Press Reviews       OPENING OF THE FORUM NEUES MUSIKTHEATER Press Reviews of the Opening on October 7, 2003     back    Klaus Zehelein: “We need a proving ground where, for a short time, we can free ourselves from the constraints and established structures of production.” (...) At the Römerkastell, says Zehelein, what is at stake is responsibility in the artistic sense. (...) The intention at the Forum is to work across disciplinary boundaries to test new perspectives on music theater. The focus will be on the use of electronic instruments and new media, in composition as well as in performance. (...) The support of the Landesstiftung Foundation ensures that the work will be able to continue through the end of the 2005–2006 season. (...) The opera director emphasized yesterday that the Forum had only come into being because the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg had supported it “at a very early stage”. Stuttgarter Zeitung It is not a dream but reality: the Forum Neues Musiktheater can begin its work. Speeches, utopian schemes, and political endorsements mark the opening of the new experimental theater, which Klaus Zehelein, the general director of Stuttgart’s Staatsoper, pushed forward with tremendous energy and considerable support from the state government. Prime Minister Teufel and Stuttgart’s mayor, Wolfang Schuster, also threw their support behind the Forum. Stuttgarter Nachrichten In nine months – a pace that a government bureaucracy would 'never in its life', as Breitscheid says, have been able to manage – a multifunctional music theater has been created in the Römerkastell. (...) Breitscheid wants more: a research, production, and training ground for a twenty-first century music theater, a “powerful central locus for what is aesthetically unprotected and swims against the current”. In other words, a research and development center where composers, directors, singers, and instrumentalists are able to forge new paths without the hardships of everyday professional life. (...) And the public? It’s part of the picture too. Spectators will not just be given a quick tour of the workshop now and then; they will be able to see (preliminary) results. Südwest Presse In the old Römerkastell in the Stuttgart suburb of Bad Cannstatt, the Forum has found a generously furnished lodging. And starting immediately, Staatsoper general director Klaus Zehelein and Andreas Breitscheid, the Forum’s artistic director, have at their disposal an experimental theater unique in Germany. Saarbrücker Zeitung In creating the “Forum Neues Musiktheater”, the Staatsoper Stuttgart now seeks to escape these limitations and restrictions, which stand in the way of work on an “opera of the twenty-first century”. (...) The “Forum Neues Musiktheater” sets itself these new tasks, and there can be no doubt that the general director of Stuttgart’s opera, Klaus Zehelein, will guide the “Forum”, which he himself initiated and realized, into the future with a sure hand. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
	Imprint