A house is flying high

After a decade, the Stuttgart Opera has once again been voted the best of the year. So it's a little hard to think that in two years the artistic direction will change. Looking back on a successful season. In the seventies, Jossi Wieler, who grew up on Lake Constance, studied in Tel Aviv and worked at the Habima National Theater; one often doesn't even think about it. He knew German theater mainly from theater magazines, in which at that time, when Botho Strauß was still an editor and not yet a national writer, theater was spoken of as if it were, at least by proxy, the world. So: for itself and quite seriously. It was the time of Peter Zadek, Peter Stein, Hans Neuenfels and Pina Bausch, and "exactly where they were," Jossi Wieler once said - appropriately enough, we were sitting in the Turmstüberl of Munich's "Valentin-Musäum," "I wanted to go there, too. That worked out so far for the stranger in the stranger, with whom one has not been able to get rid of the feeling from the beginning, i.e. since Bonn acting times in the Werkstatttheater, as if he, with means changing according to the occasion, always wants to tell only one story, because perhaps - of the love possibly overcoming all conflicts - there is also only one story that is always worth telling: that of power and powerlessness, that of master and servant. Wieler's pictures have this quality: that they accompany you through life, make you think, sometimes even guide you. For example his "Amphytrion", a high bar exercise, at the same time free and faithful to Heinrich von Kleist, which in 1985, more than thirty years ago, he had Robert Hunger-Bühler perform in a highly original way - actually on the apparatus and on the stage, which at that time was already designed by Anna Viebrock. Was that a god, how he swung and talked and flew! And was that an analysis, how he, swinging, circled the language. Only to land again on the ground, where the assistant Sosias was onionized, as one cannot say otherwise. In a balloon above time Wieler's daring gymnasium acrobatics of yesteryear came back to mind when one sat in the performance of Vincenzo Bellini's "I Puritani", literally marveling at the stage design. For once again the will to think laterally, to be different, was crystal-clearly recognizable, even strengthened by co-director Sergio Morabito. But not out of affability or because one could not think of anything better, but out of consistent deliberation. So the play only became a contemporary play (about virtue terror, religious abuse, cadaver obedience, etc.) because it was left in its time, centuries ago. And yet it was contemporary, oppressively close in its drama, which Wieler/Morabito only rarely broke up ironically. Like, to take a breath. In this special season, the terror of the 17th century in the air was matched by Kirill Serebrennikov's direction, which worked with both biblical force and virtuosity with video and live cam. He saw Richard Strauss' "Salome" above all as the downfall of the political gang around Herod (here: master and servant in one person): not as a sultry, but as an evil parable. And, please: no pity. In Serebrennikov as well as in Christoph Marthaler ("The Tales of Hoffmann") and Nicola Hümpel ("Reigen"), the dramaturgy in the past season had sought out the counterparts it needed in order to continue to move confidently in its own visual language. All three of them presented productions that the former house director Andrea Moses had never managed to the same extent: written in their own way, but not obsessed with asserting a topicality that is no longer exactly that when it comes across as over-demonstrative. It's quite possible that the artistic directors didn't choose the advertising image for the new season by chance: an entire Großes Haus, with motivated people inside, takes off in the shape of a balloon. They know where the earth is. But they want to get up there a bit, if they can. A pound to grow with The prime example of "Salome," a performance from which people came out as if they had just learned to spell the word opera, teaches us, by the way, that the good things are often very close at hand, or work. The Coburg opera director Roland Kluttig, whose "Parsifal" this season (in Coburg!) can be looked forward to, was quickly booked as a substitute. Kluttig is a Stuttgart product from the Lothar Zagrosek era, whom the dramaturge Juliane Votteler (now opera director in Augsburg) already attested at the time that he was not only a "transmission belt," but already had great personal responsibility. Kluttig proved how big that is now when he electrified Strauss in such a well-dosed way that the walls almost shook in the Stuttgart Opera. In addition to GMD Sylvain Cambreling, who will still be in charge of the next two seasons under the artistic direction of Jossi Wieler, further conductors of Kluttig's caliber would be very desirable and definitely in the spirit of the workshop idea. Apropos, workshop, walls - and yes: will the award for "Opera House of the Year" by the magazine "Opernwelt" bring anything in this respect? That someone would be chosen by the politicians who would do nothing but see to it that plans, if they existed, were quickly put into practice (where in principle it is already past twelve)? And that, at all, perhaps once is tried to grow with such a pound as it represents now times such a distinction? Germany has, what one should not forget perhaps, some large city operas, which are hardly or no longer in function: In Cologne, as in Berlin's Linden Opera, construction seems to be going on forever. Frankfurt, where there is an excellently managed house, is facing renovation measures that cannot yet be calculated. Stuttgart, a glance at the almost pompously funded and managed Munich may suffice as a warning, has a lot to lose, and more than one title: its audience.

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