One could almost bet that Bernd Loebe, artistic director of the Frankfurt Opera, would make Joana Mallwitz the new general music director of his house.

Again and again he had entrusted the conductor with premieres on.

And, moreover, he is definitely one of the supporters of women in the profession, because the Lithuanian Giedrė Šlekytė, most recently seen in Frankfurt with Francis Poulenc's “Dialogues des Carmélites”, enjoys his advocacy.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the features section.

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But now everything turned out surprisingly different.

Mallwitz decided to move from Nuremberg to Berlin and succeed Christoph Eschenbach there, and Loebe also made a decision - and in a flash for a young man whom the music business is trying hard to find on all sides: the twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Guggeis, about whom Loebe says: "To speak of a singular talent is an understatement".

Sought after in the big houses

Guggeis comes from Lower Bavaria, "from a completely unmusical family", as he recently said, only to add that at least one uncle played the drums. He started playing drums himself at the age of four, but soon switched to the piano and enjoyed singing. After school he studied quantum physics and conducting. He has at least a bachelor's degree in both subjects. At the age of twenty-three he joined the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden as a piano répétiteur and became assistant to the general music director there, Daniel Barenboim. Guggeis raves about the "seemingly endless support" that Barenboim has given him. The boss's confidence in him was so great that Guggeis was allowed to step in in March 2018 to direct the premiere of Richard Strauss' "Salome" after Christoph von Dohnányi,upset about the direction by Hans Neuenfels, who refused to conduct. Bernd Loebe was sitting in the hall at the time and was fascinated by what was happening in the orchestra pit. The supraregional criticism was amazed: The name Thomas Guggeis was suddenly on everyone's lips.

Immediately the offer came from Stuttgart to become Kapellmeister at the State Opera under the direction of General Music Director Cornelius Meister. But shortly afterwards, the Berlin State Opera wooed the young hope that he should come back. A new position was quickly created: that of the Staatskapellmeister, "an honorary title", as Guggeis explained, who returned to Berlin in January 2020. Barenboim gave him a score of Verdi's “Macbeth” with the dedication: “For Thomas, in admiration and gratitude and with best wishes for his great future”.

The Supervisory Board of the Frankfurt Opera has now approved Loebes’s proposal: Guggeis will succeed Sebastian Weigle as GMD and head of the Frankfurt Museum Concerts for the 2023/24 season for an initial period of five years and with a conducting obligation of 35 evenings per season.

Weigle had also started as first conductor at the Berlin State Opera and had previously played solo horn there for fifteen years.

As a conductor, the excellence of the Frankfurt Opera owes a lot to Barenboim's support.

The only question is how long an excellence as young as Thomas Guggeis will last.