Well, the second part of my Viennese cultural extravagaza showed the other side of Vienna.

I saw Tosca at the Staatsoper, in what was a decidedly average performance of Puccini’s shabby little shocker (to use Joseph Kerman’s marvellous phrase).

When I say average, I mean it. It wasn’t bad – with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit, it could never be that bad – but it wasn’t much good, either.

Desperately ham acting, pretty low rent voices and – perhaps worst of all – a really, really awful audience.

So in awe was I of the sound of the VPO in the Musikverein that I let pass the dreadful behaviour of the audience. I had a pretty good idea what we were in for when I saw them traipse in to the hall – a mix of those whose political views I cast aspersions on in the post below, kitted out in their finest echt-Austrian dress, what looked like Prussian Junkers and their wives, and the odd – yes, in this context very odd – person under seventy.

Sure enough, they chattered, they coughed and – really – they stood up and moved around. Not before the performance, or after it. Oh no. During it.

I’ve written some strong words before about the behaviour of British audiences. I stand corrected. We may have our fair share of poor behaviour, but I’ve never seen anything to compare with this.

Well, actually, I have: the audience at the Staatsoper which was exactly the same in its composition and behaviour. The difference was that the VPO performance was so spellbinding that I managed to let the audience wash over me.

My conclusion: Vienna may be cultural heaven in a lot of ways, but we shouldn’t be cowed by a British version of what (I think) Clive James has referred to in an Australian context as ‘cultural cringe’. I’ve been to many average performances at the Royal Opera House, and that average standard is decidedly higher than at the Staatsoper, which has the ambience of a house – and audience - stranded in the mid 1950s.

Even the Vienna Philharmonic, about which I raved in the post below, is to a large measure simply the beneficiary of its astonishingly wonderful hall, the Musikverein. Such a hall would never be built today – way too small, and far too basic – and so we’re stuck with, at best, a hall like Symphony Hall in Birmingham, which certainly represents the very best in ‘modern’ acoustics (but without even a smidgeon of the Musikverein’s warmth) and, at worst, the Royal Festival Hall and Barbican. (I exempt the Wigmore Hall, my favourite hall in the world – and better than anything in Vienna, the Musikverein included – because it is solely a chamber music and recital venue).