Bayreuther Festspiele, 25 July – 28 August
Bayreuth is a special destination for many music-lovers who flock like pilgrims to the Green Hill (Grüner Hügel) on top of which the Richard Wagner Festival theatre is visible from afar. It is the only building in the world where Wagner's works sound the way they were originally conceived by the Maestro himself - it was designed and constructed with special acoustic needs for the orchestra, singers and listeners in mind. The Bayreuther Festspiele programme consists exclusively of Wagner's operas.
Gone are the days when the organisers of Bayreuther Festspiele were only interested in the musical qualities of the production - and the festival was deservedly labelled by the critics 'a moth-ridden relic'. The final years of life and tenure of the legendary Festspiele director Wolfgang Wagner already saw radical transformations of the festival's face: the list of luminaries invited to stage Wagner's operas at Bayreuth included the likes of the German action artist, stage and screen director Christoph Schlingensief, the great Swiss director Christoph Marthaler and the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. The latter, however, was forced to give up his plan of staging 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' on Green Hill due to health problems.
The current co-directors of Bayreuther Festspiele Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier carry on the trend developing Bayreuth as a platform for ambitious director's theatre and daring to experiment with some genuinely out-there opera productions. The season before last saw the media unprecedentedly call for the new production of 'Tannhäuser' to be taken off the playbill, a first in the history of Bayreuther Festspiele. The failure of the director Sebastian Baumgarten as well as the set designer Joep van Lieshout's scenography that was deemed visually striking yet disastrous for the sound chemistry of the stage designed by Wagner - the special trajectory of the sound which, released by the instruments, hits the orchestra pit ceiling to rebound and emerge to the stage where it encounters the singers' voices and moves on to the auditorium to meet the listeners - were cited as the reasons.
And yet the festival's co-directors are not giving in. 'Tannhäuser' will be performed again at this year's festival under the baton of Axel Kober.
As for the main event - the new production of the 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' tetralogy of the world's re-creation marking Wagner's bicentenary - it was entrusted by the Wagner sisters to the grand master of avant-garde, the great deconstructor Frank Castorf, with the only condition that he does not interfere with the musical scores. After a suitably long period of reflection, Castorf accepted the invitation, not before making sure he is given a rotary stage and a licence to use film projections in his production. In an interview for the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper, the director has revealed that his travel in space and time begins after World War Two when the big battle for oil was beginning to determine the balance of power in the modern world; the rotary stage will serve as a means to connect the East and the West.
Are we to see Wotan pelted with pickled herrings and helpings of Russian salad - a normal sight in the anarchistic landscape of life as seen by Castorf - remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, though: the tolerance of the spectator who, as likely as not, has been waiting for his ticket to a performance of a Wagner opera - any Wagner opera - for ten years or so, will be severely tested.
The place on the podium will be taken by Kirill Petrenko, one of the greatest living opera interpreters.
This year's Bayreuther Festspiele will also feature a production of 'Lohengrin' as interpreted by the Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons; the stage concept - a lab of ratmen - is created by the director Hans Neuenfels with Klaus Florian Vogt, one of the world's greatest Lohengrins, starring in the title role.
Tickets to the Bayreuth Festival, regardless of the featured creative teams and singer ensembles, are always sold out. Festival-goers accordingly make the appropriate effort with their appearance: it is the best-dressed gathering of theatre and music lovers in Germany. And yet - even in the hyper-elitist Bayreuth people happen to have an extra entrance card or two to sell.
Programme: www.bayreuther-festspiele.de
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