Category: Commentary

A change of leadership has been announced today by Bratislava’s Slovak National Theatre. In the opera division, famed tenor Peter Dvorsky, the current artistic director, is to be replaced on August 1st by the Austrian conductor Friedrich Haider.

Bayreuth’s opera house has been awarded the honor of UNESCO World Heritage status. If you think that means Wagner’s festival house in the same city, with its excellent acoustics and uncomfortable seats, you will be mistaken.

In his second season, intendant Dominique Meyer has chalked up increases both in tickets sold and earnings at the Vienna State Opera.

The fall-out from the very public display of anger on both sides continues in Cologne. Uwe Erich Laufenberg, 51, director of the city’s opera, one of the leading operas in Germany, was fired with immediate effect on June 22.

Nicolas Bachler, intendant of the Bavarian State Opera, has had his contract extended through August 2018.

Amidst crucial, ongoing financial concerns about future funding for opera
and ballet throughout Germany’s highly populous North Rhein-Westphalia
region, a diverse gathering at the Duisburg Theatre verified sincere grassroots
support for Deutsche Oper Am Rhein and the current partnership with nearby
Dusseldorf.

The re-opening of Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden has been set back for another year.

The Lyric Opera of Chicago announced their financial figures in their annual report and “balanced its budget” for the 2011-2012 season, according to general director Anthony Freud.

Conflicts like this usually remain inside opera house walls. The three Viennese daily newspapers carried headlines reporting that Oscar-winning director William Friedkin called the intendant of the Theater an der Wien a “liar.”