Berlin opera director defends arts funding and creative freedom
An interview with Barrie Kosky, director of Berlin's Komische Oper
BERLIN (October 6, 2924) — This week’s story is pulled directly from a German-language interview with the accomplished opera director Barrie Kosky. The interview was by Rudiger Schaper, of the newspaper Tagesspiegel, published Friday, 4. October, 2024.
Kosky, 57, staged more than thirty productions as director of Berlin’s “Light Opera” (Komische Oper) between 2012 and 2022, and where he is now guest-directing the musical “Sweeney Todd” by Stephen Sondheim. Elswhere, Kosky’s venues include: the London Royal Ballet and Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and the Bayreuth Festival. (More of his bio below.)
The reporter’s questioning opened with a point about current budget reductions in the arts being imposed by the Berlin State Senate. Such cuts have limited the progress on new construction at the Komische Oper, and have even threatened to close the house entirely. It’s no secret that the state’s financial problems have affected most, if not all of the city’s performance/exhibition venues — theaters, symphonies, museums, and other cultural organizations. As is often the case, Berlin’s community cultural groups face new political austerity measures — and have for some time. For now, said Kosky, “there are talks with politicians” who seem to understand the importance of maintaining the city’s art- and cultural institutions as the backbone of Berlin.
“Berlin is the cultural capital of the world,” he told the interviewer. “No place else has so many different art forms — museums, theaters, operas, orchestras — everything. I travel a lot, and I know my way around London, Paris, Rome, and New York.
Berlin is unique....”
The artist was asked about recent efforts by the Berlin state government — yes, Berlin is a German state; a city-state — to limit funding to works or organizations that incorporate anti-semitic speech. (The proposal was made in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel of October 2023.) While these authorities may be well-intentioned, said Kosky, cultural workers opposed it strongly; the proposed “de-funding” rule was quickly dropped, criticized as the government being too ready to interfere in artistic or intellectual interpretation — a right traditionally reserved for individual artists and their diverse audiences.
“I think it would be tragic if (public) trust in artistic institutions were to disappear,” Kosky said. “Political interference leads to insane problems and chaos…. Someone (in our audiences) is constantly feeling ‘offended’ and uncomfortable, but that cannot lead to telling people (artists) what they are allowed (or not allowed) to say. To be clear: I’m not talking about punishable things [such as libel and hate speech]. We (already) have laws for that….”