Christian Thielemann, incoming music director of the Berlin State Opera.
In Wednesday’s (9/27) Associated Press, an article reports, “Christian Thielemann has been chosen as the new general music director of Berlin’s Staatsoper, months after Daniel Barenboim ended his three-decade reign, the city government said Wednesday. The 64-year-old German conductor will take the job at the Staatsoper, or State Opera, on Sept. 1, 2024…. Thielemann, a Berlin native, trained as an assistant to Herbert von Karajan and Barenboim … and was music director of Nuremberg’s State Theater from 1988–1992. He … was music director of Berlin’s Deutsche Oper from 1997-2004 and of the Munich Philharmonic from 2004-11. He has been chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden since 2012-13, a role that already was scheduled to end after the 2023-24 season. Thielemann … also was the music director of the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth…. Barenboim was credited with leading the Staatsoper, which is located in what was communist East Berlin until 1990 and is one of three opera houses in reunited Germany’s capital, to world renown after reunification. Now 80, he was general music director from 1992 until he stepped down at the end of January, saying that his health had become too poor to carry on.”
