2023-07-06 13:33:04
Christian Thielemann shaped the Bayreuth Festival for a quarter of a century. This year he is no longer there for the first time and now dares to take a look at the Green Hill from the outside.
Munich/Bayreuth.
“It’s an interesting and funny feeling at the same time,” says Christian Thielemann. Actually, he would probably have been on the Green Hill in Bayreuth by now, rehearsing there and also residing a little. But instead he is sitting in a hotel in Munich, where he is preparing for performances with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and is now daring to take a look at Germany’s most famous opera spectacle from the outside.
Because he is facing a special summer – one without the Bayreuth Festival. For the first time in many years, the 64-year-old is no longer there. “I spent 25 years of my life, more precisely 25 summers, in Bayreuth, 22 of which I conducted myself, even if you don’t look at me,” he says in an interview with the German Press Agency and laughs. “And in those 22 years I directed 185 performances. That’s a lot.”
“After “Lohengrin” a high point was reached”
“A very good balance sheet,” he’s not the only one to say – and it sounds a little conclusive, even if he says it wasn’t meant that way. “No. But it depends on the cast. On the directors and above all on the singers. If something comes up, you’re happy to do it. But after we had finished our fantastic “Lohengrin”, a high point was reached.”
It’s not that he wasn’t offered anything – “but for the first time in my life and with a heavy heart I had to say no”. His Dresden Staatskapelle is celebrating a birthday and the boss is indispensable.
Nothing is currently planned for 2024 on the Green Hill with Thielemann, who has been rid of his position as music director of the festival since 2020. There hasn’t really been any talk of an official post of any kind on the Green Hill for a long time.
Bayreuth debut in the summer of 2000
Bayreuth was always more than just a place of work for Thieleman. For him, the long-standing festival director Wolfgang Wagner, who died in 2010, was more of a foster father than a boss. Thielemann made his Bayreuth debut in the summer of 2000 with the “Meistersinger von Nürnberg”. Since then, he has “shaped the festival every year with standard-setting interpretations,” as the festival website puts it.
He is considered one of the best Wagner interpreters in the world and – with one exception in 2011 – has not missed a festival year in the past two decades. Thielemann is only the second conductor after Felix Mottl (1856-1911) to conduct all ten Wagner operas performed in Bayreuth on the Green Hill. In 2010 he became the festival’s musical advisor and five years later music director.
Criticism of Thielemann: “a soap bubble”
However, there were always reports that Thielemann was rather undiplomatic towards fellow conductors and was criticized for interfering unduly in their work.
Last year was the star conductor, who will remain until 2024 Head of the Staatskapelle Dresden and is now being discussed as the successor to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera, has come under criticism for an allegedly very rough tone in his work in Bayreuth.
He is said to have yelled at and insulted musicians – an accusation that the conductor vehemently rejected at the time: “There is absolutely nothing to it,” he said, speaking of a “misunderstanding”.
“It was terrible,” he says in a dpa interview a year later. “In the end it was completely clear that it was a bubble that burst quickly. But you see how hysterical some discussions are.” In many houses he “noticed borderline situations, but nothing about real abuse of power,” says Thielemann. “It was more of a rehearsal crash and shouting.”
Bychkov and Gatti instead of Thielemann
The Bayreuth Festival has, so to speak, found a replacement for Thielemann and will bring in the renowned conductors Semjon Bytschkow and Daniele Gatti in the coming years. Bychkov is to conduct a new production of “Tristan und Isolde” in 2024, Gatti in 2025 the “Meistersinger von Nürnberg”.
With Nathalie Stutzmann, the second woman in the festival face is on the podium this year – after the Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv, who made her debut on the hill in 2021. It is still unclear what plans there are for the big festival anniversary in 2026. But new times seem to be dawning in Bayreuth.
“I have to say that a view of Bayreuth from the outside is good sometimes,” says Thielemann. “Now let the others go. I think it’s very good that fresh people are at work.” (dpa)
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