Culture: 58,000 visitors at Bayreuth Festival

culture
58,000 visitors at the Bayreuth Festival

Long-running hit with interval show: The colorful "Tannhäuser"-Production (archive image). Photo: Tobias Hase/dpa

Long-running hit with intermission show: The colorful “Tannhäuser” production (archive photo). Photo

© Tobias Hase/dpa

Germany’s most famous opera spectacle is coming to an end. But after the festival comes before the festival.

A long-running hit has been launched on the Green Hill of Bayreuth marked the end of the Richard Wagner Festival. “Tannhäuser” directed by Tobias Kratzer ended the 2024 season.

Artistic director Katharina Wagner should be satisfied. After some tickets for the traditionally sold-out opera spectacle were not sold in 2023, the festival reported a full house again this year. All 30 performances were sold out, the festival announced at the end.

This means that more than 58,000 visitors attended the Green Hill this year. 15,000 people came to the two open-air concerts in the Festival Park – and 2,000 young Wagnerians came to the sold-out performances of this year’s children’s opera “The Flying Dutchman”.

Female conductors made history

But the season will probably remain in the collective classical music memory above all because, for the first time in the history of the festival, there were more female conductors at the podium than male colleagues.

Simone Young was the first woman to ever conduct Wagner’s four-part opus “The Ring of the Nibelung” in Bayreuth. She was joined by Oksana Lyniv with the “Flying Dutchman” and Nathalie Stutzmann with “Tannhäuser”.

New choir era

Shortly before the end of the festival, the management announced at the weekend that a new man would be at the head of the renowned festival choir: Eberhard Friedrich was choirmaster for almost a quarter of a century, and now a new era is beginning with his successor Thomas Eitler-de Lint.

New “Meistersinger” 2025

Now things should calm down a bit on the Green Hill – before preparations for the coming season begin. For 2025, the festival is bringing a musical expert to Bayreuth: Director Matthias Davids, artistic director of the musical department at the Landestheater Linz, is to stage a new production of “The Mastersingers of Nuremberg”. Conductor Daniele Gatti will be the musical director, and Georg Zeppenfeld, Michael Spyres, Christian Nilsson and Michael Nagy will be performing.

Former music director Christian Thielemann is also returning to the festival after a few years away from the Hügel. In 2025, he will conduct four performances of “Lohengrin” with stage design by art star Neo Rauch, which is to be performed again after a break. Next year, the festival will show the controversial “Ring of the Nibelung” for the last time in a production by director Valentin Schwarz.

The festival announced without giving any details that there will be a very special “Ring” for the big anniversary year of 2026, when 150 years of festival history will be celebrated. Katharina Wagner is also planning a small deviation from the strict canon: Wagner’s work “Rienzi” will be performed in the festival hall.

dpa

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