Ulm Theater
The Ulm Theater , founded in 1641, is the oldest municipal theater in Germany in the Baden-Württemberg city of Ulm . It is operated as a three-part house with its own ensembles for opera / operetta , drama and ballet . Until 2006 the house was called Ulmer Theater . The building at Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz 1 was built from 1966 to 1969 according to plans by the architect Fritz Schäfer and opened on October 3, 1969 with 817 seats in front of the main stage and up to 200 seats in the Podium studio theater in the basement.
history
16th Century
The earliest evidence of theatrical performances in Ulm goes back to the beginning of the 16th century, even though scenic representations have come down to us from an even earlier time. Between 1550 and 1650, the comedy experienced its heyday.
17th century
Due to the large audience, a functional building for the theater ensemble was built in 1641 according to the plans of the city architect Joseph Furttenbach in a granary on the Binderhof near the former Dominican monastery. This already had a curtain and orchestra pit and was equipped with the same technology as on Italian stages, including prism-shaped, rotatable backdrops (Telari). In this theater there were 600 seats in increasing order and 150 standing seats. As early as 1650 it was increased to 1000 places.
Such a theater was a novelty by German standards. It therefore often attracted foreign actor groups. It can be proven that from 1572 foreign troops with professional comedians appeared in Ulm, especially the English and Dutch actors who appeared from 1594 until the middle of the 17th century.
18th century
The flourishing theater scene in Ulm inspired the composer, musician and journalist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart , an uncomfortable, unconventional lateral head and editor of the German Chronicle , to realize the idea of a German national theater in Ulm based on the Viennese model. The tight financial situation and the arrest and incarceration of Schubart on the Hohe Asperg let these plans peter out.
At the urging of the ambassadors of the Swabian district meeting in Ulm, the council decided in 1780 to have the municipal remise , the coach house, converted into a theater by the ducal Württemberg prime machinist Johann Christian Kaim. The main decoration of this relatively simple theater building , known as the Komödienhaus , was a curtain painted by Viktor Wilhelm Peter Heideloff with allegorical representations of the theater museums.
19./20. century
This theater was rebuilt and expanded again and again during the 19th century and was last expanded significantly in 1923. Herbert von Karajan had his first engagement at the Ulm Theater - as first Kapellmeister - from 1929 to 1934. Otto Schulmann was also Kapellmeister in Ulm at this time, but had to leave Germany for political reasons.
At the end of the Second World War , in 1944 and 1945, bombs almost completely destroyed the theater building. In the first post-war years, an interim theater was set up in the undamaged gymnasium of the Wagner school, which remained in operation until the inauguration of the new building in 1969 and has since served as a venue for various independent theater groups or school theater groups.
From 1994 to 2011 the American conductor James Allen Gähres was general music director at the Ulm Theater. The Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Ulm , which gives its own symphony concerts in addition to the opera, is assigned to the theater .
In addition, theater was and is played at different locations in Ulm, with directors such as Kurt Hübner also being responsible for outstanding theater events. At the beginning of the 1960s, Peter Zadek's commitment to the Ulm Theater ensured its breakthrough as a director. During his directorship from 1959 to 1962, Kurt Hübner influenced the profile significantly in the direction of a theater that shares the direction of directing with personalities of different origins and artistic handwriting and serves to identify talent, as with the set designer Wilfried Minks and the director Johannes Schaaf , the actor and set designer Jürgen Rose . Even back then, when theater-goers saw a Bertolt Brecht on German stages with extreme displeasure , the Ulm artistic director advocated the Augsburg man, hired Peter Palitzsch as director, and brought out the trial of Joan of Arc . Peter Zadek's production of Brendan Behan's Die Geisel also caused a sensation in the Hübner era .
With Paul Pörtner's piece Scherenschnitt (1963) in Ulm, the orchestra pit was overcome for the first time in Germany and the audience was able to help determine the progress of a stage performance. The new building, inaugurated in 1969, also had the podium, which was specially designed for performances of modern (small) pieces by contemporary authors (Beckett, Ionesco, etc.) . This is a hexagonal play area which, with 18 floor elements that can be moved against one another, allows a very variable stage and audience arrangement and in which the audience can also sit around the stage if necessary. This is how the planners reacted to the room or workroom theaters that were sprouting up everywhere in the middle of the 20th century.
The Ulm Theater proved to be a springboard for a number of artists (actors and singers), choreographers, dancers, directors, artistic directors, etc. These include, for example, Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg , Hannelore Hoger , Judy Winter , Ernst Seiltgen , Louis Hendrik Potgieter , Liselotte Losch , Margarete Klose , Angela Denoke , Rita Kapfhammer , Philippe Jordan , Deborah Polaski , who worked her way into the difficult Wagner trade in Ulm , Erwin Belakowitsch , Horst Lamnek , Harald Serafin , Mirjana Irosch , Vera Schoenenberg and Iva Mihanovic .
The choreographer and dancer Anni Peterka founded the ballet at the Ulm Theater in 1937. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s the choreographers Günter Pick, Pierre Wyss, Philippe Talard and Joachim Schloemer began their careers as ballet directors in Ulm.
21st century
Director Andreas von Studnitz renamed the Ulm Theater in 2006 to Theater Ulm . Since then, singers such as Oxana Arkaeva , Merav Barnea , Rúni Brattaberg , Gillian Crichton , Kwang-Keun Lee , Hélène Lindqvist and Helena Zubanovich have been permanent members of the music theater . Timo Handschuh has been General Music Director at the Ulm Theater since 2011 .
After a new building was initially up for discussion, the city council of Ulm approved on March 12, 2008 an amount of 18.3 million euros for a general renovation and modernization. In addition to eliminating structural defects, the technology was also brought up to date by 2017.
Director Kay Metzger called the 2018 ballet of the Theater Ulm in Dance Theater Ulm to. In the same year, Reiner Feistel became director of the Ulm Dance Theater .
Directors
|
|
Friends of the Ulm Theater
The Friends of the Ulmer Theater eV association was founded on October 2, 1979 by Michael C. Wieland, then director Volkmar Clauß and others. The association describes itself as the link between the Ulm theater and the audience. He helps to realize extraordinary productions and to make special purchases (for example a new stage curtain). He also organizes concerts or auctions and issues a theater medal in order to bring in the money necessary for the association's activities.
literature
- Theodor Schön: History of the theater in Ulm . In: Diöcesanarchiv von Schwaben , 17th year 1899, p. 17 ff. And numerous continuations up to 20th year 1902 ( details )
- Walter Tappe: Anniversary yearbook of the Ulm City Theater on the occasion of the hundred and fifty years of existence 1781–1931 . Ulm 1931
- Kurt Füller: The Ulm City Stage , in: Ulmer Statistics - Special Series , Issue No. 2, Ulm 1955
- Herbert Wiegand, Alexander Bergengruen: Between dream theater and arena - In memory of Peter Wackernagel , Ulm 1958
- Eberhard Stiefel: Article Ulm , in: Music in the past and present. General Encyclopedia of Music , Vol. 13, ed. by Friedrich Blume, Bärenreiter-Verlag Kassel 1966, ISBN 3-7618-5913-9 , Sp. 1042-1046
- Gunther Volz: Art history from the Ulmer Theater - theaters in Ulm from the late Middle Ages to the new building from 1969 , Mag. Ludwig Maximilians University Munich 1985
- Hans Radlayers: Theater in the imperial city of Ulm. From the Middle Ages to 1802 , and Gertrud Beck: Theater in Ulm since the 19th century , in: Ulmer Volksbank (Hrsg.): Theater in Ulm Ulmer Stadtgeschichte Issue 24 - supplement to the 1990 annual report , Ulm 1991
- Lenz Prütting: For example Ulm. City theater as a culture-political way of life. Ulm 1992. ISBN 978-3-88294-161-6 .
- Sabine Kraume-Probst: Stayed young! The theater in Ulm. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg , 38th year 2009, issue 3, p. 184 f. ( PDF )
- Michael Heinrich: Game of Hexagons. Form and appearance of the Ulm theater . In: Theater Ulm: season booklet 2019/2020, pp. 23–28 ( PDF )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Zadek - Wrong Hero . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1964 ( online ).
- ↑ Jürgen Kanold: The true, beautiful, good. In: Südwest Presse . September 11, 2018, accessed October 20, 2018 .
- ↑ See Kurt Fried : Peter Wackernagel to commemorate . In: Herbert Wiegandt, Alexander Bergengruen (Hrsg.): Between dream theater and arena . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Ulm 1958, p. 31 . : "The most intellectual and most prominent among the artistic directors and theater directors, he was a theater man in the high sense of the word"
- ↑ Magdi Aboul-Kheir: Kay Metzger will be artistic director at the Ulm Theater in 2018. In: Südwest Presse . December 14, 2016, accessed October 20, 2018 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 24 ′ 5.4 " N , 9 ° 59 ′ 11.7" E