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When I was invited to join the Staatsoper I didn't hesitate: I

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"When I was invited to join the Staatsoper, I didn't hesitate: I felt I was coming home. In that situation - with the Wall just down, and everything being rethought from scratch - anything seemed possible." And, as London audiences recently discovered, Barenboim has delivered the goods.Or has he? Lutz von Pufendorf, Berlin's secretary of state for culture, gives me an earful which, coming from a top civil servant, is astonishing. Barenboim's Wagner fixation is "ridiculous" and inappropriate for the small house; by trying to turn it into a mini-Bayreuth he has driven away the Staatsoper's traditional audience. Other crimes are duplication of programmes offered by the Deutsche Oper, West Berlin's opera house, and leaving his stage empty for many days each month.

"And yet the Staatsoper gets the second-biggest subsidy in Germany!"Barenboim, he says through gritted teeth, is protected by a contract that lasts until 2002; by the end of our talk he is red-faced with anger. Only later do I learn that there is a personal subtext: he had applied for the job of Staatsoper Intendant, but was vetoed by Barenboim himself.Barenboim shrugs him off: "He's here to make his political career, I'm here to make music."But from Georg Quander, the current Staatsoper Intendant, I get a rebuttal that reflects all the hopes and anxieties assailing the new Berlin. Quander concedes that the pre-1989 audience has gone, partly because ticket prices have risen by many thousand per cent in the post-Communist era. The building is now exquisitely refurbished, but a question-mark hangs over its company's survival.As it does over many institutions in this city. It's being suggested that, with eight orchestras and three opera houses, Berlin is musically overprovided. But, as Barenboim puts it, "They're providing enough money for nobody to die, but for nobody to live properly."Everywhere you go in this glorified building-site of a capital, you find vast civic ambition fed by talent from abroad. Kent Nagano, who has just been appointed to succeed Vladimir Ashkenazy as artistic director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, says he was attracted by the electricity in the air.

And one of the two favoured contenders for Abbado's soon-to- be-vacated podium at the Berlin Phil is our own Simon Rattle.The other is Barenboim, though he clams up when questioned about it. He admits that he wants to reduce his conducting to eight months a year and spend the rest of his time at the piano. He's also embarked on a collaborative book about culture with the historian Edward Said.The prospect of his departure saddens many. "When Barenboim conducts, it's like playing chamber music," says one musician. "When he's in town, it's great," says the mezzo Waltraud Meier "But when he isn't, the energy flags If he were to go, it would be a catastrophe.".

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