DThe Hanover State Opera is parting ways with its ballet director Marco Goecke with immediate effect. Both parties have agreed to terminate Goecke’s contract, as Laura Berman, director of the State Opera, announced this Thursday in Hanover.
Goecke had first verbally attacked the dance critic of the FAZ, Wiebke Hüster, during the break of a ballet premiere in the opera foyer and then smeared dog feces on her face. According to Berman, this “imprudent assault” violated too many principles of the Staatstheater, had criminal consequences and massively damaged the reputation of the house. The question of whether Goecke would receive a severance payment remained unanswered, and the artistic director expressly did not rule out future cooperation with Goecke. Revivals of his work are already planned for the next season.
Berman described Goecke as “a compassionate, considerate, humorous, occasionally very vulnerable person” and empathized more with the perpetrator than with the victim altogether. She must protect her artists, she said. Perhaps more in front of oneself than in front of the ballet criticism. Lower Saxony’s Minister of Culture, Falko Mohrs (SPD), as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the State Opera, made it clear that Goecke’s act was a “disgusting, disgusting assault on the person, the woman, the journalist” Wiebke Hüster and that the separation from Goecke was inevitable was.