Record Year For Waldbühne

Berlin’s Waldbühne is claiming a record year with attendance of more than 200,000.

The 18,000-capacity outdoor venue’s summer season was a mix of rock shows from acts including Kings Of Leon, Peter Maffay, Joe Cocker and the Eagles, plus classical concerts from violinist David Garrett, vocal virtuosos Anna Netrebko, Erwin Schrott and Jonas Kaufmann and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

The attendance was almost double the 115,000 visitors who turned up to the famous forest clearing in 2010, when the rock lineup included Pink, Prince, and Leonard Cohen.

Since September 2008, the Waldbühne’s been run by CTS Eventim, which reportedly went to euro 750,000 per year to wrest the contract from arch-rival DEAG.

DEAG ran the venue for the previous 27 years and some German papers suggested Peter Schwenkow, the Berlin-based company’s chief, blew his chances of hanging on to it when he stood against local Mayor Klaus Wowereit in the 2006 elections for the city parliament.

Eventim is now booking the Waldbühne’s 2012 season and already has three nights from Die Ärzte (Aug. 17-19), which will wrap the act’s European tour.