The Bayreuth Festival () is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of stage works by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle and Parsifal.
Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote, as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his works. The Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagnerians and classical-music enthusiasts."How to get tickets for the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth" on wagneropera.net Retrieved 1 July 2013
Origins The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. Wagner next considered Nuremberg, which would have reinforced the thematic significance of works such as Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. On the advice of Hans Richter, however, the focus fell upon Bayreuth which enjoyed three distinct advantages.
First, the town boasted a splendid venue: the Markgräfliches Opernhaus built for Margrave Frederick and his wife, Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine (sister of Frederick the Great) in 1747. With its ample capacity and strong acoustics, the opera house seemed a good match for Wagner's vision. Second, the town of Bayreuth was located outside those regions where Wagner no longer owned the rights to the performance of his own works, which he had sold off in 1864 in order to alleviate pressing financial concerns. Finally, the town had no cultural life that could offer competition to Wagner's own artistic dominance. The Festival, once launched, would be the dominant feature of Bayreuth's cultural landscape. In addition, "Richard Wagner did not want his works interpreted amid the hustle and noise or the distractions of a large city; he sought a place remote from the usual theatrical world where it was so quiet so that the hearers could concentrate their whole attention on the work offered, and could in the pauses refresh themselves in natural surroundings."
In April 1870, Wagner and his wife Cosima visited Bayreuth. On inspection, the opera house proved to be inadequate. It was built to accommodate the baroque orchestras of the 18th century and was therefore unsuited for the complex stagings and large orchestras that Wagner's later stage works required. Nonetheless, the burgermeisters proved open to assisting Wagner with the construction of an entirely new theatre, and the Festival was planned to launch in 1873. After a fruitless meeting in the spring of 1871 with the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to obtain funds, Wagner embarked on a fundraising tour across Germany, including Leipzig and Frankfurt.
An initial public subscription proved disappointing until Wagner, at the suggestion of his friend and admirer Emil Heckel, launched a number of Wagner Societies to increase participation in the Festival's subscription. Societies were established in Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and other places.
Despite making direct appeals based on Wagner's role as a composer of the new German Reich, the Societies and other fundraising channels were well short of the needed sum by the end of 1872. Wagner made another appeal to Bismarck in August 1873, and was again denied.
Desperate, Wagner turned to his former patron, Ludwig II, who reluctantly agreed to help. In January 1874, Ludwig granted 100,000 Thaler and construction on the theatre, designed by architect Gottfried Semper, started shortly thereafter. Semper, inspired by the classical amphitheater, built a double proscenium in the theatre, creating a necessary space between the listener's "real world" and the imaginary world that occurred on stage. Later in the construction of the theatre, architect Carl Brandt expanded Semper's double proscenium to six pairs of proscenia, and also created its amphitheater shape. Performances featured a sunken pit and dimmed lighting; it is clear that Wagner was adamant about controlling the audience's visual and aural experience during his performances. These specific considerations resulted in a delayed opening of the theatre. A planned 1875 debut was postponed for a year due to construction and other delays.
Early history
Since its opening in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival has been a socio-cultural phenomenon. The inauguration took place on 13 August 1876, with a performance of Beethoven's "Choral" Symphony, which is occasionally programmed during the festival. (It was played at the post-war reopening in 1951, and subsequently in 1953, 1954, 1963, 2001, and had been planned for the cancelled 2020 season.) Then came the first performance of Das Rheingold. Present at this unique musical event were Kaiser Wilhelm, Dom Pedro II of Brazil, King Ludwig (who attended in secret, probably to avoid the Kaiser), and other members of the nobility, as well as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who committed much effort to helping his then good friend Wagner establish the festival,Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols, Penguin Books, 2003. Translator's note (R. J. Hollingdale). and such accomplished composers as Anton Bruckner, Edvard Grieg, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Franz Liszt, and the young Arthur Foote.
Artistically, the festival was a success. ("Something has taken place at Bayreuth which our grandchildren and their children will still remember", wrote Tchaikovsky, attending the Festival as a Russian correspondent.) Financially, however, the festival was a disaster and did not begin to make money until several years later. Wagner abandoned his original plan to hold a second festival the following year, and travelled to London to conduct a series of concerts in an attempt to make up the deficit. Although the festival was plagued by financial problems in its early years, it survived through state intervention and the continued support of influential Wagnerians, including King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
Following the financial failure of the initial Bayreuth Festival, as well as Wagner's death in 1883, there was a political discourse of Wagner's works involving a disenchantment with the Reich that led to a cultural lull of the festival. The declining popularity of the current centralized government created an artistic shift away from Richard Wagner who had preemptively popularized his works amongst the German government in an attempt to gain mass popularity and recognition. This consequently led to a general lack of public interest in the festival in its early history.
From its inception, the festival has attracted leading conductors and singers, many of whom performed without pay. Among these was Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere of the Ring Cycle in 1876. Another was the talented conductor Hermann Levi, who was personally chosen by Richard Wagner to conduct the debut of Parsifal in 1882 with the assistance of the young Engelbert Humperdinck.
Following Wagner's death, his widow Cosima continued running the festival at one or, more frequently, two-year intervals. She gradually introduced the early operas which complete the Bayreuth canon of Wagner's last ten mature works. Levi, the son of a rabbi, remained the festival's principal conductor for the next two decades. Felix Mottl, who was involved with the festival from 1876 to 1901, conducted Tristan und Isolde there in 1886. Until the 1920s, performances were strictly in accordance with the traditions established under King Ludwig's patronage. Not a note was "cut" from any of the enormous scores; no concessions were made to the limits of human patience on the part of the audiences. Cosima Wagner preserved the productions of Parsifal and the Ring just as they had been in Wagner's day, defending any proposed changes with appeals to her son Siegfried: "Was this not how Papa did it in 1876?" During her era of leadership, the festival became increasingly associated with antisemitism.
After Cosima's retirement in 1906, Siegfried Wagner took over management of the festival, introducing new staging and performance styles. His early death in 1930 left the Festival in the hands of his English-born wife Winifred Wagner, with Heinz Tietjen as artistic director.
Bayreuth under Nazi Germany
In the 1920s, well before the rise of the Nazi Party, Winifred Wagner became a strong supporter and close personal friend of Adolf Hitler; her correspondence with Hitler has never been released by the Wagner family. She and other festival leaders were members of Nazi chief ideologue Alfred Rosenberg's Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, which actively suppressed modernist music and works by "degenerate" artists. The festival maintained some artistic independence under Nazi rule. Ironically, Hitler attended performances that included Jewish and foreign singers, long after they had been banned from all other venues across Germany (including homosexual heldentenor Max Lorenz, married to a well-known Jewish woman). Winifred's influence with Hitler was so strong that at her behest, he wrote a letter to anti-fascist Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, inviting him to lead the festival.Civetta, Cesare. Toscanini Defied Mussolini and Protested Against Hitler. Paragraph 6. Website: cesarecivetta.com. Toscanini, who had conducted there in 1930 and 1931, refused in 1933. From 1933 to 1942, the festival was conducted principally by Karl Elmendorff.
It was in Nazi Germany that the festival made its first break from tradition, abandoning the deteriorating 19th century sets created by Richard Wagner. Many protested at the changes, including prominent conductors such as Toscanini and Richard Strauss, and even some members of the Wagner family. In their view, any change to the festival was a profanation against "the Master" (Wagner). Nevertheless, Hitler approved of the changes, thus paving the way for more innovations in the decades to come.
During the war, the festival was turned over to the Nazi Party, which continued to sponsor performances for wounded soldiers returning from the front. These soldiers were forced to attend lectures on Wagner before the performances, and most found the festival to be tedious. However, as "guests of the Führer", none complained.
Bayreuth Memorial
During the 1970s, Winifred Wagner was repeatedly petitioned to install a memorial to the Jewish singers at the Bayreuth Festival who had been murdered in concentration camps. A plaque was finally installed honouring Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann and Henriette Gottlieb after Winifred's death.
New festival Two-thirds of the town of Bayreuth were destroyed by American bombing in the final days of World War II, taking with it the rotunda, living room and guest room of Wahnfried, though the theatre itself was undamaged. Following the war, Winifred Wagner was sentenced to probation by a war court for her support of the Nazi Party. The court also banned her from administration of the Bayreuth Festival and its assets, which fell eventually to her two sons, Wolfgang and Wieland.