Baden-Baden Festival Hall

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Main entrance of the Festspielhaus in the old city station
Northwest view
Staircase of the foyer
Ticket office in the former station building

The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden is an opera and concert hall in the Baden-Württemberg city ​​of Baden-Baden . With 2500 seats, it is Germany's largest such house. The Festspielhaus, which opened in 1998, does not have its own ensemble. The operation of operas, concerts and ballet performances by internationally renowned artists and ensembles is financed by a private foundation. In addition to four annual festival phases and additional individual events from classical music, upscale entertainment and jazz, concerts of the New Pop Festival are also held here.

General

The new building was opened on April 18, 1998 with the architectural integration of the former Baden-Baden city train station (today: ticket hall, festival hall restaurant Aida, children's music world "Toccarion" of the Sigmund Kiener Foundation). The architect of the new building was Wilhelm Holzbauer from Vienna . Planned from the start as a privately financed cultural company, the transition to the first privately financed European opera and concert company succeeded after initial public funding. The private cultural foundation Festspielhaus Baden-Baden has been the sponsor of the operator GmbH since March 2000. From July 1998 to 2019, Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser was director of the house. Benedikt Stampa has been artistic director of the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden since the 2019/20 season .

Since 2000 it has been called the only German opera house that does without subsidies. However, half of the rent and maintenance of the house are borne by the city and the state. Around 3.5 million euros annually flow into a real estate fund that was used to finance the construction of the house at the time. Another half a million euros in public funds is incurred annually for maintenance, taxes and insurance. By the end of the fund's term in 2020, critics expect subsidies of 200 million euros.

A community of around 2000 private sponsors, including a 1500 member Freundeskreis e. V., supports the Festspielhaus program with around eight million euros annually.

Around two thirds of the budget of 20 million euros is financed from ticket sales, gastronomic revenues and rights income, and around one third from private funding and sponsorship. The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden also operates its own travel agency and organizes cultural trips to Baden-Baden.

The average occupancy rate of the performances in 2012 was given as 85 percent.

Studies by the University of St. Gallen determined an influx of purchasing power through the Festival Hall for the city and region of Baden-Baden of around 46 million euros for 2008 and 52 million euros for 2013.

The media partners of the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden are Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and the television broadcaster Arte . The Kulturstiftung Festspielhaus Baden-Baden awarded the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize in Baden-Baden every year from 2003 to 2016 .

On November 21, 2019, the Bambi media award ceremony took place in the Festspielhaus .

program

The season of the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden begins in September and lasts until the end of July of the following year. Festival phases are opened with premieres of newly staged operas. This is currently happening at the Easter Festival with the Berlin Philharmonic (which took place in Salzburg from 1967 to 2012), the Whitsun and Summer Festivals.

The autumn festival offers u. a. Concert opera performances and solo concerts with prominent cast. Between the festival phases, u. a. Well-known ballet companies such as the Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier (autumn) and the Mariinsky Ballet St. Petersburg (Christmas residence) as well as modern dance companies from all over the world. Numerous concerts by renowned artists with classical music as well as jazz evenings, entertainment shows and musicals round off the program.

Since 2008, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden has been running an extensive, privately funded program for children and young people with interactive children's music festivals, children's operas, artist meetings (master class rooms) and workshops. Around 3000 schoolchildren alone attend events each season as part of the school project “Discover Columbus Classic!” (Financed by Grenke AG) and prepare these visits in advance in class. The corresponding cooperation with the Karlsruhe Regional Council (since 2010) is unique in Germany. The children's music world Toccarion of the Sigmund Kiener Foundation (since 2013) is also located in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and is open all year round.

Large opera productions in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden have so far included:

  • La traviata (Valery Gergiev, conductor / Philippe Arlaud , direction, 2001),
  • The Abduction from the Seraglio (Marc Minkowski, conductor / Macha Makaieff and Jérôme Deschamps, director, 2003),
  • The Ring of the Nibelung (Valery Gergiev, conductor and concept / George Tsypin, stage design, 2003/2004),
  • Rigoletto (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, direction, 2004)
  • Parsifal (Kent Nagano, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, director, 2004)
  • The Magic Flute (Claudio Abbado, conductor / Daniele Abbado, director, 2005)
  • Lohengrin (Kent Nagano, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, director, 2006)
  • Falstaff (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Philippe Arlaud, director, 2007)
  • Tosca (Eivind Gullberg Jensen, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, director, 2007)
  • Fidelio (Claudio Abbado, conductor / Chris Kraus, direction, 2008)
  • Tannhäuser (Philippe Jordan, conductor / Nikolaus Lehnhoff, direction, 2008)
  • Der Rosenkavalier (Christian Thielemann, conductor / Herbert Wernicke, director, 2009)
  • Der Freischütz (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Robert Wilson, director, 2009)
  • Elektra (Christian Thielemann, conductor / Herbert Wernicke, director, 2010)
  • Ariadne auf Naxos (Christian Thielemann, conductor / Philipp Arlaud, director, 2012)
  • The love potion (Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor / Rolando Villazón, director, 2012)
  • The Magic Flute (Sir Simon Rattle, conductor / Robert Carsen, 2013)
  • Don Giovanni (Thomas Hengelbrock, conductor / Philipp Himmelmann, director, 2013)
  • Manon Lescaut (Sir Simon Rattle, conductor / Sir Richard Eyre, director, 2014)

The Berlin Philharmonic , the Vienna Philharmonic , the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden , the Bamberg Symphony , the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam , the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble and the leading orchestras from the USA, Great Britain and Italy can be heard regularly in the Festspielhaus.

Baden-Baden opera productions are partly created as co-productions u. a. with stages such as the Metropolitan Opera New York, (Jolanthe (2015), Manon Lescaut (2016), Tristan and Isolde (approx. 2017)) or the Opéra Bastille (Paris / Die Zauberflöte 2014/2015).

Numerous productions of the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden have been released on DVD and BluRay. These include the operas Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Parsifal, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Liebestrank as well as ballets such as Death in Venice (John Neumeier), St. Matthew Passion (John Neumeier) or Sacre (Aterballetto). Recordings with Edita Gruberova, (Norma) and Rolando Villazón (Mozart opera cycle on DG) have appeared on CD.

Building history

Preparations for the construction of the festival hall began as early as the 1990s: in 1995, 2,700 interested parties from the region secured a right to tickets for the future festival hall and paid around 700,000 D-Marks to a foundation. Shortly afterwards, after lengthy political disputes, the state of Baden-Württemberg approved an annual state grant of five million Deutschmarks. At that time, construction costs of 125 million D-Marks and completion for 1998 were expected. In the same year a circle of friends was formed to support the building, chaired by the former Prime Minister Lothar Späth . A fund from the Südwestdeutsche Landesbank was supposed to secure the financing and an operator contract with the Dekra event subsidiary to ensure the long-term operation.

Web links

Commons : Festspielhaus Baden-Baden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ From the ailing temple of the Muses to the showcase palace. In: Der Tagesspiegel from April 17, 2008.
  2. ↑ Sven Prange, Claudia Schumacher: Der Subventionsstadl . In: Handelsblatt , No. 65, March 30, 2012, pp. 64–69.
  3. ↑ More purchasing power through culture. In: Badische Zeitung from November 25, 2014.
  4. ↑ Deals, Facts & Realizations In: Immobilien Zeitung April 6, 1995. Retrieved October 13, 2015.
  5. ↑ Green light for the Festspielhaus In: Immobilien Zeitung April 20, 1995. Accessed on October 13, 2015.
  6. ↑ Festspielhaus is secured In: Immobilien Zeitung October 5, 1995. Accessed October 13, 2015.

Coordinates: 48 ° 46 ′ 0.7 ″  N , 8 ° 13 ′ 56.2 ″  E