A Green Hill far away! Bayreuth Festival 2007: a preview by Jim Pritchard. (JPr)

 

To be honest, it did seem very far away for the first few times I went to Bayreuth; it was a plane to Frankfurt and then a picturesque train ride to Nuremberg and then a further train ride to Bayreuth itself. This took the best part of a day. Now there is a cheap flight direct to Nuremberg and if you set off early enough then by lunchtime you could now be there enjoying a glass of Weissebier!

Of course Richard Wagner wanted his patrons to struggle to get there: he only wanted the most dedicated to attend the performances when he built the Festspielhaus on the city's Grüner Hügel, or Green Hill, in the second half of the nineteenth century for Siegfried, Parsifal and the rest of his heroes.

Those who have never been to Bayreuth would have you believe that the summer months in this city are like some sort of Nuremberg Rally to the evil genius Wagner. (Indeed some who have often been there would also like you to believe this too!) The facts are much simpler, and down the years this delightful city in Bavaria’s Upper Franconia region seems to have managed quite successfully to  ignore such goings on and get on with its life. OK. maybe not perhaps on the first night when the great and good gather on the red carpet.

That there is much more to see in Bayreuth than the Wagner related sites is due to Countess Wilhelmine who brought the Rococo style to the region of Upper Franconia. Starting in 1732, Wilhelmine commissioned garden designers and landscape architects to transform Franconia's farmland around the New Palace into parks and gardens of imposing grandeur. This is just one of the highlights of the city and its environs.

This year the 96th Bayreuth Festival opens on 25 July with a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg directed by the composer's great-granddaughter, Katharina. Though not yet 30, she has long been considered as her ailing father  Wolfgang’s  choice to succeed him as festival chief though this has not gone down well in the wider musical world.

This is her debut in the Festspielhaus though she has directed Wagner before; Der fliegende Holländer in Würzburg (2002) and Lohengrin in Budapest (2003), as well as, overseeing revivals of her father’s work. She has also directed Albert Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied in Munich (2005) and Puccini's Il Trittico in Berlin (2006). Critics, it must be admitted, have been divided over her efforts.

Apparently Wolfgang, who produced his own staging of Die Meistersinger three times ,has not influenced Katharina’s ideas and we are promised ‘something different’, something that will ‘challenge’ the diehards and sweep away the ‘clichés’ surrounding this work. This we have all heard before and I shall report on whether this is so  later in August on this site.

Conducting the new production will be the up and coming German maestro Sebastian Weigle, also making his debut in Bayreuth as are so are many of a mostly young cast of singers, some relatively unknown, including German bass Franz Hawlata as Hans Sachs and American soprano Amanda Mace, as  Eva. The only singer with a Bayreuth pedigree is American tenor Robert Dean Smith as Walther von Stolzing. He has previously sung Lohengrin, Siegmund and Tristan.

Katharina's partner, Endrik Wottrich, is Siegmund in the first revival of Tankred Dorst's Ring cycle, which was slated by the critics last year. Replacing Falk Struckmann as Wotan and the Wanderer in the Ring will be German bass-baritone Albert Dohmen. Struckmann pulled out for ‘artistic reasons’ adding another name to the catalogue of big name singers who no longer wander up the Green Hill. Americans Stephen Gould and Linda Watson return as Siegfried and Brünnhilde. There are rarely more that one or two Brits singing at any Festival and this year is no exception, with only Andrew Shore’s critic-proof Alberich to hold the British end up.

For me, the only attraction to see yet another Ring at Bayreuth would be to hear the music because in the pit is the controversial German conductor Christian Thielemann, in truth Bayreuth's current music director, who is brilliant in this music.

Another debutant is Italian conductor Fabio Luisi overseeing a revival of Philip Arlaud's much-loved (because it is fairly comprehensible) production of Tannhäuser with two Germans in the leading roles;  tenor Wolfgang Millgramm in the title part and Ricarda Merbeth as Elisabeth. I have not seen this since its première in 2002 and am looking forward to seeing it again.

The controversial production of Parsifal by Christoph Schlingensief, the enfant terrible of German theatre, is being revived for the final time under the baton of Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer. Much reworked since it was first put on in 2004 the director describes it as reconciling ‘Nietzsche with Wagner by negating Wagner's silly Buddhist dream’. Kundry, a helper to the knight searching for the Holy Grail, is represented as a fundamentalist Islamic fighter clad in black. A new production of Parsifal will be staged in 2008 and will be conducted by Daniele Gatti.

The Bayreuth Festival runs from 25 July to 28 August and will include a total of 30 performances, all sold out by the end of 2006. The waiting list for tickets is believed to stretch to 10 years and more - I count myself fortunate to have been so often during the last decades but I am not a zealot. I used to have a wonderful landlady there with the perfect flat as a base for the opera and to relax in the city. Once when I was unable to stay in my usual place I gave up my tickets for that year …there is more to life than Wagner!

© Jim Pritchard