Götz Friedrich
Deutsche Oper Berlin is in mourning for its General Director. Götz Friedrich, known for his artistically controversial and uncompromising leadership in Berlin since 1981, died of cancer on 12 December 2000, aged 70. Friedrich was born in Naumburg in former East Germany, and began his career at the Komische Oper in East Berlin in 1953. He made his own German translation for a 1959 staging of La Bohème, worked at the Hamburg Staatsoper, and mounted guest productions of Aida at the Holland Festival and Moses and Aaron in Vienna. Bavaria's culture minister, Hans Zehetmair, referred to Friedrich, who was active also as a teacher, as 'both a creator and a facilitator'. Friedrich's final production, Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, took place just a few days before his death, and although too ill to attend, Friedrich, in the words of Christoph Stoezl, Berlin's chief culture official, 'was able to make this children's opera a wonderful, fantasy-filled farewell gift'. A book of condolence has been opened at the Deutsche Oper Berlin website.
Information: www.classicalmusicdaily.com/articles/f/g/gotz-friedrich.htm
Posted: 15 December 2000
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