Michael Heltau or „prima la musica"
Heltau and
Music - this was not at all a surprising turn in a classical actor's career.
The truth is - music was there from the beginning. It was the reason to choose
Vienna for studying and later on for his professional career. As a young actor at
the Theater in der Josefstadt, he took singing lessons from the well-known
Elisabeth Radó. Heltau is a musical actor, you only have to listen to his
interpretations of poems from Goethe to Rilke, and from Gottfried Benn to
Bertolt Brecht. He knows about rhythm and melody, he knows about the importance
of pauses, he knows a diminuendo or accelerando, a piano or a rubato. He has
played roles in operettas (with Marika Rökk at the Vienna Raimundtheater) and
in musical comedies, he has presented the "Couplets" in Nestroy comedies and
the "Songs" of Brecht and Weill in their own style.
So the move
towards entertainment and show business was logical. These small musical forms,
the Chanson, the Viennese Lied, the Song - Heltau calls it "Welttheater within
three minutes" - he takes very seriously and respectfully. "I don't want to
sing something I couldn't speak. The music is so often mistreated as a vehicle
for nonsense!" Of course: In this the chansonnier takes the profit of a
lifelong occupation with literature and his ambition is to change from spoken
to sung word without any threshold. Naturally, there have ever been singing
actors and Heltau accords all of the great names in this imaginary gallery of
ancestors with the greatest of respect. He belongs to this tradition and yet he
has invented his own style.
When he
played Mozart in Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" at the Burgtheater in 1981, the maestro
Alexander Steinbrecher was responsible for all the musical arrangements. He once
asked: "Would you like me to write something for you?" Heltau's answer: "Like?!
But Professor, this would be the greatest honour for me!". "Very well, I've
already a title: Orpheus from Vienna."
One of the
first solo recitals of Michael Heltau was entitled "Instead of singing"; there
he recited texts from several centuries and several genres. As an epilogue, he took these lines
from Shakespeare:
The man that hath no
music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections
dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.