Intermezzo

Herheim vs Bayreuth

Asked by the German newspaper B.Z. if he'd contemplate a return to Bayreuth, Stefan Herheim was noncommittal. But you hardly have to read between the lines to garner his feelings about the current regime.

Conditions have changed since he began staging Parsifal there in the Wolfgang Wagner days, he said, and are sometimes very disappointing.  A lot of good traditions have been done away with. The Wagner sisters seem unable to reach a working consensus with artistic and production staff . The sort of thing that was achieved there a few years ago there is barely possible now.

"Hopefully" he concluded "this is only a transitional phase". Whatever that means.

Bayreuth loses its Brunnhilde

More problems for Bayreuth's 2013 Ring cycle.

Director and conductor are finally on board (the latter only three weeks ago) but the Festival now finds itself without a Brünnhilde following Angela Denoke's withdrawal.

With Wagner sopranos in short supply and all the best ones already spoken for,  finding a replacement will not be easy. 

Thielemann takes over Bayreuth Tannhauser

Christian Thielemann is to conduct Tannhäuser at this year's Bayreuth Festival after last year's conductor Thomas Hengelbrock failed to sign a new contract with Festival management.

The presence of Germany's most popular conductor on the podium will undoubtedly reduce the risk of embarrassingly empty seats for Sebastian Baumgarten's 'controversial' (i.e.'crap') production, which debuted last year.

Thielemann is also down for a brand new production of Der fliegende Holländer.  If he carries on with both next year, then the addition of Rienzi to his schedule will make him one of the busiest Bayreuth conductors since Heinz Tietjen in1934.

Frank Castorf reveals his Bayreuth Ring plans

There will be a revolving stage. There will be film. But there won't be any cuts or rewrites. Renowned deconstructionist Frank Castorf hesitated to accept a job where he wouldn't be allowed to tinker with the script, as is his usual practice. But conductor Kirill Petrenko and the two Wagner sisters stood firm. So a clause has been included in Castorf's contract for directing Bayreuth's 2013 Ring cycle - Wagner's words and music remain intact.

Interviewed in Die Welt, the self-styled "Teutonic taskmaster" explains his early ideas.

He describes the story as "a journey towards the gold of our times - oil" which will start "some time after the Second World War".  East and West will be brought together on a revolving stage, which has already been designed by Aleksandar Denic. One set will be Berlin Alexanderplatz, representing postmodern socialism. As the stage turns, Wall Street will appear.  Castorf isn't aiming for clear conclusions,  and admits he doesn't know yet exactly where he's going, but he says he's having fun finding out.

Bayreuth ticket giveaway is not illegal

So, Katharina Wagner's not going to jail. Not yet anyway.

The German Staatsanwaltschaft (federal prosecutor) has ruled that it's not criminal for the Bayreuth Festival to hand out free tickets. Giving them away to the media and people in the art and culture field, as Bayreuth does,  is OK. As is providing seats for "persons whose presence must be viewed as an advertising medium for the future popularity of the Wagner Festival" - or politicians and assorted micro-slebs.

In other words, while the Bayreuth Festspielhaus is crumbling away for lack of repair funds, while Cologne Opera is labouring under a massive deficit, and while music institutions across Germany are feeling the pinch, the German government has frittered away money merely to prove Bayreuth operates exactly the same ticketing privileges as any other opera house.

The inquiry was initiated last year by the German Bundesrechnungshof  (federal audit office), which is responsible for monitoring government spending. The auditors were concerned that a chunk of Bayreuth's sought-after tickets go to the Friends Society (at full price), with a small proportion given away, leaving 'only' 70% for the general public.

But it's hard to understand why the investigation ever made it as far as the courts. Public subsidies only cover around a third of the Festival's costs, the Friends provide nearly as much funding as the state, and many other opera houses have a far smaller public allocation (around 20% at Covent Garden).  Viewed in this light, Bayreuth's ticket policy looks positively generous, a practical compromise between the need to fund an expensive festival and Richard Wagner's utopian dream of free tickets for everyone.

What the auditors have failed to grasp is that opera is not, never has been and never will be value for money.  The economics of opera would be best modelled by raking a load of banknotes into a heap and setting fire to it.  As, it seems, would the economics of auditing.

Bayreuth 2013 - Wagner's early operas - schedule and ticket details

By the time he had Tannhäuser in the bag, Wagner had grown to dismiss his three earliest operas as unrepresentative of his true talents. That's one of the reasons they've never been part of the Bayreuth Festival. The other of course is that they're (shhhh!) not that good.

Nevertheless.....every Wagner completist will be keen to catch Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi when Bayreuth celebrates Wagner's 200th birthday next year in collaboration with Oper Leipzig.

Bayreuth Festival goes to the cinema

 

The Bayreuth Festival plans to broadcast opera live to cinemas, Katharina Wagner has said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. Over a hundred German movie houses are included in the plans, and there are discussions with cinemas in Switzerland, Austria and (yay!) Great Britain too.

 

The first broadcast will be Stefan Herheim's Parsifal on 11 August, accompanied by a break feature with Klaus Florian Vogt and Katharina Wagner.  She expects tickets to cost €27-32.

Lars von Trier finally to direct at Bayreuth?

So why did Lars von Trier really pull out of directing the 2006 Bayreuth Ring cycle?

According to Christian Thielemann, interviewed in Corriere della Sera, there were - contrary to rumour - no director/conductor clashes. Von Trier's  problem was purely physical he says; the required three months of hard graft was more than his health could cope with.

Indeed the Wagnerphile director may yet debut on the Green Hill.  A "less demanding work" is right now under consideration by Thielemann and Katharina Wagner.

No more Bayreuth tickets for Wagner Societies

Some people will always find it easier to land a Bayreuth ticket than others. 

For the rest of us, joining a Wagner Society has long been a good way of improving your scoring chances.  Every year the Festival granted them a special allocation (I understand around 10% of the total tickets) for distribution amongst their members.

No more.

Wagner Societies all around the world have received an unwelcome Xmas present - a letter from the Bayreuth Festival informing them the allocation is to be withdrawn with immediate effect. That means no tickets for the 2012 Festival.  No more tickets will be set aside for tour operators either.

The move follows criticism from local and national government funding bodies, concerned that after all the special societies, sponsors, guests and so on were taken care of, less than half the tickets were left for the general public.

According to Festival management:

 "The modifications to ticket allocation procedure have been made following investigations conducted by the Bavarian General Accounting Office and the German Federal Court of Auditors, which are responsible for the Bayreuth Festival. The reports criticized certain measures in ticket allocation and proposed clear conditions to bring about tangible and lasting changes in order to introduce greater fairness in the allocation of tickets and excluding as far as possible the preferential treatment of certain groups or individuals and to improve transparency."

The news will come as a blow to anyone who joined a Wagner Society purely in the hope of netting a ticket. On the plus side, your chances via the public ballot must surely be improved.

Bayreuth 2013 - Wagner goes Rap

The Bayreuth Festival today announced the first details of its programme for 2013, the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner's birth.

The 2013 programme is specifically designed to include young people, said Katharina Wagner. Of the operaphobic variety, it appears. The "Wagner goes rap" project invites teenagers to create a rap based on a Wagner libretto.  A film competition invites entrants to wish Wagner a hpayy birthday. And the Festival's anniversary partner, the Leipzig Opera, has commissioned a biographical musical about Wagner - but it won't include any of his own music.

Also on the bicentenary menu are Wagner's early works Rienzi, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot. These will be performed not in the Festspielhaus itself (Wagner didn't want them included in the Festival), but in Leipzig and at the Bayreuth Oberfrankenhalle.

First out the bag is Wagner's earliest opera, Die Feen, which will be shown at the Leipzig Opera House in February 2013 under the baton of music director Ulf Schirmer. It's followed on 7 July by Rienzi, with Christian Thielemann conducting, then on 8 July Das Liebesverbot conducted by Constantin Trinks, both in Oberfrankenhalle Bayreuth. Die Feen will be performed in concert in Bayreuth in July, and Das Liebesverbot will travel to Leipzig Opera House. All performances will feature the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig.

On the exact date of the composer's 200th birthday, 22 May 2013, Christian Thielemann and the orchestra of the Bayreuth Festival will join various soloists for a birthday concert at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Afterwards we are promised "a big birthday celebration".

Frank Castorf signs up for Bayreuth Ring - at last

Three months after negotiations were first aired, Frank Castorf has finally signed up to direct Bayreuth's 2013 Ring Cycle, it was announced earlier today.

Siemens pull the plug on Bayreuth Festival

The Bayreuth Festival has lost its main corporate sponsor, Siemens. 

For the past four years, the German electrical giant has funded the free public big-screen viewing in Bayreuth and the related internet broadcast, to the tune of nearly 1 million euros per season.  But now Siemens want to "follow a new path",  so there's no more money from 2012 onwards.

Unless the Festival can come up with a new sponsor,  and quickly, this means curtains for the hotly-anticipated screening of Stefan Herheim's Parsifal in 2012.

Festival management are on holiday and unavailable for comment.

Bayreuth 2012 tickets go digital

The 2011 Bayreuth Festival drew to a close yesterday with the customary announcement about next year.

Tickets will be sold online for the first time, with registration from 15 September 2011 on http://ticket.btfs.de. As anyone who has experienced the town of Bayreuth's shaky internet connection will appreciate, this is a bolder move than it may first appear.

This year the 57,750 available tickets attracted 320,000 requests - a number I suspect will increase exponentially when they're just a keyboard tap away. If you're lucky enough to score seats in 2012, you can, again for the first time, pay by credit card. Hello 21st century.

Preliminary programme and casting details were also released - most of these had already trickled out anyway. The 2012 festival opens with a new Der Fliegende Holländer on 25 July 2012. Jan Philipp Gloger directs and Christian Thielemann conducts. Evgeny Nikitin makes his Bayreuth debut in the title role, Senta is Adrianne Pieczonka with Franz-Josef Selig as Daland, Michael King as Erik and Benjamin Bruns as the helmsman.

Stefan Herheim's Parsifal returns, with Philippe Jordan taking over conducting duties from Daniele Gatti. On 5 August 2012 it will be streamed live, with a DVD appearing in due course.

The remainder of the programme comprises the current productions Tristan und Isolde, directed by Christoph Marthaler and conducted by Peter Schneider, Lohengrin, directed by Hans Neuenfels with Andris Nelsons conducting, and Tannhäuser by Sebastian Baumgarten, with Thomas Hengelbrock wielding the baton.

Bayreuth also released the entirely superfluous statistic that all of this year's productions were sold out. At least some things will never change.

Lohengrin al fresco

 

Over 10,000 people crowded into a square in central Bayreuth earlier today to watch a free transmission of Lohengrin, live from the Festspielhaus just up the road. A 180-square-foot video wall provided a crystal-clear picture for spectators, who came equipped with folding chairs, picnics and blankets - and umbrellas of course.

Images from nine remote cameras were complemented by close-ups pre-recorded during the July dress rehearsal. 86 speakers dotted around the square provided Festspielhaus-style surround sound. 

Around 40,000 more people (including yours truly) watched the live webstream - pictures and sound were excellent, and Manuel Brug's perceptive interviews with the cast and production team filled the long intervals.

Those who watched the delayed live stream on the ARTE TV channel weren't so lucky. The picture broke up after 25 minutes and the broadcaster switched to an old Anna Netrebko documentary while they sorted things out. Oops.

 

Lights.....Camera.....Rats !

The Bayreuth Festival's rat-packed Lohengrin is comin atcha live on Sunday.  For 14.90 €, you have the choice of watching the live stream and/or picking up the recording at any time between 15 and 30 August - once only.

The production, conductor Andris Nelsons, and a cast which includes Klaus Florian Vogt, Annette Dasch and Petra Lang have all been widely praised by critics.

Kick off is 4pm CET (don't forget that's 3pm in the UK), and because it's live there will be the Bayreuth-standard one hour breaks between acts.

It's a good idea to sign up well beforehand, as you need to try a test stream first.

Free tickets for Bayreuth Festival

This year's new production of Tannhäuser at Bayreuth features an innovation more often seen in fringe theatre - an onstage audience.

These aren't actors or extras but actual punters. So just who are the lucky sods who got to watch the opera at close range?

The man who gets Bayreuth tickets every year

 
An interview with a typical Bayreuth regular in the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung confirms what I discovered last year about the best way to get tickets for the Festival.

Axel Zumstrull has visited for five years in a row as member of the Society of Friends of Bayreuth. He explains how the Society receives a quota of tickets and distributes them amongst its members. The annual subscription is 205€ - "less than half the cost of a gym membership," he points out. And he doesn't even make any additional donation (which is believed to help). Although he doesn't always get the exact performances he wants, he increases his chances by ordering more tickets than he needs.

As I discussed in an earlier post, the German government bodies which help fund the Festival are not at all happy with the allocation to the Society, even though it pays around a quarter of the Festival's costs in return for receiving around a quarter of the tickets. Compare that with Covent Garden, who allocate up to three quarters of tickets to Friends for a much smaller proportion of funding.

Mr Zumstrull, needless to say, finds the government's criticism "totally unjustified."

Eco- Tannhauser opens Bayreuth Festival - in photos

The 2011 Bayreuth Festival opened last night with a new production of Tannhäuser directed by Sebastian Baumgarten and conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock.

Lars Cleveman took the title role, with Camilla Nylund as Elizabeth, Stephanie Friede as Venus, Guenther Groissböck as the Landgrave and Michael Nagy as Wolfram von Eschenbach.

The staging, according to Bloomberg's Catherine Hickley, "transposes Wartburg castle to an organic waste recycling plant and features a pregnant Venus living in a cage with giant tadpoles and furry, ape-like nymphs." In true Bayreuth style, it was expensively accoutred, extensively rehearsed, and greeted with a hail of boos at the end.

Can Frank Castorf save Bayreuth's Ring?

After days of rumours, the Bayreuth Festival confirmed today that they have asked the 60 year old Berlin theatre director Frank Castorf to direct the bicentenary Ring in 2013. It's not yet in the bag, but contract negotiations are under way - the same point at which their earlier choice, Wim Wenders, dropped out of the running. Castorf however is unlikely to demand 3D filming - the sticking point with Wenders. It appears the final step will be the selection of a production team.

Two years is not a long time in opera, so they're racing the clock now whoever is chosen.

Castorf is either an interesting choice or a desperate one. A radical deconstructionist, some regard him as an iconoclastic genius, others as a spent force. Having spent his whole life in the theatre, he only turned to opera five years ago. Typically, his Meistersinger was cut down, chopped up, and performed - in a theatre - by actors and locals rather than trained opera singers.

At least Castorf's past suggests that whatever he creates can't be as deadly dull as the Tankred Dorst production it replaces.

Bayreuth Lohengrin live on TV

For the first time ever a Bayreuth Festival production is to be shown live on TV.

The French/German channel ARTE will broadcast Hans Neuenfels' Lohengrin (the rat-infested production which debuted last year) live on 14 August. Klaus Florian Vogt takes the title role, Annette Dasch is Elsa and Andris Nelsons conducts.

It's not clear at this stage whether the broadcast will be streamed on the ARTE website as well.