---
type: exposition
title: Better Volksoper than Broadway – Olive Moorefield
language: en
url: "https://www.belvedere.at/en/olive-moorefield"
---

# Better Volksoper than Broadway – Olive Moorefield

## ÖMSUBM

![Porträt Olive Moorefield](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/header_cropped_1920x480_fp/public/2022-05/Olive_Moorefield.jpg.webp?itok=JWV51KB1) 

**Duration:** 14 May 2022 - 11 June 2022

Just twenty years old at the time, when the singer Olive Moorefield came to Vienna during a tour in 1953, she had already played a minor supporting role on Broadway in the US. Whether it was Moorefield who fell in love with Vienna or Vienna in Moorefield or both in each other, depends on which of the countless interviews and newspaper profiles you read. Whatever the reason, just a few months after her first visit, Moorefield returned to the metropolis on the Danube—for good. She accepted an engagement at the Volksoper and over the next two decades became one of its biggest stars. She sang and performed leading parts (including in *Kiss Me Kate* and *Porgy and Bess*), starred in numerous films, and released successful records. She had her photograph taken in traditional costume in front of a Viennese backdrop and was a popular special guest at museum openings and Heurigen (wine taverns) alike. “New Musical Star in Old Vienna” was the headline that ran in the American Ebony magazine in 1962.

The exhibition *Better Volksoper than Broadway* brings together original backdrops and costumes, newspaper articles, and clips from TV shows from Olive Moorefield’s first ten years in Vienna—the years in which the unknown US singer enjoyed her greatest successes in the German-language entertainment industry.  

Curators: Dalia Ahmed, Joana Tischkau, Anta Helena Recke, Elisabeth Hampe und Frieder Blume

### [Belvedere 21](https://www.belvedere.at/en/visit/belvedere-21)

**Opening hours:** Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am - 6 pm; Late Night: Thursday, 11 am - 9 pm

**Address:** Belvedere 21, 1030 Vienna ([Getting there](<https://www.google.com/maps?q=Belvedere 21,+Arsenalstraße 1,+1030+Vienna>))

[Tickets](https://www.belvedere.at/en/tickets?location%5B0%5D=4)