2023-08-25 14:35:31
Bayreuth (Germany) is probably, together with Wacken, “the most german” that the European summer offers in terms of festival. The Wagnerian elite has come to Bayreuth, in Bavaria, every year for almost a century and a half, from July 25 to the end of August. Wacken, an idyllic little town in the north, is traveled in the first week of August for pure heavy metal. They are two diametrically opposed festivals of rituals – a certain etiquette in the operatic; tattoos, leather vests and other heavy aesthetics, at Wacken-. But they are somehow identifiable as representatives of “pure Germanism”, the basis of the attraction that makes them annual pilgrimage site for wagnerians or heavys from all over the world.
Both festivals, the opera and the metallic one, were shaken this 2023 by torrential storms. In Wacken, a quarter of its 85,000 faithful were left unable to access the venue, turned into a quagmire. Those who made it were covered in mud up to their eyebrows. Despite the difficulties, tickets for 2024 sold out within two hours of opening their sale.
empty seats
At Bayreuth everyone got to their seats… but some were surprised that the one next to them was empty. That the online tickets for the sessions of the “Ring of the Nibelung” He filled the comments of his intermissions –of one hour on the clock, another tradition of the house-. That this continued to be the situation until the end of the season, this August 28, already caused something more than strangeness. Until a decade ago, Bayreuth boasted of some waiting lists of up to 15 years each one of the almost 2,000 seats of the old theater built in 1872. Its season is short and absolutely coveted. With the move to online sales, the ordeal of waiting was lightened a bit. But all the contingents kept running out.
Management increased ticket prices by about 6% — the level of median inflation for 2022, the festival explained. It continues to be, however, more affordable than other equivalents -such as Salzburg–, with locations ranging from from 350 to 210 eurosaccording to categories and pieces.
Wagner and ‘formato Netflix’
Katharina Wagner, great-granddaughter of the composer and director of the festival since 2008 -first in a collegiate direction with her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier and since 2015 alone-, she designed the season that now ends under the sign of renewal. She was opened by “Parsifal” directed by Pablo Heras-Casado, the first Spaniard to direct in the mythical Bayreuth moat, after Plácido Domingo did it for “Valquiria” in 2018.
Domingo heard some boos, while Heras-Casado triumphed despite the fact that the scenic concept of “Parsifal” was the opposite of successful. The idea of his creator, Jay Scheid, to place part of the public augmented reality glasses –AR– neither those who wore them liked them –one in five– nor those who were left without them. The first, because virtual reality became a nuisance; the latter, suspecting that they might be missing something. In the end it was not clear if the privilege consisted of having the AR glasses or the opposite.
Renovators vs. Orthodox
Heras-Married he was one of the five maestros at the helm of the Bayreuth orchestra this season, all of them representatives of a generation of Wagnerian renovators. For the first time in a quarter of a century he was not running the house of Christian Thielemann. The French Nathalie Stutzmann made her debut as the Spaniard in Bayreuth and received a standing ovation from those who make history at the head of “Tannhäuser”; the Finnish Pietari Inkinen shone with the “Ring”; the Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv did it with the “Flying Dutchman” and the German Markus Porschner with “Tristan and Isolde”.
The choice of five teachers, including two women, it was a success. Katharina met the challenge of the renovation without sacrificing the festival’s hallmark, which is the exclusive worship of Wagner. As it has been since the composer built the theater for his operas in that Bavarian provincial city, financed by the Mad King, Ludwig II of Bavaria.
Why then those empty seats? The gaps afflicted above all the “Ring”, the production in ‘Netflix format’ by Valentin Schwarz that at its premiere in 2022 last unleashed thunderous boos. This year the reactions, although adverse, were less virulent. Online tickets were even offered separately for each of the tetralogy pieces, without the need to purchase the four-pack, blasphemy for Wagnerian orthodoxy.
The budget is staggering
About Bayreuth, the question hangs over whether the formula for insist only on the usual repertoire. Katharina Wagner is pending the renewal of her contract, which expires in 2025. A year later, the 150th anniversary of the festival will be commemorated. Everything would point to continuity. But financial structures they changed. And also submissions. Until now, the ‘Land’ of Bavaria, together with the federal State and the Society of Friends of Bayreuth -which brings together patrons- each had a 29% stake in the festival, which represented a contribution of 3 million of euros each. The rest was the responsibility of the city of Bayreuth.
At the end of last year, the patrons announced that they were reducing their share. Bavaria responded by raising its to 37%, the same as the federal state. While for the Bavarian government there is no doubt that it should continue to be run by “a Wagner”, for the Minister of Culture, the green Claudia Roth, it is time to question that submission. “You have to show courage and make changes to the historical structures of Bayreuth,” she recently stated.
pre-war drums
For a federal government minister to try to dictate the rules for the traditionalist festival would be an affront in other times. But Roth is as Bavarian as Bayreuth. The musical origins of the environmental minister they are closer to heavy than to opera -he was the manager and girlfriend of a member of an iconoclastic rock band called Ton Steine Scherben-. but it is asidua a Bayreuth since long before entering the tripartite between social democrats, greens and liberals of Olaf Scholz. It can be allowed to influence the debate. She is not the most illustrious Wagnerian in the German political arena. This category is reserved for Angela Merkel, who attended the festival as the head of the conservative opposition, in her 16th year as chancellor and after retiring from power. But Roth is considered part of her family.
His phrase was interpreted as the pre-announcement of another succession war. Bayreuth has always been run by a Wagner descendant or spouse of Wagner—such as Winifred Wagner, wife of Siegfried Wagner, British and worshiper of Adolf Hitler–. Katharina starred in a hard fight with successive relatives for the succession of Wolfgang Wagner, her father. She now has the struggle to renew, or not, her contract ahead of her.
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