The painting and the change to the Universalartist
For many years, my life was dominated by singing and my passion for opera, as well as the stress of numerous performances. But my second talent, painting, also kept pushing itself to the fore, demanding its own stage.
It was under the aegis of Dominique Meyer, the director of the Vienna State Opera, that I was given the unique opportunity to present the fusion of my musical and painterly talents to a wide audience in the Gustav Mahler Saal for the first time. The project of singing Franz Schubert's "Winterreise" and showing 24 paintings - oil on canvas - at the same time marked the birth of Herbert Lippert, the Universalartist.
With 160,000 visitors, the exhibition became a media highlight and a sensational success. I was the first artist in the 125-year history of the Vienna State Opera to be given the honor of presenting my works of art to an astonished audience.
This was followed by two further exhibitions at the Vienna State Opera:
"3 x Mahler", an exhibition in which I interpreted songs by Gustav Mahler through 14 large-format paintings (oil on canvas), and "Blickwinkel Oper - Ära Dominique Meyer", my comprehensive retrospective of our time together, which was also shown in large-format oil paintings in the Gustav Mahler Saal. These exhibitions attracted a total of 500,000 visitors, who devoted themselves intensively and with great enthusiasm to the combination of singing and painting.
Other stops on my artistic journey included not only exhibitions in Innsbruck as part of the Austrian Music Theater Prize at the Haus der Musik and in Steyr at Lamberg Castle during the Steyr Music Festival, but also an extensive show as part of the Upper Austrian Provincial Exhibition. In addition, several extraordinarily interesting exhibitions dedicated to the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna took place at Palais Hansen Vienna, as well as a harmonious exhibition on the complete cycle "Is Hope the Sister of Fear" in the Sala terrena of Klosterneuburg Abbey.
