New plans for Hamburg’s State Opera | EUROtoday

Tobias Kratzer, der mit seiner Inszenierung von Wagners „Tannhäuser“ in Bayreuth zum Liebling des Publikums wie der Kritik wurde, wird im Sommer neuer Intendant der Hamburgischen Staatsoper zusammen mit Omer Meir Wellber als Generalmusikdirektor und Demis Volpi als Ballettchef. Wir trafen ihn kurz nach der Vorstellung seines ersten Spielzeitprogramms.

„So ward es uns verhießen, so segne ich dein Haupt, als König dich zu grüßen.“ Sie kennen den Vers, Herr Kratzer?

Why do you ask?

Gurnemanz says it, welcoming Parsifal. So you were welcomed in Hamburg. As a Redeemer of the Hamburg Opera.

That is high, but it would be a lie if I say would not flatter me. But like all advance laurels, this also remains to be enjoyed with caution. In the jargon of the present I would say: #nopressure.

With regard to the planned new opera, Senator Carsten Brosda said that it is not simply about a new building, but about what is as “the content” in politics as often as vague. He spoke of the hope of “art experiences that probably never existed. Kratzer, Volpi and Wellber think opera, ballet and concert together. ”

We can solely perceive that as a problem. And wish to present: “Everything that may function.”

In the Senator praise, there was an unspoken criticism: that the Hamburg opera is in a crisis. The occupancy is bad.

That may even be a problem.

You yourself reminded of the era of Rolf Liebermann and Peter Ruzicka – and of memorable performances from far times.

As in politics, criticism of the predecessor could be comfy, additionally unexpectedly. As a repertoire theater, we take over older and previous productions: for instance the “Tristan” staged by Ruth Berghaus, the “love potion” by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, the “Lohengrin” by Peter Konwitschny made in his humorous access to Wagner. But we are happy to play the bouquet productions by Dmitri Tscherniakow from the Delnon era: “Elektra”, “Salome” and “Ariadne on Naxos”.

You are comfortable to talk of the “framing” of the repertoire: every evening should become a premiere. How is that supposed to succeed? We have experienced that the attraction of many productions disappears quickly, especially the attraction of the provocation or the scandal.

We have a pilot venture for this. It is about attempting to know older productions as “artwork types of their very own historicality” to accompany every repertoire series with discussion evenings or artistic interventions.

As an opera friend, can I hope for sensual pleasure as well as emotional and intellectual enrichment?

But sure, full. For me, opera is emotional overwhelming, which additionally withstands reflection.

Doesn’t the sensual pleasure depend primarily on the singers? Can a singer – an actor – bring a performance or a staging to a higher level: they transcend?

Yes, absolutely. Stephen Gould, for example, has always been among the singers ASMIK Grigorian, who worked in Hamburg. Since my youth, performances with Waltraud Meier, which not only singing, has made it a dramatic event not only singing, but even as an actress, but even as an actress. But of course even these biggest personal personalities can only try to get close to the ideal of a role – as close as possible. Incidentally, I know myself as a director’s artist. Do you think I had ever staged that would have come close to my ideal idea? This is unreachable for executing, interpreting arts.

There was once the concept of ensemble culture: Mozart in Vienna of the 1950s, Verdi in the Dresden of the twenties. And today?

It will be one of my most important tasks to strengthen the ensemble and build a good balance with guests. In the ensemble we have very good access to central specialist games: the soprano Eliza Boom and Raffaella Lupinacci, the mezzo -soprano Annika Schlicht, the tenor Jonah Hoskins, the bariton Andrew Hamilton, Kartal Karagedik or as a guest closely connected to the house.

It is one of the hands of the company that singers are prepared by assistants and cork repetitors and that conductors only fly in for dress rehearsal.

This is hardly acceptable. I have had the best experiences with conductors with whom I worked together with Antonio Pappano or Vladimir Jurowski from the first rehearsal to the performance of all samples.

For their start program, the nine premieres, six in the big house, three stable in the Opera: There are actually only two operas-Mikhail Glinkas almost unknown political fairy tales “Ruslan and Ludmilla” and Gioachino Rossini’s “Barbiers”. Isn’t it a (too) great risk to open the season with the staging of Robert Schumann’s “The Paradise and the Peri”, with a secular oratorio? Achim Freyer’s staging of Schumann’s “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” was hardly more than a success.

On the one hand, I think “the paradise and the Peri” for the stronger work and also because of the topics negotiated therein. And on the other hand, it is no longer done to just saddle up one of the thirty or forty battleships of the repertoire. It is also about the thirst for adventure to win new things for the stage.

Under the title “Love of Frauen and Stocking” you will design a panorama of women’s fates: Robert Schumann’s song cycle “Frauenliebe und -Leben”, Béla Bartók’s “Herzog Blaubarts Burg” and Alexander Zemlinky’s “Florentine Tragedy”. That was, it was heard, only a “collaboration collectively”.

No, that’s a part of our programmatic thought talked about: “Everything that may be opera”. It is about expanding the genre boundaries, redefining them, in this case by coupling works that shed light on each other. We also try this with a evening “The Great Silence” designed by the director Christopher Rüping and our music chief Omer Meir Wellber – an encounter with the “unknown” Mozart. Or with a Mahler evening. Or with an evening “Stockhausen for youngsters”.

Do you concentrate at dramaturgically or thematically designed evenings to the director author rights? They know the criticism that many directors are not interested in earlier aesthetic norms, let alone the norms of gender, politics and society, and bend pieces.

Directed by an interpreting art form, however, unlike, for example, the interpretation of a piano sonata can certainly claim its own author rights. Bayreuth is already in the contract that the musical form of work must be preserved. There will be no such clause in Hamburg. Because: I still admire the music of Wagner, I have not yet understood, which is why he has to ensure that the woman’s death was redeemed. Do not change the questions that a work asked in the course of history – the problem history?

With their “framing” of the repertoire, they want to search for new interpretation patterns for old, apparently played works or illuminate thematic focus. How: through information? Through lectures?

Especially through the discussion about impressions that the viewers themselves took with them from a performance. It is also about overcoming speechlessness in the discussion about the opera. Many are difficult to talk about what they have experienced. A music theater evening, as I imagine it, picks up the audience on several levels. To accept the initial question: After sensual pleasure and overwhelming, it is about understanding, a new understanding.

Liebermann, whom you reminded as the largest idea of ​​the Hamburg opera, especially because of the 23 premieres under his aegis from 1959 to 1973, said: “I’m solely sooner or later.” Can an artwork type solely survive with works from the previous?

I hope that “Monster’s Paradise”, a political Grand Guignol Opera that Olga Neuwirth wrote on a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek on our behalf, is a contribution to the way forward for the opera as a result of criticism of the current.