Some good news, some bad news for German theatres and orchestras

Deutsche Bühnenverein – the German Stage Association – has published its latest statistics for German orchestras and theatres. And, on the whole, it seems the sector remains healthy.

Attendance fell slightly, down from 21 million to 20.5 million. Managing director Marc Grandmontagne said such variations are normal: “These fluctuations are not unusual … over the last 15 seasons, the number of visitors has gone up and down by a similar amount.”

However, take a look at the stats for opera and the news is not so good. Opera audiences dropped by 2.2%, operetta by 6.4%. Similar falls occurred in dance (3.3% decline) and musicals (6.3% drop).

The success story, it seems, is the category “other events”, which rose by almost 8%. The rise of this catchall group suggests that audiences are responding to new cross-genre productions that cannot be so easily categorised.

As for the economic side of the story, revenue remained static at €551m. The same is true for jobs, with 39,692 in employment ­– about the same as for the previous year.

The full report can be found on the German Stage Association website.

buehnenverein.de