Director of the Oper Wuppertal, Rebekah Rota says, “You can be lucky only after you have been smart.” Her career trajectory from singer to administrator in the German opera theater demonstrates an organized progression in the business of singing.
Rebekah Rota is not at all what you would expect an opera intendant to be. And that’s a good thing! She is a much needed burst of fresh air in the stuffy corridors of the German theater system. A fiercely intelligent critical thinker, she looks to the future of the somewhat overindulged machine of the German theater system with clarity and sobriety. As the Oper Wuppertal Artistic Director Dorothée Schulte, puts it, “Rebekah does not hide in her ivory tower as so many others do.” I spent a day shadowing her through the maze of the Oper Wuppertal hallways and spoke with her for hours, through many laughs and a few tears, about her path, her plans for the theater she leads, and her love of tea.
What fires you up and makes you get up each morning?
My father was an obstetrician and quite famous in his field. When people asked him what business he was in, he would answer: “I grow people.” He helped babies grow and be born, but he also helped all people that he worked with reach their full potential. He talked about having an overarching principle behind everything that he did.
Quite early in my life, I started asking myself, whatever job I might happen to have, “What is the business that I am in?” For me, that is touching people’s hearts and inspiring them. This is what drove me as a singer and what continues to drive me now. Only my daily actions have changed.
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Did you have a plan for your professional path?
Things just fell into place, but I’m also a neurotic planner. I love planning and I always have a 10-year plan. This is the first time in my life that I do not have a 10-year plan, and it’s terrifying. Whether or not that 10-year plan actually ends up actualizing, it doesn’t matter, but it gives me a direction.
When I was still studying in the States, none of my teachers believed in me. Part of the reason I became a singer was not only because of my love for it but also to show them that I could. I am a contrarian—you tell me I cannot do something and, by George, I will. A significant amount of my path has been defined by people telling me I cannot or should not do something.
What made you transition into administration and leadership rather than solely in directing or in education?
I looked at the business and asked myself where I will be able to make the most difference. The German theater system is on a trajectory which will jeopardize its future sustainability. I thought, “What is the position where I could have the most impact?” Intendant was the obvious answer. I pushed as hard and as fast as I could on that new path, because I knew I had a limited time to make it happen and still have time to be effective in my new role. It took me seven years from when I left the stage as a singer to this point.
Why a limited time?
I saw the timeline of the political and financial system in Germany as well as the changing cultural climate, so I knew that we need to make changes and make them now. Actually, we needed to make changes 20 years ago. There was also the timeline of my personal age and hiring capabilities. Once I got hired, how long would I be able to work to make an impact?
I did a meta-analysis, because this is how wonky and nerdy I am. I covered my bedroom wall with cards for every opera theater, tracking the timelines and career trajectory of every intendant—where they started, where they went, their ages when they got their first job, their nationality, what their background was. At that time there were only 18% women, three foreigners, one non-European, and one who was a singer. I knew the odds were stacked against me.
Rebekah Rota Oper Wuppertal
Why do you think there are not many singers who progress within the system to positions of intendants?
Most singers become singers because they want to stand on a stage. There are not a lot of singers who want to commit to leadership positions and who necessarily have developed the skill set that’s required to lead. I would also add that generally Germans have intellectual/academic bias and they tend to show preference to people who they perceive to be intellectuals—and singers are not perceived to be intellectuals.
The German theater system is a very specific microcosmos, run politically and financially by the government. Within it, each theater is somewhat independent yet interconnected to the system. Where does your playing ground end and government regulation and financial pressures begin?
Every theater is structured differently in terms of finance and local politics. In some, the government has high audience attendance quotas that intendants are expected to meet, which means that those theaters cannot take as many risks, and that impacts their artistic programming. Other theaters are more constrained financially or, conversely, know that they will be “saved” in cases of excess; they can take risks and act differently. These nuances can be challenging to navigate.
Rebekah Rota Oper Wuppertal wig studio
What was the most surprising element of this position?
I expected it to be incrementally more work, but it is exponentially more work. All my systems, small and large—work systems and managing my daily life—failed last year. Every single one.
Was that the biggest challenge for you?
I think we had a really great year as a theater—but for me personally, it was the worst year of my life. It was really bad.
Why did those systems that worked for you before not work any more?
In my previous positions, I managed my own workload. Now I am responsible for everyone’s work load, the whole opera department. I am the needle’s eye where all decisions go through. And last season we also had a lot of new people on the team overall. We were all learning together.
Challenging! Do you see yourself staying in the German theater system?
I purposefully have not created a 10-year plan.
So your wall is empty?
I felt that I needed to draft a new 10-year plan and, as I did that, I realized it was inhibiting me from total freedom in planning the five years of my contract. I realized that in order to be as courageous, I needed to plan and act as if I only had these five years.
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What is your biggest joy in this position? Something that you can uniquely experience only doing this job?
The biggest joy has not changed since being a singer, only my vantage point has: the initial response from the audience after the final curtain. The individual interactions with the audience are invaluable and they feed me. And watching my ensemble grow: take on a new role, go through the rehearsal process. and then step on stage and really own it.
You wanted to come into this position with enough time to make an impact, to work on the changes that you feel are needed for this system to not come crashing down. What are those changes?
As I was working on the pillars that were going to define my time here, I divided them into two categories, artistic and operational. My main thrust for this coming year is the operational side, focusing on how we produce opera and how we treat the people who produce opera; how we are centering and structuring the audience journey; how we lobby with the people in the city who do not come to the theater, yet recognize that we do good work and the value of having a theater in Wuppertal.
This city is really challenging because it was incorporated only about 100 years ago and is actually several different cities that historically had their own city centers, spread over a very long valley axis along the river Wupper. It also has a population with 60% migration background.
Rebekah Rota
That’s a huge positive for the city! But that may not be positive for the German theater system, because not a lot of immigrants are included in it, especially people of color!
When it comes to audience engagement, people talk a lot about cultural background being the issue. I would say that for me it comes down to economic and educational background. In Germany, only 1% of the population with non-migration background goes to the theater. It’s an art form that does not appeal to the vast majority of any demographic, so we are always talking about appealing to a small slice of the overall demographic.
One thing that I do find quite encouraging is that we do have a very diverse audience. There are increasing numbers of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, though not yet in the numbers I would like to see. The audience members with a migration background who do come to the opera tend to be from financially stable and educated households. So, the defining issues seem to me to be economic and educational.
But the German theater system is still very limited in their hiring practices.
I’m not saying we don’t have issues of racism on the production side of opera. We do. I’m speaking, however, about the audience and the art form. Not about the German theater structure, because of course there are race issues. However, that for me is a slightly different topic.
What are the changes you spoke about on the artistic side?
I want this to be a theater that is seen as an incubator for new, upcoming talent. Every season’s program should be diverse enough to offer at least one piece of interest for different, nontraditional target audiences. I would like to ensure that we have a more diverse and representational profile in our artistic programming and in the people who are creating art here.
Every season there are at least two pieces by female composers. The ratio of female to male directors is balanced. We present operas from people who have not gotten as much stage time in the German system. This shouldn’t be a big marquee headline, but just the way we do business here.
How would you describe your leadership style? How much intuition versus learned skills do you employ on a daily basis? How much heart versus brain?
When it became clear to me that I wanted to transition from singing to management, I started consciously growing myself in that direction. I started observing and analyzing the leaders around me. I started tapping into the generational richness that I had been gifted with.
Overall, my leadership style is focused on empowering the people around me. I feel like I have done my work well when everybody around me feels empowered and knowledgeable about how they can best act on their own. I employ a collaborative, analytical and transparent process, which focuses on the issue and not the person. I also try to be transparent about my own process, strategies, goals, and decision making.
My biggest opportunity and commitment to make sure that this theater and the team continue to grow is to make sure that I continue to grow. As long as I am doing that, everybody else will be able to grow while being supported by me.
Are you a risk taker?
I would say I am a calculated risk taker. I love living in the zone of risk. My fear is stagnation.
Give me an example of a risk that you just took that brought you joy.
It was a risk in artistic programming for last season. We had to pair Schönberg’s Erwartung with something, and my team was arguing for safe choices. Someone threw out the idea of doing Ethel Smythe’s Der Wald. Everybody in the room said, “That’s a horrible idea.” And I said: “No, that’s a brilliant idea! I want to take a risk. I think that’s the right pairing.” It just made sense to me.
The double-bill ended up getting significant recognition. We had a recording made and produced. We were named in multiple “best of the season reports” and were nominated for the International Opera Awards.
That is an amazing accomplishment for your first season! Do you take risks in your personal life as well?
I am a tightrope walker. But now with my new partner, I have found a happiness and joy in stability I did not know I would enjoy. I also didn’t take calculated risks with my daughter. I had a very clear strategic outcome that I wanted to achieve, and I pursued that objective from day one. It influenced every decision that I made, and that was a very thoughtful process.
How do you take criticism?
I personally love criticism. I actually really do. My daughter found this motto, which I love, “I never lose. I either win or I learn.” I grew up in a family that embraced criticism. I often heard, “You cannot grow if you are comfortable.” So I got comfortable with being uncomfortable really early.
Would you ever consider taking a position outside of the German theater system?
Yes, absolutely. I lied when I said I don’t have a 10-year plan. I have a dream. It’s not a 10-year plan but a 10-year dream. The things that increasingly interest me are the overarching issues for the whole cultural sector, the issues I see facing the German theater system and the art form. The intersection between art, politics, and finances in general. I would be interested in exploring directions that take me beyond the purview of one specific theater.
People who have come up in the German theater system tend to use abuse and use abusive language.
Starting this season, every director who works here has a written clause in their contract that they must adhere to the behavioral codex of the Deutsche Bühnenverein. If they do not, I can impose a financial penalty. We are the first theater in Germany to have this clause and we are working with the Deutsche Bühnenverein to test it and see how it holds up. We’re changing the culture within the theaters. Culture changes are the hardest.
What was the most challenging thing?
I think feeling like I was always failing at something. No matter how much success I had in one area of my life, if I was excelling in that one area, it meant that I was failing somewhere else.
And what was the most rewarding thing?
I think just the many special moments of having my daughter be with me or hearing her sing a melody or watching her on the side of the stage clapping for me when I was taking my applause. The first time we went to see The Nutcracker together at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, she sang perfectly every note along with the chorus at the end of the first act. She was three years old and she was wearing a little princess costume that I sewed for her.
What are your parting words?
My father always says it is better to be lucky than to be smart. You can be lucky only after you have been smart. The path here to this moment was a long one that involved a lot of sacrifices and a lot of different kinds of battles, personal and professional. I subscribe to the idea to keep pulling yourself back together—after every hurdle, after every door that is shut—to regroup and to find a new path forward, because there always is one. The resilience of each individual has no exhaustion.
To learn more about Oper Wuppertal, visit: www.oper-wuppertal.de
