also before the opening, but actually of natural causes. And it’s said that the emperor was so disturbed at the impact of his comments that for the rest of his life, he was always very, very reluctant to give an opinion about anything and would say … “It was very nice. It pleased me.” Here is the grand staircase. And of course the building was very heavily damaged in the Second World War. The auditorium was destroyed, but the great staircase survived and it’s very impressive. And the obvious comparison, of course is with the Paris Opera. But I have to say nothing can really match the spectacular theatrical grandeur of the Paris Opera, the Palais Garnier, which you see on the right hand side. And this again is the Burgtheater by Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer, again in a kind of Renaissance/Baroque style. Another very impressive staircase, which has … Actually, I’ll show you next time. It has murals by Gustav Klimt. This is the parliament building. And so, democracy was a Greek invention. So, the inevitable choice of historical architectural style for the parliament was neo-Greek, as you see here.

And it’s by the architect Theophil von Hansen, who is also the architect of this building, which I don’t think is a particularly distinguished building, but whenever I take groups to Vienna these days, they always want to see it, because this is the Palais Ephrussi, and I imagine all of you have read the Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which describes the history of the Ephrussi family, the French branch, which I think is rather more interesting, the Parisian branch of the family, and the Austrian branch, who were really just very, very rich. And this was their house on the Ring. And here’s a photograph of it before the Second World War. Here on the right hand side, these people, of course, Ephrussi, they’re a banking family, their wealth was recent. And you get the feeling that everybody in Vienna in the 1860s was dressing up in historical costume. And this is a photograph of Emmy von Ephrussi, where she is trying to dress up as Isabella d'Este, as painted by Titian on the left hand side. Now, art. Vienna, of course, prided itself on being an important artistic centre. The main venue for the exhibition of art in Vienna was the Kunstlerhaus. And Kunstlerhaus had pretty well a monopoly on art exhibitions up until the founding of the Vienna Secession in 1897. So, it had a similar role to the Salon in Paris or the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. And you see from this picture, dating about 1880, the way that the pictures were exhibited, which we might think was rather unartistic, with very crowded walls, and the pictures exhibited frame to frame, almost floor to ceiling.

I’ll be talking more about that of course on Sunday, when I get to talk about the creation of the Vienna Secession. Now, the most famous and celebrated artist in Vienna in this period in the 1860s and 1870s was Hans von Makart. He may not be a very familiar name to you because I suppose his reputation was very diminished and eclipsed after his death. He was immensely famous in the 1860s and he was one of the first of what they called the “Malerfursten,” the painter-princes. He lived like a prince. Here he is with his wife and his children and like everybody in Vienna, and everything, he was dressing up in historical costume. Here is Hans von Makart and his wife in 16th century costume. And here they are in 17th century costume, all pretending to be in a painting by Frans Hals. There’s an insert of a painting by Frans Hals, bottom right. And here is Hans von Makart looking very splendid in historical costume on horseback for one of these great pageants that he organised in the city. One of the pageants was to celebrate the construction of the railway system. This pageant took place in 1878. And top here is Makart’s design for this pageant, and which you can see is very inspired by Rubens. This bottom here is a design that Rubens made for a pageant that took place in Antwerp in the 1630s when Ferdinand of Austria visited the cities. So, Makart based himself, he thought himself, as a modern Rubens and a modern Titian. And of course at the Kunsthistorisches museum, he had one of the world’s greatest collections of both these two artists to hand, that he could study closely. Here is a vast painting that he made of a historical pageant, again, although I don’t know how historical, how correct his historicism here is. This is, again, Charles. This is the Emperor Charles V in the 16th century, entering the city of Antwerp.

I doubt whether there were quite so many naked ladies leaping around when Charles V made his entry. Now, he’s a very skilled artist, Makart, and especially when you see his sketches. They do have a wonderful freedom and panache to them that when you look at the sketches, they really look quite modern, quite expressive handling of paint. This was his other very enormous, very famous masterpiece, if you think it’s a masterpiece, which is Bacchus and Ariadne. And this is Makart trying to out-Titian Titian. Here is the same subject by Titian, painted for Leonello d'Este, in the early 16th century. And, of course he’s historicist, but he’s in some ways quite up to the minute in his interest in Japanism. A not very convincing-looking image of a Japanese geisha on the left hand side. But everything Japanese, of course, very, very fashionable from the 1860s onwards. And on the right hand side, a Wagnerian valkyrie. So, he was an early fan of Wagner, and it was a kind of mutual admiration. Wagner also hugely admired Makart, and went to visit him in his studio. Two more Wagnerian subjects by Hans von Makart. And this is one of his most famous portraits of a great tragic actress of the day called Charlotte Wolter in the role of Messalina. Like a lot of artists at this time, I think he’s making use of photography to help him. And here, this painting was clearly based on photographs he took of her.

There’s a rather nice photograph here, if you can see, on the right hand side, of Makart actually chatting with her in between poses. But his favourite model was a woman called Hanna Klinkosch, who was considered in the 1870s to be the most beautiful woman in Vienna. And here you can see, there is Makart, Hanna von Klinkosch on the left hand side, dressed up to look like a subject of Rubens. And there is Rubens’ portrait of his second wife, Helena Fourment, on the right hand side. Now, Hanna von Klinkosch is an interesting character. She was the daughter of a Jewish silversmith. As I said, she became a very celebrated beauty in Vienna and eventually married into the highest echelons of the nobility. In 1890, she married the Prince of Lichtenstein. She became the Princess of Lichtenstein. Of course, she was his second wife, so he already had legitimate children by the first wife. But all the same, this was quite a scandal, you can imagine, in Vienna in the 19th century, for one of the grandest of all aristocrats of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to marry the daughter of a Jewish silversmith. And he’s an artist who certainly had an impact on Klimt, on the early work of Klimt. And these portraits of Hanna, this is again Hanna Klinkosch on the left hand side, they have a kind of “Come hither” sexiness and a kind of gorgeous sumptuous quality that does very much anticipate the paintings of Klimt. Two more photographs of … Hanna von Klinkosch. Well, on the left, she’s again in historical costume. She’s dressed up as though she had been painted by Cranach, a 16th century German artist. But on the right in very up-to-date, modern Parisian fashion. Now, probably the greatest masterpiece of Makart was his decoration for a library of a palace in Vienna.

The palace belonged to a Greek merchant called Nikolaus Dumba, who later actually, towards the end of his life, was one of the first important private patrons of Klimt. And he wanted a gorgeous, sumptuous library. And he generously paid for Makart to go to Venezia. He said, “I want you to go to Venezia. "I just want you to spend some time there. "I want you to look around "and look at everything you can find "of great beauty in Venice. "And I want you to come back to Vienna "and I want you to create a library for me.” And that’s what he did. This is actually a contemporary watercolour of it by an artist called Rudolf von Alt, that probably gives you the best impression of what the library looked like when it was completed. This is the ceiling. The whole library and the ceiling does survive, but in different places, sadly. When the Nazis took over Vienna, the descendants of Dumba were forced to sell the ceiling to Hitler, who admired it very much, which they did. And then after the war, the family reclaimed it and then they sold it, and on the open market, and it’s now in a museum in Taiwan. Whereas the rest of the walls actually survive in Vienna. I think it’s an unfortunate solution, and whether it’s in Taiwan or in Vienna, it would have been better if the whole thing had stayed together, because it’s obviously conceived as what what Wagner would have called a “Gesamtkunstwerk,” “Total work of art.” Here is a photograph of Dumba in his celebrated library.

And this is one of the panels from it. Now, this is at Makart’s studio. And these days, if you look in history of art books, it’s a bit like Stuck in Munich. Stuck is perhaps more famous today for his house and his studio than he is for his actual painting. And in fact, Makart took over an old foundry, an old factory, which is a vast space. This is what it looks like from the outside. And this is what it looks like inside. Wow. I mean, it really is the most over the top artist studio of the 19th century. When Wagner’s wife, Cosima, went to visit it, she was very impressed. She said, “Oh, it looks like a sublime lumber room.” I think that’s actually quite an accurate description of all this completely mad clutter. And here is Makart and his wife lounging around in the splendours of his studio. Well, that’s really something isn’t it? Makes my flat look quite tame by comparison. Now, by big contrast, I mean you’ve got this opulent, over the top style, the Ringstrasse style of architecture, painting, interior decoration, so different from the slightly austere Biedermeier interior design of the 1820s that I was showing you last week. And this, again is a contrast. This is going back to the famous Thonet chair No. 14, which was launched in 1859 by the firm of Gebruder Thonet, which had been founded 10 years earlier in 1849, immediately after the year of revolutions. And this was, for its … I think these chairs, they’re completely timeless. And as I told you last time, they were the first, this was the first, mass-produced, industrially-produced furniture. Over 50 million of these chairs being produced, and pretty well every cafe and restaurant in the Western world had these chairs.

And here is, again, an image that shows you how they could be put together. You see, the wood is bent with the use of very hot steam. And so the individual elements can be very cheaply mass-produced and then easily fitted together. But as well as the relatively simple and famous chair No. 14, there were much more elaborate pieces that fit in with the taste of the mid 19th century for complicated and lavish design, like this rocking chair, or this one. And how about this for a baby’s cradle? Also produced by Gebruder Thonet. Now, apart from Makart who’s, in a way he is, as I said, the artist, the prince-painter of the Ringstrasse period, there’s one other very interesting, very quirky artist that I want to talk about fairly briefly. And this is Anton Romako. He’s born in 1833, and this is one of his most famous … He’s a rather eccentric artist, who in some ways very much looks forward to the next period, or even the next-but-one period. Because in some ways his art bypasses that of Klimt, and it’s closer to that of Schiele and Kokoschka. This is a painting celebrating an Austrian naval victory against the Italians in the 1870s. That is Romako on the right hand side. Here is his very tender portrait of his wife with his two daughters. But this is a very terrible story that I’m going to tell you, that could have been from a novella, of the turn of the century, and it’s got very Freudian connotations to it. A Schnitzler novella, for instance. A very tragic story. His wife, his younger wife, left him for a lover and abandoned the two daughters. Here are the two daughters somewhat later. And they jointly committed suicide. It was a mutual pact between the two daughters.

You think, “Oh my god, yes, this really is "the Vienna of Freud.” But it’s an extraordinary image. I think even if you don’t know the terrible story that these two girls were shortly afterwards going to kill themselves in a suicide pact, I think what is kind of startling and unusual about this picture for its period is the completely empty background. And this was also featured … Oh, no, this is his very eccentric portrait of Sisi, of the Empress Elisabeth, which he did not paint from life. After the age of 30 … Sisi of course was one of the most beautiful women of the 19th century, and I know you have heard all about her from Trudy, or are about to hear about her from Trudy, as the Princess Diana of the 19th century. A very glamorous woman, but a woman who was obsessed, very narcissistic, I suppose. She was obsessed by her own beauty and physique. If you go to the Hofburg in Vienna, you can see her private gym. She was very determined to keep in shape. And from the age of 30, she never posed again for any artist or any photographer. There are no images of her, except rather distant ones in the street of her, after the age of 30. The portrait on the right, which was an officially approved one, was not painted from life, it was painted from much earlier photographs. I doubt whether she would have been very happy with Anton Romako’s rather strange image on the left hand side. But these two portraits, particularly the one of the woman, are perhaps his most famous and admired pictures because, you can tell from the fashion, this is the 1880s. This is Christoph and Isabella Reisser, who are a married couple. And they have some of that weird, almost eerie intensity that you get in the portraits of Egon Schiele and Oscar Kokoschka, more than a generation later.

Again, the two figures are frontally placed and there’s no 19th century Ringstrasse clutter around them. Very different, in a way from, from Klimt, who, if he was painting her, the whole thing would have been sumptuous and full of decorative charm, and very Belle Epoque. But this is a very stark kind of image, with all this emptiness around her, and the frontality of the image. For comparison, this is a portrait by Egon Schiele, that I will be talking about this time next week. And a weird, sort of unnerving intensity of the expression. So, Romako on the right hand side, and Richard Gerstl on the left hand side. That’s a self-portrait that he made shortly before his suicide. Now, music. I’m going to finish off talking about music. And there were two musical kings of Vienna throughout this period, the Ringstrasse period, from the 1860s to the 1890s. And they are Johann Strauss II and Johannes Brahms, and they each of course have their very famous monuments on the Ringstrasse. Johann Strauss, born in 1825, to a Viennese family of partly-Jewish ancestries. That was a fact that the Nazis were desperately anxious to cover up. They went to the most enormous lengths to search out and confiscate any documents that showed the Jewish ancestry of Johann Strauss. They couldn’t afford to lose his music, but it’s a wonderful instance of the weird obsessiveness of the Nazis, that having found this documentation and removed it so that the public could not find it, they then actually … They didn’t destroy it.

They kept it for future possible use, or reference in an archive. Now, these two musical giants, you would think, Vienna wasn’t that big a city, you’d think they would’ve come across one another. But this photograph actually records the very first time that they met face-to-face, which was towards the end of their lives in the 1890s. And Johann Strauss, rather touchingly, took his autograph book with him, and he asked the great master, Johannes Brahms, for his autograph, and also I think very touchingly, Brahms took the autograph book, and he wrote out the first … He wrote stave lines, and he wrote out the the first part of the melody of the Blue Danube Waltz, and he wrote underneath it … It’s a very, very Austrian way to … Even though he wasn’t Austrian, as we’ll see in a minute, but it’s a very Austrian expression to end a sentence with the sighing word “leider.” So, what he said was, “This is the Blue Danube Waltz, "not by Johannes Brahms. "Unfortunately.” So the Blue Danube Waltz was the thing that made Johann Strauss II internationally famous. It was written in 1866. And what made it famous was he took his orchestra to Paris for the Paris World Exhibition of 1867. And the Blue Danube Waltz took Paris, and then the world, by storm. And, of course, we have to have a little bit of it. So, here is the opening, conducted by the Austrian conductor, Franz Welser-Most. Is something happening? Nothing happening. Well, not … Can’t hear anything.

• [Host] Oh, Patrick, I did hear it there for a second.

• [Patrick] Sorry?

• [Host] I did hear something.

• [Patrick] All right. Well it starts very softly, so maybe I just didn’t hear it. There we go. Yeah.

• [Patrick] Is that … And so on. And now, here is Brahms, who was born in Hamburg, so the very opposite end of the German-speaking world. Hamburg and Vienna could be on different planets, they’re so different from one another. But he arrived in Vienna in … 1862, aged at 29. As a young man, he was very beautiful. Everybody was impressed by him. Robert and Clara Schumann described him as looking like an angel from another world. But I can’t think of any other person who aged quite as rapidly. He sort of went from Adonis to “gray-bearded loon” almost overnight, once he arrived in Vienna, and became this sort of grand old man, of the rather conservative classical Austro-German tradition for the rest of his life. Here he is, not that … Because he didn’t get to be that old, he never got to be as old as I am, but looking absolutely ancient, walking around the streets of Vienna with a lady friend. He never married, but he was a great frequenter of brothels and prostitutes. And apparently, all the prostitutes of Vienna knew him and they liked him. They were fond of him. And, as he was such a grand man of German music, great people from all over the world came to visit him, and it was an embarrassment when he was walking around the city with the good and the great, that all the prostitutes would wave and blow kisses, and shout greetings to him. This is his flat in Vienna. It’s pretty well, I would say, Ringstrasse. Quite conventional Ringstrasse taste, with some rather heavy furniture, as well as some nice Thonet chairs.

You can see the Chair No. 2 and the Chair No. 14, and a Thonet rocking chair. Very conventional taste in art, with reproduction of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna on the wall in the background, and a bust of Beethoven. And Cherubini. I mean, that’s rather surprising, that he had a reproduction of Ingres’ portrait of Cherubini in his flat. And here he is, the grand man in his flat in Vienna. This is probably the most famous classical concert hall in the world. It’s the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, also just off the Ringstrasse, opened in 1870. And many great works of music have had their premiere in this hall, several of Brahms’. There was his Variations on a Theme of Haydn, were premiered in it in 1873. Second and Third Symphonies were also premiered in this hall. But I’ve chosen a piece by Bruckner. Many of you will have heard Dennis talking about Bruckner very vividly the other day. And very sympathetically. Bruckner, a very strange character. I think today we would describe him as being on the spectrum, in fact quite far down the spectrum. Endless stories of his weird and eccentric behaviour, of course his rather unhealthy obsession with teenage girls, and another unhealthy obsession with the skulls and bodies of dead composers.

There’s a story of him, when Beethoven’s corpse was exhumed, he begged to allowed to be present. And as the coffin was opened, he threw himself into it, and he clutched the skull of Beethoven and had to be wrestled to the floor to release it. Well, he was of course a provincial Austrian. He arrived in Vienna, and he had a position at the Conservatoire as a professor, and later at the university. His symphonies had a mixed reception from the Viennese. The critic Eduard Hanslick was a very bitter enemy throughout his career. But I’m going to play you the opening of the Fourth Symphony. And this is a performance that actually took place in the hall that you see during the Second World War under Furtwangler. It’s a wonderful … These glorious, mysterious, hushed openings, that these great symphonies have, that Dennis was talking about. He played the opening of the Fifth Symphony, which is not dissimilar. Monumental works. And you could make an analogy, I suppose, between the ambition and the monumental scale of the Ringstrasse buildings and the symphonies of Bruckner. Now, on another scale, of course, chamber music, and I mentioned last time that the chamber music of Schubert and his songs were not intended for public performance. They were intended for private performance. But as the century moved on, the chamber music moved into the public sphere. The quartet you see on the left hand side is the Muller Quartet. They were perhaps the first quartet to start performing chamber music in public. And they were followed by the Hellmesberger Quartet, who were the leading performers of chamber music in public in the mid-to-late 19th century. And by 1870, it was normal practise to have a public concert, but of course you don’t want to hall as big as the Golden Hall. So, in the Musikverein, there is a smaller hall which is specifically designed for chamber music performance. And it’s called the Brahms Saal.

And in that room, several works of Brahms’ chamber works were premiered, including his … Second String Quintet on the 11th of November 1890. I was rather struck by this date because the 11th of November actually happens to be my mother’s birthday. She was born in 1921. You know, Brahms seems so remote from us. He seems, you know, old fashioned, of course, even for his time. He really seems to be an old master. So it really brought me up short to think that my mother was born to the day, 31 years after this piece of music was presented to the world. But the heart of the city, as I said, is the Opera House. And this was inaugurated in May, 1869. Almost inevitably, of course, the first opera to be presented at the Imperial Opera, the Hofoper, was Don Giovanni, but presented, as was normal at the time, in the vernacular, in German, rather than in Italian. This is what it looked like. Very lavish, over the top productions. This is Aida, as it looked in the 19th century. costumes at the Vienna Opera. This is a set for Das Rheingold, although Vienna, actually, was not a great bastion of Wagnerism. The Viennese were actually quite resistant to Wagner, and generally preferred Italian opera to German opera. This, here, are performers of Wagner in Vienna of the 19th century. But I’m going to finish with two short excerpts, one from Carmen. And the reason for this is that Carmen, I’m sure you know, was something of a flop when it was presented in Paris in 1875, yet some of the stupidest critics, critical comments, ever, in the history of opera, the French critics said, “Oh, Carmen has no tunes. "It’s Wagnerian. "It’s boring,” and so on.

And sadly, Bizet died very shortly after the premiere thinking that his opera was a flop and that was the end of it. But he’d signed a contract for it to be performed in Vienna. And after his death, in October 1875, Carmen had a tremendous, tremendous success in Vienna. It really took Vienna by storm. And both Wagner … Interestingly, Wagner, Verdi and Brahms all happened to be in Vienna at the time. Those three composers who had very little in common, really didn’t like one another, but they all loved Carmen. Very surprising, in the case of Wagner, really. But Brahms loved it so much, he apparently went to see it 20 times. And the singer in the first performance, singing in German of course, was Pauline Lucca, who was rather scandalously the chere amie of Bismarck, so the inset picture there is a picture that caused quite a few raised eyebrows, a photograph taken of Bismarck together with the first Viennese Carmen, Pauline Lucca. And I can’t see my little thing to click on, so actually I’m going to skip that. I’m going straight to my final excerpt, which is from the opera Die Konigin von Saba by Karl Goldmark. And that had its premiere at the same year, in 1875. In fact, a couple of months earlier, in March, 1875. Again, a great success, and became an absolute staple of the Vienna Opera right up to the Anschluss. It was constantly in the repertoire, and all the greatest singers, Leo Slezak and so on, they all sang it in Vienna. But because of the fact that Goldmark was Jewish, of course it was immediately banned at the Anschluss, in 1938, and sadly has never regained its position. I’ve never had a chance to see it. I’d love to see it. But I’m going to finish tonight with a short excerpt from Goldmark’s The Queen of Sheba. Right, time for questions. I can see there are a lot of them.

Q&A and Comments:

Yes, the Israeli restaurant was called Shouk, and I haven’t forgotten my promise to send you my new list. It’s delayed because when I finish this lecture, I’m going to meet up with a friend and we’re going to try out a Lebanese restaurant, which has been very recommended. You’re going to think I never do anything else but eat when I’m in Paris, but, well that’s true to a certain extent.

Q: Is it expensive?

Shouk. Shouk is moderately expensive. I paid 27 euros for my main dish of calamari, but it was worth every penny. It was delicious. My lunch today was not expensive at all. La Fresque is amazingly

Q: … Dessert?

A: I’m not really into desserts, so I’m not the right person to ask for about desserts.

“Looks like a schnitzel.” No it wasn’t. But it was all very good. Let me see. Yes, they always have vegetarian things, and also, what is very nice about La Fresque actually, which you don’t often always get in Parisian restaurants, is you may have noticed that they always serve very delicious vegetables with the meat or the fish. I can begin to crave vegetables in Paris, if you have too many confits de canard or too many meaty things without vegetables.

“How come the place …” I don’t think … It was me, probably, that changed the setting. This is Jennifer saying not to miss Erik Larson’s book on the Chicago World Fair. Of course, it was very, very important, The Chicago World Fair, partly because it was celebrating the rebirth of Chicago after the catastrophic fire a few years earlier. Yes, those were two portraits of Franz Joseph as a young man and as an old man.

Q: Louis XIV reigned 72 years. Is that longer than our dear queen?

A: I’m not sure. Of course, he was a child when he came to the throne. The Devil in the White City, Larsen’s book. Thank you very much. I must get hold of that.

“Franz Joseph, ennobled so many Jews "that the Goethe published a mini Goethe "for all Jewish nobles.” Hmm, not sure about that. It’s a bit of an ambiguous compliment.

“Wonder if he costs the cost of all those fancy uniforms "as opposed to what the salary …” Yes, I know that was a very expensive uniform I showed you, wasn’t it? “

Ros Newman, the sculptor, died recently. "Would you consider giving a …” I don’t know her work, I’m afraid. Of course, I know William Rothenstein.

Q: “What was the name of the BBC programmes "about the fall of the Habsburgs?”

A: I don’t have TV. I’m sorry, I can’t answer that one. Somebody might. “‘Mein Wille’ is more than … "It’s ‘My will.’” Yes, it is. It’s very strong.

“Mein Wille.” “It’s my will that it will be happening.”

Q: “Were any of these buildings destroyed?”

A: Actually, amazingly … Well, the auditorium of the Opera House was destroyed, and one wing of the Ephrussi Palace was destroyed. But I’m sure many of the buildings must have been damaged. But actually all those main buildings on the Ringstrasse are still there. It would take more than a few bombs to get rid of most of them.

This is Rosalind saying, “I was in Vienna about 10 years ago and discovered "that apparently the Opera House "didn’t have a ticket office. "You have to buy tickets on the street.” I’m not sure if that’s still the case.

Q: What do I think is the most beautiful opera house in Europe?

A: Well … I think Budapest is fantastically beautiful, of the really big, grand ones. It might be Budapest. But of course, if you’re going for smaller ones and older ones, there is the Estates theatre in Prague and the Cuvillies in Munich. They’re exquisite. They’re exquisitely beautiful. But yes, amongst the really big 19th century ones, I think I would go for Budapest.

Q: “Who is the horseman on top of the opera house?”

A: I’d never thought about that. I don’t know who that is.

Q: “Palais Garnier, is it more elegant?”

A: Palais Garnier is so jaw-dropping. I’m not sure if “elegant” is the right word. It is so incredibly over the top and it just amazes me every time I go to it. I do enjoy visiting it very much. I go quite often.

Q: “Who crafted the fountain in front of the parliament building?”

A: I don’t know that either, I’m afraid.

“I understand similarities between "the Opera House in Vienna and Budapest, "but the compromise was the Budapest one had to be small.” That is correct. That is correct. And that was on the insistence of Franz Joseph. But I really think the Budapest house is an absolute masterpiece, and it’s got a wonderful acoustic and it works very well. “I have a general question for Lockdown University team.”

Q: This is Marika. “I’ve been immensely enjoying all your lectures "about history, and cultural history of Austria. "What gave Lockdown University the idea "to have this series of lectures?”

A: And I think … Well, it wasn’t my idea, I can tell you. I think it was Trudy, who was probably the inspiration for the series. And she asked me, and I was very enthusiastic about it.

“Bacchus and Ariadne looks like the Raft of the Medusa.” Never thought about it, but it does have a similar composition, doesn’t it? Sort of pyramidal composition.

“Romako seems apropos for …” I can’t quite understand what that is.

“The two girls look so sad.” Yes, it’s a … Well, I think it’s a very poignant portrait, even if you don’t know the terrible fate that befell them. How they killed themselves, I really don’t know.

“In my Hungarian grandmother’s Rosh Hashanah prayer book, "she was born in 1893, "there are several prayers to protect King Ferenc Jozsef, "as he was called in Hungarian.”

Betty saying she’s having trouble hearing me. The sound goes in and out. I don’t know if anybody else had that problem.

“Sissi trilogy films in the 1950s "with Romy Schneider and her mother Magda.” Yes.

Q: “Did those ladies with the wasp waist "really have their ribs broken?”

A: I’m not sure whether that is an urban myth or not. Now, the one who’s supposed to have had it done, of course, is the French actress Polaire.

“Wasn’t there a …” There was a huge suicide rate in Vienna in the time of Freud. It was quite extraordinary. Much higher than other places. The reason, I can’t really say.

“A caption to the statue of Johann Strauss …” I’m not sure. “I now understand more palpably "what Freud meant when he said "we need work, beauty and love. "And after two years of yoga pants, "this sumptuousness is such a treat. ”

Thank you. Thank you.“ It’s not a cold, I’m afraid. No, it’s an allergy or it’s … I don’t actually have a cold. It’s a recurrent thing. It’s a sinus thing.

Q: "Was the suicide rate higher in the ‘90s?”

A: I believe it was, yes. “Father of Strauss, Jewish, not mother I think, "which does not …” Well it wouldn’t make him Jewish to you, Myra, but it would to Hitler, unfortunately.

Q: “What changed Franz Joseph’s style of ruling?”

A: I think he just … I think he was a wise man, who became wiser as he got older.

Q: “Did Strauss hide his …”

A: You were talking about Johann Strauss? I don’t think it was such an issue, really.

Q: Will I be doing any tours in 2022?

A: Yes, I’m doing … Well, funnily enough, I’m not booked for any by Martin Randall, although I’m booked to do lectures for them in March and April, about impressionism. But I am booked to do lots of tours for Kirker Holidays. Back to Biedermeier.

“Many of the fabric used in the furniture scene "were very French, from Provence.

"Where were they manu …” I think they would’ve been local, all those. I don’t think they would have come from … There would have been a strong resistance, and there would have been economic reasons, why they didn’t come from France. But there’s certainly a French influence.

Q: “With so much building and decorating "at the start of the creation of the Ringstrasse, "where did all the workers and artisans come from?”

A: Well, I suppose they came probably from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Yes, that’s wonderful, that picture of Strauss and Brahms together, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to have that conversation recorded?

Q: “Wasn’t Brahms forced by his father to play the piano?”

A: Yes, he was, in a brothel. So, he was certainly used to prostitutes from a very early age. This is Erica writing, I think from Athens, saying that Dumba gave the money for the concert hall.

“Dumbastrasse is down the side of the building.” “I missed the name of the gentleman "who walked the streets of Vienna.” That’s Brahms. That’s Brahms, Johannes Brahms. It’s Barbara,

“In 1953 we went as teenagers to Vienna "for five weeks. "We were accommodated in a Jewish old age home. "Reason too complicated to explain.

"Danube was certainly not blue.” No it’s not.

“We saw Don Giovanni and Fledermaus. "Of course, it’s a great period for the Vienna Opera, "with lots of wonderful singers.” Let me see.

Thanks all, for your thanks. Brahms, I don’t know that he was a big drinker. I know he was a womaniser.

Q: “Was the Ringstrassen-Galerien "where Brahms’ music played …”

A: It was particularly … Well, obviously in the Musikverein, two halls.

Q: Vienna restaurants?

A: I’m not so familiar with Vienna restaurants, that I could put together a good list for you.

Q: Balagan?

A: Yes, I’ve been there, and it’s fabulous. It’s very expensive though. That’s an Israeli restaurant. And recently, I had clients on a tour, and it was completely booked out. They couldn’t get into it.

“How extraordinary that the people of Vienna, "with all their high culture and opera "and magnificent costumes were …” Yes, I know, I know. It’s one of the great mysteries, isn’t it? One of the great mysteries, that the Germans and the Austrians were so cultivated and yet they were involved in such terrible crimes.

Yes, La Fresque. It’s F-R-E-S-Q-U-E. Right. Thank you again for your … Yes, my cough, don’t worry. Actually my cough is my own fault, because it gets worse if I … It’s for having such a heavy … I shouldn’t have had such a heavy lunch and drunk so much at lunch, because that tends to provoke the cough. So, don’t worry about my health. I think it’s okay.

“Odessa Opera House is a smaller copy of the Vienna one.” I’ve seen pictures of it, but never been there. Budapest. I know last time I was in Budapest, I couldn’t go to the Opera House because it was being worked on.

Yes, Miklos Ybl, great architect, brilliant architect. The painted ceiling was Nikolaus Dumba, Greek merchant. Some people not having a problem with the sound. That’s good to hear.

Q: “Where is the patisserie where Freud "had his morning breakfast?”

A: I’m not sure. There are several very, very famous patisseries of course in Vienna. So, I think I’m getting to the end here.

Yes, people talk about the Ringstrasse period because of the street, which was the most important, I suppose, cultural development in Vienna in the 1860s and ‘70s. So, that’s it for today. And then I’m onto Vienna Secession and Klimt on Sunday, by which time I’ll be back in London. Thank you all very, very much.

• [Judi] Thank you, Patrick. And thank you to everybody who joined us. Bye-bye.

• [Patrick] Bye-bye.