Jobs for boys: Bonn baton is bumped up
OperaHermes Helfricht, Kapellmeister of Oper Bonn, is to be the next GMD of Theater Hagen, in the Ruhr.
Helfricht, 32, succeeds Joseph Trafton, who’s from Kentucky.
So it goes.
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And here I thought there are no jobs for white male conductors.
This is a ridiculous comment. Becoming the GMD of a German theatre is a huge responsibility, and requires someone who has come up ‘through the ranks’ of the Kapellmeister system, learning to negotiate the vagaries of a repertoire opera house. Looking at Helfricht’s CV, it is clear that he has done exactly that.
A colleague of mine was part of the commission to appoint a First Kapellmeister (the last step before becoming a GMD) at a regional German opera house last year. I forget the exact numbers, but out of about 160 applications, only five were from women. If we want to have more women taking up GMD positions, we need to understand why so few of them are applying for positions lower down the career ladder, and attempt to remedy that.
Spot on. Even Karajan and Kleiber did the Ochsentour. It should be a requirement for any leading conducting position and would certainly put an end to the over-promotion of the inexperienced based on gender or hairstyle.
Great name.
I thought the same!
His conducting quite fleet of foot.
…and where is the problem?
Yes, really: what is the issue with this appointment? Is Herr Helfricht assumed to be not competent to this new position? Is it nepotism? How is this “jobs for the boys”? It is one appointment of what seems a very routine type, except trading Bonn for the Ruhr for what is presumably a sort of promotion.
Must every post on SlippedDisc harbor a problem? Sometimes news is just news…no comment necessary.
The headline IS comment.
Is this a step up or down?
Only time I went to Hagen was for an awful Holländer with one horn fluffing the Leitmotif and the singers splish-sploshing through a paddling pool. Never again.
Bonn is rather better than that.
Are we suppose to hold being from Kentucky against him? Or is that a good thing?
Helfricht succeeds Trafton who comes from Kentucky and also has great hair