Oct 27: Concert — The Music of Art: “The Merry Widow”

A evening of art and music combining the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s exceptional “International Arts and Crafts” exhibit and the Indianapolis Opera’s upcoming performance of “The Merry Widow”

When: Thursday 27 October 7:00 PM

Where: The Indianapolis Museum of Art (4000 W Michigan Rd Indianapolis) Allen Whitehill Clowes Special Exhibition Gallery

This event will be a treat. In 1905, Viennese composer Franz Lehár wrote the operetta The Merry Widow, the light-as-air story of a seductive widow and her romantic entanglements in upper class Austrian society. But this gilded era in Vienna would soon evaporate with the start of World War I, Sigmund Freud’s dark theories of human nature, and a new avant-garde art movement known as the Secession, inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain. As Lehar composed The Merry Widow, a group of artists formed the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), an incubator for more modern ideas about art.

You may not be able to go to Café Sperl in Vienna, where Secession members such as Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser met for coffee while Lehár composed his fluffy operettas in the corner. But Thursday you can do the next best thing. Enjoy a look at art objects that represented this radical trend in Viennese culture at this transitional moment in history. Afterward, experience musical excerpts from The Merry Widow, juxtaposed with samples of the ultramodern Viennese music that soon succeeded it—all performed by the Indianapolis Opera. IMA’s great exhibit plus Lehár plus Berg, Schonberg, Webern? It gets no cooler than this.

If you like this, you have to attend full performances of The Merry Widow are November 18 & 20 at Clowes Memorial Hall. As part of Spirit & Place, on November 10 I will engage members of the Opera Ensemble in an even darker discussion of how Fin-de-Siècle Vienna provides the political and social context of Lehár’s frothy opera.

Presented by the Indianapolis Opera and the IMA Education Division. Note: While IMA general admission is free that night, there will be a charge to enter the gallery where the Arts & Crafts show and the Music of Art program will take place: the cost is $7 for the public, $5 for IMA members. For more information, contact Patty Harvey at the Opera.