Friedrich Kurz

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Friedrich Kurz (* 1948 in Nürtingen ) is a German musical and theater producer .

Among other things, he produced very successfully Cats in Hamburg in 1986 , Starlight Express in Bochum in 1988 and Das Phantom der Oper in Hamburg in 1990 . Kurz set in motion the musical boom of the eighties, which changed the German theater landscape permanently.

Life

Friedrich Kurz attended grammar school in Nürtingen, but did not pass the Abitur. He emigrated to America in the mid- 1960s after disputes in his family. There he worked, among other things, for one season as a professional footballer in Philadelphia and later in Toronto . Sometimes he was also active as a ski instructor. During this time he read a lot, especially plays. Eventually he received a scholarship to study literature and drama at Bethany College , a private college in West Virginia .

In 1972 he came to the Olympic Games in Munich as manager of the US team . He completed his studies and studied an additional two semesters at the London Film School . He made a film about a woman who was supposed to ski down the Matterhorn . The project failed because of the weather. In order to pay off his debts from the project, he then worked for two years on the stock exchange in Germany and was obviously able to earn a lot of money.

As Friedrich Kurz describes in his autobiography “The Musical Man”, since a decisive experience in 2004 he has publicly confessed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his son, Jesus the Messiah. His brother is the music producer Bernhard Kurz .

Musical producer

Friedrich Kurz met Andrew Lloyd Webber through a friend . Lloyd Webber had already had great success with the musical Cats in the USA, Great Britain and Vienna . In Vienna, the play has been playing in front of houses that are sold out every day since 1983. Kurz saw the opportunity to be successful with the musical in Germany as well. He won numerous investors for the project. He converted the Operettenhaus in Hamburg into a musical theater and had cats performed there from 1986 . Kurz founded the Stella-Theater-Produktions-GmbH for the performance of the musical . Friedrich Kurz set up a unique and novel marketing and sales system for Cats, not only promoting the city for months on an unprecedented scale (the sophisticated Cats logo appeared on urban transport for the first time), but also cooperated with tour operators, of Deutsche Bahn and other tourist-relevant institutions. The success was resounding ... Cats was the beginning of a success story that is not often written in Germany. "

In 1988 Friedrich Kurz produced Starlight Express in Bochum and had the Starlight Express Theater built especially for it - this theater is now seen by many experts as the main reason for the continued success of this production, which has been running in the same theater for more than 30 years. On the other hand, productions on Broadway or in London's West End in theaters with traditional box sets were unsuccessful.

Friedrich Kurz then produced Das Phantom der Oper in 1990 , again in Hamburg. Here, too, he wanted to build a new theater, but after the project at the original location, the Rote Flora , was not politically feasible, the project became more expensive with the construction of the Neue Flora and Rolf Deyhle became Kurz's business partner. In 1991 there was a dispute between the partners and Deyhle bought his shares from Kurz after Kurz had won a lengthy legal battle against Deyhle in a London court. In the course of this legal dispute, Deyhle had been called a "Legal Criminal" by a London judge.

With his Berlin productions Tell me where the flowers are (later Marlene ) about Marlene Dietrich in the Theater am Kurfürstendamm and the play Shakespeare and Rock'n Roll at the Freie Volksbühne Berlin , he was unable to build on the successes in Hamburg and Bochum.

In 2011 Friedrich Kurz announced a music theater project in Dresden . He wanted the architect Daniel Libeskind to build a new theater for the musical Michelangelo (about the life story of the Renaissance artist ) on Ferdinandplatz (between Karstadt department store , New Town Hall and Georgplatz ) . The premiere was planned for 2016. The implementation of the project did not materialize.

Literature and documentation

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Kurz: The musical man. Gerth media. Asslar 2010
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Jansen: Cats & Co. History of the musical in German-speaking theater. Henschel publishing house. Leipzig 2008. p. 158
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Jansen: Cats & Co. History of the musical in German-speaking theater. Henschel publishing house. Leipzig 2008. p. 159ff
  4. ↑ Friedrich Kurz: The musical man. Gerth media. Asslar 2010. p. 127ff
  5. ↑ Politician is skeptical about plans for musical theater. In: Bild Online . January 27, 2011, accessed March 19, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Bild-Zeitung from October 15, 2013
  7. ↑ Claudia Lord, Wiebke Müller: This is how illustrious building projects burst: The castles in the air of the city of Dresden. In: Bild Online. January 21, 2015, accessed March 19, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME In short, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musical producer
DATE OF BIRTH 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Nürtingen