Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Just in time to blight Christmas for Berlin’s music lovers, Mayor Klaus Wowereit called a press conference to announce the appointment of a new man for the top job at the hallowed Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

He’s Jurgen Flimm and he actually already has a job. Flimm runs the Salzburg Festival until 2011. Even so, he’s happy to step into the Berlin breach in an interim capacity from Jan. 1.

Is the talent pool in Europe so small?

Flimm, 67, is not the man we’ve been dreaming about to run the company whose most prominent fixture is conductor Daniel Barenboim. Thanks to Flimm, Salzburg’s shows look increasingly dated. His choice to run the Staatsoper sure looks like a last- ditch solution for the vacant post.

That’s not the only music problem in the German capital. At the rival Deutsche Oper across town, it seemed as if General Manager Kirsten Harm’s head was on the chopping block. She also likes to direct her own lackluster productions, most recently “Tannhauser.” It was Harms who provoked appalled laughter for canceling the re-run of a Mozart opera whose director had included scenes which an anonymous caller thought might be upsetting to devout Muslims.

Harms’s contract ends in 2011, which is a long time to wait, though the company at least has an energetic new music director. Donald Runnicles, who starts next year, is notably strong in German repertoire. He follows the little-known Italian Renato Palumbo, Harms’s disastrous choice for chief conductor.

Undesirable Post

Flimm steps into one of the opera world’s least desirable leadership posts. The job of being Barenboim’s right-hand man is not easy. Flimm’s predecessor, Peter Mussbach, left more than a year before his contract ended, in a situation of bitter conflict.

The company’s managing director, Georg Vierthaler, made a rapid exit at the same time. Mussbach’s predecessor, Georg Quander, seized the chance to go to press with scorching attacks on Barenboim’s leadership style.

While the ailing Staatsoper has depended on Barenboim’s power and allure to winch the troubled company through difficult post-reunification years, he’s hardly an easy-going or conciliatory colleague.

Of the three Berlin opera houses -- there’s also the Komische Oper, run by another stage director, Andreas Homoki -- the Staatsoper has the best average attendance and the healthiest box-office figures. Yet the building is literally falling to pieces, and will close in 2010 for a three-year overhaul. Flimm will have to steer the company through an extended period in the small and shabby Schiller Theater -- frighteningly close to Harms and her misled Deutsche Oper.

Diplomacy Needed

Few opera companies survive a radical renovation unscathed, and in Berlin’s financially impoverished and artistically undirected operatic context, Flimm will need flair, originality and a great deal of diplomatic talent. None of these qualities have particularly distinguished his recent leadership of the Salzburg Festival, where his choice of works and interpreters has seemed too often geared to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

At the same time, Flimm did succeed in making his mark on the exuberantly grungy Ruhr Triennale, set in the sprawling industrial ruins of Germany’s depressed Ruhr Valley. For all his flaws, he will be a less insipid leader than rival Harms, who did her best work in provincial Kiel.

As Christmas presents go, the Flimm appointment is right up there with striped socks and floral handkerchiefs. We didn’t ask for it, we didn’t want it, and we can only hope that it will prove more useful than it seems at first glimpse.

Thank you, Mr. Wowereit. A merry Christmas to you too.

(Shirley Apthorp is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Shirley Apthorp at sarabande@compuserve.com.

Last Updated: December 23, 2008 19:00 EST