BAYREUTH, Germany (dpa) – The curtain has now gone up on a 91st Bayreuth Festival characteristically overflowing with the glitterati but uncharacteristically lacking in squabbling and speculation over Wolfgang Wagner’s possible successors.
Critics and pundits this summer have found themselves at a loss for something to write about in the run-up to the biggest event in the Wagnerian calendar.“The fact that, after interminable years of whingeing and pontificating about a successor for 82-year-old Wolfgang Wagner, there is no grist this year for scandals, gossip-mongering, political gyrations and excitations is something that has struck fear and loathing into the hearts of commentators for weeks now,” wrote one prominent critic on opening day.“This year we shall be reduced to just sitting back in those wooden Bayreuth seats or in our easy chairs around the radio at home and enjoying Wagner’s orgy of sound,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung critic Reinhard J. Brembeck wrote resignedly.That orgy of sound got underway with “Tannhaeuser” in a production by French director Philippe Arlaud.It marks the return of Wagner’s popular romantic opera after a seven-year hiatus, this time with Australia’s Glenn Winslade in the title role as Tannhaeuser, torn between Elisabeth (Ricarda Merbeth) and Venus (Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter).As Bayreuth musical director, Christian Thielemann conducted the orchestra from the hide-away pit out of view of the audience perched on those hard wooden seats.Thielemann’s debut three years ago in Bayreuth with Wagner’s “Meistersinger” launched his reputation as the Festival’s “new crown prince”, according to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.And speaking of “Meistersinger”, Wolfgang Wagner’s staging of that production on August 28 will be his last, capping nearly half a century as an operatic director. It was in 1953 that his production of “Lohengrin” was first performed in Bayreuth.In the 49 years since then, he has put his stamp on virtually everything his grandfather wrote.“It’s been an extraordinary artistic achievement,” says Bayreuth analyst Gert-Dieter Meier, “regardless what anybody might think about any of the individual productions.”In its third year is Juergen Flimm’s “Ring” production in Bayreuth under the baton of Adam Fischer. Making her debut as Brunnhilde is Evelyn Herlitzius in an otherwise line-up of such familiar faces as Alan Titus (Votan/Wanderer), Graham Clark (Loge), Violeta Urmana (Sieglinde) and Robert Dean Smith (Siegmund).Siegfried takes two guises at this year’s fest. Christian Franz embodies the young hero taken to Brunnhilde’s bosom in “Siegfried” and Wolfgang Schmidt gets to wear the glittering ring in “Goetterdämmerung” and have a spear run through his shoulder by John Tomlinson’s Hagen under the watery gaze of the Rhine Daughters.Making her Bayreuth debut this summer is Petra-Maria Schnitzer as Elsa singing opposite Peter Seiffert in the fourth year of Keith Warner’s staging of “Lohengrin”, this time under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis. Schnitzer and Seiffert are said to be lovers not only on stage but off, but that is about the extent of gossip at this year’s even.Otherwise, Bayreuth buzz this year is already firmly focused on the future. Next year “Der Fliegende Hollaender” gets a new staging by Claus Guth, with Marc Albrecht conducting.And in 2004 Martin Kusej’s “Parsifal”. Returning to that subterranean orchestra pit will be Pierre Boulez, who directed this last of Wagner’s operas from 1966 to 1970 as well as Patrice Chereau’s “Ring” cycle from 1976 to 1980.Further down the pipeline, a new staging of “Tristan und Isolde” highlights the 2005 festival, and in 2006 Danish director unveils his “Ring” under Thielemann’s musical direction.In the meantime, Wolfgang Wagner’s daughter Katharina will be marking her time and waiting for her chance to return to Bayreuth in a manner befitting her lineage. This autumn the curtain rises on the 24-year-old Wagnerian’s production of “Der fliegende Hollaender” at the Wuerzburg Stadttheater.As any true Wagnerian knows, that is the fitting place for her to do so – her great-grandfather began his career there in 1833.
