This morning, still without a ticket for tonight's Bayreuth Lohengrin, I settled on the last resort - box office returns on the day. There are other websites around which will tell you this is a great method of securing a ticket if you don't mind queuing. Maybe that was true a few years back, but it wasn't my experience.
I arrived at the box office, which is situated to the side of the Festpielhaus, shortly before it opened at 1.30. There were around 20 people in front of me. The doors opened; one ticket for Lohengrin was available. It went to the first in line, one half of a couple who had been waiting since early morning. Two tickets for Thursday's Meistersinger were also quickly snapped up.
And that was it.
Between 1.30 and 4.00, when the performance began, there were no more returns. So only one person got in via the official route.
The previous day, I was told, was even worse - no tickets were returned at all.
So to anyone counting on picking up tickets on the day - be warned.
A question arises though. 2,000-odd tickets for each show are distributed more than six months in advance. Surely some of those customers can't make it. What happens to their tickets? I suspect the majority are passed on to friends and family. Sometimes they're returned days earlier (as with the Meistersinger tickets mentioned above), sometimes they're sold privately by the owners (the husband of a woman in the queue had lucked out that way the previous day).
But there are also 'other' channels in the form of Bayreuth's notorious touts, who operate flagrantly right under the noses of the Festival management. Some of the mournful-looking folk wandering around with Suche Karte signs are in fact touts or their agents, hoping to snap up unwanted tickets from festivalgoers at face value, then sell them on with a markup. One of the best-known touts is pictured below. He parks his bike just yards away from the box office shortly before each performance to ply his wares. But even he didn't have much to offer today.
Another well-known tout had approached us earlier. He wouldn't accept my companion's final offer of €500, and later claimed his two tickets had been sold for €660 and €1,000.
So, the message is clear. Unless you're feeling lucky, or willing to pay way over the odds, don't bother with Bayreuth unless you've got a ticket.
(I will post later on how to improve your chances of getting a ticket through the regular routes).
He looks like a real menace to society - a right Bavarian bruiser with LIEBE and HASS tatooed across his fingers no doubt...
Posted by: Keith Mcdonnell | 03 August 2010 at 10:13 PM