State Opera Director Roščić

“The best always cross borders!”

Bogdan Roščić, 60, has been director of the Vienna State Opera for four years

(Bild: Klemens Groh)

State Opera Director Bogdan Roščić talks about the new "Don Carlo" staged by Kirill Serebrennikow, chicken soup, his new "nest" - and about the fact that opinion journalism as a stage event is a tricky thing. 

"Krone": How was your summer?

Bogdan Roščić: It was wonderful. I spent it without traveling, as quiet and secluded as possible, in a wooden hut in the Salzkammergut, near Lake Traunsee.

Without listening to operas?

I managed just one, and even that one I felt sorry for afterwards. Even as one of the clowns in this circus, you don't have to keep feeding yourself another and another performance like a sick person feeds on chicken soup. You can also sit still once in a while. I have always considered this constant, assiduous, routine intake of cultural calories to be a bourgeois bad habit.

The first premiere is Verdi's "Don Carlo", Kirill Serebrennikov is staging another production at the State Opera after "Parsifal". Is there a particular reason for this?

The main reason is that I wanted to work with him again. You shouldn't act as if there is always a compelling connection between a work and a director. Of course there are plays where you have a well-founded suspicion that someone has a special approach, has something to say about them. But there are also people who are so good and bring so much to the table that you can ultimately do almost anything with them. The best ones always cross borders. Directors with strong opinions and theses are a dime a dozen, but they often make the mistake of only illustrating their opinions and theses. It's impossible for art to come out of that, it's a thematic mistake, if you like. And someone like Serebrennikov goes beyond that. Whatever the thoughts about the play may be - what happens on stage follows its own, different laws. A sensual spectacle, in our "Don Carlo" with the special component of these incredible costumes that were made for it.

Interview with Bogdan Roščić

What are you most looking forward to in your own company in the coming season?

To our "NEST", the State Opera's new second venue!

Which production from another opera house are you particularly looking forward to?

I'm very excited about the newly opened Theater an der Wien and I'm also curious to see what and how much Stefan Bachmann will do differently at the Burg.

What is your biggest dream?

If the workload could be reduced a little in favor of more rehearsals so that we could achieve even more artistically... That's a pretty big, perhaps unattainable dream, but who needs small dreams.

On December 7, the State Opera will open its second venue, the "NEST", a music theater for children and young people.

That's probably the most important thing we're doing this year. It won't be an exposition that is a promotional event for the big house. That would have limited value. Instead, it will be a theater that justifies and supports itself artistically. Marcel Prawy once allegedly said: "Children should go to the Valkyrie, it's the best children's opera anyway. Of course, what we offer at the State Opera is also something for children and young people. But I believe that the experience can be intensified and that something like a guiding force can be created with the Nest.

Elections will be held in a week's time. Various theaters are positioning themselves politically during this time. After the Hamas attack on Israel, you put "Bring them home" in large letters on the opera house - to what extent should, can, may the State Opera express itself politically?

I admire the self-confidence of cultural people who believe that their recommendations or warnings are of interest to anyone who doesn't already agree with them. Something like that can be necessary and liberating for you, but it has zero persuasive power, it's not a political act. And on the stage itself, there is often the misunderstanding that the political aspect of art is like gravy that the performers have to pour over otherwise apolitical works of art. Richard Wagner, for example, a revolutionary in the 1840s who was wanted on a warrant and threatened with the death penalty, was never of this opinion. He also found his works highly political, but still knew the difference between art and politics. Opinion journalism as a stage event is a delicate matter, both politically and artistically. I stand by "Bring them home" because I insist on it: people can have different opinions about what has been happening in Israel and the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. But it is impossible for people of good will to disagree about what happened on October 7 itself. I don't know what effect the action had. But if it comforted even one person, it was worth it.

Looking back on the past season: satisfied?

That depends on what. Attendance was over 99.9%, a new record, and that was also the case with ticket sales. Satisfaction with what takes place on stage, on the other hand, is a much more complicated matter.