Music
Conductor Thielemann before returning to Bayreuth
The future of star conductor Christian Thielemann on the Green Hill was at times uncertain. photo
© Soeren Stache/dpa
For a long time, Christian Thielemann was almost inseparably linked to the Bayreuth Festival, but recently it was uncertain what would happen next for him there. Now there are plans.
Thielemann “will return, yes,” said festival spokesman Hubertus Herrmann when asked. “We are in discussions about future musical tasks in Bayreuth,” he emphasized on Monday. “Nothing has been signed yet.” Artistic line-ups and decisions should be “announced in our press conference”. Thielemann, the designated general music director of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, confirmed to dpa that he will conduct “Lohengrin”.
“Standard interpretations”
In Yuval Sharon’s production, which was actually canceled last year, with a set design by the artist Neo Rauch, the opera will be back on the Richard Wagner Festival schedule in 2025 after a two-year break. Thielemann was also the conductor of this Bayreuth production of “Lohengrin” until last year. The future of the star conductor on the Green Hill was recently uncertain – even though he was inextricably linked to Germany’s most famous opera festival for many years.
He made his Bayreuth debut in the summer of 2000 with the “Meistersinger von Nürnberg”; the long-time festival director Wolfgang Wagner, who died in 2010, was more of a foster father to him than a boss. Since then, he has “shaped the festival every year with benchmark interpretations,” as it says on the festival homepage.
Thielemann is considered one of the best Wagner interpreters in the world and is only the second conductor after Felix Mottl (1856-1911) to have conducted all ten Wagner operas performed in Bayreuth on the Green Hill.
In 2010 he became the festival’s musical advisor and five years later music director. However, he has been rid of this position since 2020. There hasn’t really been any talk of an official post on the Green Hill in any form for a long time.
This summer, the current chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden, who had shaped the festival musically for over a quarter of a century, was no longer there – he is now scheduled to return in 2025.
“Leader” or “Protector”?
A new production of the “Meistersinger von Nuremberg” is also planned for this year. Festival director Katharina Wagner announced Daniele Gatti as their conductor in the summer, who will succeed Thielemann in Dresden in 2024.
In the – for now – last year of the Bayreuth “Lohengrin” production, Thielemann and festival director Wagner in 2022 had their different opinions on the question of whether the word “Führer” should be heard in the opera in the Bayreuth Festival Hall – where Adolf Hitler once did and went out.
Katharina Wagner had asked the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang the title role, after the dress rehearsal to replace the word “Führer” with “Schützer” at the end of the opera about the Swan Knight – to Thielemann’s incomprehension.
“For me it’s always like this: the originally intended text is the original text and you stay true to it,” he told the dpa in the summer. “I don’t change any notes – then I don’t change any text and ask the artists in my performances to sing the original text. But everyone sees it differently and you have to accept that.”