The world’s leading incubator of opera talent
NewsIn a tribute to Nikolaus Bachler, who has stepped down after 13 years and 150 productions as artist director of the Bavarian State Opera, Munich culture editor Robert Braunmüller maintains that no opera leader since Gerard Mortier has done more to revitalise the art.
His signature singers were Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, Christian Gerhaher, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Tara Erraught and more.
His conductor of choice was Kirill Petrenko.
And his assistants have gone on to major positions in the opera world. Viktor Schoner is in charge of Stuttgart Opera, Florian Scholz is chief at Berne, where the Munich dramaturg Rainer Karlitschek joins him as director of opera.
Read here.
I look forward to seeing what he does with the Salzburg Easter Festival.
Ha!
He will bring Kaufmann and Harteros and Gerhaher and Petersen and Petrenko to Salzburg Easter Festival?
That s the way it s working, generally
When he was Artistic Director of the Vienna Festival in the early 90s, my company; Music Theatre London performed our Versions of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni there and the next year Klaus, as he was known then commisioned us to subvert La Cenerentola. I subsequently orchestrated ‘Le Belle Helene’ for him when he ran the Volksoper. I always found him to be charming, supportlive, broad minded and highly artistically cultivated. Munich has been lucky, now it’s Salzburg’s turn. Pity he never worked in London, but I’m sure the strictures of creating within our relatively philistine arts funding system would, understandably not have been to his taste