Deutsche Oper Berlin: Aviel Cahn is the perfect choice

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Aviel Cahn is the perfect choice

Ambitions and elbows: Aviel Cahn Ambitions and elbows: Aviel Cahn

Ambitions and elbows: Aviel Cahn

Source: dpa/Monika Skolimowska

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Germany’s largest opera house is twilight. Now a new director is coming: the Swiss Aviel Cahn has everything he needs to kiss the Deutsche Oper awake again. The directors of the other two Berlin singing temples will have to dress warmly.

EFinally, a correct, future-oriented decision by Berlin’s cultural policy: Aviel Cahn, 48 years old and director of the Grand Théâtre de Génève since summer 2019, will take over the Deutsche Oper Berlin from autumn 2026. And anyone who knows this extremely ambitious, well-organized, networked doer, who always has the future of music theater in mind, knows: those responsible for the other two houses have to dress warmly.

Of course, Cahn has a difficult task ahead of him: the largest German opera house has only been interesting in recent years because of the occupation policy of the opera director Christoph Seuferle. He could always boast of surprisingly good no-names. However, there was hardly anything worth mentioning scenically. Apart from the discovery of solid rarities (Korngold’s “The Miracle of Heliane”, Zandonai’s “Francesca da Rimini”) by Christof Loy, who suffered on all sides and was sufficiently familiar with the style. Vasily Barkhatov’s staging of Verdi’s late political work “Simone Boccanegra” proved this again in today’s boring setting.

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Since Dietmar Schwarz took over the Deutsche Oper in 2012, who had actually stirred up the Stadttheater Basel quite a bit as opera director, a leaden opera era has reigned on Berlin’s Bismarckstrasse – in a dirty yellow corporate look. After the death of the superintendent Götz Friedrich, the house could no longer regain its former size. Daniel Barenboim, the well-connected man, easily outperformed him with the State Opera, not only because of the state orchestra that was being optimized and the more representative property. And at least since Barrie Kosky made the Komische Oper sparkle as a queer operetta praliné, things looked even bleaker in the old, neglected West.

Neither Udo Zimmermann (director from 2001 to 2003), who arrogantly reached for the music theater stars, but underestimated the capital city’s melee situation and his explosive general music director Christian Thielemann, nor the badly treated, but also weak, acting without power and always coming up with new conductor foam bats in the ditch Kirsten Harms (2004 to 2011) were able to get the house going again as director. At least Harms succeeded visually in reverting to Fritz Bornemann’s sober but generous post-war modernism.

Solid and good

With Dietmar Schwarz, things then bobbed along, somehow solid, but rarely more. Directing decisions were mostly well-known, partly well-worn names or newcomers for whom the stage was often much too big. Significant debuts came at most with Tobias scratches, who strangely enough was sent onto the huge stage with Zemlinsky’s one-act play “Der Zwerg” and the playful theater star Ersan Mondtag, who illustrated Rued Langgaard’s crazy world design of “Antikrist” in bright colors.

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The new “carpenter’s shop” as a secondary venue for contemporary music only delivered dull, quickly dissipated, everyday sounds. The ambitious Meyerbeer cycle ran aground with the wrong directors, and the new “Ring des Nibelungen” by Stefan Herheim was also a bitter disappointment. Against which general music director Donald Runnicles with his well-behaved continuous sound solidity did not arrive either.

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Runnicles will remain in Berlin until 2027. But at least, Aviel Cahn can now clean up at the Deutsche Oper. Fortunately, among the semi-publicly traded candidates, it was neither the crazy Benedikt von Peter, whom Schwarz would have liked, nor the solid opera administrator Viktor Schoner, who worked in Stuttgart in the Zehelein/Wieler successor there with a similar initial aesthetic. Tobias scratches was also in discussion in Berlin, but was poached by the Hamburg State Opera. Let’s see how this problematic experiment will work with a director in charge who is completely inexperienced as a director.

Aviel Cahn is an optimal choice. And he actually has the best prerequisites in Berlin. After the early departure of Daniel Barenboim, the State Opera is in a sudden phase of self-discovery, its future director Elisabeth Sobotka is more of a quiet administrator. The Komische Oper has left the second row in charge for its long-term renovation phase with Susanne Moser and Philip Bröking, in the background the current in-house director Kosky still dominates with the well-known glitter style.

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Of course, the Swiss Cahn had also flirted with the Zurich Opera House, where the Linden Opera director Matthias Schulz is now moving, but a departure from Geneva would have been premature. Although Cahn has a hard time there. The public is international, but conservative, the art humus thin. But in his four years (two of them affected by the pandemic), he has almost always managed exciting premieres, whether with baroque, bel canto, Mozart or modernism, in the team combinations and casts.

Cahn studied piano, singing and law. He ran his own artist agency, the artistic office of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Finnish National Opera. He worked in Beijing, was opera director at the Stadttheater Bern and was artistic director of the Flemish Opera in Antwerp/Gent for ten years. He’s got his job. Many of his directors are also old acquaintances for Berlin, but he always knew how to use them correctly. He has elbows and ambitions. Berlin is now exactly the right stage for him. He is also fond of ballet. Maybe he’ll manage to lure his dance director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to the Spree with him. At least for an opera.

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