Bayreuth Festival Operas

For the duration of the Richard Wagner Festival, Bayreuth, a medium-sized city in
northern Bavaria, has the eyes and ears of the world trained on it.  It all began with
a dream: Wagner, composer, playwright and theater director all rolled into one,
conceived the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), a perfect combination of singing,
drama and staging.  The established theaters in the big cities of his time were completely
inadequate for these plans, so along with the artistic dream came the dream of his own
festival and theater.  In early 1871, Richard Wagner, joined by his wife Cosima, traveled
to Bayreuth.  He later wrote, "... the unique charm and the location of the friendly city
itself were what I had been desiring.  An utterly beautiful and generous plot of land not
far from town was given to me as a gift and for the purpose of building the theater I had
in mind." The cornerstone to the Festspielhaus was laid in 1872.

Since 1876 the Bayreuth Festival has accompanied every high and low point of German
history. Its current director is a grandson of the composer: Wolfgang Wagner, 88 years
old, festival director since 1951.

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus is both a world cultural monument and a highly modern theater. 
It is reserved for the works of Richard Wagner, which are based on Germanic myths.  In
the evening, gods, giants and Nibelungs act out their eternal dramas onstage.  In the early
morning, the grounds outdoors are populated by people seeking tickets.  Taking the official
route to festival admission can last seven years or longer.  The number of ticket seekers
outnumbers the number of tickets available by a factor of ten to one.  On opening day,
Bayreuth is a spectacle of myth, fashion and media.  Presidents and party chairmen bump
shoulders with show business celebrities.  Less apparent are the many music critics, but
they do in fact convey every nuance of the performances inside to the world outside,
upholding Bayreuth's status as a nerve center of the world of music theater.

The performances in the unique acoustic of Wagner's Festspielhaus, perfectly suited for
his music dramas and never replicated anywhere else, are captured in all their vibrancy
by the recording engineers of Radio Bavaria and transmitted your way in these radio
productions by Deutsche Welle.  Host Rick Fulker talks with conductors and soloists in
the intermissions and conveys the excitement and authenticity of this most unique and
renowned opera festival in the world.

This year we bring you the current Bayreuth production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with staging by Katharina Wagner.  The conductor is Sebastian Weigle.