Keith Warner resigning – crisis at The Royal Danish Opera

Artistic director at The Royal Danish Opera Keith Warner resigned last night after some terrible cutbacks at the theatre.

Keith Warner has been in Copenhagen for less than a year and is the victim of a serious case of buying a pig in a poke – he was simply promised something that he never got i.e. a functioning opera house with a reasonable economy. What he got was a functioning opera house that within a few months was slaughtered economically turning it into if not a sinking ship at least a much changed institution.

You can read Keith Warner’s speech to his company here.

I have been a faithful member of the opera audience for about 15 years and I have had the fortune to see the The Royal Opera transform from a provincial house into a company of quality. Now it seems that the eleven year reign of former artistic director Kasper Holten was a golden age. These years were characterized by a growing enthusiasm about opera that culminated in 2005 with the inauguration of the new opera house.

That opera house turned out to be a terrible weight on the economy of the entire Royal Theatre. While having to run not one but two houses the economy did not follow. The politicians were amenable in the beginning but with the economical crisis the current turned and it became fashionable to see cutbacks as a fair and necessary policy. Opera, ballet and theatre turned into luxuries Denmark couldn’t afford apparently.

A week ago 81 employees were dismissed amongst them 16 choristers and 2 soloists and the number of opera stagings will be decreased next season. All in all The Royal Theatre will make cutbacks amounting to 100 billion kroner or 13.5 million euros.

I am sick and tired of these reductions. They are destroying something beautiful, something well functioning, something that has taken years to build.

These are tough times and our economy is suffering just like economies are all over the world. What I deeply regret is that we are now also to be poorer in spirit. Keith Warner’s resignation is the symptom of a true crisis at The Royal Danish Opera and an emblem of the stupidity of politicians.

/anna

Lady in White. Queen Margrethe’s 40th jubilee. Photo of the Week #145

This weekend Queen Margrethe II celebrates her 40th jubilee with pomp and circumstance. I am not a firm believer in the monarchy and find it rather terrible that anyone should be born different from the rest of us. Plain wrong. But being principled on one side doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the glamour of a good royal celebration. I’m a sucker for it – beautiful dresses, wonderful jewels, elegant horses in formation with hussars blowing their horns, golden carriages etc. etc.  So when I by coincidence found myself close to the royal palaces at the right time today I parked my car and joined some thousands of other more or less loyal subjects to watch the Queen pass by in her carriage on her way to the city hall. 

You can see what it all looked like here…since my photo of the week is not very illustrative of the occasion. I picked this at first glance rather bad photo because it captures the fleeting moment of her majesty driving by, waving, while the masses wave their paper flags in return. In the reflection of one such flag you can also discern the profile of the prince consort Henri. And I love the colors, douce and winterly with a touch of champagne to celebrate the new year. 

 

/anna

Merry Christmas – straight from the manger

Only in America… My favorite is the star over Bethlehem while the smoking king is a very close second.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas – today I am enjoying it a tiny bit more since it is Monday and I would have been at work for 1,5 hours by now were it a normal Monday (as it unfortunately will be in a week – who ever said 2nd of January wasn’t a holiday?)

Time off + duck, presents, and obscene amounts of filled chocolates to accompany loads of television and good books – I love the concept.

Merry Christmas!

/anna

 

Have you seen this man? Photo of the Week #144

Someone is busy…  I caught a glimpse of him in the New York Public Library a couple of weeks ago. Just one day to go now.

/anna

Heart of Darkness

Today was the shortest of the year. I have really felt it, the darkness. The last two years Denmark has been covered in snow at this time and, apart from all the trouble, snow really brightens your day – literally. So without the snow this year it has been dark, dark, dark. So yay for Christmas lights and yay for solstice!

This is from Lübeck in Northern Germany where I went with my mom and sisters last weekend. There is a marvelous Christmas market and the town is famous for its marzipan. So what’s not to love?

/anna

Christmas Wreath. Photo of the Week #143

Last week when visiting friends in Boston I took a short trip to Salem. Just next to the house of the seven gables (which some of you may know from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel) I passed this wonderful little Christmas tableau.

So happy fourth Sunday of Advent!

I will be having mulled wine and æbleskiver (small pancake spheres that Danes stuff themselves with in December) at my sister’s. Christmas joy? Check!

/anna

December Darkness. Photo of the Week #142

A soft darkness has taken over our lives in these Northern parts. But when it’s like this it has its advantages.

/anna

Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna

When abroad I count myself among the museum devouring kind. I try to take as many scalps as possible not only to see art and collections but also to see how museums work and communicate to their audience. Occupational hazard.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Vienna where I managed to tear myself away from all the art that city holds and take a peek at the giant Naturhistorisches Museum. Natural history is not something I know a lot about but it can be fascinating to see the wonders of nature in minerals and animals.

My initial reason to go was the Venus of Willendorf which strangely enough resides here and not in the Kunsthistorisches Museum vis-a-vis the Naturhistorisches, man-made as she is… Anywho… Check Willendorf and then on to the rest of the museum, past the dinos and off it went:

Display after display after display in beautiful old exhibition cases with variations on a theme like young birds or crocodiles:

  

And when we reached animals of the sea, look, they changed the background of the cases into blue. Blue as the sea…get it?

This museum is old and it seems like it has stayed more or less intact over the years. I am sure they have stuffed a new animal every now and again but the cases and the way their content was displayed betrayed the originality of the place. And while that may be interesting and fascinating in itself I think it is a problematic take on communication in a modern world.

I mean, why show glass models of jellyfish, though wonderful as examples of a craft and a time past, when you can go to the aquarium or see an HD film from the oceans? I adored them but if I wanted to learn something about jellyfish I think I would go for the other options.

Art galleries used to look exactly like that. “More is more” was the dictum of the 19th Century curators, but when we display art like that today it is more as a reflection on models of display and museum history. The Kunsthistorisches Museum across the park is in all respects a twin to the Natural History Museum, except they do not hang all their rooms like this:

Not that the Kunsthistorisches Museum could not learn something new too… But when I think about the vast possibilities of teaching and communicating the wonders of nature the people behind the scenes need to get going – probably dreaming a bit and fundraising a lot first of all. The collections are wonderful and the house is wonderful, but it is a gem of the past. My enjoyment of it was purely aesthetic and my professional gain was purely historic.  And as such I recommend the Naturhistorisches Museum – go have fun looking at all those sea monsters, and minerals, and albatrosses, and precious stones, and what have you! I am sure they even have a piece of Kryptonite if you look long enough.

/anna

Phew, not yet… Photo of the Week #141

A year ago this was the view that met me from the National Gallery in Copenhagen.

I am grateful that snow in November does not seem to be happening this year. One giant *phew* there!

/anna

Finalizing the guide. Photo of the Week #140

This week I went to Vienna in order to finalize an audio guide for the museum I work in. We are opening an exhibition next week and I did a specific guide for that. “Vienna?” you may ask – but the audio guide company we work with have their head quarters there. So here is a picture from a focused day of cropping images and correcting texts and sound files.

Guide done, back in Copenhagen and ready for the last busy days before we open on Thursday. Can’t wait!

 

/anna