Andreas Massow resigns as Deutsche Oper lists six key losses

Berlin’s Deutsche Oper has lost six key positions in one season, while Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht reportedly cost €440,000 per performance. Slippedisc’s November 2026 report also records the resignation of director of opera Andreas Massow for private reasons, as intendant Aviel Cahn faces a budget freeze.

Why did Massow step down?

Massow said he had “decided to reorient myself professionally.” He will rejoin the Bayreuth Festival next summer, according to the report.

Slippedisc called his departure a blow to Cahn, the company’s intendant, and placed the budget freeze after what it called a brutal reception for two productions. They were Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht and Milo Rau’s Flying Dutchman, described by the report as Mideast-oriented.

The source does not say that Massow left because of the freeze, either production or Cahn’s leadership. His stated reason was private, and his announced destination was Bayreuth. The report therefore treats his resignation as one event within a broader institutional crisis rather than a disclosed response to a specific dispute.

In plain terms, Massow announced a career move without explaining the company’s financial or artistic problems.

Which positions disappeared?

Slippedisc’s list identifies six departures within one season:

• Operndirektor
• Financial Director
• Technical Director
• Chorus Director
• Marketing Director
• Director of the Tischlerei (second performing space)

Five posts beyond the opera director cover finance, technical operations, chorus, marketing and the Tischlerei, the source’s name for the second performing space. The list gives no names, appointment dates or replacement details for those departures. It therefore establishes the administrative spread of the losses, but not how each vacancy affects programming.

The practical scale is six departures across artistic, financial, technical and promotional functions in a single season.

What does the cost figure establish?

At €440,000 for every performance, Mittwoch aus Licht carries the largest reported number in the story. Slippedisc did not identify who calculated the figure, and it did not publish a total production budget, ticket income or attendance.

Its account stops at sequence: the report links the budget freeze to a brutal reception for both Mittwoch aus Licht and Milo Rau’s Flying Dutchman. The €440,000 figure identifies the cost of one performance, not the full loss or the size of the freeze.

Placed beside the six departures, the figure turns an abstract budget freeze into a stated cost per show. The source does not establish whether either production, the two together, or another budget decision triggered the freeze.

The production cost is concrete; responsibility for the freeze remains unspecified in the report.

How did Berlin’s rival respond?

Music director Christian Thielemann of the rival Staatsoper unter den Linden expressed what Slippedisc called laconic sympathy for the Deutsche Oper’s misery. The report did not quote him directly. Under the headline ‘Misery’ at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, it added: “Can’t get much worse than that.”

Thielemann’s response acknowledged distress without offering a remedy in the report. That restraint contrasts with the scale of the losses, though the source offers no evidence of coordination between the two companies or institutional support.

His move to the Bayreuth Festival is set for next summer. Cahn now faces the practical test of staffing the remaining five roles while confronting the budget freeze and moving beyond the reception linked to two productions.