Program Notes · Wiener Philharmoniker · 19 June 2026
A Summer Night at Schönbrunn 2026
v3 · updated 30 September 2026 · 26 sources
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v3 · 30 September 2026 · Further reading added
- Added three recommended books: Wonder of Wonders, Verdi's Shakespeare, A History of Opera
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v2 · 30 September 2026 · Sources added; house-style edit
- Added 23 sources
- Removed em dashes (also the spaced en dashes in the Straussiana title)
- Boito bio: fixed the self-contradictory 'completed only one further opera, the unfinished Nerone'
- Falstaff: corrected the scene set-up (the cronies refuse to deliver the letters, then the page is summoned to carry them)
- Trepak: removed the unsourced tambourine detail
- Adoration: manuscripts found in Price's former summer home (per the orchestra's notes); list of specific arrangements softened to 'many arrangements'
- Korngold: Der Schneemann written at eleven (staged later); death place Los Angeles; Straussiana described as commissioned by a US publisher for school orchestras, his last complete orchestral work
- Méditation: removed the inaccurate 'the orchestra falls silent' and 'muted' strings
- Daphnis: replaced the unsourced claim that Ravel sanctioned omitting the chorus with the sourced fact that the suites can be performed with or without it
- Bock bio: partnership end dated by The Rothschilds (1970); death place corrected to Mount Kisco, New York
- Terfel framing: replaced 'the role for which Terfel is world-famous' (Wotan) with sourced Met and Covent Garden performances
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v1 · 21 June 2026 · First published
Franz von Suppè (1819–1895)
Light Cavalry (Leichte Kavallerie), Overture8 min
About the Work
The Summer Night Concert (Sommernachtskonzert) is one of Vienna’s great public rituals: each June the Wiener Philharmoniker plays a free open-air gala in the Schönbrunn Palace gardens, the Baroque façade and the hilltop Gloriette floodlit behind them, before a crowd of tens of thousands stretched across the lawns. Tonight Lorenzo Viotti opens that party with a piece tailor-made for it. Franz von Suppè, the Dalmatian-born ‘father of Viennese operetta’, wrote his two-act operetta Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry) in 1866 for the Carltheater, and while the operetta itself has faded, its overture has become one of the most instantly recognizable curtain-raisers in the repertoire. Its galloping cavalry rhythms and brass fanfares have lived a second life in cartoons, films, and advertisements, so that listeners often know the tune long before they know its name. Compact, theatrical, and irresistibly tuneful, it is the ideal flourish to launch an evening of operatic and orchestral fireworks under the stars.
What to Listen For
After a brisk military fanfare from the brass, the famous ‘galloping’ main theme breaks out: trotting horns and snapping rhythms that paint a cavalry on the move. Listen for the sudden mood-swing at the centre: a broad, almost mournful cantilena, an operetta tune of real tenderness that interrupts the bustle before the gallop returns. Suppè builds his overture as a string of contrasting episodes rather than a symphonic argument, so the pleasure is in the swerves: fanfare, gallop, song, and a whip-cracking dash to the close.
Arrigo Boito (1842–1918)
‘Son lo spirito che nega’ (Mefistofele, Act I)4 min
About the Work
This is the calling-card aria of Boito’s devil. In the Prologue and opening act of Mefistofele, the title character, Boito’s version of Goethe’s Mephistopheles, introduces himself to Faust with a self-portrait that is at once philosophical and gleefully malevolent. ‘Son lo spirito che nega sempre tutto’ (‘I am the spirit that denies everything always’) is a near-direct setting of Goethe’s famous line, ‘Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint.’ The devil declares himself the eternal negator, the enemy of creation, the force that wills evil and (to his own annoyance) sometimes does good. Boito caps the aria with a notorious theatrical effect: a sharp, mocking whistle, as Mefistofele pierces the air with a derisive fischio. Written for a true basso cantante with menace and swagger, it is a gift to any great bass-baritone: a chance to be charming, sardonic, and frightening within four minutes.
What to Listen For
Listen for the swagger in the vocal line. Boito gives the devil a rolling, almost dance-like buoyancy that makes his nihilism sound like fun. The orchestra needles him with sardonic little figures, and everything builds toward the whistle, the moment the audience waits for: a literal whistle that turns metaphysics into music-hall. Note too how the laughter is built into the phrasing, the voice sliding mockingly between registers as the devil relishes his own wickedness.
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)
Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut5 min
About the Work
The Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut is a purely orchestral interlude placed between the second and third acts, and it carries the emotional weight of the opera’s tragic turn. In the score Puccini headed it with lines from the Abbé Prévost’s novel and the subtitle ‘The Imprisonment. The Journey to Le Havre’: Manon has been arrested as a courtesan and is about to be deported to the penal colony of Louisiana, and her lover Des Grieux follows her into exile. The Intermezzo bridges that catastrophe wordlessly, gathering up melodies associated with the lovers and lifting them into a surging symphonic meditation on doomed passion. It was with Manon Lescaut, his third opera, that Puccini first found his fully personal voice, and this interlude, composed when he was in his early thirties, is one of the earliest places to hear the lush, aching lyricism that would define him. Outside the opera house it has become a beloved concert piece in its own right.
What to Listen For
Listen for a long-breathed cello and string melody that climbs in great waves toward an impassioned climax: Puccini at his most openly Romantic, with no voices to share the spotlight. The themes are drawn from the lovers’ music, so the Intermezzo plays as a wordless love duet. Notice how Puccini withholds and then releases the full orchestra, and how the harmonies darken as the passion peaks, foreshadowing the desolate desert death that ends the opera.
Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)
Falstaff’s monologue ‘Ehi! paggio!... L’onore! Ladri!’ (Falstaff, Act I)5 min
About the Work
Falstaff was Verdi’s farewell to the stage: a sparkling comedy written when he was nearly eighty, his only comic opera since a youthful failure half a century earlier, and a score of dazzling lightness and wit. Boito’s libretto draws on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor and the Henry IV plays to build it around Sir John Falstaff, the fat, vain, impoverished old knight. In this Act I monologue, Falstaff’s cronies Bardolfo and Pistola have refused, on grounds of ‘honour’, to deliver his love letters. Falstaff explodes: first with ‘Ehi! paggio!’ as he summons his page to carry them instead, then into the celebrated tirade on honour (‘L’onore! Ladri!’). What, he demands, is honour? Can it fill an empty belly, mend a leg, set a broken arm? It is a mere word, a puff of air. The monologue is Shakespeare’s cynicism (from Henry IV) set to music of astonishing nimbleness, ending as Falstaff chases the rogues out with a broom.
What to Listen For
Listen for the conversational speed of the writing. Verdi at eighty composes patter that turns on a dime, the orchestra darting and commenting like a fourth character. There are no set-piece arias here; the music follows every shrug and snort of Falstaff’s reasoning. Savour the mock-philosophical grandeur Verdi lends to ‘L’onore!’, inflated then instantly pricked, and the whirlwind of the final chase. It is comedy as orchestral filigree, sung by a bass-baritone who must act with his voice.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Trepak (Russian Dance) from The Nutcracker, Op. 711 min
About the Work
The Trepak is one of the ‘character dances’ that fill the Kingdom of Sweets in Act II of The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s last and most popular ballet, premiered in St Petersburg in 1892. As Clara and her Nutcracker prince are entertained by a parade of treats, each nationality dances its own number (Spanish chocolate, Arabian coffee, Chinese tea), and the Trepak is the ‘Russian’ dance, named after a traditional Cossack folk dance from Ukraine and Russia. It is the briefest and most explosive of the suite: barely a minute long, built on stamping accents and a melody that accelerates to a breathless finish. Tchaikovsky, drawing on the squatting, kicking energy of the real trepak, compresses an entire crowd-pleasing dance into sixty seconds of pure adrenaline, making it a favourite encore and gala number quite apart from the ballet.
What to Listen For
Listen for the relentless acceleration: the tune starts fast and only gets faster, whipped along by hammered downbeats. The whole orchestra stamps in unison, evoking the squat-and-kick of the Cossack dancer, and Tchaikovsky times the final headlong rush so that the piece ends almost before you expect it, over in a flash, designed to bring the house down.
Florence Price (1887–1953)
Adoration (orch. Elaine Fine)4 min
About the Work
Adoration is a short, devotional miniature by Florence Price, the first Black American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. She wrote it in 1951, late in her life, as an organ piece: music conceived for worship, with the unhurried warmth of a hymn or a quiet prayer. Like much of Price’s catalogue, it slipped into obscurity after her death in 1953, only to be rediscovered in the great Price revival of the past two decades, after a trove of her manuscripts was found in 2009 in her abandoned former summer home in Illinois. Its gentle, song-like character has made it a magnet for arrangers, and it now exists in many arrangements. The orchestration heard tonight is by the American composer Elaine Fine, who has clothed Price’s intimate organ lines in glowing string-orchestra sound. At Schönbrunn it offers a moment of stillness and tenderness amid the gala’s brilliance.
What to Listen For
Listen for the lyrical, hymn-like main melody, sung by the strings with a singer’s phrasing and breath. Price’s harmonies are warm and unhurried, touched here and there by the inflections of the African-American spiritual and the salon Romanticism she grew up with. Notice how Fine’s orchestration keeps the texture transparent. This is music of devotion, not display, and its power lies in its quiet sincerity and the long, arching line that swells gently and then settles back into peace.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Straussiana (Polka, Mazurka, Waltz)7 min
About the Work
Straussiana is Korngold’s affectionate bouquet of Johann Strauss, and a fitting choice for a Viennese open-air gala. He composed it in 1953, his last complete orchestral work, commissioned by an American publisher as a piece for school orchestras, arranging little-known melodies by Johann Strauss II into a three-movement suite: a Polka, a Mazurka, and a Waltz. The piece looks back, with both nostalgia and craft, to the dance music of the city Korngold had been forced to leave, filtering Strauss’s tunes through his own lush, cinematic orchestral imagination. Though written for young players, it is no mere teaching piece: Korngold’s harmonic richness and orchestral colour transform the Strauss melodies into something that glows with Hollywood warmth while keeping the lilt and sparkle of the Viennese ballroom. Heard in the Schönbrunn gardens, it is a knowing wink: a Hollywood master conjuring the spirit of old Vienna.
What to Listen For
Listen for the three contrasting dance characters: the crisp, bouncing Polka; the swaying triple-time lilt of the Mazurka; and the grand, lilting Waltz that crowns the set. Throughout, hear how Korngold’s orchestration upgrades Strauss: richer harmonies, fuller strings, glints of harp and woodwind colour that belong as much to a film score as to a ballroom. It is Strauss seen through a golden, slightly nostalgic lens.
Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
‘Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge’ (Wotan’s address, Das Rheingold, Scene 4)5 min
About the Work
This is the radiant close of Das Rheingold, the ‘preliminary evening’ of Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. The gods have recovered their gold and built their fortress; now Wotan, their chief, stands before the completed castle as evening falls. In ‘Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge’ (‘The sun’s eye shines at evening’), he greets the stronghold gleaming in the sunset and names it Walhall (Valhalla). A rainbow bridge appears, and the gods prepare to cross into their new home in triumphant procession. Yet Wagner laces the splendour with foreboding: we have just heard the dwarf Alberich’s curse on the ring, and the music’s very grandeur is shadowed by the knowledge that this divine glory is built on theft and will end in ruin. Sung by a bass-baritone of authority and beauty of tone, Wotan’s address is one of the great moments of noble Wagnerian declamation: majestic, conflicted, and quietly tragic.
What to Listen For
Listen for the broad, hymn-like sweep of Wotan’s vocal line, set against shimmering orchestral light as the fortress catches the sunset. Wagner’s leitmotifs do the storytelling: hear the gleaming ‘Valhalla’ theme in the brass, the cascading ‘rainbow bridge’ music and, crucially, the dark glint of the curse and the sword motif slipping in beneath the splendour. The triumph is real but hollow, and a great singer lets you hear Wotan’s unease inside the grandeur.
Jules Massenet (1842–1912)
Méditation from Thaïs6 min
About the Work
The Méditation is the most famous page Massenet ever wrote, and one of the best-loved violin solos in all music, yet it began life as an orchestral interlude inside an opera. Thaïs (1894) tells the story of a beautiful courtesan in fourth-century Alexandria and the monk Athanaël who sets out to convert her to Christianity, only to fall hopelessly in love with her himself. The Méditation is placed between the two scenes of Act II, at the very moment of Thaïs’s spiritual transformation: as she wrestles alone with her conscience, a solo violin, accompanied by harp and strings, sings a melody of melting tenderness that represents her conversion and the dawning of grace within her. Its serene, prayer-like beauty has made it a concert and recital staple far beyond the opera house, beloved at weddings, memorials, and galas alike. At Schönbrunn it offers the orchestra’s concertmaster a moment in the spotlight.
What to Listen For
Listen for the solo violin’s long, arching melody, rising and falling like a sung prayer over rippling harp arpeggios. The tune unfolds in serene waves, building to a passionate climax, the soul reaching toward grace, before subsiding into hushed peace. Notice the dialogue between the soloist and the gentle orchestra, and how Massenet sustains an almost unbroken line of melody from first note to last.
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 217 min
About the Work
The second suite from Daphnis et Chloé is the dazzling finale of Ravel’s largest score, the ‘choreographic symphony’ he wrote for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and premiered in Paris in 1912. The ballet retells an ancient Greek pastoral romance of the shepherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé, and Ravel poured into it some of the most sumptuous orchestration ever written. The composer himself drew the concluding portion of the ballet into this concert suite, which has since far outstripped the stage work in popularity. It comprises the three final scenes: ‘Lever du jour’ (Daybreak), the reunion-dance ‘Pantomime’, and the explosive ‘Danse générale’. Ravel called the whole work a ‘vast musical fresco’, and these final pages are its glory: a sunrise of unmatched orchestral splendour followed by a Bacchic dance of mounting frenzy. The original ballet uses a wordless chorus, and Ravel’s suites can be performed with or without it, though tonight’s open-air setting under the Schönbrunn sky is exactly the grand canvas the music craves.
What to Listen For
Listen, in ‘Daybreak’, for one of music’s great sunrises: trickling streams in the woodwinds and harps, mist lifting from the strings, and a long melodic swell as the sun floods the stage, a slow, ecstatic crescendo of pure orchestral colour. The ‘Pantomime’ centres on a famous flute solo, the god Pan wooing the nymph Syrinx, sinuous and tender. Then the ‘Danse générale’ erupts in a whirling, asymmetrical 5/4 rhythm, driving the whole orchestra to a delirious, pounding close.
Jerry Bock (1928–2010)
‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof5 min
About the Work
‘If I Were a Rich Man’ is the show-stopping number of Tevye, the poor dairyman at the heart of Fiddler on the Roof, and one of the most famous songs in the Broadway canon. Bock and Harnick wrote it for the 1964 musical, drawing on the Sholem Aleichem stories of Jewish village life in early-twentieth-century Russia. Alone with his thoughts and with God, Tevye daydreams about the life he would lead if he were wealthy: a big house, a fat wife, idle hours for prayer and study, the deference of his neighbours. Bock built the melody on the sounds of Jewish liturgical and folk music, complete with passages of wordless, cantorial-style vocalizing (‘Yidl-diddle-diddle…’) that imitate the ecstatic improvisation of a synagogue cantor. The result is at once comic and deeply touching, a poor man’s wishful prayer that has become a gala favourite for the great bass-baritones, who relish its blend of humour, character, and full-throated singing.
What to Listen For
Listen for the cantorial vocalise, the wordless ‘biddy-biddy-bum’ passages where Tevye’s voice swoops and trills like a synagogue cantor lost in song. The melody leans on the distinctive intervals of Eastern European Jewish music, giving it its instantly recognizable flavour. Notice how the mood shifts between broad comedy and sudden tenderness, especially when Tevye imagines time to study the holy books: the dream of dignity beneath the dream of riches.
Tonight's Artists
Bryn Terfelbass-baritone
Bryn Terfel is the gala’s human centre, and his four numbers trace the full range of a great bass-baritone. As Boito’s Mefistofele he is the sardonic, whistling devil; as Verdi’s Falstaff he turns from menace to comic philosopher, demolishing the idea of honour with Shakespearean wit. Then, as Wagner’s Wotan greeting Valhalla in Das Rheingold, he summons noble grandeur shadowed by foreboding, in a role Terfel has sung at the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden. Finally he sets opera aside for Broadway, becoming Tevye in ‘If I Were a Rich Man’, where his vocal heft and warm humour bring the dairyman’s wishful prayer vividly to life. Four characters, one unmistakable voice.
Sir Bryn Terfel, born on a farm in Pant Glas, North Wales, in 1965, is one of the most celebrated bass-baritones of his era, a singer whose enormous, dark-hued voice and magnetic stage presence have made him equally at home in Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and the popular song repertoire. He came to international attention in the early 1990s and quickly became a leading interpreter of roles such as Wotan in Wagner’s Ring, the title role in Verdi’s Falstaff, Mozart’s Figaro and Don Giovanni, Scarpia in Tosca, and Sweeney Todd. A proud Welshman who sings in his native language and champions Welsh music, he is also a beloved concert and crossover artist, bringing operatic weight to musical theatre and folk song alike. Knighted in 2017, Terfel combines vocal grandeur with a warm, often humorous personality that makes him an ideal gala performer, at ease addressing a stadium-sized crowd as readily as an opera-house audience.
Further reading
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Accessible Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof
Alisa Solomon, Picador 2014
The story of how Bock and Harnick’s Fiddler on the Roof was made and how it travelled the world, the show behind ‘If I Were a Rich Man’.
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Accessible Verdi’s Shakespeare: Men of the Theater
Garry Wills, Penguin Books 2012
A short, lively book on Verdi’s Shakespeare operas and the collaboration with Boito that produced Falstaff; both men are on tonight’s programme.
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Deeper A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years
Carolyn Abbate, Roger Parker, W. W. Norton 2015
Two leading opera scholars trace four centuries of the art form, with room for Boito, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Massenet, the opera composers heard tonight.