A Week of Culture in Vienna and Surroundings

I've had a busy couple of days this week pursuing lots of cultural, musical and historical endeavors. Went to see Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" on Monday night at the Vienna State Opera. It was an incredible performance, and the setting in the gilded halls of the Opera House make it even that much more impressive.

This is a view from my seat on the third level of loges.

Curtain call of the "Zauberflöteæ cast. Pagageno is the guy in green.

I also visited the museum of my favorite composer of operettas, Franz Lehar, where I had a private guided tour of his villa and got to see the original manuscripts of his many operettas, including "The Merry Widow." This was like spending a morning in heaven for me!


Portrait of Franz Lehar, with his conductor's baton.


Then yesterday I went to the small town of Mikulov, in the Czech Republic, about a two hour train trip away from Vienna. Mikulov has wonderful baroque era architecture, as well as a haunting history of having been a pre-War cultural center of Judaism in Moravia for centuries, without any Jews being left living there when the war was over. I visited the one remaining former synagogue.

Miulov, from the top of a medieval era tower.

Interior of the Upper Synagogue in Mikulov, CZ

At one time there were 12 synagogues in the town, with a Jewish population of 3,500. I also wandered around the Jewish cemetery and hiked north out of the town into the rolling hills of Moravia, the Czech Republic's easternmost state.


Gravestones in the Jewish Cemetery in Mikulov

Today it was rainy, so I spent part of the afternoon at the Austrian Military History Museum, here in Vienna, seeing lots of fascinating things, like the car in which Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in June 1914, the event that touched off World War I. To be in the presence of so much history, all in one place, is truly amazing.

The actual car in which Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. in 1914.


This doesn't even begin to tell you about all the other stuff I've been doing. I have enjoyed getting to know some of the people of the Vienna Community Church congregation, and some of them are inviting me to dinner in their homes and to meet them for coffee in Viennese cafes. I also spent an evening with a guy from the congregation at a Viennese "heuriger" wine garden in Heiligenstadt, in a house where Beethoven once lived. So I am literally "drinking in" Viennese culture. It's a tough assignment, but somebody's got to do it!