Winding Down

Hello Everyone!

I’m back again with only a week and a half left! Which means… trying to do as much as possible before I leave.  So, what has happened in this last week for me? I think I left off the last blog talking about how I was going to see Mahler’s 6^th Symphony Monday night, which was… AMAZING. There were probably almost 20 IES students there, all squished together in the standing room area. The music, as beautiful as it is on recording, was even better live. There is one chord at the end that is really loud and comes out of no where… I literally jumped it surprised me so much.  I’m so glad I had the opportunity to experience it.

Nothing else this week was too out of the ordinary. I went to church again on Tuesday night for the spirituality night and met with Jalka again on Wednesday. She has asked me to translate her survey into English so that it can be used more places.

Friday was really fun though. May 1^st is Austria’s Labor Day, so we didn’t have school and Angie, Christa and I took full advantage of that. First, we went over to our friend Sarah’s apartment. She had invited us and several of the other vocalists over for breakfast. So we had a lot of fun there.  Then, we went to see the graves of … Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, J. Strauss and Mozart’s Memorial and… they are all within 20 yards of each other. Basically, Beethoven was buried there and then the rest of them said “Hey, I want to be buried with that guy.” But Mozart was somewhere else in a pauper’s grave so the city decided, “let’s make a statue for him there too.” It was pretty surreal.

So as if that wasn’t enough, we made an entire Beethoven day out of it and went to see his only opera Fidelio at the Staatsopera. It was certainly worth going to see, but let’s just say… there is a reason it isn’t performed very often. Fidelio is pretty much only performed because it is Beethoven, as operas go, it is not the greatest. The storyline is very cool. Fidelio is actually a woman, Leonora, in disguise. She spends 2 years getting the daughter of the jailor fall in love with “Fidelio” so that she can set her wrongfully imprisoned husband free. The only problem was that the plot moved very slowly, and arias went on way longer than they needed to, so it didn’t exactly keep you on the edge of your seat. But the performers all sang wonderfully and the staging was very well-done too. Although, it is still strange to think of Beethoven as a “flawed” composer.

I continued to make the most of my day off into the evening when I talked to Aaron for a couple of hours and then went back to Christa and Angie’s apartment to watch Slumdog Millionaire. If you have not seen this movie yet, I highly recommend it.

Saturday was also eventful. I got up early and took a tour of the imperial treasury in the Hofburg Palace. I was required to go for my Art and Architecture class and had been meaning to get there for a couple of weeks. The exhibit displayed crowns, scepters, cloaks, religious objects and more… covered in gold, velvet, embroidery and precious gems… of course! It was pretty unbelievable.  But perhaps the most unbelievable thing I saw- the treasury contains what is believed to be a relic of Jesus’ true cross and the lance that pierced Jesus’ side. The piece of the cross was found in the third century by Charlemagne’s mother in Jerusalem. This piece is especially valuable and rare because it contains a hole from one of the nails, which means that this piece of wood was probably soaked with his blood. The lance, after much research was determined to be that which pierced Jesus’ side because of an inscription which says just that. I know that we were supposed to go to the treasury to talk about the elaborate works of art that we saw there, but these two items are the only things that stick out in my mind.

After I did that, I finished up some final souvenir shopping and went to the IES center. Two of my friends (one singing, one playing piano) performed the whole of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. This is a song cycle of twenty individual songs that tell the story of a miller pining after a miller maid and eventually goes crazy that is over an hour in length.  Additionally, my friend Nate, who was singing, did it all memorized. They did a wonderful job.

This week should be fun. There is a lot going on and lots of work to do before finals, but hopefully it won’t get too crazy. I’m going to see Anna Netrebko sing in the opera La Traviata on Monday and we have our last IES concert on Thursday. I’ll be sure to let you know how all of it goes. Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Caitlin