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Stories   >   After Barenboim - The legendary conductor resigns from the Berlin Staatsoper / VAN

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After Barenboim - The legendary conductor resigns from the Berlin Staatsoper / VAN

Posted: January 12, 2023

VAN's Hartmut Welscher writes……Every era has to end. Except, so it seemed, the Daniel Barenboim Era at the Berlin Staatsoper. His legacy for the musical life of Berlin is so monumental precisely because it extends far past the city’s musical life. Instead of merely administering his legacy, the Staatsoper needs a fresh start.

When Daniel Barenboim signed his contract as the new General Music Director of the Berlin Staatsoper on December 30, 1991, Berlin was a very different place. Rents were low and measured in Deutsche Mark. Frank Castorf, famous in music circles for his controversial staging of the “Ring,” had not yet begun his long tenure at the Volksbühne. Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s counterparts on the world stage were Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, François Mitterand, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The techno club Berghain wouldn’t open for over a decade.

Was Berlin an international capital, or a backwater town posing as one? Some Berliners suspected the answer was in the question itself. “The entire city is sitting in the waiting room of history, and while everything that happens here is very real, there is still a sense of unreality,” writes Dutch author Cees Nooteboom of the era in his book Roads to Berlin. “They are waiting for better roads…waiting for a balanced budget and for new buildings on Potsdamer Platz, for the [former GDR leader Erich] Mielke trial and for new immigrants, for work and for revelations, for investments and bankruptcies.” With its wasteland of abandoned industrial buildings and cheap rents, Berlin became an ideal environment for the subculture. But when denizens of this subculture compared themselves to their counterparts in London, Paris, or New York, they found themselves lacking cosmopolitanism, iconic cultural institutions, and a sense of grandeur. There were three opera houses, but none were world-class. A report by critic and director Ivan Nagel concluded that the 250-year-old Staatsoper, which sat as a rundown palace on the thoroughfare Unter den Linden in the GDR years, should be rebuilt as a “repräsentativen Hofoper”—a formidable crown jewel in the new German cultural sector.

Daniel Barenboim—an international star and citizen of the world who had, two years earlier, been fired from his post at the new Bastille Opera in Paris before conducting a single note—was brought in to make the Staatsoper iconic. And he delivered: Under his direction, the Staatskapelle has, in the last 30 years, become one of the most renowned opera and concert orchestras of the world, and one of the best-paid in Germany. While preserving the dark, burnished sound of the orchestra, he made it more nimble and agile and, at least initially, expanded its repertoire.

In Berlin, the former-musical-prodigy-turned-artistic-director increasingly became a cultural politician. In keeping with his self-image, he found his equals at the federal (rather than the state) level. Anyone who appears before the Pope and the United Nations, or who makes history by cofounding (with no less than Edward Said) the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra needn’t waste his time with the petty humiliations of local politics. “His personality and charisma are very effective at the political level,” a Berlin politician who handles cultural issues told VAN in 2019. “He never needed to get involved with local politics. He represents his interests at the federal level, where the money is, which is legitimate and bears fruit for him.”

In his official statement of resignation, the 80-year-old Barenboim thanked former chancellor Angela Merkel and former president Wolfgang Schäuble for “so pleasantly supporting” him during his time as General Music Director. Had Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder (who served as Chancellor from 1998 to 2005) not become persona non grata over the last year due to his friendly stance towards Russian interests, he probably would have been thanked as well. In 2000, Schröder helped Barenboim’s Staatskapelle receive the so-called “Chancellor’s Allowance”: €1.8 million in federal funding. At the time, such cultural funding was a novelty.

No classical musician before Barenboim has so immortalized himself in the institutional infrastructure of a city. It’s likely that none after him will be able to do so, either: the Barenboim-Said Academy, the Frank Gehry-designed Pierre Boulez Saal, the Musikkindergarten. In all probability, the long-overdue renovation of the Staatsoper would not have been possible without him, either. The state of Berlin didn’t have the money, so Barenboim quickly arranged for €200 million to be earmarked in the federal budget. “Without Mr. Barenboim’s personal campaigning at the federal level, this certainly wouldn’t have happened,” said former Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit in 2015 during a meeting of the Investigative Committee of the city’s governing body, the Senate, while this committee was discussing the ballooning costs of the renovations.

Whoever succeeds Barenboim will have to live with his shadow just as they work to free themselves from it, regardless of how often the chief-conductor-for-life is actually in the house. A good example of what happens when the patriarch abdicates but still shows up can be found in soccer: On May 8, 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson retired as the manager of Manchester United after 27 years. He had turned the club from the mean-tempered black sheep of the English Premiere League to one of the most successful and wealthiest soccer clubs in the world: 38 trophies, including two Champions Leagues and 13 league titles. The son of a Scottish shipyard worker, he once described his management style as “power and control.” His “hairdryer treatment”—yelling at a disappointing player from a short distance, thus delivering the volume and heat of a hairdryer—became a cliché in England. After retiring, Ferguson became a board member and club ambassador. From time to time, he still takes his usual place in the Director’s Box of Old Trafford Stadium, Block STH223, Row F, Seat 128. The North Stand was renamed in his honor. A larger-than-life statue was built in his likeness. Whenever he arrives, the entire stadium rises to its feet and calls out his name. In the nine years since his retirement, Manchester United has gone through seven managers. They haven’t won a single championship. ¶

Title Image © Christian Mang

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