Wuppertal stages

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The Wuppertaler Bühnen und Sinfonieorchester GmbH are the municipal theater company of the city of Wuppertal . They are run as a city-owned GmbH and maintain ensembles for the fields of drama , opera and symphony orchestra . In addition, the GmbH works for the dance theater Pina Bausch , which brings out and performs its productions in the opera house. Around 280 people are currently employed by the Wuppertaler Bühnen und Sinfonieorchester GmbH.

One of the Wuppertal theaters is the opera house in the Barmen district (built in 1905, badly damaged in World War II, rebuilt by 1956, renovation 2006–2009, reopening on January 18, 2009). The theater in the Elberfeld district (built in 1966, closed since 2009) was used as a second, small theater with 126 seats in the 2009/10 season when the theater foyer was converted into a small theater . This small venue was finally closed at the end of the 2012/2013 season (end of June 2013). For this, the Schauspiel Wuppertal received a new venue with 152 seats, the “ Theater am Engelsgarten ”, on the grounds of the Museum for Early Industrialization and the Engels House (“Historical Center”) not far from the Opera House in September 2014 . The necessary remodeling of the museum's former magazine was largely financed by the association of “Friends of the Wuppertal Theaters and the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra”, the Jackstädt Foundation , private individuals and companies.

In addition, the Wuppertal stages played in the theaters of the neighboring cities of Remscheid and Solingen until 2013 .

From the 2017/2018 season, Thomas Braus will be the director of the theater. Berthold Schneider has been the artistic director of the opera since 2016/1017 . The General Music Director has been Julia Jones since 2016/2017 , and Patrick Hahn will follow her from the 2021/22 season . Daniel Siekhaus has been the commercial director since October 2018 .

The Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra has its domicile as a concert orchestra in the historic town hall of Wuppertal .

history

In the strictly Protestant Wuppertal, which was also not a residence , the theater as a "temple of idols" initially had a hard time. From the 18th century there are reports of traveling companies who occasionally visited the valley of the Wupper, performed in barns, inns or in the open air and offered both drama and opera. The Jesuit missionaries , who have been in Wuppertal since 1761, performed spiritual games with children in the Elberfeld Chapel at the tower courtyard .

Elberfeld

In Elberfeld, which was already more urban at the time, a public limited company was founded in the early 19th century to build a city theater. The project soon provoked protests from the church:

“We have considered it our duty, for political-mercantile and even more for religious reasons, to unite our wish and our request of the local merchants and citizens so that Se. Herzogl. Would you like to deign in grace to do our region the great benefit that Höchstdieser forbids the erection of a stage in Elberfeld. For we believe that in this way irreligious principles contrary to Christianity are often spread, the ever increasing levity and luxury promoted and nourished, the taste for the serious truths of Christianity spoiled, the heart made insensitive to the power of the evangelical truths, the blessed effect of the preaching of the divine Word is prevented and such attitudes are encouraged, which make the thrones shaky, undermine the state and civil welfare and help to increase moral ruin. "

The protests were in vain: On May 30, 1806, the first permanent show stage in Wuppertal, the Theater an der Hofaue in Elberfeld, was opened. In the first few years the Bergisches Theater Düsseldorf and various other companies played operas and drama here. As early as 1811, under the rule of Napoleon , the house was converted into a prison, later served as a hospital and warehouse, and the theater was again banished to stables, stalls and inns. In a theater above a horse stable behind the "Zweibrücker Hof" on the Wall, the Düsseldorf theater company under Josef Derossi gave the first opera performance, the title of which is still known: Rossini's Tancredi on May 16, 1821. Derossi's troupe was part of this time also the young Albert Lortzing as an actor. After complaints from the church, this company was also closed in 1825 for “fire protection” reasons. Derossi then continued to play in various rooms, from 1833 in a riding school on Luisenstrasse; However, plans to build a new theater came to nothing.

Karl Lebrecht Immermann

In 1835 Carl Leberecht Immermann , who had headed the Düsseldorf theater, company and venue from Derossi since 1834, took over . He made modifications to the Reitbahnbühne which increased the technical possibilities of the stage and opened the redesigned hall with a Beethoven symphony and two comedies. Immermann, an admirer of classical drama, had been warned by the mayor at the time, Johann Rütger Brüning (“The sense of this art is very extinct here”) - after two seasons he gave up, disappointed about the poor working conditions and the occasional failure of the audience. 1838–1840 Derossi took over the theater again, followed by W. Henkel.

Abraham Küpper († 1869)

The Elberfeld friends of the theater, who had also played in amateur associations such as the “Eintracht” theater for a number of decades, joined forces in 1841 to form a theater association , repurchased the grounds of the Theater an der Hofaue in 1842 and converted the half-timbered building into a brick building. The new theater opened in 1844 with Eugène Scribe's comedy A Glass of Water . The theater played with varying degrees of success and under frequently changing directors, some of whom also directed the stages in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Krefeld. From 1857 to 1871 Gustav, Abraham ("Oweram") and Eduard Otto Küpper from Elberfeld were responsible for the house, who also opened the theater for variety and entertainment programs. The family also owned a restaurant on the Johannisberg, where theater was played and which only gave way to the Elberfeld town hall in the 1980s . During the Küppers management period, for example, Clara Schumann performed a guest performance and Wagner's Lohengrin premiered .

In 1871 the sponsoring company was reconstituted as the Theater-Verein-AG and appointed the theater director Kullack as director, who was, however, not very successful. After a few spectacular theater fires such as the Vienna Ringtheater fire, the Elberfelder Haus was also examined for fire safety: At the end of the 1881/82 season, the theater was closed due to an acute fire hazard.

In just a few years, 400,000 marks were collected for a new house, and the city of Elberfeld made a plot of land at Brausenwerth available, where construction of the new city ​​theater at Brausenwerth began in 1885, with the performance of a festival by the Elberfeld poet on September 6, 1888 Friedrich Roeber and Goethe's Iphigenie on Tauris was inaugurated. The newly appointed director Ernst Gettke also ran the theater in Barmen from 1888 to 1893, a connection that was closed again and again until the stages were finally merged.

In 1906, the Thalia Theater, a second large theater, was opened in Elberfeld, which served primarily as an operetta, revue and variety stage and existed until 1967.

Barmen

The Old City Theater 1874–1902
The old city theater after the fire in 1902
The city theater (today's opera house) 1905

In 1888, a municipal theater company was founded in Barmen , which built a theater on the corner of Fischertal and Neuer Weg, which, after a prologue by the poet Emil Rittershaus , performed the opera Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber and the Drama Don Karlos was opened by Schiller . The theater associations in Barmen and Elberfeld agreed on the joint management of both theaters under the director Martin Wihrler, who remained in Wuppertal until 1877. The house fell victim to a serious fire as early as 1875 and was restored by autumn 1876 - against the resistance of some theologians who saw the fire as a “judgment of God”. Another fire on 24./25. March 1902 the building fell victim to The construction of a new theater on the corner of Spinnstrasse / Neuer Weg (today Kurt-Drees-Strasse / Friedrich-Engels-Allee ) began immediately and was completed in 1905. Today's opera house was opened with a performance of Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner .

The Wuppertal City Theater

1919 to 1945

On May 1, 1919, the Elberfeld and Barmen City Theaters were merged to form the United City Theaters Barmen-Elberfeld under the director Robert Volkner . Volkner followed Paul Legband in 1921 , Paul Henning in 1925 and Otto Maurenbrecher in 1929 . The unification of the city administrations, which was completed in 1929, was based on the example of the theater association.

In 1930 the company was named Städtische Bühnen Wuppertal, analogous to the city's name . At this time, Elberfeld began to concentrate on acting, while the Barmer Theater has since been mainly used for opera. During the economic crisis of the 1920s, operations were drastically reduced, and in 1932 they were saved by founding a GmbH under the new director. Paul Smolny followed in 1932. During the Nazi era , the so-called 'non-Aryan' ensemble members were dismissed. From 1935, the head of the City Office for Cultural Affairs , Wilhelm Mühlhausen, controlled the city's cultural life. Günther Stark (1934–1941) and Erich-Alexander Winds were directors under him.

One year after the 50th anniversary of the Theater am Brausenwerth, the building was closed as out of date and out of date. The theater in Barmen was rebuilt in 1939 and inaugurated again on November 5th. Under the Elberfeld-born conductor Hans Knappertsbusch , the Ring Festival with national singers was held in 1942 and 1943 . The Barmer Haus was largely destroyed in an air raid on Wuppertal on May 30, 1943, and the Elberfelder Theater fell victim to the air raid on June 25 of the same year. The replacement operation in the Elberfelder Stadthalle, which soon began, was prohibited on September 1st by order of the Reich Plenipotentiary for the total war effort.

1945 to 1996

Wuppertal was the first city in West Germany to reopen two stages in 1945: the Elberfeld town hall as an opera house and the Union's ballroom with 290 seats in Unterbarmen as a chamber theater , which was opened with Fidelio and the comedy Charley's Tante . Erich-Alexander Winds, who had resigned his office in 1944, was re-engaged as director.

In 1949 a separate house was created for the theater with the Theater an der Bergstrasse in Elberfeld, which was inaugurated with Elisabeth and Essex by Hans Rehberg . From 1950 to 1955 there was a short theater marriage with the theater in Solingen, which did not pay off economically and was ended again by the Wuppertal side.

From 1952 onwards, a Wuppertal Opera House working group for the reconstruction of the Barmer Theater. The building was reopened as an opera house with Paul Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler with an interior construction from the 1950s in the foyer and the fundamentally redesigned auditorium . The other directors of the post-war years were Helmut Hendrichs (1953–1958) and Grischa Barfuss (1958–1964). When Arno Wüstenhöfer (1964–1975) became artistic director , a particularly fruitful time began for the Wuppertal theaters. In 1966 the newly built playhouse with 745 seats replaced the theater on Bergstrasse and opened the next day with Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Else Lasker-Schüler's Die Wupper . In 1973, Wüstenhöfer engaged Pina Bausch as the head of the ballet department and, despite the initially bitter resistance of the audience to modern dance theater , stuck to her. Hanno Lunin followed Wüstenhöfer , in 1978 Hellmuth Matiasek became director, in 1983 Jürgen Fabritius followed him , in 1988 Holk Freytag moved from the Schlosstheater Moers to Wuppertal.

Since 1996

The auditorium of the opera house in 2007 during the renovation work
The container

As a result of the declining municipal finances in the nineties, the municipalities of Wuppertal and Gelsenkirchen decided to merge the two city theaters in the form of a gGmbH : In 1996, the Wuppertal theaters and the music theater in the Revier merged to form the "Schillertheater NRW". The Wuppertal theater also played in Gelsenkirchen, the Wuppertal opera section was directed by Gelsenkirchen artistic director Ludwig Baum. The Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra became an independent city-owned company, and in 1999 the Wuppertal Pina Bausch dance theater became an independent limited company.

Especially in the opera, the number of subscribers and spectators of the Schiller Theater fell sharply. As early as 2000, the newly elected Wuppertal city council decided with a CDU-FDP majority to end the merger with Gelsenkirchen. In 2001 the Wuppertal theaters with the opera and drama divisions were rebuilt as a GmbH, Gerd Leo Kuck was hired as general manager. The structurally critical condition of the two theater buildings and the consequences of the fire at Düsseldorf Airport in 1996 led to the closure of the opera house, which is no longer fire- safe according to current criteria. The Wuppertal city council decided to renovate both buildings. During the 2003 season break, the theater was brought to a state of refurbishment that allowed the three branches of drama, opera and dance theater Pina Bausch to play during the refurbishment of the opera house. The opera house was closed to the public from December 2003 and was reopened on January 18, 2009.

The city of Wuppertal transferred the management for the season from August 1, 2009 to Christian von Treskow (drama) and Johannes Weigand (opera director). On August 1, 2017, the directorship of the actor Thomas Braus took over.

Closure plans

In 2009 the city administration decided to give up the theater, which was already out of order, as a venue in order to save money. The renovation is to be suspended, and the foyer, which is still used as a gaming venue, should also be closed in summer 2012. In addition, a reduction of the municipal subsidy by 2 million euros annually from 2014 is proposed, which could mean the closure of one of the two branches. In June 2012 it became known that the operating license for the small gaming facility had been extended once until summer 2013. After that, from autumn 2014 [out of date] a warehouse of the Museum for Early Industrialization will be used as a venue.

In January 2010, a 24-hour protest against the closure took place, in which many Wuppertal schools took part. On March 27, 2010, the German Stage Association celebrated World Theater Day in protest in Wuppertal. In November 2010, the city leaders expressed the goal of preserving both branches of the Wuppertal theaters and finding an external operator for the theater, but without abandoning the city's savings plans for the budget of the theater.

At the end of June 2013, the theater was closed due to unaffordable renovation and maintenance costs. In October 2013, the Schauspielhaus Wuppertal Initiative Wuppertal called for a round table on the future of the Schauspielhaus and the implementation of a council resolution from 2006 on the renovation of the building.

building

In 1905 the original building of the Wuppertal Opera House was completed based on designs by the Cologne architect Moritz. This building was badly damaged in an air raid towards the end of the Second World War. After reconstruction, it was reopened in 1956. The house was closed in 2003, completely renovated from 2006 to 2009 by the Wuppertal building management and reopened on January 18, 2009.

The Wuppertal theater was designed by Gerhard Graubner and built between 1964 and 1966. It was opened on September 24 and 25, 1966 with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Else Lasker-Schüler's Die Wupper . After the reopening of the renovated opera house, the theater was closed at the beginning of 2009, in order to be renovated by 2012.

Since the summer of 2007, the container on the Schauspielhaus forecourt has been used primarily for young people for performances and concerts. Three times a week it is the platform for projects and ideas from laypeople or off-groups, but also ensemble members who can introduce themselves here in front of up to 40 people. A poetry slam is held once a month .

literature

  • Kurt Hackenberg and Walter Schwaegermann (eds.), From the theater in Wuppertal. A souvenir , Wuppertal: Born, ca.1957
  • Hans G. Auch, comedians, Calvinists and calico. History of the Wuppertal and Schwelmer theaters in the 18th and 19th centuries (1700–1850) , Emsdetten: Lechte, 1960
  • Siegfried Becker, theater in Wuppertal. 50 years of review , Wuppertal, approx. 1995
  • Joachim Dorfmüller , Wuppertaler Musikgeschichte , Wuppertal: Born, 1995, ISBN 3-87093-074-8
  • Michael Okroy , "So that dreams can breathe." From the Stadttheater Barmen to the Wuppertal Opera House , Wuppertal: Born, 2009, ISBN 978-3-87093-095-0

Movies

Web links

Commons : Wuppertaler Bühnen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Head of the Wuppertaler Bühnen und Sinfonieorchester GmbH
  2. ^ Entry from 1806 against the building of the theater on the Hofaue, quoted from Hackenberg (see lit.), p. 5
  3. ↑ City of Wuppertal: Thomas Braus becomes the new director of the Wuppertaler Bühnen ( memento from November 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), notification November 11, 2016, accessed on November 11, 2016
  4. ↑ Wuppertal gives up the theater - Westfalenpost.de
  5. ^ City of Wuppertal. Save to create. Budget security concept 2010–2014. Presented by Mayor Peter Jung and City Director Dr. Johannes Slawig on November 17, 2009 ( PDF , 1.2 MB)
  6. ↑ Martina Thöne: Theater: a year without a small stage , Westdeutsche Zeitung, February 22, 2013, accessed on July 3, 2013
  7. ^ Gymnasium Bayreuther Straße Wuppertal
  8. ↑ derstandard.at
  9. ↑ WZ-newsline: City is looking for a new operator for the theater November 10, 2011
  10. ↑ Closure in June 2013 ( memento from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), report in the WDR from July 1, 2013
  11. ↑ Schauspielhaus: Round table required. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung. October 20, 2013, accessed November 18, 2013 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 1.8 ″  N , 7 ° 11 ′ 36.9 ″  E