“Mr Eitler-de Lint sees the restructuring as an opportunity and, above all, as timely,” writes the press office of the Bayreuth Festival, which has now announced the name of the new choir director on the Green Hill. Thomas Eitler-de Lint therefore seems to fit the profile perfectly as the successor to long-standing choir director Eberhard Friedrich. Friedrich is known to be skeptical of the festival management’s plans to reduce the size of the 134-voice festival choir. Friedrich recently put an end to his era in Bayreuth by resigning, although he would have said goodbye anyway due to his age.
According to press spokesman Hubertus Herrmann, the new man, a man in his late fifties and a native of Vienna, agrees with Katharina Wagner regarding the future of the festival choir: “to create a new structure that will fully meet the high demands of the festival both quantitatively – depending on the work, up to 134 choristers – and qualitatively.”
With Eitler-de Lint, a choir director with a great deal of experience in Wagner is taking over the position. As choir director at the Leipzig Opera, he rehearsed all of Richard Wagner’s operas with choir participation at the “Wagner 22” festival there. Before his appointment in Leipzig in 2017, Eitler-de Lint held positions of responsibility at the Vienna Volksoper, the National Opera in Amsterdam, various radio choirs such as the WDR, the NDR, the MDR, the Zurich and Hanover opera houses, and in 2016 he was also guest choir director at the Shanghai Opera. Bayreuth also appears on his CV: from 1996 to 2003 he was assistant to the choir director there.