Holiday like a 19th Century Composer!
Relax at Beethoven's favourite spa, buy Puccini's villa in Italy, have an affair with a countess in the South of France.
Here is a list of holidays that absolutely no one asked for. Over the last few years I’ve taken a few trips planned around the idea of attending something — a concert, an exhibition, (but it could really be anything!)— and I’m very sold on this as a way to take a holiday. If you don’t trust me on this, trust
who also thinks what she calls an ‘exotic anchor activity’ is a good idea. Firstly it makes you feel a bit less like a tourist and it’s just a more interesting way of planning something.If you can, I think traveling to attend music is a great thing to plan around. There are of course loads of great popular festivals over summer you could travel for, but because I just spent 10 nights attending the Mahler festival in Amsterdam (I will stop mentioning this soon I promise!) I’ve decided to compile a list of holidays you could take planned around classical music and composers. (chic) I promise that even if you think you don’t like classical music there are some interesting things in here! I had so much fun putting this together, I have many more potential classical music holiday ideas and I also want to tell you about Wagner’s silk underwear so maybe I will do a few more of these.
Stay at a Villa fit for Verdi, buy Puccini’s house.
Lake Como, popular with George Clooney and also many 19th century composers! Villa Meltzi, Villa Margherita and the Villa Pliniana attracted the likes of Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Bellini (who wrote his most famous opera, Norma, at Pliniana). Franz Lizst also stayed at all three villas. You can stay at both Villa Margerita and (if you are very rich) Villa Pliniana, where you will have access to a personal chef, spa, swimming pool, concierge, and even a private helipad. Villa Margherita , where Verdi stayed and worked on La Traviata, is a steal by comparison. You can rent out the second floor. If you’re into composer based real estate (v niche) I would love to know who bought Puccini’s tragic Lake Como villa 10 years ago. . . If you have “price upon request” money you could enquire after another of Puccini’s villa’s currently on sale through Sotheby’s.
Watch Don Giovanni in Prague and relax at Beethoven’s favourite spa.
The Estates Theater in Prague’s claim to fame is its strong link with Mozart, who conducted the world premiere of his opera Don Giovanni there in October 1787. It is the only theater left standing where Mozart performed, making it the perfect choice of opera house to watch Don Giovanni in. It’s on a few times this year. Add some Smetana, Dvořák and Janáček to your itinerary, all Czech composers who would also be fun to see performed in Prague. You could stay at The Mozart Prague, just like Mozart himself, or at this music themed hotel, where you can stay on the contemporary, classical, opera or jazz floor, which I think is very funny.
Also luxuriously you could go to the Beethoven Spa in Teplice, which he visited in in 1811 and 1812, he even worked on his Ninth Symphony there. They are obsessed with this fact.
“Every detail of the interior of Café Restaurant Beethoven commemorates the composer. The walls are covered with wallpaper printed with his scores, the originals of which we acquired from Beethoven Haus in Bonn. The musical theme is present in the design of the café’s chandeliers, which resemble a cluster of notes, the chair armrests and coat hangers. The tablecloths are embroidered with Beethoven's signature. Violin keys and music notes are even apparent on the uniforms of our staff – such as on the cufflinks and ties of waiters.”
You can also eat the Beethoven chocolate cake (apparently his fave hahaha) and drink an ale named after him that uses the top-fermentation method that was common in Beethoven's time. (also hahaha) You can try and stay in the Ludwig van Beethoven suite, which is apparently the room he stayed in.
Spend a warm summer where Chopin spent a dreary winter, have an affair in the south of France like Liszt.
Chopin was buried in Paris at Pere Lachaise, where a container of Polish soil he had kept since 1830 was sprinkled over his coffin. Very famously his heart was taken back to Poland in an alcohol-filled crystal urn, which is enshrined at the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw. If you’re a Chopin fan you could visit both of those or fly into Warsaw’s Chopin Airport and attend a concert at Chopin’s birth home in Żelazowa Wola. Personally I would go to Mallorca and visit the monastery at Valdemossa where Chopin and George Sand spent a dreary winter and where you can see the piano on which Chopin composed his Preludes. The monastery also hosts a Chopin festival in August in its beautiful grounds, although I cannot find any info on how to buy tickets for this year. Email them! Would be very nice to stay here. After that you could head to the Loire valley and visit George Sand’s house in Nohant. Here you can still see the room where Chopin composed, with the padding Sand installed on its doors and wall to soundproof it. More saucily at Nohant, Franz Lizst had a affair with a countess who abandoned her husband and children resulting in her giving birth to Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, who wound up marrying Richard Wagner.
Perhaps a hotel with a corridor to an opera house and an alfresco opera?
The Hotel Quirinale in Rome is quite literally connected to Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera by a corridor! Because of its proximity to the opera house, the hotel has hosted loads of musical guests: Puccini, Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and Riccardo Muti, but the most fun fact is that Giuseppe Verdi not only stayed at the hotel in 1893, but made use of the connecting corridor on opening night for his opera, Falstaff, so he could greet fans from the balcony of his room after the performance. That room is called, of course, the Giuseppe Verdi Room and you too could stay in it, although the hotel really seems like it needs a little revamp. Why not instead stay in the Donizetti suite in the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti’s former home, which is now the hotel Maalot Roma. If you’re going to see an opera in Rome, make it Tosca, an opera that premiered in Rome in 1900 and is actually set in Rome. The Teatro dell’Opera perform it regularly. If you’re in Rome over the summer you could also watch an opera at the Baths of Caracalla. Formerly public baths for Romans, the Baths of Caracalla date back around 212-217 AD and every summer they host a selection of operas from the Teatro dell’Opera.
Go skinny dipping in Alpine waters like Brahms, cycle to Mahler’s Komponierhäuschen
Brahms loved walking and beer gardens, making him a perfect candidate for HOLIDAYS. One of his favorite places to visit was Lake Wörthersee in Austria, he spent 3 very productive summers there. An average day looked something like this: nice naked dip in the lake at the crack of dawn, breakfast around 5am, morning hike and then composing from 7am, lunch at an inn, letter writing and then some evening beers while his friends entertained him with Carinthian songs. At the Hohe Gloriette, a lookout, you can hear Brahms music at the push of a button. Quite tacky, but fun. Sadly a lot of Brahms related sites have been demolished, for example on the site of the demolished Krainerhäuschen, where he stayed, there is now a parking lot named "Brahms Parking.” Terrible, but also incredibly funny to name it that.
You could however stay at Hotel Schloss Leonstain where Brahms stayed in 1877. From there you could take a nice bike ride along the lake to Mahler’s lakeside villa in Maiernigg. The villa is privately owned (by who? it’s a mystery!), but a 15-minute walk from the lake through dense forest gets you to his Komponierhäuschen, or “composition cabin” which you can visit. If you want to really fulfill your 19th century composer staying at a lakeside villa dreams though you can always rent this with 20 of your closest friends.
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