Bayreuth being a small Franconian town not withstanding, it has two big tourist attractions to offer. One, to be sure, is the annual Richard Wagner Festival (and assorted 19th century Wagnerian buildings, i.e. the Festspielhaus and the Villa Wahnfried, where he lived, plus a museum next door which yes, covers all the dark sides (the antisemitism, the later Nazi fandom) along with the positives. The other tourist attraction hails from the 18th century and came to be because Frederick the Great's favourite sister Wilhelmine got married to the Margrave of Bayreuth. Wilhelmine loved music (like her brother, she both composed and played), literature and architecture and did not let the fact that her husband was ruler of a tiny principality with assorted budget detain her from leaving Bayreuth with some of the most splendid Rokoko buildings imaginable. The most important one is the opera house which is a UNESCO classified world heritage building entirely preserved in its original state:

Audience Room:



Stage:



The other is the Bayreuth Hermitage, i.e. the summer palace and surrounding park, which she didn't start but greatly enlarged and redrafted. Like the "New Palace":



For a more extensive write up and a lot more pictures, see my post here.

This year there was no premiere, which meant we saw an production we already knew for the second time - Tristan und Isolde by Christoph Marthaler, as it happens, which shezan has seen when she visited. Nothing had changed much. The Tristan (Robert Dean Smith) was still bland, though he did improve somewhat in the third act, the Isolde - Iréne Theorin - was way better, and the direction was still not making much sense.

However, behind the scenes much drama continues to go on, with the endless soap opera provided by members of the Wagner family. Now last year, Gudrun Wagner suddenly died. Gudrun was Wolfgang Wagner (last surviving grandchild of Richard W., so you get your dynastic connection right)'s second wife and the reason for his fallout not just with wife No.1 but the children from this marriage, including his oldest daughter, Eva. Who is in her early sixties by now and was the Wagner estate's original choice as Wolfgang's successor. Wolfgang insisted on Katharina, Gudrun's daughter. Much struggle in public ensued. After Gudrun died, there was a big reconciliation and Eva and Katharina declared they'd lead the Festival jointly, which is what they're doing this year. Except that Eva is sort of the invisible woman. Last year she declared confidently, re: Katharina, "I have a daughter in her age, I can handle young women". This, considering Katherina is doing all the publicity and seems to be the deciding voice still, seems to have been somewhat hubristic. Which all wouldn't matter if the festival itself would florish. However, the only thing everyone is happy with this year is a "Wagner for children" innovation - in addition to the regular festival program, there is a production of Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) for children in order to interest kids in Wagner, which has been a resounding success both with the kids and with the critics. So everyone loves the Dutchman for kids, and working in the Dutchman for kids. Nobody loves anything else, especially not working in anything else. I already couldn't believe my eyes when Katharina declared in a newspaper interview, when asked why there were world class stars among the singers in Bayreuth anymore, "well, one can't have a great Tristan or Siegfried every year. But you can look forward to the Tristan production of 2015!" (As mentioned, I'm not crazy about the current Tristan myself, but I'm not leading the Bayreuth Festival. A Festival leader is supposed to be supportive of her singers, musicians and directors!) Yesterday, my regular source for Bayreuth gossip told me things are even worse than that interview lead me to suspect. During the rehearsal for Parsifal, Katharina told the soloists, "well, ladies and gentlemen, three of you won't be coming back next year". When the tenor who sings Parsifal himself, Christopher Ventriss, wanted a ticket for Die Meistersinger (as it happens Katharina's own much boo-ed production), he was told he could only get a ticket for Parsifal, i.e. the production he stars in, not for any of the others. Gudrun's assistant of 20 years got fired.

"Now I realize how good a festival leader Old Wagner" - i.e. Wolfgang - "was," sighed my source. "What we all took for granted. He knew everyone's name. Whether you were responsible for the stage lights or a violinist in the orchestra or a leading singer. He talked to everyone. If in someone's office or wardrobe the water didn't run rightly, he took care of that, too. It wasn't that he paid better but he was there, you know? He was personal with everyone."

With Wolfgang in the throws of senility and out of the picture now (nobody has seen him since Gudrun's funeral, and King Lear inspired suggestions as to his fate are running rampant) and Eva being the invisible woman, it looks like Katharina is fastly making herself the most unpopular woman among the Wagner-producing world. Stay tuned for more next year.

( Meanwhile, here's my mother, friend and self on the green hill: )

Apologies to theatrical_muse and fandom_muse people; not only did I have a very busy week past, but as I'll be in England from tomorrow until Friday, I'll have a very busy week coming. Hopefully, starting next Saturday I'll be day-long at your disposal.

It was great seeing shezan again; the poor APs were a bit bemused by the conversation wandering off now and then from opera and politics to people called the Doctor or shows named "Spooks", but otherwise was delighted to have her with us as well. Die Meistersinger at Bayreuth, directed by Katharina Wagner in her Bayreuth debut at 29 and gambit for the succession, was savaged by the critics and turned out to have some interesting ideas, some very silly ones, good singers in the male roles and unfortunately weak ones in the two female ones, and some imagery that made me think of all the epilogue complaints in HP fandom, a thought I could unfortunately not share with the Aged Parents who are decidedly not into HP. (And didn't like this production, but not because of the satirical depiction of future families; 'twas the wannabe shock of an interlude with waltzing masks, several artificial phalli and some genuine nudity which made my mother roll her eyes and go "oh, please".) Something we all could agree on was that Katharina W. has guts, because this was the second performance, not the premiere, and she still got on the stage to take her bow and confront the most vicious boos you can imagine (short of vegetable thrown), several times. (The singers got mostly enthusiastic applause, in contrast.) Also, of course she's right in that you can't play Sachs' final song which ends the opera about "holy German art" in Bayreuth, of all the places, without letting the scene reflect on the fascism to come, but then again, it showcased one of the problems of the production, imo: it was a set piece not connected to the rest of the opera, which didn't deal with rising fascism (or fascism in other stages) but mostly with various ideas of how to be an artist and the artist-audience relationship

Whereas Great-Grandfather Richard had written Stolzing as the young musical revolutionary, Sachs as the understanding wise middle-aged genius who eases said revolutionary's way into society and Beckmesser as the dry critic who can only plagiarize, not create art of his own, Katharina interpreted Stolzing as a poser who's only too glad to sell out revolutionary pretensions for public acceptance, Sachs as someone who is frightened of his inner Bohemian and hence ultimately throws himself into conservatism, and Beckmesser discovering his inner avantgardist and being the genuine artist in the end. Which isn't completely new (Beckmesser's version of Stolzing's song as atonal before its time is an intepretation I've heard before), and the singer who sang Backmesser was magnificent, but then you're left with the same problem many a modern production of "The Merchant of Venice" has: everyone who wins is loathsome, and the ostracized outsider isn't exactly someone to root for, either, due to some of the attributes the work he's in has given him. The most successful set piece focused on this reinterpretation was Stolzing presenting the final version of his song as a historic dress production in front of an audience which was clearly meant to be the Bayreuth one; after having booed (via signs) the earlier avant-garde presentation by Beckmesser, they cheered this one. Mind you, telling your audience you think they're too easily pleased with classical stage presentations (which at this point haven't been shown in Bayreuth for decades) and too dumb to understand the avantgarde isn't going to endear you to them (see also: boos for Katharina later), but it was a reinterpretation of this particular scene which worked.

During the first break, we were invited backstage, where we didn't meet Katharina but saw Wolfgang W. (had two strokes since last we met, and was clearly not in particularly good shape, but gamely tried his best to nice) and wife Gudrun with other guests. One of which was a 80-something years old woman from Bonn, hung like a Christmas tree with jewels who immediately launched the most cringeworthy monologue about the incredible novelty of a modern dress production, which she never saw before (I take it this means she never visited a theatre, either for drama or opera, during most of the decades of her life). Wolfgang W., who rather famously isn't a big fan of modern dress production when it comes to Die Meistersinger (his own productions of that opera were either somewhat historic or abstract) but is doing his best to make his younger daughter his successor just sat there and smiled without comment.

During the second break, I chatted with the bookstore owner who has a mini branch at the Festspielhaus each year (complete with rare recordings), and he told me that Christoph Schlingensief, who is responsible for the current horrid Parsifal production which is going to end with this season, has hinted he wants to do a Tristan and Isolde. Any man who manages to suck out the eroticism of the Parsifal/Kundry kiss which is pretty much the point of the scene, as it clues him into adulthood and what happened to Amfortas, shouldn't be let anywhere near Tristan, so here's hoping the fact he recently bitched about the Wagners on national tv means he won't be, at least not in Bayreuth.

Second day of the Ring, and perhaps I ought to explain why this whole opera business takes up most of my day as opposed to a few hours. Firstly, a friend of mine and someone I know professionally, who signs my cheques, so to speak, are attending for the first time and also are visiting Bamberg for the first timle. So when we're not at Bayreuth, which is about an hour away from my hometown Bamberg, we're doing the sightseeing thing.

*insert burst of Bamberg pride at hailing from prettiest town in Germany*

But the performances at Bayreuth start at 4 pm. Which means if you want a place at the parking lot, you start in Bamberg at 2 pm, arrive around a quarter to 3 or at 3 pm, park and then stroll around the Festspielhaus, browse among the rare CDs at the stand the local bookstore has at the festival, chat and buy high-priced drinks because it's incredibly hot. Though nowhere near as hot outside as it is inside. Walking outside, especially in the garden area - there is a reason why the whole thing is called "Grüner Hügel", i.e. "Green Hill" is quite pleasant. It also captures the ever-presentness of the past - that particular past which you can't not think about in Bayreuth. So, on the one hand, you have Arno Breker's portrait bust of Wagner standing around (Breker = Hitler's favourite sculptor; currently, there is the first exhbition of his work post WWII in Northern Germany, and there is a huge debate in the papers about it), and on the other, you have a memorial plate for two singers, regulars at Bayreuth, who were murdered in concentration camps.

Meanwhile, Die Walküre: my favourite of the four Ringoperas. As it turned out, Beate - my friend - had never seen it on stage before, and watching it with someone who got caught up in the story and the music because it was all new was fascinating. "I didn't know one could fall in love on stage so passionately" she said about the first act with Siegmund and Sieglinde, and cried after the third with Wotan and Brünnhilde. (I don't blame her - my favourite father-daughter relationship in music, and the tragedy of it makes me misty-eyed as well each time (unless the performance sucks and enrages me instead, of course). The scenery this time was a bit dull at first - I've seen that "ruined nineteenth century grand house" for Hunding's hut in the first act before. The second act, otoh, presented more inventiveness - at first, Wotan and Brünnhilde seemed actually on top of a mountain among the mist, but when the stage fog cleared, you could see they were surrounded by broken statues, which does relate to the declining world of the gods.

The most important elements were, of course, the singers. Adrianne Pieczonka, a Canadian singer according to the program, made her Bayreuth debut as Siegline, and was truly stunning. She got the special kind of applause to go with it - not just clapping of hands, but trampling of feet and "bravo, bravo" calls both after the first act and later with the general curtain call. Her Siegmund, Endrik Wottrich, on the other hand, got a few boos after the first act, which I thought was unfair - he was not spectacular, but good, and took the criticial passages - "Wälse, Wälse, wo ist dein Schwert" and "Winterstürme weichen dem Wonnemond" very well. When I chatted with the bookstore people later, I found out the reason - apparantly Wottrich had not been good as Erik two evenings earlier in Der Fliegende Holländer, plus the gossip was that he only got the job because he has an affair with Katharina Wagner, which made for resentment among the Wagnerians. I still thought it unfair. If he got the job done, there was no reason to boo.

Falk Struckmann as Wotan really came into his own, after being more in the background in Rheingold, and Linda Watson sang beautifully as Brünnhilde, though I had to pity her - the costumes for the Valkyries looked horribly uncomfortable, and Ms. Watson is somewhat voluminous (which of course is true for most singers in the part *g*). Again, allow me the heresy to wish for a fantasy production, with someone who watched various fantasy tv shows and knows that you can design female armour in a better way. OTOH, it must be said I never saw a production who got across that the Valkyries were death godesses so well, and the red armour/dress helped with that. The encounter between Brünnhilde and Siegmund, before she decides to help him, was truly eerie.

Shortly before the second break ended, a sudden burst of applause went through the audience; as it turned out, Placido Domingo had shown up to attend. (Domingo sang in Bayreuth a couple of times - I have seen him in Parsifal and in Die Walküre during the previous Ring - so presumably he could get a last minute ticket.) It was the second evening without the director showing, though. I haven't heard an explanation yet why Tankred Dorst doesn't come on stage in the end. Though the man is 80, so perhaps it's simply the heat - supposedly, it gets around 50° Centigrade in the Festspielhaus, and I can believe it. Christian Thielemann took his laurels for a second day.

Siegfried won't be performed until tomorrow, so today it's sightseeing time, all the way.