The Komische Oper, predicated like all repertory companies on the uneasy relationship between the living and the dead, is on track to sell 92 percent of its tickets this season, an enviable figure for any house. In 2024, it was named Opera House of the Year at the International Opera Awards in Munich.
But the state of Berlin, which is the house’s largest funder by far, is sharply cutting culture spending, threatening the ongoing renovation of the company’s longtime home theater and its annual operating budget.
This season, those cuts have already led to the cancellation of one premiere, of an East German operetta adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” In Serebrennikov’s production, Leporello holds up a sign in the second act of “Don Giovanni” dryly noting that a tenor’s aria “was unfortunately cut due to the slashing of Berlin’s culture budget.” On opening night, audience members cheered and applauded.
“We’re not safe in any way, shape or form,” Gaffigan said. “We’re fighting for our survival. From year to year, we don’t know what’s going to happen.” In an emailed statement in German, Christopher Suss, a spokesman for the city’s cultural department, said that “there will be no halt to construction” on the house’s renovation project and emphasized that “the closure of this unique opera house is out of the question.”
He wouldn’t comment on further cuts because the city’s budget is in the process of being negotiated. On Friday, Berlin’s top culture politician, Joe Chialo, resigned his post; his resignation letter laid out his opposition to forthcoming planned cuts that, he warned, would “lead to the imminent closure of nationally renowned cultural institutions.”
“I have never seen anything like it, where a company is doing so well, and we’re terrified for our own existence,” Gaffigan said. “Doing as well as we are doing, I thought the Komische Oper would always be there. And one night you wake up and realize, ‘Maybe not.’”
