Every day, Ricardo from Italy stands in front of the Bayreuth Opera House and holds a cardboard sign in his hands that says: “Looking for a ticket.” And in most cases he is lucky, he says: he even managed to get a ticket to the premiere of “Valkyrie” – however, without a view of the stage, but this does not matter to him. “The music is fantastic and I don’t need a stage,” says Ricardo. Moreover, according to him, he still does not understand what is happening on stage in the new productions of the Ring of the Nibelung cycle, of which Valkyrie is a part.
Around 60,000 people annually make the pilgrimage to the Green Hill in Bayreuth, where in 1876 the long-established Bayreuther Festspiele, founded by Richard Wagner exclusively for the performance of his own operas, first took place. A third of the guests this year came from abroad, mainly from the US and Japan. Those who want to buy a ticket here in the official way often have to wait in line for years. Not to mention that the tickets are not cheap.
Getting closer to a new audience
Ricardo has been coming to Bayreuth from Italy every year for 30 years in a row: he is a big fan of Wagner. Meanwhile, Sven Friedrich, director of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, notes that today the festival is also attracting more and more new fans. Last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of tickets were returned to the box office, especially from abroad. Then the festival management organized the sale of these tickets via the Internet, and many lucky ones managed to purchase the coveted one. The opportunity to buy “hot tickets” for the operas included in the program of the Bayreuth Festival via the Internet is also provided this year.
Opera House in Bayreuth
In order to reach a new audience, the Bayreuth Festival will try new formats this year as well. So, during this musical holiday, two free open-air concerts are organized – with the participation of the festival orchestra and famous opera singers. Everyone can come to the spacious lawn in the park near the opera house – you just need to take a blanket or a folding chair with you.
“We have all experienced two terrible years: first the coronavirus pandemic broke out, and now there is this terrible war,” says Katharina Wagner, director of the Bayreuth Festival, in her welcoming speech before the start of the concert.
Not just for the elite
The fact that the Wagnerian festivals in Bayreuth were originally intended not only for the “beautiful and rich”, but also for ordinary people, was forgotten over time. Meanwhile, Richard Wagner was interested in having the doors of his new opera house open to the general public. In order to attract the public, the composer used the most unusual means, as can be seen in the exhibition “VolksWagner” (“People’s Wagner”) at the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel came every year to the Bayreuth Festival (archive photo)
Wagner even went so far as to present the “Valkyrie” from the “Ring of the Nibelungen” in the circus ring. The performance involved circus acrobats and even animals. It is said that Richard Wagner liked this production. The composer then also set his sights on viewers from other countries – he personally made sure that inexpensive booklets for his operas were sold at railway stations and on sea passenger liners.
Wagner’s music in the politics of the National Socialists
The Bayreuth exhibition “VolksWagner” (an allusion to the Volkswagen car brand) tells, on the one hand, how Wagner secured his popularity, and on the other hand, how politics and advertising used his music and his works for their own purposes. Wagner wrote many theoretical works about music, but he also did not bypass politics. What are his political speeches that caused a lot of controversy, in which many saw an anti-Semitic orientation.
The sound of music from Ride of the Valkyries, the prelude to Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, accompanied Nazi newsreel footage of the landing of German paratroopers on Crete during World War II, after which Wagner’s music began to be perceived as warlike all over the world. and aggressive.
All roads lead to Bayreuth
But there are other associations with Wagner. Thus, millions of couples around the world, from the middle of the 19th century to the present day, have been married to Wagner’s march “Treulich geführt” (“Wedding Choir”) from the third act of the opera Lohengrin. It begins to be performed when the bride enters the festive hall.
In 2021, Jay Scheib presented a virtual version of Siegfried at the Bayreuth Festival
In 1977, American rock musician Meat Loaf, who was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner, released his debut studio album Bat out of Hell (“Bat from Hell”), on the cover and in the compositions of which alludes to the symbols and music of Richard Wagner. It became one of the best selling albums in the world.
Since 2017, the musical The Bat from Hell staged by American Jay Scheib has been successfully staged in Oberhausen – the same one who will take on a new version of Parsifal transferred to virtual reality at the Bayreuth Festival in 2023. Thus, the director of the festival, Katharina Wagner, wants to create another magnet for attracting new young people to the Bayreuth Festival. So all roads lead… to Bayreuth.
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