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📍 About Operabase:With around 300,000 listed artists and 6 million users, Operabase is the data platform with the widest reach in the classical music sector. It records opera productions, concerts, musicals and ballets worldwide - and serves opera houses, orchestral institutions, agencies and cultural professionals as a central research and casting tool. The platform's immense wealth of metadata reveals international trends, repertoire developments and artistic movements like no other source.
Ulrike Köstinger has been CEO of Operabase, the world's leading data platform for opera, concerts, musicals and ballet, since 2023. Her career path - from internships at the Salzburg Festival and La Scala in Milan to working as a brand manager at L'Oréal and setting up the streaming service CueTV - has taken her to the top of a company that has been shaping the international classical music world for 30 years.
🗣️ Topics of the interview:
- Professional career: From La Scala in Milan to the tech & SaaS industry
- Operabase: What has made the platform so relevant for 30 years?
- Scope of services & metadata: Artist profiles, repertoire, productions, trends
- Economic structure: How is Operabase financed as a SaaS company?
- Operabase as a digital cultural advisor: 6 million users & their needs
- Experience classical music digitally: Opportunities, risks & new audience structures
- Will AI lead to a cultural boom?
- Which classic business models are truly sustainable?
- Private funding & financing in an international context
From a local music festival to an internationally acclaimed platform: Heidelberger Frühling has consistently expanded its profile and now combines formats such as the Lied Festival, String Quartet Festival, Chamber Music Plus, the "Das Lied" competition and the Classic Scouts. The focus remains on the music festival itself, which has been shaped and further developed by pianist Igor Levit as Co-Artistic Director together with Thorsten Schmidt since the 2022/23 season.
📍 About Heidelberger Frühling:With a budget of around 5.3 million euros and an exceptionally high proportion of private funding, Heidelberger Frühling is a special case in the German cultural landscape. Where many festivals are predominantly state-funded, here it is possible to actively involve regional companies and private supporters - a model that has gained great recognition and is an example of how sustainable cultural funding can succeed.
🗣️ Topics in the episode:
- The emergence and further development of the Heidelberg Spring
- The task of a modern music festival
- Audience development & audience retention
- Changes in audience interests over the course of time
- Funding & private funding partnerships
- Classical music festivals as a location-independent license model
How does the Konzerthaus Dortmund manage to make music accessible to everyone? Dr. Raphael von Hoensbroech has been Managing Director & Artistic Director of the Konzerthaus Dortmund since 2018. This interview deals with the exciting question of how a modern concert hall can remain successful in times of change - culturally, economically and socially.
