Just in: Londoner is Berlin’s new secretary for culture
NewsThe city’s incoming senator for culture Joe Chiallo has a rock music background. He needs guidance on high culture, not least on the change of regimes at the post-Barenboim state opera and the ongoing confusions about Russian artists in the midst of the Ukraine war.
Chialo has chosen well.
His Kultur-Staatssekretärin is to be Sarah Wedl-Wilson, head of the Hanns Eisler Academy.
London born and Cambridge educated, Wedl-Wilson, 54, has risen through several German and Austrian classical institutions, lastly at the Salzburg Mozarteum, which she calmed down after years of turbulence. She will now call the shots in Europe’s perpetual capital of culture.
Her deputy has taken over temporarily at Hanns Eisler.
Oha, that gives an interesting spin to the Thielemann-or-no-Thielemann succession saga at Staatsoper…
Low-end solution in sight.
please not!
What do you bet ?
Berlin is in this case a “Staat“ not a “Stadt“, i.e. a Federal State not merely a city. It’s both of course. But the latter is less prestigious in terms of posts, despite being the capital.
Yes, I suppose that would give Berlin a real Staat in the arm.
Yer woman started off selling programmes at Wigmore Hall. She used to run the Innsbrucker Festwochen, from 2000-2009, with Rene Jacobs. When Jacobs left they did not renew her contract, something about budget overspend. The Tirol administration wanted a local to run it. She moved on to Salzburg, for a while marrying Leopold Wedl, a supermarket baron, they divorced in 2016. She managed to obtain Austrian citizenship no doubt due to Brexit. It seems the whole business of arts admin is both competitive and nepotistic.