May 2021

In the last few months everything has been in a state of upheaval – and we were in the middle of it. Those days are finally over!

Let us finally allow our hopes and dreams to return...!

WE – intend to RE-OPEN our doors from the BEGINNING of JUNE!!

Our ladies are already cleaning and polishing in every corner...

So that we can finally WELCOME YOU again properly!

"THEY" should enable not only TRAVEL FREEDOM, but above all FREEDOM to enjoy our eagerly awaited HOLIDAYS!
Whether on your mobile phone, or printed out and placed in your jacket pocket...

NO more restrictions to our TRAVEL FREEDOM!

NO more quarantine restrictions!
We can finally ENJOY HOLIDAYS again!

On 1 March, there would have been a wonderful reason for a celebration that unfortunately could not take place. All the team members were thrilled for Mr. Sasa – he became a grandpa for the first time.

His daughter Marina is a happy mum to little girl. At 49 cm long and weighing 3,240 g she makes a rather impressive first appearance. Congratulations to this new young family. George and Max – the two sons of Sasa – are very happy about the new playmate!

Spring has now arrived in Vienna – better late than never. All over the city, the greenery awakens, the trees and the first flowers are in bloom.

We have also "re-opened" our sun terrace and replanted and renewed our flower boxes in Wolfengasse.

Oleanders, fragrant herbs, pelargoniums and fragrant incense delight our team and many walkers at the moment. Very soon, this blossoming splendour will be welcoming our guests again and inviting them to take a break on the terrace!
 

The last, largely completed painting by the Viennese artist icon Gustav Klimt can be seen again in Vienna after more than 100 years. The Belvedere is showing "Lady with Fan" as part of a special exhibition on the final phase of Klimt's work.

It was the last picture that Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) worked on in his studio in Vienna-Hietzing in 1917. Apart from a few details, the co-founder of the Vienna Secession was able to complete Lady with Fan before his death. It shows one of Klimt's favorite subjects – a "beautiful Viennese woman". However, not some society lady – a frequent motif in Klimt's work – but a supposedly unknown dancer, looking confidently into the distance and holding a fan in front of her upper body. In any case, this is "unadorned Klimt": because the work was never covered with the special protective layer, the varnish, usually found on oil paintings.

The painting, which has now returned to Vienna for a while for a special exhibition at the Belvedere, has a moving journey behind it. To date, the Lady with Fan was accessible to the Viennese public just one single time: in 1920, in an exhibition in today's MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. Art collector Rudolf Leopold (founder of the Leopold Museum) later sold the painting; it was exhibited in the 1980s and 1990s in Tokyo and Krakow, before it was auctioned off in New York in 1994. It was never explained whether its removal from Austria was even legal. In order to bring it to Vienna, the Republic of Austria granted the anonymous foreign owner immunity from prosecution.

Lady with Fan. Gustav Klimt’s last work, until February 13, 2022
http://www.belvedere.at

The internationally successful Austrian artist Xenia Hausner shows her large-scale paintings in the Albertina.

Xenia Hausner, born in 1951, comes from a family of artists, but does not appreciate being reduced to her famous father, the surrealist painter Rudolf Hausner. Fair enough. Her imagery is much too independent for that.
The Albertina, which is presenting her works in a comprehensive show, is a home game for Hausner. She has already been represented here in two group exhibitions, and is now going solo for the first time with "True Lies". The large, two-dimensional works in powerful colors have mostly women as their subject matter. The artists also deals with the topic of staging. The compositions preceded to some extent very elaborate preparations in the studio.

In her series "Exiles", the viewer is confronted with people in tight spaces. Whether a line of people in a train compartment or close proximity inside a car: For all the tension, the observer feels a certain level of anxiety. Snapshots that are shocking and unsettling. That in any event do not leave you uninvolved.
Hausner wants to move something in the observer, to invite them to new insights. But this is where the artist's sovereignty of interpretation, which leaves lots of leeway in the interpretation of her images, comes to an end.

Xenia Hausner. True Lies, until August 8, 2021
http://www.albertina.at/

Comeback of the velvet paw spectacle "Cats": Andrew Lloyd Webber's masterpiece conquers the Ronacher in the slightly modernized German-language original version.

The Cats are back! It's still the same junkyard in London, the same full moon in front of Tower Bridge, the same eerily shining cat's eyes: to the unforgettable melodies of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rum Tum Tugger (Dominik Hees), the twins Mungojerry (Andrea Luca Cotti) and Rumpelteazer (Anna Carina Buchegger), the beautiful snow-white Victoria (Hannah Kenna Thomas), and Grizabella (Ana Milva Gomes), the outcast, aged diva, who performs the greatest hit of the musical with "Memory", emerge from the dark.

They all gather at the junkyard on this magical full moon night. It is the traditional Jellicle Ball, where Old Deuteronomy, the shaggy old ringleader of the cat clique, intuitively chooses one of them to disappear into the afterlife for rebirth.

A new cast performs the illustrious gang of Jellicle Cats – above all the audience favorites Ana Milva Gomes as Grizabella, Dominik Hees as Rum Tum Tugger and Felix Martin as Gus, the theater tom / Bustopher Jones.
More than 73 million people in 30 countries and 16 languages worldwide have seen this exceptionally fascinating musical. The German-language premiere was held immediately after London and New York in Vienna, where it ran for seven years without a break. Now, the musical returns to Vienna and celebrates its premiere in September 2019 – as a revised original production.

Cats, Shows March to June 2021: see website
Again starting Sept. 11., 2021
Musical in German
www.musicalviennna.at

Here, in the baroque Lobkowitz Palace near the Imperial Palace, highlights of the magic of stage are caught forever. More than 1,000 stage models, 600 costumes and props from three centuries, more than 100,000 drawings and prints as well as more than 700,000 theater photos are among the holdings of the museum. There are also the elaborate stick puppets of the art nouveau artist Richard Teschner, including his marvelous "Figurenspiegel" (concave mirror with light effects).

The Theatermuseum brings together collections on all topics of the performing arts and is one of the biggest and most important documentation centers of its kind in the world. Objects of contemporary Austrian and international stage art from spoken and musical theater via dance and film to figure and puppet theater are kept in the archives and scientifically researched, published and presented in exhibitions.

The museum evolved from the Theater Collection of the Austrian National Library, whose origins go as far back as the Baroque era. In 1923, the collection was enlarged when the theater collection of the famous actor and former director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Hugo Thimig (1854-1944), was bought.

A separate department of the museum is devoted to children where they are introduced to the stage-world in a playful way. The museum also houses a grand concert hall, the "Eroica Hall", called after Beethoven's Third Symphony, dedicated to the composer's patron and owner of the palace, Franz Joseph Maximilian Prince Lobkowitz. Subsequently many of Beethoven’s compositions were performed at the Lobkowitz Palace.
Until August 2021, the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts (which is being renovated) will be presented in a new hanging scheme in the adapted rooms of the Theatermuseum. Alongside Bosch’s Last Judgment triptych, other highlights from the 15th to 19th centuries can be seen, including leading works of European painting from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt through to Tiepolo, Guardi and Füger.

www.theatermuseum.at