Alumni tour of the Munich National Theatre

When the rain start­ed in the state capi­tal at 4 p.m. on Fri­day, 24 Feb­ruary 2023, the group of 24 alum­ni of the Elite Net­work of Ba­varia had al­ready gath­ered in the pleas­antly dry and warm Freunde Foyer of the Na­tional Thea­tre, which can be reached via the somewhat hid­den side en­trance North. We were wel­comed there by the histo­rian and pas­sionate tour guide, Dr. Su­sanna Wal­dorf, who re­vealed the first insid­er tip right at the be­gin­ning: If you want to have the feel­ing that the Na­tional Thea­tre opens its doors only for you per­sonal­ly, you should en­ter the house for a per­for­mance not via the busy main stair­case but via the side en­trance North, which is open for every regu­lar event. Even for our small group, it was an im­pres­sive feel­ing to have the ma­jestic house seem­ingly all to our­selves as Dr. Wal­dorf led us through the build­ing, climbing huge stair­cases, pass­ing gold-ornamented mir­rors and ad­mir­ing gi­gantic Murano glass chan­de­liers – which, by the way, are spot­lessly clean due to a large-scale clean­ing cam­paign every year dur­ing the sum­mer break.

Meanwhile, the stage was al­ready bus­tling with activ­ity. After inter­esting in­sights into the histo­ry of the house - from mul­tiple re­con­struc­tions to the lost and redis­cov­ered Cu­villi­éstheater - there fol­lowed a mag­nifi­cent view from the cen­tral loge, for­merly re­served for royal­ty, onto the third larg­est stage in the world. Sur­rounded by a stage set­ting made cur­tains that magi­cally moved up and down, sev­eral of the 1000 peo­ple who work at the Na­tional Thea­tre were just laying the dance floor for the evening's ballet per­for­mance - dou­ble pad­ded and al­ways at hand in this reper­tory thea­tre that per­forms a dif­ferent opera or ballet every night. We were of­fered an even deep­er in­sight when Dr. Wal­dorf took our group up, back and under the stage. There we could get an idea of how much tech­nical fi­nesse and hu­man craftsman­ship is re­quired to offer the audi­ence a per­fect opera, con­cert or ballet expe­rience every even­ing.

break.

After the tour, we had to brave the cold rain on the short way to the wine bar "Stein, Lump und Küchen­meis­ter". How­ever, the pleas­ant con­versa­tions held there over a glass of wine or two more than ade­quate­ly com­pen­sated for the small rain show­er. A stim­ulat­ing ex­change took place across the disci­pli­nary and pro­gram boundaries when, for ex­am­ple, glori­ous victo­ries of the Elite Cup were reca­pitu­lated, rec­om­men­da­tions re­garding the cur­rently run­ning oper­as were given or opin­ions about the latest find­ings in the life sci­ences were dis­cuss­ed.

Text: Coordination Office of the Elite Network of Bavaria