Classical Music from Germany – Current trends

For over ten years, the Deutsche Bank has fostered young opera talent with the Academy Opera Today. The project is not about short-term start-up financing, but rather non-material sustainability.

Secretly, Patrick Hahn played “What’s my Line?”: “Who is the conductor, who the director, who designs sets, who does the dramaturgy?” He still recalls the precise moment that he first met the other scholarships holders of the Academy Opera Today and tried assigning the new faces to their disciplines. Hahn too was then one of the new finalists on board, having successfully passed the application process and been found suitable by the jury of the funding program.

That was 2009. Hahn retained his scholarship at the Academy for two years. Then he was hired as a dramaturge at the Stuttgart Opera and also worked as a specialized journalist. To facilitate such smooth transitions is one of the goals of the Academy Opera Today, a scholarship program initiated by the Deutsche Bank and its affiliated foundation. First and foremost here is the idea of a network: students and young professionals who are enthusiastically committed to opera are given the opportunity to exchange ideas with like-minded people, organizers and successful colleagues.

Source of passion

The program of the Academy Opera Today is comprehensive and oriented to practice. The scholarship holders travel four to six times a year to various important national and international opera houses and festivals where they can take a look at the productions. The Academy directors organize workshops, provide opportunities for background conversations and discussions. In this way the Academy brings leading figures in the opera scene together with the next generation. One significant difference from other funding initiatives and music prizes such as singing competitions is that here not only one species of people who are part of the opera world are singled out, but rather the focus is on the whole range, from composers to cultural managers, from stage designers to theater directors.

“That’s our goal. We don’t want to be the seventh singers competition or the tenth competition for conductors; we want to give support to those for whom there hasn’t previously been such funding”, says Michael Münch, Vice Chairman of the Deutsche Bank Foundation. Last November the eleventh year of young people were taken into the program. “Counting present and former scholarship holders, the network now comprises a total of 165 people crazy for opera”. People crazy for opera? “Yes, when you see the passion these young people bring to opera, it’s quite amazing.” It is precisely with this that the program wants to link up, to support this passion and make it known to those who make the decisions in the cultural world. It has long been able to book successes Among the alumni of the Academy are young composers such as Anno Schreier and Mark Moebius, young assistant general directors such Christoph Belka at the Dresden Staatsschauspiel, Katja Nawka at the Semper Opera, Tillmann Wiegand at the Ruhr Triennial and Martin Wolter, Valery Gergiev’s assistant at St. Petersburg’s Mariinski Theater.

Crisis with prospects

In addition to the workshops, each scholarship holder mounts his own production. “This is both the grandest and the most difficult thing in the program”, says Patrick Hahn. “The scholarship holders have the opportunity to develop an opera independently, to offer it to an opera house for production, sell it and have it performed.” At the annual ceremony welcoming newcomers to the program and bidding farewell to graduates, the products of the collaborations become audible and visible for the first time.

Thus, for example, in 2011 Ulrich Kreppein, together with ensemble members of the Oldenburg State Theater, presented first impressions of his opera The Temptations of St. Anthony (Die Versuchung des heiligen Antonius). In May 2012 the complete setting of Flaubert’s novel will then receive its premier in Oldenburg. The project reinforces the support framework. And so last autumn the Academy also stressed the importance of a balanced mix in its selection of entering scholarship holders. For 2011-13, the jury chose five candidates each in cultural management and dramaturgy, four in conducting, three in stage design, six or seven in composition and directing. The next round of applications already began on January 15, 2012. Besides already existing experience in the discipline, the six-member jury also demands an essay supplying information about the applicant, which makes the selection process easier.

In order to provide coaching for scholarship holders beyond only professional training, the Academy also offers an additional communications workshop. Michael Münch emphasizes that the demands on those working in opera are growing steadily. “So we want to advise scholarship holders in various questions: How should I look? How should I present myself? How do I conduct a successful conversation?” The dramaturge and director of today is a businessman and needs self-marketing skills for success as much as does any actor, musician and film maker. Opera too means selling oneself, and in this point the core competencies of a creative artist converge with those of a banker.

As for bankers, they have long recognized that funding culture is more than just good PR. The idea is to create and develop structures that make possible a complex enterprise such as opera. It is also about non-material values, which in the best case reach into reality. In this point, opera converges with the world stage of finance. And this is by no means a negligible reason that, even in times of crisis, when bankers struggle with currencies and other variables, the stability pact in music promotion remains intact. For the next few years, the Academy Opera Today has a secure funding basis. The curtain can continue to go up.