Enchoris Podcast | S2E1 | Julien Chavaz

In the first episode of season two we talk to Julien Chavaz, Generalintendant and Operndirektor of Theater Magdeburg and, from 2028/29, Intendant of the Aalto-Theater and the Essener Philharmoniker. He was in Seoul, directing Peter Grimes for Korea National Opera, when the phone call about Essen came. This is a conversation about the journey that made that call possible: the agricultural sciences degree before the dramaturgy, the years assisting across Europe, the small company in Fribourg, and what changes when you take on a house of 440 people where many of them are better than you at their own job. He discussed what an Intendant should do when he arrives at a theatre and how to respect his predecessors work and decisions. In his words "you arrive at a house that existed 150 years before you and will exist 150 years after, and your job is to pass the torch on". It is also about what a theatre owes the city around it. Football chants on the opera house steps, a play built from the rise of a band out of a Sachsen-Anhalt village, the Wintermärchen that carries the financial year. Julien Chavaz talks about his craft. What opera directing physically is — standing in front of sixty people and making an idea land with your arms and your face. How much a story can be told without text, with Tatiana's letter scene in Tchaikovsky’s famous opera Eugene Onegin as the worked example. Why he designs from colour and rings his costume designer before anyone else. And the economics behind it: what commissioning a new opera actually costs in years, why co-production is the method he will carry into Essen, and why a chorus contract is often a better living than a solo career. On 20 December 2024 he was at an opera in Madrid when a car was driven into the Magdeburg Christmas market; he describes the interval, the missed calls, and the flight the next morning. The theatre went on to commission Wunde Stadt, a play about the attack, and he sets out the argument for making work from an event rather than staying silent about it. And then the election. Two weeks before this recording Sachsen-Anhalt voted, and he talks about what he expects: not open censorship, which would be unconstitutional, but interference — and his own question to anyone proposing to restrict artistic freedom and what a theatre may show, which is who exactly they imagine will come and stage it. 0:00 Introduction 1:14 The Processes of Becoming an Intendant 4:01 Theater after Corona 6:25 Collective Experiences strengthen Democracy 8:12 Audience Development in Magdeburg 13:35 Giving the Stage back to the City 16:38 The Wintermärchen, and the Theatre's best Months 18:47 Pressure on Culture in the Regions 20:30 An Intendants Responsibility 24:38 On Leadership 27:30 What Opera Directing actually is 29:35 Telling a Story without Text 31:46 Tatiana's Letter Scene in Tchaikovsky's Opera 33:22 Neverland, and Cartoons 36:01 Four Pieces at the Athénée 38:47 Obsessed with Colour 43:07 Opera and filmed Productions 45:02 Clivia and the Weimar Operetta 49:07 Learning the Form as an Assistant 55:26 Life with an Idiot by Schnittke 57:38 Working with an Opera Chorus 1:00:33 Co-Production, and what a new Opera costs 1:09:23 The Terror Attack in Magdeburg 1:15:34 Wunde Stadt 1:19:56 Iconic Art reflects the hard Reality of the World 1:22:18 After the Election 1:25:18 The AfD's cultural Programme 1:26:35 Bauhaus, and degenerate Art 1:27:42 Theater Tradition 1:29:31 Artistic Freedom 1:32:32 Artistic Choices and the Evolution of Opera 1:38:18 Closing Thoughts