The Berlin Staatsoper relocates to the sticks:
Berlin's Staatsoper is moving to smaller, more frugal premises for three years as its 19th-century home undergoes renovation — and musical director Daniel Barenboim pledged Tuesday to live up to the challenge.
The Staatsoper building has long been a tourist attraction and a centerpiece of the former East Berlin's Unter den Linden boulevard. But later this year, the opera will move to the Schiller Theater, a smaller auditorium in the west.
Barenboim said he would compensate by working even harder and trying to lure the opera's fans across the city's former Cold War divide.
For what it's worth, Milan's experience is that when la Scala was shut down for renovations and temporarily moved to the (admittedly ugly, but at least it was new) Teatro degli Arcimboldi, quite a few people simply chose to stay home. Because yeah, they mostly wanted to go to la Scala, regardless of the quality of what was going on at Arcimboldi.