“Therese and Leo: Vienna 1900” is a theatrical presentation based on Arthur Schnitzler’s novel The Road into the Open, published in 1908.

Vienna — more than Berlin, Paris, or London — stands out at the turn of the 20th century as the European city most friendly to radical innovation of every kind. In science and art, economics and politics, music, architecture and urban design, new paths into the future began in Vienna. Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ruled from Vienna and split by rivalries of social class and ethnic identity, approaches the edge of collapse.  

Schnitzler’s novel, examines this world in profound  depth, providing psychological insight that some of his contemporaries, including Sigmund Freud, recognized and appreciated.  While for Schnitzler modern life is inevitably a condition that places the destiny of human beings into their own hands,  he is acutely aware that what “destiny” and “freedom” mean for each individual is shaped by cultural status and economic circumstance.  Men and women, Jews and gentiles, the rich and the poor, do  not share the same life prospects.

Vienna during this era is a starkly divided city where opulent wealth coexists with crushing poverty.  Many of the city’s families are immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia; some of them are flourishing in their new environment, but many are jobless,  homeless, and sick.

Of particular interest to this theatrical adaptation of Schnitzler’s novel is representation of the lives of Vienna’s Jewish inhabitants, precariously located in a predominantly gentile city at a time of rising antisemitism. Given to us is a kaleidoscope of characters and their experiences, including their fiery internal debates about assimilation, identity, and Zionism.

The Golowski Family

Therese and Leo Golowski are siblings belonging to a Jewish family that has lost its wealth and now lives in a modest neighborhood in Vienna.  Therese is a political activist, an ardent Social Democrat who opposes the ruling class that governs not only Vienna but the entire Habsburg Empire.  In the opening scene of this play she gives an incendiary speech to striking coal miners in Bohemia.  As turbulent as her radical politics is Therese’s personal life. At the same time that she fights for the poor and advocates also for women’s rights, including the right to reject traditional female roles, her own sexuality doesn’t respect conventional boundaries.

Her brother Leo pursues a different path, although his life is no less laden with danger and contradiction.  He attended the first international Zionist congress in Switzerland in 1897, and he no longer holds out any hope for Jews if they remain subjects of the Empire.  Leo embraces instead the Zionist dream of building a homeland elsewhere in the world. 

Musical Vienna

Leo is also a pianist and composer of avant-garde music. Central to Schnitzler’s novel – and to this  play – is the interweaving of life and art.  Leo’s gentile friend Georg is a  musician too, but he feels comfortable reworking traditional harmonies in his compositions.  Leo, in contrast, finds those harmonies hopelessly outworn and irrelevant.  To the fracture and loss and despair that he witnesses daily, Leo gives an impassioned voice through the invention of new musical form.

Music in Schnitzler’s novel gives expression to every dimension of life.  In the late 18th and 19th centuries, Vienna had become the world center of classical music. In Schnitzler’s era, though, this  tradition is being challenged by radical innovations introduced by composers like Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg.   It is such new music that supplies the counterpoint to the clash of life paths and personalities that drives Schnitzler’s story forward.

The search by  individuals to find meaning and a path “into the open” — sometimes in the supportive company of others and sometimes at loggerheads with them — is the subject matter of this narrative.

— Raymond Barglow