Michael Niavarani makes his State Opera debut

I don't even know if there are any actors who aren't bibliophiles. For me, at any rate, this love has become a real addiction. And when I lie on the couch at home and look up at the books, they usually calm me down because I know they're there. But they can also turn nasty!

Not necessarily. I've always been interested in biology and history - I have a lot of specialist literature. But also drama, of course. It can happen that I'm tired after a long day of rehearsals and performances, with a cigarette in my mouth, looking for something to distract me before I go to sleep and happen to catch a Goldoni, for example. Then I start reading and suddenly I'm wide awake again and realize that I've come across something wonderful that could be wonderfully adapted for my stages. And then I'm back in the theater again.

The theater is like a maelstrom. It exudes a fascination that fills me. Otto Schenk once said to me: "You didn't choose the theater, the theater chose you." That's true.

At grammar school. We had a wonderful German professor - her name was Hannelore Lazarus - who noticed that this bad pupil Niavarani, this half-person who didn't know what he was supposed to do in the big universe, displayed an unexpected talent when he had to read the lead role in the class reading. It all started with Willibald in Nestroy's Bad Boys at School. I was incredibly moved by this character, by the text. The insolence that this Willibald takes the liberty of expressing towards the teachers or general judgments about people in general - such as "Man is also a feathered creature. For many a man, as soon as he takes a feather in his hand, shows what a beast he is" - led to me going to the bookshop the next day to buy more plays by Johann Nestroy, who was unknown to me at the time. Shortly afterwards, I was allowed to play Muffl in several school performances of Früheren Verhältnissen. Then there was a visit to the Burgtheater - my grandmother took me there - where I experienced Josef Meinrad - this hilarious comedian who always had one ear in the audience and therefore had the ideal timing, sensing exactly when and where to deliver a punchline. From then on, I was always to be found in the standing room area of the Burgtheater. However, the journey from the standing room to the stage seemed to me to be further than the one from Vienna to Australia. Practically unmanageable.

The initial spark that I could be a good comedian came during a math exam. I had to solve a term on the blackboard and, as always, had no idea. But, inspired by a Pension Schöller performance with Maxi Böhm that I had seen on TV the day before, I created my exam as a role à la Maxi Böhm. I spoke like him, moved like him and incorporated a few phrases from Pension Schöller. Of course, I got a failing grade on the exam, but the numerous laughs in class that accompanied my "performance" boosted my self-confidence to dare the long journey to the stage I mentioned earlier. In the end, I left school behind and put all my eggs in the acting basket.

My paternal grandfather was a full-time doctor in Tehran, but wrote plays as a hobby and even performed them with his own troupe in a rented theater. An enthusiastic amateur, so to speak. I didn't get to know him, but I did get to know my other grandfather on my mother's side. He was a violinist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and whenever I went to a performance at the State Opera as a teenager, I would pick him up afterwards at the Operngasse stage door. That's why I have a familiar feeling towards the State Opera and see my debut as a kind of homecoming.

What I didn't understand for a long time as a small child in conversations with my grandfather, however, was the distinction still made by older Philharmonic musicians between performances at the Musikverein, which were called "concerts", and performances at the State Opera, which were called "services". It was clear to me that grandpa was a violinist. But what was meant by the evening "services" was not clear to me. I imagined a lot of things: My grandpa as a night watchman, a bus driver, a snow shoveler..

I adore and love the State Opera, I have appreciated Bogdan Roščić for a long time, but can you perform on a foreign stage when performances are scheduled in your own theaters? On New Year's Eve? So it went back and forth between Bogdan and me for a long time, until I told some of my philharmonic friends about my scruples after a performance at the Simpl. At some point during the conversation, however, I came up with the killer argument par excellence: "Nia, your grandpa was a Philharmoniker and played in Die Fledermaus at the State Opera so often on December 31. How happy do you think he would have been to see his grandson as a frog on stage?" I was deeply moved - I think I even had tears in my eyes - and decided to accept.

However, after the performance at the Staatsoper, I will rush over to the Simpl to perhaps take part in another number, but in any case I will drink a toast with everyone.

Absolutely, he is in the tradition of the boozy Viennese types that Nestroy liked to put on stage, just think of Knieriem in Lumpacivagabundus. But even the Strauss operetta as such has a lot to do with Nestroy: In most Nestroy plays, there is an overture, accompanying and inter-act music - it is no coincidence that Nestroy had an orchestra, including an orchestra pit, at the Carl Theater, which he directed. These works therefore had something of a singspiel about them.

In addition, it was Nestroy who brought Jacques Offenbach to Vienna and, among other things, realized the Viennese premiere of Orpheus in the Underworld at the Carltheater. And it is well known that Offenbach inspired Strauss.

He is a typical Viennese civil servant who has become a drunk out of despair at the world and is thus able to maintain an ironic and cynical distance from everything that is happening around him. Sure, he's also a bit of a crook.

Some of the old jokes come from an era when they were considered courageous, subversive and anarchistic. However, due to the changing times and society, they have lost their salt and now seem, as they say in Viennese, "bochn", i.e. strangely naive. They should and will be replaced by more contemporary comedy. What still works, of course, remains the same with Niavarani. The important thing is that every joke must consist of three parts: Information - preparation - punchline. Anything more is superfluous. In a serious drama, of course, the punchline is replaced by a high level of emotion and in cabaret the information is replaced by an intellectual debate.

It has improved a bit in that the phase in which I get nervous has become shorter and shorter. Now only the last few minutes before the first performance are really awful. The amazing thing, however, is that it doesn't matter what state I was in during the day for the performance itself: tired, sad, depressed, desperate - acting always works and I always feel much better afterwards. Apparently, my job is a kind of chiropractic treatment for my soul - it's always adjusted. And I see that as a reward for the fear I had before the performance.