OPERAPOLITIK.(future of opera houses in Berlin)

Only in Berlin would an argument over the future of three opera houses take on the dimensions of a constitutional crisis. Here is how things stand in the first days of December: the Social Democratic Party, which governs Germany with the Greens, supports a plan to unite the Staatsoper, on Unter den Linden, with the Deutsche Oper, in the west. Daniel Barenboim, the Staatsoper's music director, fiercely opposes the idea. The Christian Democratic Union, meanwhile, wants to put not only these two companies under one administration but also a third--the smaller-scale Komische Oper. Thomas Flierl, Berlin's cultural tsar, who belongs to the ex-communist Party for Democratic Socialism, has yet to commit himself one way or another. Berliners have lost all patience with this mess, but visiting Americans may be charmed by the fact that politicians here take an interest in opera at all. I realized that my sojourn in Berlin had taken me into uncharted waters when, during an intermission one evening, Professor Christoph Stolzl, the chief of the Berlin C.D.U., took me aside to talk about Arnold Schoenberg. Any right-minded American politician would sooner be photographed dangling a baby over a hotel balcony--as Michael Jackson was, in a startling contribution to the city's musical politics--than be caught dead at the opera.

In the past few months, Berlin's opera houses have maintained their place in the limelight by presenting an array of unusually outre productions. The Komische Oper led with a beery, working-class version of "The Bartered Bride," which the critic Manuel Brug described as "Schmettana instead of Smetana." The Deutsche Oper responded with a "Werther" that had Goethe's star-crossed lovers meeting in a laundromat--a mise en scene so realistic that clothes were seen tumbling in the windows of the dryers. ("Others throw bombs, I direct opera," Sebastian Baumgarten, the gifted but erratic young director, proclaimed.) The Staatsoper weighed in with a heavily congested production of Shostakovich's "The Nose," conceived by the painter Jorg Immendorff. The orchestra wore space-alien bodysuits, while singers and chorus members impersonated major players in Middle Eastern politics, from Saddam Hussein to Kofi Annan. We were even treated to a singing Osama bin Laden. The staging seemed designed to provoke a scandal, and, in anticipation of rotten tomatoes, Immendorff told Der Spiegel that he would go to the premiere dressed in "washable fabrics." But the scandal of "The Nose" was that there was no scandal; the creative team received a unanimous round of tepid applause. There was no need for Immendorff to drop by the Deutsche Oper to get his laundry done.

Does a city really need three opera houses? Probably not, but Berlin has long taken pride in its embarrassment of operatic riches. If one house closes, the city will end up with the same eminently sensible--and thus eminently predictable--arrangement that applies in New York, Paris, and London. There will be the "big" house, like the Met or Covent Garden, presenting de-luxe productions with international stars; and there will be the "alternative" house, like New York City Opera or English National Opera, staking out slightly more adventurous repertory. With three companies, you never quite know what you're going to get: perhaps a flamboyant diva performance set against a strict Brechtian concept; perhaps a cast of unknowns trapped in an avant-garde nightmare. Since all three houses are strapped for money, you tend to see fewer international stars, more hungry young singers, and, even on the lunatic fringe, better nights of theatre.

The "opera misery," as one critic has dubbed the situation, honors a long local tradition of byzantine cultural-political imbroglios. Many of the same battles were fought in the nineteen-twenties, when the Staatsoper faced competition from two new entities--the Stadtische Oper, on the site of the present Deutsche Oper, and the Kroll Oper, on the Platz der Republik. Suddenly, the city had ...