It's always the same fears, expectations or mere suppositions that suggest that opera is about to die out.

Audience numbers declined, the old stories are difficult to convey to young people.

I've known that since I've been working in the business of so-called serious music - whether it was during my time at Hessischer Rundfunk, later in Brussels at the Monnaie or, for the past 21 years, at the Frankfurt Opera.

It's the recurring allegations.

The corona crisis was very welcome to the hecklers who were constantly hesitating.

Even the problem of energy costs can be used as a good reason to keep cutting the opera chairs.

Realiter: After 21 years of work with consistently high quality, winning awards, recognitions and eulogies, none of what was foreseen has happened.

To this day, the opera in Frankfurt reaches its audience, even through demanding productions and regularly recognized musical achievements.

The audience flocked, the national and international press took notice of the opera, nothing happened that was loudly proclaimed as an opera crisis.

ugh!

The permanent director Loebe does not get caught up in complacency and repetitions of the successful, but achieves the constant interest in the Frankfurt Opera by questioning himself and always breaking new ground.

The management of the house is repeatedly confronted with a complex situation.

Immense savings

There is the constant struggle or spasm with the subsidy providers, the disproportionately ruthless way of burdening the theater with financing the tariff increases entirely from its own budget, contrary to the practice in all other comparable large German opera houses.

And then there are 21 million for the Frankfurt Opera and Theater together, which can be saved within three years.

Added to this are the demands for less working hours for the same pay derived from the “work-life balance”.

Where even the constructed contrast between life and work does not seem to make sense.

Especially when it comes to professions in which personal creativity is possible and even expected.

Has the director fallen out of time with these thoughts?

Has his view become historically outdated?

When Bernd Loebe felt the urge to go to the theater and opera, he realized at the same time that it was a kind of obligation to the audience.

It was about repaying the trust in the house with good performances and good income situations.

Hopefully to send many viewers home after the performance happy, enriched and also thoughtful.

To convey pride in the work done to every employee.

Not to question the art form of opera in any way.

In which one learns something about the past, sees the present reflected and develops visions for the future.

The basis for this is community spirit and the awareness that you can only create an overall impression if everyone submits to a common goal.

This can only succeed

when at every point of the theater - in rehearsals as well as performances - this awareness can be kindled again and again.

That sounds complicated and it is.