In fact: Although 58,000 people attended the Bayreuth Festival this year, it was not completely sold out for the first time in its recent history. This is due to the “Ring” cycles, whose utilization averaged 92 percent; the performances of “Parsifal”, the “Flying Dutchman”, “Tristan and Isolde” and “Tannhäuser” were completely sold out. The total capacity utilization of the festival was 97 percent – still a very high value.
In addition, 5000 people attended the open-air concert, the demand for AR glasses was greater than the supply. The children’s opera was completely overbooked, it has been since it was introduced 14 years ago. The Bayreuth Festival offered discounted tickets for young people up to the age of 25 for the first time this year, and demand was extremely high.
Next year, the 112th Bayreuth Festival will open on July 25, 2024 with a new production of “Tristan und Isolde” under the musical direction of Semyon Bychkov and directed by Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson. The production replaces the emergency “Tristan” from 2022, which was only created at the time to have a practically choir-free production in the program if Corona had prevented performances of the very choir-heavy pieces. Camilla Nylund and Andreas Schager, who sang Parsifal and Siegfried this year, will sing the title roles.
The “Parsifal” will be resumed with the opportunity to see it with AR glasses, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, who celebrated an outstanding success with it this year. In addition, there is the cult “Tannhäuser” in the production by Tobias scratches with the conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, the “Flying Dutchman” under the direction of Oksana Lyniv and the “Ring des Nibelungen” directed by Valentin Schwarz, again musically directed by Philippe Jordan. The management is optimistic and expects full capacity utilization in 2024 “due to this year’s high demand for individual sales of the Ringwerke”.