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By MICHAEL Z. WISE

Belgian banker Adolphe Stoclet and his wife, Suzanne, wanted a home that was a shrine to art, a sumptuously appointed abode where nothing would be left to chance. After the Palais Stoclet in Brussels was completed a century ago, designed by Josef Hoffmann and embellished by a cavalcade of Viennese artists, a guest described it as having “the enchantment of one of the basilicas of Ravenna.”

It still glitters as a European Taj Mahal, albeit one with reclusive owners and pressing conservation needs that keep it more tightly sealed than the cave of Lascaux. Now the Palais Stoclet, considered the best surviving realization of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” faces an uncertain future as it marks its centennial. For the past decade this Jugendstil masterpiece has been a battleground for the four sisters who inherited it, even as they seek to protect the coveted private property from the ravages of decay, pollution, theft and the prying eyes of the public.

Hoffmann, founder of the Wiener Werkstätte artistic collective, drew up the geometrically refined exterior clad in white Norwegian marble with undulating gold-leafed trim; Werkstätte members including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser and Michael Powolny brought splendor to the interiors. The designers placed every item within the house and its grounds, supplying specially created artworks, gardens, furniture, light fixtures, cutlery and silver toilet articles.

For the dining room, Klimt crafted a dazzling marble mosaic encircling a table with 24 chairs. Silver candleholders and tureens studded with malachite cabochons sit atop polished ebony sideboards. Chandeliers strung with pearls heighten the magic.

All is intact as on the day the Stoclets moved in. “It seems as if it were still 1911,” said Alfred Weidinger, deputy director of Vienna’s Belvedere Museum. “You don’t sense the passage of time.” An exhibition about the collaboration between Klimt and Hoffmann is on view through March 4 at the Belvedere, with a focus on the Palais Stoclet, including a reconstruction of its central hallway. “We got farther than anyone else in getting into the house,” Mr. Weidinger said of his research. “We took thousands of photos, but we can’t use a single one since the family won’t allow it.” Family members had indicated a willingness to lend furnishings for the show, but reneged at the last minute.

Stoclet, a financier and engineer who met Hoffmann while working in Vienna, died in 1949 as did his wife. They bequeathed their home to their children, after creating a shareholders’ association aimed at preserving everything unchanged, and it was occupied until 2002 when Stoclet’s daughter-in-law Anny died and her daughters opted not to move back into what they once considered a “maison enchantée.”

Far from anything enchanted, in their adulthood the house has been a source of strife for the sisters. Although the building was listed as a Belgian landmark in 1976, fears arose that the contents might be dispersed. Many non-Wiener Werkstätte artworks from the Stoclet collection have already been auctioned off in the past 10 years. The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought a Duccio Madonna from the Stoclets in 2004 for a reported $45 million—then the New York museum’s costliest purchase ever.

Around the time the Duccio was sold, an inventory of contents was apparently leaked to Brussels authorities, who designated the specially designed furnishings as integral to the landmark. Three of the sisters, Catherine, Nèle and Dominique Stoclet, appealed to Belgium’s Council of State, arguing that the move constituted expropriation without compensation. They lost in February 2011 when the fourth sister, Aude, and her son Laurent Flagey successfully fought to keep house and contents together, while suggesting it be run by a foundation. None of the sisters—now ranging in age from their late 60s to their early 70s—nor Mr. Flagey and the lawyers involved would respond to queries for this article.

Perhaps Hoffmann’s vision of a fully aestheticized domain was doomed from the start. In 1900, well before the Palais Stoclet’s completion in late 1911, Adolf Loos published an essay, “The Poor Little Rich Man,” satirizing the Gesamtkunstwerk concept. It foretold the fate of a wealthy client who submitted to the dictates of an obsessive architect, only to find himself robbed of self-expression and personal history. “It is something inhuman,” Christian Witt-Dörring, a specialist on the Wiener Werkstätte, said by telephone. “It’s an enormous burden for the family. The house belongs not to the occupant, but the other way around.”

Opening the Palais Stoclet, named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2009, as a museum “would mean death,” said Mr. Weidinger, because of the house’s intimate interior scale and the risk of imperiling the fragile furnishings and wood floors. “It’s a small house inside. . . . Hoffmann built a home for a family with a few children,” he added.

“There have been many thefts and deterioration,” said Marc Hotermans, a conservator working there for more than 20 years. Philippe Stoclet, born in the house and a cousin of the sisters, said in a telephone interview: “I am afraid that one day a Russian oligarch or an Arab sheikh may offer to buy the house for $200 million and they’ll sell.” Billionaire Ronald Lauder and the Austrian government have made unsuccessful offers to buy the Palais, whose value has been estimated as exceeding $130 million.

For the moment, the Brussels regional government has drawn up a $1.7 million plan for partial restoration, with half the cost of renovating the exterior and 40% of the cost of fixing the interior paid by taxpayers. Since the house faces the heavily trafficked Avenue de Tervueren, exhaust fumes necessitated refurbishment of corroded marble cladding and the quartet of sculptures surrounding the cupola.

But there’s discontent with this arrangement. “I don’t think that public funds should be used to fill private coffers,” Michel Draguet, director of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, said by telephone. “It makes me uneasy when there’s no will to open to the public. I’m convinced that there is a way to create a visitors center outside the house to learn about it.” Meanwhile, the house’s inaccessibility has only heightened its allure, in turn intensifying a sense of siege among the sisters.

“Every time anything is published, they get hundreds of letters and pressure to get in,” art historian Anette Freytag said. “They just want their privacy.” Yet time will inevitably bring change. Catherine Stoclet died in December, and Belgian authorities and art experts hope the next generation—seven great-grandchildren stand to inherit shares—will allow greater entrée. “I have seen a progression already because more experts helping with the restoration could get in,” Ms. Freytag said. “It’s very slowly opening up.”

Mr. Wise is the author of “Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy” (Princeton Architectural Press).

The Sparkling Wine

Casa Valduga Brut

It seems only fitting that Brazil, a country closely identified with the art of celebração, would be filled with sparkling wine fans. Indeed, sparkling wine sales have soared in Brazil in recent years—increasing 100% between 2005 and 2010. The wines range from simple Prosecco-style offerings to more serious methode Champenoise bottlings like those made by Casa Valduga, one of the oldest wineries in Brazil. The Casa Valduga 130 Brut is a rich, yeasty wine made from a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. According to its European distributor, the wine is so close to its French model that the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, complimented the former President of Brazil on his choice of “Champagne.” $29, available at select wine retailers; for more information email info@canaselections.com

The Bonbons

Brigadeiros

These traditional Brazilian sweets are said to be named after Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, a Brazilian politician whose campaign volunteers handed them out during his (failed) presidential run. The sticky treats are covered in sprinkles and have a consistency that’s a cross between marshmallow and dulce de leche. A dentist’s nightmare! We ordered the traditional chocolate-caramel flavor; they also come in pistachio, wasabi and peanut butter flavors. $23 for 15 pieces, gourmetbrigadeiro.com

The Crunchy Treat

Bacon-flavored Yokitos

Light in texture and pork rindy in taste, these corn-based chips initially had us scratching our heads. But they grew on us, bite by bite, to the point where we found ourselves looking into an empty bag. We also liked the snazzy alligator playing tennis on the package. $2 for 2 ounces, brazilianshop.com

The Pick-Me-Up

Matte Leão

With a caffeine level greater than most teas and less than most coffees, a mug of yerba mate makes an excellent afternoon pick-me-up. The light-colored loose leaves have appealing grassy and smoky flavors. We preferred our beverage before it steeped too long and the tobacco notes took over. $5 for 9 ounces, brazilianshop.com

The Addictive Snack

Pão de queijo (cheese bread)

Best eaten straight from the oven, pão de queijo is a popular breakfast food in Brazil. Just add water and eggs to this cassava-flour-based mix and bake your own cheesy treats. With a golden crust and gummy dough, they’re a heavenly cross between a delicate gougère and a Japanese mochi rice cake. Be warned: They’re very addictive. Yoki Cheese Bread Mix, $3 for 9 ounces, amazon.com

By KAREN WILKIN

New York

One version of the history of French art between the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 and the establishment of the Second Empire in 1852 goes something like this: Just as the French Revolution deposed the irresponsible ancienne régime, Neo-Classical images of high-minded heroes replaced Rococo confections of frivolous aristocrats pursuing love in flowery settings. (Imagine Jacques-Louis David’s purposeful, besandaled Romans, swords upraised, swearing to do something noble, versus Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s giggling charmers on swings, all fluttering petticoats and indolence.) As politics continued to change, so did aesthetic imperatives. Neo-Classicism, once associated with Republican virtue but co-opted by Napoleonic imperialism and hardened into academic convention, was supplanted by emotionally and formally liberated Romanticism, which was, in turn, challenged by a kind of supercharged, revitalized Neo-Classicism. (See Eugène Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s odalisques.)

There’s some truth in this shorthand version, but the history of art during these restless decades of political and social upheaval turns out to be far more complicated, more unpredictable—and more interesting—than this limited account. Witness “David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France: Drawings From the Louvre” at the Morgan Library and Museum. A spectacular assembly of 80 rarely lent works, the show is vivid proof that French art from the late-18th century to the mid-19th, like French politics, was not a neat sequence of clearly defined positions but, rather, an unruly assortment of contradictions.

The emblem of the exhibition, prominently displayed, is a rapid sketch by Delacroix for his personification of Liberty. But the chronological sequence begins with David, himself an embodiment of contradictions—an ardent enemy of the ancienne régime who sided with the extremists and was imprisoned for his association with Robespierre during the Terror, he became, essentially, Napoleon’s court painter. David’s evolution is tracked by studies for uplifting scenes from Roman history, a profile portrait of a fellow prisoner, and a preparatory drawing for an “official” painting of Napoleon crowning himself emperor.

Artists who trained in David’s studio are also represented, their individual approaches (and shifting political allegiances) suggested by such diverse evidence as sleek line drawings of the Trojan War, episodes from Roman history in flickering patches of dark and light, meticulous portraits, and frantic battle scenes, most of them quite different from anything their teacher produced.

The most noteworthy and atypical of David’s former pupils may be François-Marius Granet, a landscape specialist who spent a good deal of time in Italy. Granet’s moody view of Rome, the familiar skyline and distant hills wrestled into being with pools of brown wash, transcends its time. No wonder Paul Cézanne, born, like Granet, in Aix-en-Provence, but three generations later, admired his older compatriot’s work.

Selected to present the unusual, as well as the iconic, the exhibition offers such surprises as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s delicately outlined, very young female nude and the caricaturist Honoré Daumier’s bold mythological scene, plus engaging examples by less familiar figures, such as Corot’s contemporary Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny’s energetically hatched pen-and-ink landscape. Yet “David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France” also includes a wealth of dazzling works by the most celebrated draftsmen of the period.

Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s suavely modeled nudes, their robust, eloquent forms created by seamless transitions from light to dark, demonstrate the academic tradition at its best. The advent of Romanticism is signaled by Théodore Géricault’s urgent explorations, from an eerily lit mythological scene to a studious sketch for a history painting and a washy evocation of mounted combat. The tragically short-lived painter’s wide-ranging gifts are further suggested by a scene of a horse market, part careful observation, part homage to antiquity, done during his self-directed studies in Italy—having failed to win a Prix de Rome with his idiosyncratic works, he went on his own. As well, there’s a marvelous sheet of fierce cat heads, a study for a straining figure in “The Raft of the Medusa,” and a poignant watercolor of Géricault’s own left hand, made when he was on his death bed.

Géricault’s aesthetic heir, Delacroix, is arguably the star of the show. Whatever his medium, the confines of the rectangle seem barely able to contain his energetic marks and strokes. Delacroix’s admiration for the freedom and intensity of Rembrandt’s drawings is palpable, equally visible in a highly developed study of Christ on the Mount of Olives, in calligraphic sketches, or in a drawing from life, of an Arab, made during a formative early trip to North Africa. And some pages of explosive preliminaries for “The Death of Sardanapalus” are irresistible.

Neo-Classical incisiveness, as opposed to Romantic fluidity, sometimes with exotic (and erotic) overtones, is announced by Ingres’s exquisitely refined pencil portraits, including one related to his forceful painting of the publisher Louis-François Bertin. An elongated odalisque and a pair of unexpectedly spontaneous studies for the voluptuous fantasy “The Turkish Bath” remind us that distinctions between Romanticism and Neo-Classicism may be irrelevant. A fine selection of Ingres’s drawings from the Morgan’s collection, elsewhere in the museum, enlarges the argument.

Instructive as the political subtext of “David, Delacroix, and Revolutionary France” undoubtedly is, it’s the excellence and intimacy of the best drawings on view that make the show so rewarding. In his journals, Delacroix agonized over why he preferred his sketches to his finished paintings, concluding that sketches allowed the viewer to complete the work imaginatively. The wonderful drawings from the Louvre at the Morgan let us test Delacroix’s hypothesis.

Ms. Wilkin writes about art for the Journal.

By PAUL LEVY

Chris Chrisotodulou

Georgia Jarman as Antonia in ‘Tales of Hoffmann’.

LONDON—”The Tales of Hoffmann” by Jacques Offenbach is performed less often than its witty and lush late-Romantic music merits. This is chiefly because the 1881 opéra fantastique, which purports to be the retelling of three love stories by and about the German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, has several killer roles.

The four soprano parts have so many notes high above the stave, and so much coloratura, that they are usually shared by at least two singers. But the tenor, Hoffmann himself, is seldom off the stage, and the score calls for him to sing his high notes frequently and at full volume.

In this new production for the English National Opera by the outstanding director Richard Jones, the tenor problem is embraced and solved by Barry Banks, who conveys the blocked artist and frustrated lover’s emotions with sonority, panache and plenty of stamina. More surprising, the American soprano making her U.K. debut, Georgia Jarman, undertakes the rare feat of singing all four heroines—and proves herself a star.

She is hilariously choreographed in the role of Olympia, Hoffmann’s beloved singing doll, and tosses off her highly ornamented passages effortlessly, elegantly and beautifully—and she looks as good as she sounds, which also makes her ideally cast in the roles of the singers, Stella and Antonia. But Ms. Jarman doesn’t do sleaze, and I think she has been a touch misdirected as the courtesan, Giulietta; her naughty, crude body language doesn’t work.

Still, it’s a triumph for the ENO, with the principals being given luxurious support by Christine Rice’s warm mezzo muse/schoolboy, Clive Bayley taking the four bass-baritone “villain” roles and the orchestra conducted with convincing briskness by Anthony Walker ref. Mr. Jones shows what a real opera director (as opposed to the several film directors recently employed at the ENO) can do, with superb blocking of the chorus, imaginative sets by Giles Cadle, costumes by Buki Shiff and lighting by Mimi Jordan Sherin. Even Tim Hopkins’s English translation does less harm than usual: The set-pieces make good sense—though the bits in between them are unclear, as is sadly normal at the ENO.

Director David McVicar’s “Der Rosenkavalier” is currently revived at the ENO. Conducted sumptuously by Edward Gardner, Richard Strauss’s bittersweet confection has a lovely, world-class cast that includes Amanda Roocroft as the Marschallin, Sarah Connolly as Octavian, Sophie Bevan as Sophie, plus John Tomlinson as the priapic Baron Ochs and Andrew Shore as the scheming Faninal. Delicious.

“Hoffmann” until March 10;
“Rosenkavalier” until Feb. 27;

www.eno.org

Write to Paul Levy at wsje.weekend@wsj.com