He took the score seriously

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducted far too few performances at the Vienna State Opera. Apart from one concert for Austria in 2006, his work at the Haus am Ring concentrated on the years 1987 to 1991. State Opera Director Claus Helmut Drese deserves credit for having engaged this great pioneer of historically informed performance practice, this revolutionary in the history of interpretation. Harnoncourt presented only operas by Mozart to an astonished, enthusiastic and yes, sometimes even hostile audience: New productions of Idomeneo, Zauberflöte and Così fan tutte as well as, together with the Wiener Festwochen at the Theater an der Wien, Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Even though Harnoncourt's music-making at the Vienna State Opera came to an abrupt end after 1991, he had nevertheless set such a clear marker that things were never the same again. After initial skepticism (which in some cases was quite clear), enthusiasm gradually took over among the musical staff as well.

In keeping with the repertoire that Nikolaus Harnoncourt had conducted at the Vienna State Opera, and also in keeping with the upcoming new production of La clemenza di Tito, it is worth recalling a statement by Harnoncourt that tells us a lot about his deep, searching gaze, a gaze that always traced the music to its deepest layers and thus made it possible for an audience to experience it in a unique way.

"In my opinion, Mozart's music is also so perfect because it actually contains all this Apollonian quality, but it also says infinitely more. It contains the whole fullness of life, from the deepest pain to the purest joy. It carries out the most bitter conflicts, often without offering a solution. It is often frighteningly direct in the way it holds up a mirror to us. This music is much more than beautiful, it is terrible, in the old sense of the word: sublime, all-seeing, all-knowing."