Bavarian II unfolds on a gentle hill, funded in part by Ludwig’s contemporary, the composer Richard Wagner. As the opera house nears the famed Wagner temple in the German city of Bayreuth, where he lived and rests, the gardens around the opera are arranged in intimate corners. An orchestra conducts the scene, while medium-sized statues capture Richard Wagner in a poised, purposeful gesture of creation.
Bayreuth summers carry a clear name: Wagner. From late July through August, daily performances feature one of the composer’s operas. The repertoire isn’t vast, but it is thorough, totaling about a dozen performances including works that are commonly performed in concert formats or include fragments of his music.
Matinee sessions begin in the early afternoon, and one constant across titles is their generous length, often stretching until twilight. The Mastersingers can approach four and a half hours, with one-hour pauses between acts, if any. In Bayreuth, the cycle Rhinegold and its companion piece may run back-to-back, sometimes totaling two and a half hours for the first title and about two hours for the second, uninterrupted.
Not every Wagner work premiered in Bayreuth, since some pieces premiered before the festival theater opened in 1876. The Festspielhaus, a musical monument with a capacity near two thousand, has long been recognized as a World Heritage Site. UNESCO conferred that status in 2012.
The festival is commonly referred to as the Festspielhaus, and it presents the Wagner tetralogy of mythic themes, including Rhinegold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. This cycle draws on Norse legends and philosophical ideas that weave through the operas in a continuous frame.
Despite Wagner’s stipulated limits on certain interpretations of his librettos, the works did venture outside Bayreuth only years after his death. In 1903, the Metropolitan Opera in New York staged one of the pieces, a restriction that lasted until 1913, and subsequently in 1913–1914 it appeared at the Liceu in Barcelona.
Each summer, a new staging of Wagner’s plays is presented in Bayreuth. This season marks the premiere of fresh sets for Tristan und Isolde and for the Ring, which runs for four hours. The musical direction for the different performances is led by Markus Poschner, with scenography by Roland Schwab, both making their Bayreuth debuts.
The spotlight falls on Daniel Kirch, a German tenor with a long track record in Wagner’s major roles across German theaters. He succeeds Jonas Kaufmann in Munich, bringing life to two fiery characters: Loge, the fire god in Rhinegold, and Lohengrin. Morning family performances feature revised, accessible adaptations crafted by Katharina Wagner and staged for a ten-day period.
In Wagner’s Ring, Loge shares the stage with Wotan and Alberich, the Nibelung, forming the core trio of the first half of the tetralogy. The stories, drawn from Norse myth, are braided with philosophical reflections to deepen the drama.
Wagner’s family, owners of the festival site, soundly backed a new production by entrusting the musical direction to a rising Hamburg-based director, Cornelius Meister. He joined the theater a few years ago as an assistant director before stepping into the main role. The artistic helm is steered by Austrian Valentin Schwarz, who together with Meister crafts a modern interpretation of the tetralogy. In this version, the gods and their companions are recast with contemporary dynamics, keeping the mythic core but reimagining its visual and narrative thread for today’s audiences, including a dramatic portrayal of power, loyalty, and trickery that resonates in modern theatres.
As for the performers, veterans such as Klaus Florian Vogt, Tomasz Konieczny, Irene Theorin, Christa Mayer, Camilla Nylund, and Petra Lang appear alongside rising talents who have grown into the Bayreuth stage. Among newer names, the young soprano Lisa Davidsen has drawn attention with a recent recital in Palma that helped launch her Bayreuth journey.
Directing responsibilities fall to Christian Thielemann for certain works, with Oksana Lyniv guiding Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, and Axel Kober overseeing other pieces in the festival. For Wagner enthusiasts unable to travel, a welcome announcement arrived as the festival began on July 25: a strengthened collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon to record and expand access to all staged operas. The full cycle will be reissued and broadened in an online release that will extend into the autumn season, offering fans in Canada, the United States, and beyond a chance to experience the performances from home with high fidelity and a curated listening sequence. (Source attribution: Bayreuth Festival, Deutsche Grammophon partnership)