The cultural festival Styriarte takes place in Graz in Austria
Graz
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Italian flair meets cultural delights
The capital of Styria offers a way of life, excellent gastronomy and lots of culture – including the Styriarte music festival. This year it has the optimistic motto “Travelling” and uses the experiences of the pandemic to rethink.
Graz is always said to be the northernmost city in Italy. In fact, with its lively squares decorated with oleander pots, Graz breathes Mediterranean flair and a pleasurable way of life. Countless cafés and restaurants, but also an upscale range of shops ensure activity without the hustle and bustle of a metropolis. And if you like it a bit hipper, you can have fun in the Lend district on the right bank of the Mur, which merges into a densely populated multicultural district.
In 2003, Austria’s second largest city was the European Capital of Culture, which brought in, among other things, the futuristic new building of the Kunsthaus on the banks of the Mur – the “Friendly Alien” – and the floating Murinsel platform. The old town of Graz is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition to its fully preserved architecture, which combines Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Historicism in a closed ensemble, there is a lot of new architecture and a sense of technology, such as in the Smart City, which was designed to be sustainable.
And since 1985, the annual music festival Styriarte has been one of the pillars of the city’s rich cultural life. Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who grew up in Graz, was the defining figure of the festival until his death, which had a wide impact. This year the Styriarte has the motto “Travelling”. The Smart City is also home to the Helmut-List-Halle, where the festival’s opening concert will take place. You can take the tram there, which is called “Bim” in Graz. On the way there is already a flash mob with the choir taking part in the opening concert and loudly warming up in the tram, which doesn’t bother the relaxed people of Graz. The opening concert has the motto “The Rally to Graz” and was conceived by the Styrian composer Denovaire.
The experimental work was commissioned by Mathis Huber, who has been the director of the festival since 1990. Huber has been lucky in the past two years, because his festival takes place in the summer and was able to take place in both pandemic years – albeit with restrictions. He also has a loyal customer base. But even at the Styriarte there is a decline in capacity utilization of around 25 percent. In these times of crisis, as is well known, there is a lot of talk about live experiences that CANNOT be replaced. But also from the social factor that a visit to a concert or theater offers. Intendant Mathis Huber considers that to be overestimated: “We learned in Covid from other formats that were forced on us that we misjudged the concert format. Out of the routine of centuries. We thought that the new, abridged formats might be a limitation for our audience, but the opposite was true! They were thrilled: These compact formats are a great concert experience, this break just got on our nerves anyway!”
Mathis Huber has reacted to this experience and now only presents a short program without a break at the festival. Even baroque operas are shown in shortened versions in Graz. The Styrian baroque composer Johann Joseph Fux has been an important pillar of the program for years. According to Huber, he was a “Styrian peasant boy with an amazing career who, as court composer in Vienna, made it to number 1 in the top music world. At that time, the court orchestra was the largest musical unit in the world, there were over 100 employees, just for the court music!”
The performance of “La Corona d’Arianna” from 1726 takes place in the arcaded courtyard of Eggenberg Castle under the open sky. On the way to the castle through the beautiful park, the plaintive calls of the peacocks create a special acoustic atmosphere. Director Adrian Schvarzstein sets the mythological events in a Mediterranean club in the flower power era of the 1970s. Outfitter Lilli gave the women towering hairstyles and the men curly wigs and impressive sideburns. The shrill taste ensures cheerfulness, the casual club happening situation welcomes the audience with Strizzi waiters and ouzo on the house.
The Zefiro Baroque Orchestra conducted by Alfredo Bernardini, acting as a Helge Schneider lookalike, wrote a 75-minute version of the opera that, leaving out confusing subplots, only shows the core of the story: Venus is an experienced Paarship agent here and tries to Theseus left Ariadne to be paired with Bacchus, and his friend Peleus with Thetis. That works pretty smoothly. The famous Arnold Schönberg Choir from Vienna is omnipresent, bringing Fux’ lavishly composed choirs over the ramp with great emphasis. The ensemble, ready for any frills, makes a lot of fun out of the baroque opera.
The mood is cheerful, the crises of this world seem far away in Graz. Mathis Huber deliberately opted for a cheerful festival motto with “Auf Reisen”: “After we thought that Covid was slowly going down in history, we were very happy that we chose a cheerful topic that lets you breathe again. And the idea is still valid, even in the middle of the war. We have to stay fit and we have to recharge our batteries in the summer because we might not have anything to heat in the winter. We have to strengthen ourselves mentally.” Felix Austria!