A Georgia Redneck in Vienna

Mozart Festival in Vienna

 

Mozart and me 

In 1969 at West Georgia College, I once argued with my Music Appreciation Professor that Iron Butterfly’s “Ina Godda Divida,” the sixty’s psyechedelic hit song, was on a par with the classics. Today I can barely stand to listen to it. If you are not familiar with “Inna Godda Divida,” there is a reason. Not only is it not equal to the classics, it isn’t even good rock and roll, but such were my thoughts in 1969. I must have been smoking that whacky-weed. Come to think about it, I was.

To the surprise of many, I grew up and over the years I came to love classical music, thanks mostly to National Public Radio and Bugs Bunny. Learning about classical music from National Public Radio requires no explanation. Everyone knows they play it, but Bugs may require a little clarification.

I am not the only one. I have heard others say this, “I first became interested in classical music while watching Bug Bunny mow Elmer Fudd’s hair with a lawn mower as the overture to Rossini’s Barber of Seville played in the background.” If you recall, Bugs and the gang made a series of cartoons set to the classical music.

By the time, I went to Viennain 2007; I knew the classics. I was particularly fond of Mozart, thanks in part to the movie “Amadeus,” but I had not exactly been hanging out at concert halls. I was a middle-class man and I didn’t feel I would fit with Atlanta’s rich who seem to be the only people who take an interest in the music in my city.

I was more than a little nervous as my wife, Anne, and I approached a concert hall in Vienna. Not just any concert hall, but one in which Mozart had played. I picked up our ticket from will call. An usher escorted us to our seats, five rows back in the middle. I questioned the usher, “There must be some mistake. Are you sure these are our seats?”

“Yes Sir,” he said in German accented English. I wasn’t going to argue, but I had paid only fifty Euros appease for the tickets which should have put us in the nosebleed section. We had the best seats in the house.

The concert hall made anything we have in Atlanta look like a barn. It was deep with history, all the greats had played there.  It was elegant, emboss entirely in gold, and the many large chandeliers were crystal. The orchestra entered dressed in costumes from Mozart’s period. I was transformed to another time. When they began to play, I was transformed to heaven. It was a high points in my life and I could not help but think look at me, a big Georgia redneck sitting in a world class concert hall in Vienna Austria and acting right too.