One almost doesn’t want to take the turnoff to the Cuvilliés Theater on Saturday evening in the Kaiserhof of the Residenz and instead watch the first snow cover the Christmas village. But for a good cause, around four hundred people willing to donate found their way inside to the 27th Advent benefit concert at the BMW branch in Munich. At the Käfer reception in the theater foyer, the proceeds from ticket sales will be enriched by prominent gingerbread sellers.
As one of the first invited guests, actor Hannes Jaenicke starts with a basket of the baking “Omis” and “Opis” from the social bakery “Kuchentratsch”. His fellow actors Götz Otto, Jutta Speidel, Manuel Cortez and Jan Hartmann as well as moderator Alexander Mazza and the seniors themselves follow suit. The pastries will contribute more than two thousand euros to the donation that evening, as branch manager Bernd Döpke announced after the concert.
Without the basket, it also poses more elegantly in front of the silver-and-white Christmas tree. Whereby Götz Otto poses more in the tree and winks at the photographer through illuminated branches. While Otto, Jaenicke and Co. have long since mingled with the crowd sipping mulled and sparkling wine, Florian David Fitz walks in in a casual Norwegian sweater. Up until now, like in previous years, he was still counting on a church as the location, he explains while taking off his jacket. Therefore several layers instead of fine concert twine. He came with his family and, after a work-intensive phase, is looking forward to an evening off and a Christmas break in the warmer south.
When it comes to the classics, Fitz recently came across the modern romantics, such as Prokofiev or Stravinsky. “That would be something for tonight,” he jokes incredulously, without having looked at the program. Of course, that reads more pleasantly: Rossini, Haydn, Reger, performed by the vocal soloists Golda Schultz and Klaus Florian Vogt, cellist Emanuel Graf and the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Antonino Fogliani in an entertaining compilation.
Afterwards, moderator Nina Eichinger asked Ursula Princess of Bavaria, patron and driving force in the annual election of the recipient of the donation, to announce the donation amount on stage. Almost 96,700 euros will go to the hearing-speech-cochlear implant department of the KBO children’s center in Munich to finance two new audiometry systems. Bernd Döpke had hoped for 100,000 euros beforehand and is just asking the audience to pull out their mobile phones: “We should still overcome the hurdle.” As in the previous year, the donation lines will remain open until the beginning of the new year.