Why the Neue Oper Wien is perfectly at home at the MAK
The Neue Oper Wien has always been on the move, as it seeks spaces that do not merely house performances but play an active part in them: “The space is not merely a backdrop, but part of the production.” In the MAK, it has found the ideal partner for this. A museum founded in 1863 to bring art and industry together is transformed, for five evenings, from a place of preservation into a place of experience. And these evenings do not take place just anywhere, but in the MAK’s lecture hall – a space that has always stood for exchange, debate and aesthetic curiosity. It is precisely there that Oscar Strasnoy’s Geschichte unfolds to its full effect: intimate, focused, without the distance of a traditional opera house. This shift in perspective alone demonstrates how well the two institutions complement one another: one brings movement to the opera, the other brings movement to history.
At the same time, it is no coincidence that the Neue Oper Wien is bringing Strasnoy’s Geschichte to a venue that has always reflected social developments: the narrative – based on Witold Gombrowicz’s drama Operetka – about identity, origin and the dynamics of a dysfunctional family meets a museum that continually engages with social, cultural and aesthetic upheavals. The subtle irony in Geschichte – the play on role models, expectations and self-assertion – finds in the MAK an institution that has been addressing such questions for over 150 years.
For the MAK is not a museum that is content merely with archiving. From its very earliest days, it has been a place that challenges the present: World Exhibitions, international congresses, the Wiener Werkstätte, the great design revolutions of the 20th century – all found an echo here. The institution has continually reinvented itself, reorganised its collections, opened up its spaces and broadened its perspectives. It is a museum that does not preserve tradition, but questions it.
Whilst many opera houses – and above all their programmes – have long had a museum-like feel, the Neue Oper Wien dares to offer an elegant alternative: we bring the present to the very place where history is usually archived. And the MAK, with its long tradition of experimentation, aesthetic innovation and a passion for the process itself, offers the perfect space for this. Here, contemporary musical theatre meets an institution that itself repeatedly proves that art does not stand still.
Opera in a museum? For us, this is not a rupture, but a logical consequence. For if opera is alive, it belongs precisely where the present is explored. And at the MAK, this historic laboratory for new forms, we find a place that not only provides space, but also responds.
Vortragssaal MAK
