Gamble without strategy: The new season at Staatsoper

Bogdan Roščić’s millennial directors will take over the new season. Great idea, until you look at it in detail. And all that in the midst of a European cultural crisis. Bitte was?

Bogdan Roščić /// © APA

Governing symbolically charged cultural institutions like the Vienna State Opera is an extraordinarily complex task. The risk of crisis is ever-present, the assurance of success is slim, and the political climate pushes directors toward conservative hesitation and the safe exploitation of the canon. Ultimately, it quite often comes down to personal advancement at the expense of culture: “What pushes an ambitious functionary to spend thirty years as the financial director of an opera house? There is only one answer – his career,” noted Rolf Liebermann in Actes et entr’actes (1976). For all these reasons, as Mortier and Jonas rightly observed two decades ago, an opera director’s vocation must be more than to administrate: s(he) must take a position, defend the art, and advocate for it.

For six years now, Bogdan Roščić has been cracking the governance enigma that is the Wiener Staatsoper. He approached the task like a corporate executive: identifying what he perceived as glaring inefficiencies and setting about to fix them. A marketing department was established, an extensive public relations campaign was launched to uphold the institution’s image, and a new venue was opened – the NEST, aimed at young audiences and emerging artists. He even let us, the young, into Generalproben. True, he clashed with (and won against) the musical leadership (with Philippe Jordan, that is) – but this didn’t prevent him from securing a contract extension through 2030.

What defined Vienna since the Big Bang

The central interest of Roščić’s tenure has been to reshape the repertory life of the house – which, in many ways, is the opera house’s true enigma. You see, the issue is this: since the Big Bang, Staatsoper has defined itself through its repertory – performing every night, sustaining itself by, for, and through the repertoire. Under Dominique Meyer, for example, the 2016-17 statistics were striking: of the 215 opera evenings given that season, 53 different operas were performed – each between two and eight times – five of which were premieres. Figures like these simply don’t exist anywhere else.

There is, of course, one fundamental flaw in such a mode of existence: for all the life it gives to opera as a living art form, it robs it of a future. The repertory system breathes constant life into the stage – but does so by consuming operatic titles on an industrial scale, without any real consideration for what may come five years down the line. Bogdan Roščić, rightfully so, decided it was time to confront the dusty, regressive dragon of the repertoire head-on (some productions, after all, have been in rotation since the 1950s), and to replace what he saw as unworthy with his own commissions.

"Die Staatsopern-Spielzeit 2020/21 war geprägt vom Gedanken, einerseits eine rasche und umfassende Erneuerung des meistgespielten Kernrepertoires in Angriff zu nehmen und andererseits eine verstärkte Öffnung des Hauses voranzutreiben."
– Wiener Staatsoper Geschäftsbericht 2020–21, p. 4

Roščić launched his offensive against this repertory windmill with remarkable force. Remember the 2020-21 season, in which he introduced ten new opera productions into the house – assembling and acquiring a full royal flush of directors from across Europe? It was impressive. It gave us hope. But soon, questions began to emerge – and with them, a clearer picture of his managerial style. Why, for instance, did Roščić choose Herbert Fritsch to replace one of the house’s oldest productions – Il barbiere di Siviglia (Günther Rennert’s 1966 staging)? Why not Damiano Michieletto, today’s most gifted director of comic Italian opera, who had instead staged Animal Farm the previous season? Why bring in the fading Keith Warner for Die Meistersinger, yet hand both Tannhäuser and Don Carlo to Kirill Serebrennikov – two quite different operas?

And now, with the upcoming 2025–26 season, the pattern is unmistakable: Roščić is strangely linear about his reform and ultimately lacks a coherent strategy in this repertory reform. I would even argue that his new stagings harm the already dubious identity of Wiener Staatsoper. How can I be so sure? Because 4 of the 5 premieres that are his means of remaking the repertoire are randomly handed over to quite unknown millennial directors, whose self-realization moment comes at the wrong time.

Don’t get me wrong – in theory, nothing is more welcome than tackling an ossified repertoire with a bold injection of youth. That’s precisely what Mortier did at La Monnaie in the 1980s. The issue here isn’t with the artists themselves, but how they’re being used. Dropped into a system devoid of cohesion, dialogue, or long-term vision, they’re expected not to build reform, but merely to perform it. This isn’t a strategy – it’s a lottery. Why has there been no sustained effort to reshape the identity of the house so that it might meaningfully accommodate such change and forge a stronger future? And why aren’t these projects going to truly strong talents from the Wiener Festwochen or the Festival d’Avignon – with the sole exception, perhaps, of Ersan Mondtag?

The warning signs of this Intendanz confusion were already there in 2023, when young French director Cyril Teste – whose operatic experience consisted of just two productions at the Opéra Comique – was entrusted with Salome. The same season, Magdalena Fuchsberger was given Dialogues des Carmélites. And just recently, an actor from a Petersburg youth theater, Evgeny Titov, staged Iolanta, thanks to his connections within the Kosky–Homoki circle (I call it the “Komische Oper lobby club”). And now the new season is a full gamble.

Let me crack, one by one, these choices of repertoire renewal

Smetana’s Die verkaufte Braut (premiere on 28 September 2025) was last seen at the Staatsoper in 1991 – in a production by Otto Schenk, may he rest in peace. The new staging is entrusted to Dirk Schmeding. I’ll be honest: due to my youth, I only heard his name once before – at Theater an der Wien, where he directed Korngold. Operabase helped fill in the blanks: over the past decade, Schmeding has worked in Detmold, Darmstadt, Augsburg, St. Gallen, Braunschweig, Kiel, Weimar, Lucerne, and in Stuttgart, where he collaborated with Sergio Morabito. I’d wager it was Morabito who secured him this production. In this sense, at least, Schmeding’s presence makes some degree of sense – a step in the ladder of an emerging career. And yet, I can’t help but note that, if Roščić’s stated strategy is to be taken seriously, the more logical move would have been to invite a Czech director – someone like Jan Frič, or at least Barbora Horáková. Last but not least, why not Dalibor then?

Beethoven’s Fidelio (premiere on 16 December 2025) is led by Franz Welser-Möst and directed by Nikolaus Habjan, with stage design by Julius Semmelmann. This is the moment my eyes widened. Yes, I understand – the old repertory Fidelio, performed some 250 times since 1970 in Otto Schenk’s production is long past its expiration date. It’s time to turn the page. But why, for heaven’s sake, Nikolaus Habjan? Do we really want yet another puppetry-driven spectacle, with all its overworked game of dolls, instead of a staging with a clear conceptual vision or political urgency? Have they not seen his productions at Theater an der Wien? Why not entrust this story – of incarceration, devotion, and liberation – to someone like Katie Mitchell or Tiago Rodrigues, artists who might actually uncover something radically new in it?

Verdi’s rarely performed Luisa Miller (premiere on 7 February 2026) was last seen in Wien in 1990, in a staging by Elmar Ottenthal. Bold move, Bogdan! But wait — who’s directing? Who? Philipp Grigorian? Viennese audiences surely don’t know him, but as a Muscovite, I most certainly do. A former actor at the Vakhtangov Theatre, a regular stage director at the experimental Elektroteatr Stanislavsky (electrotheatre.ru) and in the Nations Theatre, a Golden Mask winner for his 2012 production Full Moon. By Russian standards, Grigorian is a good theatre artist – but let’s be clear: he has only 2 operatic productions behind him, Offenbach’s La Périchole (Bolshoi Opera) staged on the small chamber stage of the Bolshoi, and the recent Xerxes in Stadttheater Giessen. Honestly, I was stunned by this choice. How did it happen? Why? I don’t know if we can believe that this, so far chamber-scale director had such a compelling vision for Verdi that he convinced Morabito to hand him the keys to Vienna’s main stage. I actually sincerely want to believe so. But there is also so much skepticism about this.

Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito (premiere on 9 March 2025, music led by Pablo Heras-Casado) will be staged by Jan Lauwers. It is called to replace the classical post-dramatic staging by Jürgen Flimm / George Tsypin’s 2012 production. Here, I was also confused. Okay, the piece itself is parading right now across Europe – 2024 by Carsen in Salzburg Festival, by Milo Rau for Wiener Festwochen–Grand Théâtre de Genève and in Tirol, etc. But Lauwers again? Did they really think that after the underwhelming Grand Macabre production (particularly in comparison to the same year Warlikowski in Munich Staatsoper Munich, or Bakhatov in Oper Frankfurt Oper Frankfurt) he would be able to solve this dramatically difficult opera? I’m tempted to think this production might be replaced just as swiftly as Roščić is now replacing Flimm’s.

Last comes Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, that has, astonishingly, never been staged at the Wiener Staatsoper. It will be conducted by Daniele Rustioni and directed by Ersan Mondtag. Viennese audiences can get a taste of his style right now at the Burgtheater, while German art followers will remember his work for Germany’s pavilion at the recent Venice Biennale (deutscher-pavillon.org). French audiences just saw his Forza del destino in Lyon Opera (Opera Lyon), and Berliners may recall his Antichrist at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Deutsche Oper Berlin). He is today’s textbook example of the kind of interdisciplinary artist. Mondtag may well be capable of doing something intriguing with Bizet. But then again – Flórez is hardly Nadir anymore…

Roščić’s decision seems sound enough: invite a generation of directors aged 35 to 45 and throw the gates open to young talents (are they, really?), to kill two rabbits at once: first, renew the repertoire, and second, launch new stage directors. But it all seems to be done in such a chaotic, random, and utterly non-programmatic way – arbitrary, not to say slapdash – that unless one considers “repertoire renewal via the C-section” to be a strategy, it feels more like a season in Hanover or Theater Basel than at the Wiener Staatsoper. And of course, the management knows the risks of such hasty, piecemeal choices – which is why each of these premieres is front-loaded with singing and music stars.

Bon appétit, and try not to spill.

Today we are not in a position to be spending our resources in haste on “realizing” the millennial generation – not at a time when, across Europe, the first casualty of the populist turn is culture itself, and especially so in Austria. In Berlin, opera houses are on the brink of closure; in Italy, the theatrical landscape is nearing an artistic midnight; in France, the Ministry of Culture can no longer sustain its network of national stages. In such a climate, it is imperative that our stages become tribunes for truly powerful and meaningful artistic gestures. That requires seeking out the right artists, making the offer, working with composers, connecting talents across disciplines – all in order to conceive a proper vision of our operatic future.

“Mit diesen Projekten unterstreicht die Wiener Staatsoper nicht nur ihr Interesse am Weiterentwickeln und Ausweiten der künstlerischen Themenlandschaft des Hauses, sondern vor allem den intensiven Wunsch, Musiktheater auch jenen, die bislang keinen oder nur wenig Kontakt zum ihm hatten, vertraut zu machen.”
Geschäftsbericht 2023–24, p. 6.