Festival of Bayreuth

Bayreuther Festspiele

The Festival of Bayreuth ( Bayreuther Festspiele ) is a festival of opera founded in 1876 by Richard Wagner and devoted to the execution of its ten principal operas. It is held each summer with the Palais of the festivals (Festspielhaus) of Bayreuth, in Bavaria, a theater designed by Wagner to be able to carry out its particular design of the lyric work like “total work of art”.

It is about the one of the festivals of the most prestigious classical music of the world, which attracts each year on the “Hill crowned” of Wagnerian of which some had to wait years to obtain an entry, demand being more than eight times higher than. This success, which could appear surprising for a festival having with its repertory only ten operas inlassablement put back on the stocks, is explained at the same time by the great quality of the settings in scenes, the scandal which accompanied certain the three last decades productions, and the prestige of a place conceived by Wagner itself.

History

Origin

The Festival of Bayreuth was born from the will of Richard Wagner to create a place and a mode of production suitable for carry out its design of one opera of the future conceived like one total work of art ().

Wagner also sought to ensure its financial and artistic independence. An estrangement with its guard and patron, the king Louis II of Bavaria, caused its disgrace and its departure of Munich, where he had initially thought of installing his festival. It planned to fix it at Nuremberg, city which it had honoured in its opera the Masters Singers with Nuremberg . However, on the council of the leader Hans Richter, it was interested in the town of Bayreuth, in Franconie, which joined together three great advantages:

a considered theater, the Opera of the Margraves (Markgräfliches Opernhaus), built between 1745 and 1748, whose size and good acoustics were supposed to be able to be appropriate for its projects.
a localization out of the areas in which it had yielded its rights on the representations of its works in 1864 because of financial problems.
the absence of real cultural life likely to compete with the artistic control which he sought, which ensured it that its festival would be the principal cultural event of the city.

In April 1870, Wagner and his wife Cosima go to Bayreuth. They are disappointed by their visit of the Opera, designed for formations baroques and unsuited to the settings in complex scenes and the full orchestras required by a Wagnerian production. However the municipality is declared ready to help Wagner to build an entirely new theater, and dates it from the first festival is fixed at 1873. Having failed spring 1871 to convince the imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to finance its projects, Wagner starts a round in concerts through Germany. It also launches a public subscription whose result is however disappointing. To finance its future festival and its theater, Wagner, on the suggestion of its admiror and friendly Emil Heckel, encourages the creation of a certain number of supposed Wagner Companies to take part in the subscription. It is created some in particular with Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna.

It appears however clear with the end of the year 1872 that Wagner failed to raise the required funds to the organization of a festival, in spite of the assistance of the Companies which insist on its statute of musician of the new Germany. A new call to Bismarck in August 1873 fails. In last spring, Wagner calls upon its former Louis patron of Bavaria which, in spite of their quarrel passed, makes him gift in January 1874 of 100.000 Taler S.

The first stone of the Festspielhaus, conceived according to a plan of Gottfried Semper, is posed the May 22nd 1874. The first festival, planned for 1875, must finally be pushed back with 1876. It must see the first integral representation of the tetralogy the Ring of Nibelung , the first two operas having previously been created with Munich on the insistence of Louis II, and the two last being given in world creation.

First years

The first festival at the summer 1876, for the first complete representation of the Ring of the 13 to the August 17th, is a social and cultural phenomenon. Bayreuth accommodates this year the emperors Guillaume I {{er}} of Germany and Pierre II of Brazil, like Louis of Bavaria which keeps its secret visit, probably not to meet the emperor, and of many artists commes the type-setters Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Piotr Tchaïkovski and Franz Liszt. Great artistic success, the festival is however a financial disaster, which pushes Wagner to give up the idea of a second session the next summer and to give a series in concerts to London for raising funds. The first years will be difficult and the festival will be able to be maintained only thanks to State grants and the Wagnerian ones, the first of which Louis of Bavaria. A second festival takes place in 1882, for the creation of Parsifal the July 26th.

As of the beginning, the leaders and the Chanteur the S most talented of the world come in Bayreuth, some without seal. Hans Richter directs the Ring of 1876, with as assistant the young person Engelbert Humperdinck, familiar of the Wagner. In 1882, in spite of sound anti-semitism proven, Wagner chooses for the creation of Parsifal the Jewish chief Hermann Levi; this one will return regularly to the desk of Festspielhaus during the two following decades. Felix Mottl, which is used the festival of 1876 for 1901, directs the entry to the repertory of Tristan and Isolde in 1886.

The reign of Cosima

After the death of Richard Wagner in 1883, Cosima, helped soon by their son Siegfried, attempts to maintain the festival and the program on a bi-annual rate/rhythm . It directs it from 1883 to 1908, date on which Siegfried succeeds to him, but it remains the heart of the Palate of the festivals until its death in 1930. Siegfried survives to him only of a few months.

Cosima makes festival a celebration of the worship of her late husband. The productions - settings in scenes, decorations and costumes - are preserved in the state and are programmed festival after festival. Until the Years 1920, the word of the Master is law on the Hill crowned, until its insistence on the use of animal truths on the scene, of the Oie S with Fricka, a Crapaud for Alberich, of the corbel X with Wotan, a Ours with Siegfried; however the dragon of act II of Siegfried is traditionally a forgery. The Girls of the Rhine, in the first table of the Gold of the Rhine , are shown “swimming” thanks to a system of cables attached to the ceiling.

Cosima also works to make respect the thirty years privilege obtained by the Festival for Parsifal . It cannot however prevent the Metropolitan Opera of New York from assembling it as of 1903, but will banish (“will excommunicate”, will say some) Festival the singers who will face his prohibition of a representation out of Festspielhaus. Parsifal falls into the public domain in 1912.

Bayreuth under national-socialisme

In the Years 1920, Winifred Wagner, wife of Siegfried Wagner and director of the Festival starting from 1930, meets Adolf Hitler of which it becomes a personal friend and a convinced support. Hitler is as of this time a close friend of the Wagner family, so much so that the children call it “uncle Wolf” and than rumors of marriages with Winifred, widow since 1930, run in 1933, after its accession at the station of Chancelier of the '' Reich ''. It is thanks to its support that the Festival can be maintained during the Third Reich and, according to Winifred, to preserve its “artistic independence”; Besides Hitler attends representations in which take part of the Jewish or foreign artists, a long time after they were banished other German theaters. Hitler shows such an amount of admiration for Wagner and so much veneration towards its family and her Festival which he wrote at the request of Winifred to the Italian Leader Arturo Toscanini, however a antifascist solved, to request it to take the head of the Festival, which Toscanini refused.

The Années 1930 however see an artistic renewal for the Festival. The decorations and costumes of Parsifal , unchanged since creation in 1882, if were deteriorated that the safety of the representations was not ensured any more and that Winifred decides in 1933 to assemble an entirely new production. In spite of the protests of Toscanini, Richard Strauss and certain family members Wagner, Winifred, with the approval of Hitler, engages the intendant of the Opéra of State of Berlin Hans Tietjen for a new production in 1934, in decorations of Alfred Roller and Emil Preetorius. Tietjen and Preetorius will carry out the other productions of this decade, except for the Parsifal of 1937 whose decorations were signed by the young person Wieland Wagner, oldest son of Winifred.

During the Second world war, the Festival is made available to the Nazi party and the representations reserved starting from 1940 at soldiers wounded at the face, guests of the Führer . the Masters Singers , easily détournable in the direction of a Propaganda ultra-nationalist, are only work with the poster in 1943 and 1944.

New Bayreuth

The Bayreuth workshop

After the death of Wieland in 1966, Wolfgang preserves the direction of the festival, but not being able to only take care of all the administrative and artistic aspects, it starts in the Années 1970 to invite a certain number of directors in what it calls the Werkstatt Bayreuth (Bayreuth workshop). It thus aims at giving to the most innovative directors of the moment the possibility of presenting radically new visions of works of his grandfather. This change makes it possible the Festival to be rather renewed than to take again the same productions during decades. The scenario writer Ingmar Bergman, although made credible by Trollflöjten , his televised version of the Magic Flute of Mozart in 1975 for the Swedish television, declines a proposal to become director.

The most famous production of this time, and perhaps of all the history of the Festival, is the “Ring centenary”, presented in 1976, at the time of the centenary of the festival and the twenty-fifth birthday of reopening, by a French team made up of the director Patrice Chéreau, of the leader Pierre Boulez, of the decorator Richard Peduzzi and the costumier Jacques Schmidt. Making tetralogy a reading taking its source in socialist youth of Wagner, Chéreau the watch like a comment of the exploitation of the working class by the having classes of the 19th century and a denunciation of corrupting gold. If its setting in scene because a scandal at the time of the first representations in 1976, it finally gained the approval of all the public of the festival, and was greeted by eighty-five minutes of applause and hundred liftings of curtain at the time of the last representation, in 1980.

Also took part in the “Bayreuth workshop” the French Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Sir Peter Hall of the Royal Shakespeare Company, like Götz Friedrich and Harry Kupfer of the Deutsche Staatsoper of Berlin. On the long run, the decision of Wolfgang Wagner to invite innovative directors led to a deep renewal of the festival and its maintenance like spearhead of the Wagnérisme.

In 1973, the Festival and its buildings (Festspielhaus and Villa Wahnfried) are transferred to the Foundation Richard-Wagner de Bayreuth, whose Board of directors gathers Wagner family members and representatives of the State. Wolfgang Wagner becomes president about it.

Bayreuth at the beginning of the 21e century

In 2006, the Festival is always directed by Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the type-setter, who is maintained at his station although the board of directors of the Richard-Wagner-Siftung has in 2001 elected his daughter Eva Wagner-Pasquier to succeed to him starting from 2002; it rejected this election, causing the withdrawal of Eva, and intends to transmit the direction to his wife Gudrun and their daughter Katharina. Nike Wagner, girl of Wieland, also made application form. The possibility that a not-Wagner reaches the head of the Festival was also evoked.

The Festival maintains without difficulty its success: there are approximately five hundred and thousand requests for fifty-eight the thousand places put on sale each summer, that is to say more than eight requests per place. The Kartenbüro (office of the tickets) allots the places according to a system of waiting list, with however a priority for the members of certain Wagnerian circles and the patrons. The latency can vary between five and ten years according to the seniority of the production and the opera concerned.

A new production of the tetralogy the Ring of Nibelung is created all the five to seven years, after one year without tetralogy; the last (by Tankred Dorst) has just been presented to the summer 2006. Among the six other operas with the repertory, three are programmed the years of tetralogy, and the five years without tetralogy.

In July 2007, Katharina Wagner presented a setting in scene of the Maîtres Singers which caused the anger of part of the public. This setting in scene reverses the usual approach and makes of Beckmesser an artist of avant-garde while Sachs and Walther are found in the camp of the conservatives. This approach is founded on an analysis of the partition by the musicologist Gerd Rienäcker (for him, the role of Beckmesser " musical innovations frappantes" contains; who announce Berg and Stravinski) and of the booklet by the type-setter Ernest Bloch who sees in the diversion of the text of Sachs " something like the birth of Dada".

Repertory

The ten operas of maturity of Wagner are played Festival of Bayreuth:

the Ghost ship (1843)
Tannhäuser (1845)
Lohengrin (1848)
Tristan and Isolde (1859)
the Masters Singers of Nuremberg (1867)
the Ring of Nibelung

the Gold of the Rhine (1856)
the Valkyrie (1857)
Siegfried (1871)
the Twilight of the gods (1874)

Parsifal (1882)

The Ninth Symphony (1824) of Beethoven is the only work of the repertory of the festival not to be composed by Wagner; it is sometimes given as a concert of opening. The Festival moreover programmed six exceptional concerts since its creation.

It is question of opening the repertory with the operas of youth of Wagner, the Fairies (1833), Defense to like (1836) and Rienzi (1837), even with lyric works having influenced it, like Fidelio (1814) of Beethoven or Der Freischütz (1821) of Weber.

Formations

The festival has of a chorus and a Orchestre especially made up, which ensure all the representations.

Orchestrates

The Orchestra of the Festival of Bayreuth ( Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele ) is composed members of the full orchestras of German-speaking space; it is gradually renewed each year.

Chorus

The Chorus of the Festival of Bayreuth ( Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele ) was made up in its current structure in 1951. It is renewed same manner as the orchestra.

Wieland Wagner, on the council of Herbert von Karajan, which directed at the time of this first festival, entrusted the recruitment and the preparation of the choruses to Wilhelm Pitz. Pitz quickly did of it one of the best choruses of operas of the world, so much so that the producer Walter Legge urged it to direct his Philharmonia Chorus.

After the retirement of Pitz in 1971, Norbert Balatsch, Master of the choruses to the Opera of State of Vienna, succeeds the following year to him.

Uses

The Festival can be allowed to adapt the course of its representations to the duration of the operas of Wagner. Thus the spectacles start in middle of afternoon and are intersected by one hour intervals, which make it possible the public to take a collation at the restaurant of the festival or on the Hill (the Bratwurst is of rigor), and with the singers to rest their voice. This last point is particularly important, because the talent of a Wagnerian singer also consists with to hold the distance ; for example, many Sachs arrive exhausted at the act III of the Maîtres Singers , which however reserves two purple passages to them.

The public is recalled after each interval by a brass band, played by coppers of the orchestra since the balcony located on the gantry, which is an arrangement of a leitmotiv of the opera to the program. The reason is played once fifteen minutes before the recovery, twice ten minutes front, and three times five minutes front, with a variation after the last.

See too

Source

External bonds

Festival of Bayreuth
Database of the interpreters since creation
the Councils to obtain a place

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