The Richard Wagner Festival at Bayreuth in Germany has been thrilling audiences since 1876. With such a deep past and the 2017 edition of the Wagner Festival upon us, we thought it a perfect time to look back on some previously notable years at Bayreuth.
The One That Launched the Ring (1876)
Bayreuth had a long music history before Wagner was even a twinkle in Odin’s eye. Church music flourished up to and beyond the reformation, and by the early 1700s it was slowly turning into an opera town. Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia (whose kid brother you might know as “Frederick the Great”) was intent on making Bayreuth a major musical center. For the most part, she succeeded: opera took off and the scene attracted many foreign singers and instrumentalists. But when she died, musical life dwindled. Almost 100 years later as Richard Wagner looked for a site that could handle his monumental Ring cycle, Bayreuth emerged the favorite. According to Grove, Wagner was drawn to its central location and peaceful woodland environs that would let an audience unwind and unplug. Unfortunately, when he hosted a series of concerts to raise money to rehabilitate the theater, the proceeds were underwhelming. As a result, Wagner had to cut some construction corners. In 1876, he staged the Ring in its entirety. And while the opera itself was great, the experience was not. The production wasn’t up to standards, and he found himself in debt from the subpar construction efforts. Seriously, how hard was it to get people to a fundraising concert?
The One with No Applause (1882)
Mendelssohn and Schumann were known to dissuade some audiences from inter-movement applause, but if you’re trying to find patient zero for your no-clapping origin story, Bayreuth ‘82 is a safe bet. That was the year Wagner debuted Parsifal. The opera was of a serious nature, and the last thing the composer wanted was for excess applause to disrupt the flow or kill the mood. So, he informed the audience that there would be no curtain calls until the end of the entire opera. Puzzled by this directive, the audience took it to mean they shouldn’t applaud at all. And so, silence. It persisted afterwards, too — early performances of the opera were before hushed audiences. Wagner himself found this to be a bit too weird, and once tried to spark a slow clap from his seat in the audience. The audience told him to shut up. So it goes.
The One with the Rebrand(1951)
After World War II, Bayreuth was not looking good. Winifred Wagner had a close relationship with Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi state assumed directorship of the Festival in 1933 and promptly ran it into the ground. As Frederic Spotts points out in Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, not only did this Wagner-festival become a Hitler-festival, the Nazi regime alienated some of the best conductors and singers. After the War years, Winifred's sons Wieland and Wolfgang assumed directorship. Their “New Bayreuth” began in 1951 with a performance of Parsifal. Looking to move the festival past its fascist associations, Wieland did away with the grand sets and costumes (liked those horned helmets and shaggy coats) that were evocative of a mythical Teutonic past. The New Bayreuth sets were simple, and focused on the drama unfolding on stage. The stark productions were wildly influential, and their influence can still be seen today.
The One with Grace Bumbry (1961)
Not even 20 years removed from the Nazification of Bayreuth, a 24-year old black woman was set to make her debut at the festival. She was mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, a rising star who had studied with Lotte Lehmann at Northwestern University and won Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions after her graduation. In 1960 she made her debut with the Paris Opera, as Amneris in Verdi’s Aida. The next year, she was cast as Venus in Wieland Wagner’s production of Tannhäuser, much to the chagrin of Bayreuth loyalists and neo-Nazis. At a press conference in which he shut down her detractors, Wieland dared the negative critics to find a better singer. When the time came, Bumbry's skill drove the audience wild. And while “driving an audience wild” is a terrible cliche, in this case, it is not — people are still debating how many curtain calls she achieved for her performance, though it seems that 42 curtain calls over the course of 30 minutes is the most accepted.
The One Hundredth (1976)
Of course the Bayreuth centenary had to include something big. And that something was the year’s Ring cycle, under the baton of Pierre Boulez and stage director Patrice Chéreau. The saga was a departure from everything the audience expected — the action was transported to a Europe in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, casting the conflict as one not of Gods and mythical beings, but of the rich and the working class. To quote a 1976 New York Times review of the production, “saying it received a mixed reception is an understatement.” But even though its premiere was controversial, it proved to be a turning point for the creative and interpretive liberties directors would take with operas. Audiences` also came around; the production saw a 45-minute standing ovation in 1980.