Semper Soirée – Nikolaus Habjan

Storyline

Whistling in the theatre? – that’s a really touchy subject! Probably it heads the list of no-goes in theatreland. And ignoring this rule could have had particularly dramatic consequences until the end of the 19th century, when auditoriums were still lit with gas lamps. A piercing whistle would be emitted if the oxygen levels in the lamps got too low: this could either mean that hardly any fuel was left in the lamp or that gas was flowing somewhere out of an open pipe – a situation that could quickly have deadly consequences. Anyone who decided to whistle for fun could cause a false alarm, thereby massively disrupting rehearsals and performances.

However, whistling is sometimes permitted during performances, such as Arrigo Boito’s whistling devil in Mefistofele. And concert whistlers were highly popular in the 19th century: audiences loved to hear operetta arias, concert waltzes and other musical gems whistled by famous performers. But this special skill soon fell into oblivion … until, that is, Nikolaus Habjan revived the lost tradition of concert whistling. A truly universal theatrical artist, Habjan is a stage director, puppet designer and virtuoso puppeteer. His most recent production at the Semperoper was Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. And he is also one of the world’s best concert whistlers. In 2018, he was the first whistler to perform in Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall. His speciality is coloratura arias from three centuries of opera, with a repertoire ranging from Handel and Mozart to bel canto; he is also an elegant performer of Verdi, Schubert, Wagner and Strauss. Habjan is accompanied at the piano by Ines Schüttengruber.