23.6.02022

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Feature photo: State Opera Stuttgart

Archive

Today I received two references from Florence to a press release each in English and in German, both of which report that the archives of the EUROPA-UNION — at least those from Baden-Württemberg — are now also being kept in the historical archives of the European Union and are of interest to one be made available to the public.

The archive of the EUROPA-UNION Heilbronn - I have already reported - is now available there and will certainly be able to offer future researchers and scientists a good insight into voluntary work in the city and district of Heilbronn.

This also ensures that the commitment of many citizens is not forgotten. I think it's particularly good that posterity also gets impressions of how politics took place at the local level beyond professionalism and eternal princely courts.

And subsequent federalists also have a good source of information so that they don't have to start from scratch again and again, because some battles have long been fought out, some problems are actually not problems at all and some things are always worth pulling out of the drawers.

Here you will find the English-language press article …

Here you can find the German-language press article …

Former sign of the state office in Stuttgart

red bus

I was enthusiastic about the idea of ​​the Red Bus in Heilbronn right from the start. And so we have already been on the road with the Red Bus several times and have it again in the program this year.

And so it goes without saying that I would also recommend the ride on the Red Bus to others. Yesterday I received feedback on this for the first time from a tour group from outside who recently used the Red Bus in Heilbronn. Coming from outside and being a small group, they wanted to book seats in advance. They found out that you couldn't book one - and that's perfectly fine, and it's also common practice in other cities.

When they got to Heilbronn and wanted to board the bus, they were amazed to find that the best seats had already been reserved. And something like that doesn't work at all! We Heilbronn residents know that there are "better people" in Heilbronn, for whom everything is possible, including reserving a seat on the Red Bus, but people from outside Heilbronn do not understand this.

Another feedback is that the information material provided was too small to be read without problems. At least this point should be able to be fixed.

Marriage of Figaro

This from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart The comedy of a similar name from 1786, set to music in 1778, has never really fascinated me, and it would probably have been forgotten long ago if Mozart hadn't taken it on, a long time ago now. And for all those who, like me, do not count Mozart among their favorites, it would certainly not be tragic if operas were also granted the right to be forgotten - but then there is this music again.

When I surprisingly got the offer, me The Marriage of Figaro I was torn to look at the Stuttgart State Opera, but in the end my curiosity won out: what will be more outdated this time, the opera itself, the opera building or the staging?

The answer right at the beginning, the building won. Even if its morbid charm inspires more and more people and its probably last renovation in the 1980s didn't really make the whole thing any better, it's nice to walk in the old hallways again, but it's definitely torture to work there, or even just having to go to a toilet. And so I'm not sure whether I should support the planned restructuring or not, especially when you consider that it will easily exceed the 1 billion euro mark. In addition, I am not sure whether it will be possible to build a modern opera building into the old State Opera. Merely renovating the building for the first time after 1945 doesn't help anyone — unless you have enough money to continue operating this building as a kind of opera museum and the real opera then takes place elsewhere in Stuttgart.

Whatever decision the people of Stuttgart make, in the end hardly any operagoers will have survived after years of renovation to pick up on the "good old days". If you disregard the students who, like me, were lured to the opera by their music teachers, then yesterday I was certainly one of the youngest viewers. So I would like to add that it is not appropriate to burden the youth with more than one billion euros in additional debt just to make the old age even better for a couple of old people. It would probably be better for everyone to build a modern opera building elsewhere and keep the State Opera as an extension for our state parliament - at the latest when this exceeds the 1 MP limit, the space will be urgently needed.

Back to the performance. As always, the orchestra was good, professionals. Vlad Iftinca a positive surprise for me on the fortepiano. The now obligatory surtitles in German and English also help first-time visitors to follow the plot without any problems and thus compensate for the increasing shortcoming that many opera singers can no longer understand linguistically - whether this is only due to my own hearing, I dare doubt.

The content of the opera is completely out of date and, no matter what else is interpreted into the plot, cannot hide this fact. The program booklet that comes with it is well designed and nicely done - but ultimately pure kitsch, unless you want to inspire students with it, then you can see it as a well-intentioned experiment - and then I would be interested in the didactics behind it.

So the staging and the singers remain to save the performance. me personally Andrew Wolf best liked as Figaro, but was the crowd favorite of the evening Claudia Musko as Susanna, who had played Barbarina during the premiere.

The production initially delighted me with its Ikea idea and also brought a little more movement to the play than I remembered from other performances. Overall, this has done the piece a lot of good. However, there was a break between the second and third acts that I couldn't understand, and when I thought I had understood the stage set-up in the third scene, it was resolved again. And so I regret that I didn't take the opportunity before the opera to have this production explained to me in advance.

All in all, however, a very successful evening, which more than made up for the trip to Stuttgart. And I continue to believe that opera has a future, especially if you don't shy away from transporting the old and especially the dusty hams into the here and now.


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  • I moved from the district to Heilbronn over 40 years ago because I didn't want to drive a car anymore. Since then I've been on two wheels all year round...

    I don't understand these bicycle streets - whether it's Badstraße, Schleusenstraße in Horkheim, Titotstraße or the Frankfurter/Holzstraße area.
    In these areas, cars and two-wheeled dirt slingshots are driven through unpunished and the cyclists are even teased if they move there.

    The bicycle streets are an alibi project of the city administration, which a few years ago picked up the "bicycle-friendly community" award.

    • This "tapping" went hand in hand with a completely overpriced membership in a very ominous construct. The administration only wants to adorn itself at our expense and to our detriment. Unfortunately, that's how local politics is done these days.

    • I can still understand that with the Red Bus.

      What I don't understand is why a bicycle street is being set up where, among other things, Kaufland has charging stations for heavy goods traffic.