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Austrian conductor dead after collapse at German opera

Austrian conductor Stefan Soltesz has died after collapsing during a performance in Munich, the city's opera house said.

Published: 23 July 2022 13:06 CEST

a view of the National theater in Munich,

A picture taken on May 8, 2019 shows a view of the National theater in Munich, southern Germany. (Photo by Christof STACHE / AFP)

The maestro of Hungarian extraction held the baton at opera houses in Vienna, Graz, Hamburg and Berlin during his long career.

“With dismay and deep sadness, the Bavarian State Opera must announce the death of Stefan Soltesz,” it said late on Friday in a statement.

Soltesz died late on Friday “after a collapse while conducting ‘The Silent Woman’ by Richard Strauss at the National Theatre” in Munich, it said. He was 73 years old.

No details on his cause of death were immediately available.

The general director of the Bavarian State Opera, Serge Dorny, tweeted he was “deeply saddened” by Soltesz’s death.

Die Nachricht über den Zusammenbruch und das Ableben von Stefan Soltesz macht mich zutiefst traurig. Wir verlieren einen begnadeten Dirigenten. Ich verliere einen guten Freund. Meine Gedanken sind bei seiner Frau Michaela. #RIP pic.twitter.com/CbQVBh3jgf

— Serge Dorny (@DornySerge) July 22, 2022

“We lose a talented conductor,” he said. “I lose a good friend. My thoughts are with his wife, Michaela.”

Soltesz served as musical director of the state theatre of Brunswick in central Germany from 1988 to 1993 and chief conductor of the Flemish Opera in Antwerp and Ghent from 1992 to 1997, followed by engagements in the western German city of Essen.

He debuted on the Bavarian State Opera stage in 1995.

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Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews — also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite? Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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