Biography|Simone Young — The Dammtorstrasse House She Ran for a Decade

On a Thursday in mid-May 2003, Hamburg's arts minister Dana Horakova announced the appointment at City Hall.

Simone Young signed a five-year contract to become general manager and music director of the Hamburg State Opera and music director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra.

She would take the posts in August 2005.

The Australian press covered the signing because Opera Australia had just declined to renew her as artistic director.

Hamburg was offering the purse strings as well as the podium.

The New York Times noted that she would be the first woman to hold a leading position in a major European opera house.

The house itself stands on Dammtorstraße, with its administrative address at Große Theaterstraße 25.

Gerhard Weber's 1953–55 auditorium replaced the Stadttheater wrecked in the 1943 air raids.

She had first conducted here in 1996.

From 2005 to 2015 she held both jobs at once: Intendantin of the opera and Generalmusikdirektorin of the orchestra.

The German press called the management structure a triumvirate, with ballet director John Neumeier and an administrative director beside her.

The repertoire ran from Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Wagner and Strauss to Hindemith, Britten and Henze, with world and German premieres in the mix.

In 2013, Wagner's bicentenary year, she conducted all ten of his major operas in the Wagner-Wahn festival, including a new Ring staged with Claus Guth.

Opernwelt named her Conductor of the Year in 2006.

The company had already been Opera House of the Year in 2005.

In December 2011 she announced she would leave after the 2014/15 season.

She left on the date she chose.

Kent Nagano succeeded her as GMD.

The pin is the public façade on Dammtorstraße.

The building is a working theatre, not a private office.

This is the place that made the chief-executive tag fit.

Photo: Fred Romero, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Bertold Fabricius, CC BY-SA 3.0, 2010.