Star of classical music, known for his love of Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, conductor Christian Thieleman will direct the Berlin Staatsoper which Daniel Barenboim had to leave last January for health reasons.
German conductor Christian Thielemann will succeed Israeli-Argentinian maestro Daniel Barenboim as director of the Berlin Staatsoper, whom the latter left for health reasons, the prestigious German institution announced on Wednesday September 27.
Last January, the 80-year-old pianist and conductor born in Argentina, Barenboim, suffering from a serious neurological illness, announced his resignation from the Berlin Opera.
The head of Culture in Berlin, Joe Chialo, indicated that Christian Thielemann, who has regularly conducted the Berlin Staatsoper orchestra, the Staatskapelle, will succeed Barenboim from September 2024.
The Berlin Staatsoper, located on the grand Unter den Linden avenue in the old eastern part of the German capital, is one of the city’s three opera houses.
Specialist in Brahms, Strauss and Wagner
Born in Berlin, classical music star Thielemann is known for his love of Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner.
Last year, his production at the Staatsoper du Ringthe famous tetralogy by Richard Wagner also known as The Ring of the Nibelung in French, had been “unanimously described as phenomenal”, according to the German daily Berliner Zeitung.
The German conductor, aged 64, is under contract until next year with the Staatskapelle of Dresden (east), whose orchestra he directs, one of the most renowned in the German-speaking world.
A protégé of the legendary Herbert von Karajan, Christian Thielemann was general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, an opera house in the west of the capital, but resigned in 2004 due to a funding dispute with the city.