Berlin opera house retain Barrie Kosky as Chief Director until 2022.

Barrie Kosky is the opera director with the Midas touch. His radical and innovative productions have won him international recognition as one of the most insightful and exciting figures in opera today – a reputation that earned him the position of Chief Director at Berlin’s Komische Oper for the 2012 to 2014 seasons. Kosky’s trademark ability to entice uninitiated audiences into the opera house, even in a country as committed to attending opera as Germany, has not gone unnoticed, and it has been announced ahead of their new season opening with Offenbach’s La belle Hélène this week, that Kosky will now remain at the top spot at Komische Oper until 2022.

This eight year extenison on Kosky’s current contract is a stellar endorsement, not only of Kosky’s considerable skill and invention when programming a season, but also of how he has begun to change the perception of the Komische Oper (one of three major opera houses competing for audience members in Berlin) as not only presenting operetta. In an interview with Berlin’s Morganpost Kosky revealed the secret of his continued success in Berlin is to program for the audience, not the critics.

“As a director I have a dramaturgical perspective, critics however have a very analytical perspective,” Kosky remarked. “The audience is a very different context: they are fixed on an evening or single piece. The audience which goes to the Fiery Angel is completely different to the one that goes to West Side Story. Some people say, with an absolutely outrageous ignorance, that Komische Oper is all fun and tralala. But that’s not true. In the current season alone we have Moses und Aron, Don Giovanni and Giulio Cesare programmed.”

Berlin is not the only place in Germany where Kosky is in demand. In 2017 he will direct Meistersinger at the world famous Bayreuth Festival. While Kosky has a long history of tackling Wagner, including directing a full Ring Cycle with the Staatsoper Hannover in 2011, his Bayreuth appointment has surprised some due to his recent outspoken derision of Wagner due to the composers anti-semitic reputation.  Kosky has admitted to being conflicted about the appointment. “When I was asked I said to Katharina Wagner that I couldn’t do it, as I was finished with Wagner. She asked me to take five months to reconsider.” 

Speaking about his eventual decision to accept the role Kosky said “There is something about Meistersinger that as a Jewish artist really concerns me. But then I asked myself critically whether I really wanted to always be running from Wagner?”  It also seems there is some catharsis for Kosky in being invited to contribute to the annual celebration of Wagner’s operas. “Meistersinger has a strange sense of humour and in my production it will be a very black humour. So [Katharina] has obviously selected me for artistic reasons.” Kosky said. “But I’ve also been told that she has chosen me because I’m a Jew: the first Jew to stage a Meistersinger at Bayreuth. For me this is very interesting.”

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