Two hundred scores. Twelve nights.
An opera house lives with two questions, and they get mixed up constantly. The first one asks how this «Tosca» makes it onto the stage — convincing, on time, on budget. The second asks whether it gets staged at all.
The Second Question
The first question has filled shelf after shelf with professional literature. The second one decides the fate of the house, and it is the one asked least often. A house can put every single production on stage flawlessly and still fail, because it staged the wrong operas. An immaculately rehearsed opera in front of an empty house is still an opera in front of an empty house.
The season is the answer to the second question — and with that, the strategic source of the entire house. This is where the singers get assigned, the rehearsal time handed out, the money committed. Everything that happens on stage later is the execution of a decision that was made long before, at a desk.
Nine stories, each one taking on a different aspect of the subject. All of them are available as articles and as podcast episodes, appearing here step by step over the coming months.
Neun Texte
Two hundred scores. Twelve nights.
Portfolio Management
From «The Most Important Stage Is a Desk»
Excerpt
Two hundred scores lie on the Intendant’s desk. Twelve nights stand in the calendar. That, at its core, is the whole story — everything else is negotiation.
Every one of those scores is a masterpiece. Every one of them is fiercely loved by somebody: by the composer, by the conductor, by the soprano who has waited twenty years for exactly this role. Two hundred legitimate wishes, twelve open nights. The math does not work out, and it never will. This is not a problem that gets solved. This is the work.
Whoever sits at that desk does not rehearse. Does not stand at the podium, does not sing an aria, does not build a set. And still decides more about the success of the house than any tenor.