As the last echoes of the music died out and I saw that the angry young men had gone, the rest of us knelt and prayed to become more like that God who humbled himself to be born of woman, made his living as a carpenter, and hung out with angry young men in bars. I wish I could have overheard the conversations they had.
After Mass we went to the cathedral museum. At the top of the stairs we were immediately struck by two glories: an enormous piece of stained glass—probably from the 15ht or 16th century and a painting by Hieronymous Bosch: The Temptation of St Anthony. I didn’t know what to look at first! The Bosch wasn’t even protected by glass. You could see each tiny brush stroke. No photographs allowed of the painting so I tried to commit it all to memory. The demons hatching from rotten eggs, the half animal-half mechanical bird/fish. And there in the center was Anthony fixed solid and stable before an altar, surrounded by a fabulous fantastic landscape threatening to erupt into a nightmare.
The museum was also exhibiting a huge collection of amulets with an extended discussion of how devotional material can lapse into superstition. Very interesting. The crucial thing seems to be focusing on the “power” you are hoping for in the physical object hung around your neck. I guess the difference between their situation and ours is the reliance on blind, verifiable tests that either support or refute medical hypotheses. Such tests pretty conclusively undercut the medicinal properties of armadillo tails hung around your neck.
As we were crossing from one side of the museum to the other through the balcony, where Mozart’s organ was located, a soprano began singing “Panis Angelicum” (another Mass had begun after the concert). What a joy it must be to sing in such a space! I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to write music specifically for such a space and for such a organ.
We ate a lunch of sausage at the fountain hoping for another 15-minute bell concert. Not on Sunday, I guess. So we walked up to Stift Nonnberg convent (where Maria von Trapp was going to be a nun) and looked out over the south side of Salzburg. It looked as large as the northern “old city.” Who knew it was even there?
Came back down the never-ending flights of stairs, crossed over the river on a footbridge, and walked up the never-ending flights of stairs to visit the Franciscan Monastery and churches over there. The monastery was a bust. They wouldn’t let us in to look around, but we got plenty of exercise. And there were fascinating cemeteries with skulls everywhere—some of the graffiti artists seem to be just as interested in these memento mori. The Loretto church was quiet and peaceful with a lovely vesper service going on. I can see why so many people want to get out of the bustle and just relax there.
Back at the room we got ready for the opera. The only tickets we could afford were up in the nose-bleed section—and they cost us 40 euros each (about 50$ a piece). With each flight of stairs an usher would look at our tickets and say, “yes again,” and up we would go. Finally, when we ran out of stairs and lightheaded from the altitude a pretty little usher motioned for us to tip-toe single file out onto a gang plank with chairs. They laughingly called it a balcony.
Then Riccardo Muti made his way briskly through the orchestra, briefly acknowledged the applause, and launched into “Betulia Liberata,” written when Mozart was just 15 years old. It is the story of Judith giving Holofernes a very close shave (if you know what I mean) and thus lifting the siege of Betulia and liberating the Jews who would otherwise have been enslaved.
The most famous part of the opera is the recitative that takes place between Osias—the leader of the Jews, who argues that they should wait for this God to rescue them with a miracle, and Achior, Prince of the Ammonites who admires the God of the Hebrews but can’t see a reason to give up his traditional gods. Their discussion waxes philosophical and they try to prove that in a world of causes there has to be one un-caused cause that everyone acknowledges as God. And if there are any gods, there must be only one of them—creator of all the created things—and without any imperfections.
Mozart didn’t write the libretto, but did condense the speeches and eliminated all but the essential line of the argument. A wonderful elderly lady named Mrs. Sommerfield, who was staying at the same guest house as we were, told me with tears in her eyes that his were the finest sentences ever written in German. But more about that conversation later.
In the performance itself, though the music was glorious the wordiness made the whole opera seem kind of “preachy” to me. The high point, of course, is Holofernes losing his head over Judith, and we didn’t even get to see that. We only heard it talked about. I’m not surprised it’s not performed often.
But still, there are issues that haunt me: “Fear is lack of faith in divine mercy.” And the women plead that it is better to surrender immediately and hope for mercy from Holofernes, than endure the siege and hope for deliverance from God. Is that true? Osiras tries to find a compromise: “We’ll give God five days to work a miracle.” Judith, our heroine, reams out both positions: One shows a lack of faith and the other shows arrogance—putting God to the test. It’s better to pray and listen for God’s instructions than follow either horn of the dilemma. I think I could hear where Mozart’s heart was in the matter. I’m not sure where my heart is in the matter.
After the opera we stopped for delicious ginger ale and French fries with a schnitzel sandwich at a little food kiosk in the square. Yum Yum. Crash!
Monday, May 24, The Trip to Hallstadt
After breakfast we headed to the train and bus station for a day-trip to the tourist sight of Hallstadt. Couldn’t find a bus ticket office with a human being so we had to deal with one of those automatic ticket machines. These bus ones didn’t offer any English translations so it was a little bit dicey. Sort of figured it out—we were going to have to change busses in Bad Issl, which wasn’t some sort of moral condemnation like Bad Dog! But rather an indication that at some time in the past there had been medicinal baths (like hot springs) there.
When we got on the bus the driver told us we’d paid too much—we should have just bought the tickets from him. Sigh. So much to learn. Everything is different in a foreign land. You just have to be willing to make mistakes. With luck, you only make each one once!
As confusing as it all was for us, we met a young Japanese woman traveling on her own. Her only means of communication with the local people was to hope she could find someone who could understand her broken English. But she asked lots of questions from the people around her and thus was able to do quite nicely, I guess. No fear there. And great faith in the people who crossed her path.
In Bad Issl we found where our bus was supposed to be but couldn’t find any mention of it on the scrolling bus schedule. Our Japanese friend said she was going on to Hallstadt on the train. Our tickets didn’t say anything about a train but when a train pulled in at the station we figured it was better to catch whatever conveyance was heading where we wanted to go so we jumped on too. When the conductor came by I handed him my bus tickets and said nothing. He stamped them with a pleasant “Danke,” so I guess we did right.
Hallstadt was a lovely village at the edge of a lake completely hemmed in by Alpine mountains. Some of them still showed patches of snow. The sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds and the water was clear and serene. The train stop was just that—only a siding with no other buildings at all. It was directly across the lake from the town. But there were trails heading around the lake and one trail heading down to the edge of the water where we found a ferry dock.
Everyone (except the bicyclists) was taking the ferry. The ride across the lake gave some beautiful views. The town and mountains reflecting in the lake doubled all the grandeur. In the town itself it seemed like every building had a banner stretched between windows. They seemed to be protesting something. I asked the “skipper.” He said that since Hallstatd had been made a world heritage site the government wanted to institute zoning restrictions on what could and what could not be built or remodeled. (I could already see where large commercial development was moving in—large hotels) but the local people, like local people everywhere, didn’t like outsiders trying to run their affairs. The local people have been preserving their heritage for 7000 years all by themselves and they didn’t see any reason to change that practice.
Lovely windows and alters in the Catholic Church. The town is built right along the margin of the lake and then up a lung-busting flights of stairs to the front doors of many houses. A tunnel has been built as well so there was one pretty impressive traffic intersection where they were building the hotel. In all this peaceful spot that was the one bit of pandemonium.
We had a nice meal of sausage and French fries plus a great local beer. Who would have thought that the sausage and French fries and beer would be so GOOD in Germany and Austria? Ha! We met a nice couple at the dock who live in Vienna and work at the U.N. headquarters. He is retiring in a few years and plans to move back to the San Antonio hill country. Quite a bit different from Austria and Germany.
Back in Bad Issl on the return trip we had a 45-minute layover so walked into town and found another church with lovely Lamberts glass fused and laminated into “furniture.” The ambo, the altar, the confessional door and the Baptistry were all made of such lovely glass.
Asked for iced coffee at a Kontintorei and got a coffee float! It was yummy. We saw young couples everywhere who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and even younger teens still at the age of tormenting each other. How cute. And how quickly that will change.
Back in Salzburg we visited an outside WC in Mirabell Garten (where Maria and the kids danced around the fountain) that required 50 cents euro. Georgia had only a one-euro coin so she put it in a machine she thought would give her change. Instead of change, out popped a non-descript little box with the strangest label on it. I’m not sure Maria ever saw anything like it.
(to be continued)