Berlin's Komische Oper renovations are likely to continue as city of Berlin slashes culture budget by 10%. Director Philip Bröking says that the upcoming budget cuts are extremely painful and, for many, difficult to implement.
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00:00Berlin's Komischer Opera House is likely to continue renovations despite drastic culture
00:05budget cuts across the city.
00:07The opera house has found a temporary new home at the nearby Schiller Theatre, which
00:11has 20% fewer seats than its original home and means fewer ticket sales.
00:16Director Philipp Broeking says that the upcoming budget cuts are extremely painful and for
00:21many theatres difficult to implement.
00:24The one problem is that culture in general in Berlin should have a budget cut of 130
00:30million euros, of around one billion.
00:33That's an overproportional amount.
00:35Berlin has to save, we know that, everyone knows that, but when I now see that a total
00:42of three billion has to be saved for 2025 and the cultural budget cuts 2.5% of the country's
00:50total expenditure, then that's actually 75 million that needs to be saved in the cultural
00:56budget.
00:57In fact, 130 million has to be saved, that's an overproportional amount, and for us that
01:03means around 10% of our budget, so that's around 4 million.
01:09That's difficult to implement, within a year that's already completely planned.
01:15Berlin is regarded as extremely progressive and unique because of its generous art funding.
01:21But even if the renovation of the Komische Oper that is due to take six years continues,
01:26the budget cuts still affect Germany's image.
01:45But it's
02:15not just the culture that will be affected by the cuts.
02:18The German economy, which continues to splutter, could use a little bit of acceleration from
02:23the arts and culture, which brings in tens of millions of euros worth of revenue per
02:27year.