Bayreuth Festival (4) - Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung, 28 and 30 July, 1 August 2026

Festspielhaus

Siegmund, Siegfried – Klaus Florian Vogt
Sieglinde – Elza van den Heever
Hunding, Hagen – Mika Kares
Wotan – Michael Volle
Fricka, First Norn – Anna Kissjudit
Brünnhilde – Camilla Nylund
Siegrune, Second Norn, Gutrune – Alexandra Ionis
Rossweiße, Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Grimgerde, Floßhilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold
Helmwige, Third Norn – Magdalena Hinterdobler
Gerhilde – Martina Weischenbach
Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz
Waltraute – Karis Tucker (Walküre), Anna Kissjudit (Götterdämmerung)
Schwertleite – Freya Apffelstaedt
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woodbird – Victoria Randem
Erda – Christa Mayer
Gunther – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Woglinde – Katherina Konradi

Curator – Marcus Lobbes
Artistic and technical conception – Marcus Lobbes, Nils Corte
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Digital- and AI-storytelling – Roman Senkl
Creative code, visual art – Nils Corte, Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger
Set design – Wolf Gutjahr
Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra 

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

‘Auf geb’ich mein Werk: nur Eines will ich noch: das Ende – das Ende!‘ When, in bitter disillusionment, in his great monologue from the second act of Die Walküre, Wotan offers Alberich – absent from the stage, yet present in words, orchestra, and our thoughts – the world he had once striven so hard to retain, now desiring one thing alone, the end, he spoke for all of us. Michael Volle delivered the line with characteristic intelligence and artistry. The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra ‘spoke’ with equivalent excellence as Wagner’s Attic chorus. Goodness knows what happened or did not onstage. I cannot recall and I doubt anyone else can; the likelihood of anyone having cared is still lower. Maybe it happened at one of the times I experimented by closing my eyes or wearing a newly acquired sleeping mask from a Bayreuth branch of Rossmann. (Tentative conclusion: may help relieve symptoms for a short period, but consult a musicodramatic physician should symptoms persist, as alas they did.) The truth, alas, is that most of us had willed that end far sooner, from about a minute or two into the first Rheingold screen-saver foisted on us by ‘curator’ Marcus Lobbes. His recorded utterances suggest barely the slightest acquaintance with the Ring, let alone what it might mean, but such knowledge is doubtless to be disdained in a braver new world than Aldous Huxley might ever have imagined. 

In a sense, there is little else to write, yet somehow, like the pilgrims who returned night after night, more in expectation than in hope, I should make the attempt. What did we learn? That the ‘machine’, the ‘intelligence’, the ‘prompter’ – whatever we wish to call it/him/whatever – was never happier than when covering singers with red, which contrasted with brown, to merge in a sickly terracotta, only to be eclipsed by yellow? That the bizarre ‘historical’ pictures could indeed get worse? The Prologue and first Act of Götterdämmerung took us not very far, from Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan to Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, the latter understandably covering his face. That whoever/whatever was signally incapable of aligning past production images, all still in terrible resolution, with what was going on, so that Frank Castorf’s legendary alternative Mount Rushmore appeared only when it should not in Siegfried, and that, staggeringly, Patrice Chéreau’s still more legendary Immolation Scene, Dame Gwyneth and all, appeared first in the wrong scene with Brünnhilde? What on earth the advent of the euro was doing there, I refuse even to speculate. We cannot or, better, should not be expected to do the work for these machines. We are not Alberich’s enslaved Nibelungs; or rather, we are, but must free ourselves. Not that we saw them anyway—and the chorus, when it appeared, was denied costumes and indeed visibility. An unfortunate moment of mislighting, were that a word, nonetheless revealed the arrival of its female contingent. The ‘cage’ of screens, front and back, could not function on its own terms, let alone ours.

Occasionally what we saw just about aspired to the level of a mid-price greeting card image; near-aspiration consistently failed to elevate itself into achievement. The obscenity of randomly posting a picture of what appeared to be starving Africans, presumably as a result of a colonial atrocity, as something to gaze at for a few seconds, then having it ‘transform’ into some meaningless shapes, whilst Siegmund and Sieglinde voice their increasing love – and lust – for one another should in itself have been enough to take this idiocy off the stage. That Walküre ‘moment’ fell, if I remember correctly, somewhere between sightings of Thomas Mann (at the right time for Wälsungenblut, though apparently not intended as such) and a pair of keyholes; Lenin and Hitler remained some way off. Who knows? Who cares? Actually, many might care about suddenly being presented with an unmotivated, uncalled-for giant image of Hitler impressed upon them in the Festspielhaus. Where is the obligation to them? A concert performance would have been infinitely preferable; so too would even the worst of stagings.

Someone should have pulled the plug, literally, before this debacle had begun, leaving us with what would doubtless have been a fine concert performance. It might well have been a disappointment, but it would not have been a catastrophe. It would have spared some of the ‘AI’ environmental footprint too, as our own World-Ashes not only wither but blaze across the world. Home to Wagner’s endearing encounter with Jessie Laussot, Bordeaux has endured more temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius this unfinished year alone than it has over the preceding century-and-a-bit during which records were kept. Soon not only revolutionary composers will be expelled; not only the vines whose fruits Jessie’s husband traded on will wither; the city itself may fall.  The end approaches and it does not look pretty; nor does it seem likely to cleanse us and the world Musk, Trump, Lobbes, and others have despoiled. Mention of sustainable theatre, sustainable anything else, or indeed any sort of theatre, let alone drama, now raises little more than a shrug. We are all apparently just to destroy our eyes, ears, minds, and souls sitting in front of screens waiting like the gods in Waltraute’s heartrending plea to Brünnhilde—or what would have been, had it not similarly been obliterated by further image-bombardment. Say what you like about the US occupation forces when they turned the Festspielhaus into a venue for musicals and other entertainments; they never conceived of such an indignity on Wagner’s house, work, performers, and audience, let alone put it into practice.

Again, I shall need to be brief about the performances, since I found it well-nigh impossible to concentrate upon them. Bar a very few inevitable slips, the orchestra continued to play brilliantly for Thielemann, despite its relegation to soundtrack for whatever it was we were compelled to view. Silken strings that darkened on demand; sensuous yet spirited woodwind; brass that rang with the hallowed tones, yet none of the complacency, of altdeutsch tradition: from this palette our necromancer-in-chief painted a series of epics to my ears closer to Strauss (and even at times Debussy) than the Bayreuth Wagner of old, yet certainly with tales to tell. These were aesthetic decisions rather than omissions; this was made clear at points of the highest dramatic tension in Act I of Die Walküre, when suddenly Thielemann shifted to an almost Klemperer- or Barenboim-like focus on growling, foundational harmony, the parallel gear-shift in tempo audible yet convincing. There was often a chamber-music line less in the line of Karajan than beyond him; at least, I discerned it from time to time when the images would permit me to listen.

 

The singers were, of course, still more poorly served—some might say unforgivably so. This may seem an absurdly first-level question for a production, but did our ‘curators’ for one minute consider the implications for the outstanding, hard-working vocal artists placed at their disposal? Either they did and utterly failed in another basic task, or they did not and were thereby negligent. Volle’s class shone through nevertheless, if only sporadically, as did that of everyone else. Perhaps I might have been more critical in other circumstances, but Klaus Florian Vogt’s follow-ups to his excellent Loge, taking in both Siegmund and Siegfried – surely a record? – offered insight throughout and only occasional tiring. He acted too, bringing far more to the stage than a thousand screen-savers might ever: not only in his own dramatic presence, but in engagement with others. If Mika Kares did not quite manage such a feat, our Daland and Fasolt excelled also as Hunding and Hagen. Here is a first-rate artist, readily adaptable, without threat to lyricism, verbal meaning, or their musicodramatic union. Anna Kissjudit stood out to me similarly as Fricka and the First Norn. Her sister Norns, their sister Rhinemaindens, and indeed their sister Valkyries were all excellent as individual voice and ensemble. Camilla Nylund emerged as first among equals, in fiercely committed performances as Brünnhilde in all three of these operas. Far too often, though, these were fleeting rather than sustained impressions, and all on account of the ‘curation’. 

This ‘production’, ‘curation’, or whatever one wants to call it is not about ‘AI’; it is not ‘about’ the Culture Industry or capitalism. It denotes and indeed forms part of their logical, lowest-common-denominator, catastrophic conclusion. Of course the Ring, like anything else, cannot preserve itself from the structures of our current existence; nor should it, even if that were possible. By the same token, it should not – must not – merely surrender to them. The Bayreuth Festival was, for sound reasons, founded as a joint stock company. That was not an endorsement of later-nineteenth-century capitalism; it was a decision necessitated by economic furchtbare Not. To complain about that is to plummet to the inanity level of ‘you have an iPhone, so how can you criticise capitalism?’ There was neither call nor need for this aesthetic disaster, surely the worst in the history of the Festival. If any of us hears again of Lobbes in the opera house, it will be too soon, but this is not the fault of a single person, however culpable he and his ‘team’ may be. We are not all guilty, as the cliché has it; guilty indeed, though, are obsession with technology – as ‘bros’ call it, ‘tech’ – and an economic system so ruinous Alberich might have led the revolution against it. 

The optimistic view would be that, once this is all done, there will be a chance to start again, echoing Harry Kupfer’s vision of a Ring post-nuclear-apocalypse. That now seems merely utopian, however welcome it was to find occasional relief in Siegfried from poor-quality reproductions of Kupfer’s lasers. Wagner situates hope, at the close of Götterdämmerung, in the survivors, the men and women ‘moved to the very depths of their being’ by what they have witnessed. If we have witnessed nothing and merely been numbed to the ever-narrowing shallows of what remains of our being, will not the fires continue to rage until we are all incinerated? Make a Ring about that and just maybe we can still talk, create, and crucially listen. Otherwise, as a composer-conductor in Wagner’s line, soon to work on the twentieth century’s defining production of the Ring here at Bayreuth, once put it: ‘The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?’

Or, as Wagner, already at work on the Ring project, noted in his diary from revolutionary Dresden almost 120 years earlier: ‘8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.)’ If we do not stop ‘AI’ and the forces behind it, such will soon be all our lot, minus Wagner’s strange feeling and certainly minus redemption, ‘through love’ or anything else. Booing with a fury and unanimity I have never previously encountered ensued: which already returns us, once again, to Wagner and the Dresden uprising. Let us consider this, then, a warning on multiple levels, in the unlikely event it is not too late already.

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Der fliegende Holländer, 29 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Daland – Mika Kares
Senta – Elisabeth Teige
Erik – Benjamin Bruns
Mary – Nadine Weissmann
Steersman – Kieran Carrel
The Dutchman – Nicholas Brownlee

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov

Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint),
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Images: (c) Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrather

Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Dutchman and Dutchman return, still ship-less, to their small town of still smaller horizons for what may or may not be the last time. They have had a good run by recent Bayreuth standards, rightly so, and are not scheduled for next season. (Minus Tristan, all dramas from Rienzi onwards are scheduled either for this season or next.) Whilst there was naturally immense relief all round at an actual theatrical experience amidst the torture-debris of the ‘AI’-Ring debacle, things were looking a little tired, at least until a third act that continues to pack quite a punch. I doubt this was really the fault of anyone concerned, although Tcherniakov presumably did not return to direct this revival, since there was no production team present for curtain calls. Indeed, what we saw had very much the air of a repertory house revival, somewhat at odds with what is held to be the ethos of ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’, if infinitesimally so when compared to the horrors that had unfolded the previous two nights. (I shall deal with Die Walküre in a single ‘rest of the Ring’ review following its much-awaited Götterdämmerung.)

Providing, as ever, his own set designs, Tcherniakov presents in the Prelude a pantomime in which the young ‘H.’ (Holländer, we presume) sees his mother hanging lifeless from a house window, shamed by a hypocritical, Peter Grimes-like community that had her yield – perhaps as sex worker – to Daland’s advances, only to be cast aside when no longer of use. His adult return is no seven-year ritual in search of an impossible love, but rather pursuit of revenge against the man and more broadly the community that did this. His whole life, one senses, has explicitly led up to this, as he is welcomed by the venal Daland – maybe he continues to run up such expenses? – and later his wife Mary, acted with palpable compassion by Nadine Weismann, as well as by Senta. Invited to dinner, his plan falls into place when, following interesting initial reluctance that has her decline even to come inside, Senta falls for him. The third act shows the community at large, in mirthless corporate celebration for which the Dutchman’s crew (or whatever they be) notably fail to participate. Shots are fired, Daland falling before his daughter, who nonetheless continues to hold faith in H., to be cruelly tossed aside—as surplus to his requirements as his mother had to Senta’s father’s. Daland’s house and wealth ablaze, the entire claustrophobic Nordic townscape at risk, Mary returns to kill the Dutchman. Senta’s highly disconcerting, hysterical turn between grief and celebration is ultimately transformed into compassion for the woman who has long cared for her. Perhaps, then, as we hear the 1860 post-Tristan ‘redemptive’ ending, there is a form of feminist redemption after all. Men have created and perpetuated this world and its revenge saga; if women survive, they can hardly do worse and might, just might, do better.

Oksana Liniv’s conducting remained the weakest link in the evening’s proceedings (from when I last heard it in 2024). It is a pity she could not have been replaced with someone more able and willing to respond to such a dramatic conception, or indeed any other, of the work. If the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra played well enough, it rarely sounded inspired, and one could hardly blame it. Lyniv’s alternation between pressing too hard and listlessly meandering, the latter especially apparent in a second act that seemed much longer than it was, offered a reversion to number opera seemingly not from aesthetic conviction, but because a more music-drama-focused performance could not be sustained. A sudden change of gear to breakneck speed at the close of the spinning chorus had pit and stage fall apart for several bars, the chorus compelled to find its own way back into sync, quite unaided by the conductor. 

A further sadness lay in the sound offered by a now reduced chorus,  especially at the beginning of the third act. The Festival’s decision to take an axe to what should be one of its crown jewels has regrettably had consequences, notwithstanding the musicianship of those remaining and their new director. In the title role, Nicholas Brownlee had an awkward beginning, intonation surprisingly, repeatedly awry in the first act. He grew into his own, though, to offer a compelling performance later on. Having sung two other challenging roles (Fasolt and Hunding) on two immediately preceding evenings, Mika Kares was undaunted by prospect or reality of Daland, outsinging the Dutchman in the first act and continuing to impress thereafter. Benjamin Bruns and Elisabeth Teige offered an aural, if not necessarily dramatic, glimpse of what a future Siegfried and Brünnhilde might sound like, Bruns impassioned and vocally fearless as Erik, Teige taking all in her musicodramatic stride in a role notorious for its demands. It was heartening too to welcome a fresh-voiced Kieran Carrel from Berlin’s Deutsche Oper to the Green Hill as the Steersman; let us hope this intelligent portrayal will prove neither his last visit nor role here. If I had certain reservations, then, this revival nonetheless proved quite a tonic after the anti-human production horrors of the two preceding evenings.

Bayreuth Festival (2) – Das Rheingold, 27 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Wotan – Michael Volle
Donner – Alexander Grassauer
Froh – Siyabonga Maqungo
Loge – Klaus Florian Vogt
Fricka – Anna Kissjudit
Freia – Evelyn Novak
Erda – Christa Mayer
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Fasolt – Mika Kares
Fafner – Peter Rose
Woglinde – Katharina Konradi
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Marie Henriette Reinhold

Curator – Marcus Lobbes
Artistic and technical conception – Marcus Lobbes, Nils Corte
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Digital- and AI-storytelling – Roman Senkl
Creative code, visual art – Nils Corte, Phil Hagen Jungschlaeger
Set design – Wolf Gutjahr

Costumes – Pia Maria Mackert  

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

The Bayreuth Festival has had a chequered history over its (almost) 150 years to date. It nonetheless remains, or has until now remained, in many ways an object lesson to the rest of the operatic world in how to take art seriously, how to create conditions in which it might be produced and experienced, and much else—not least with respect to the Festspielhaus amphitheatre and covered pit. That the rest of the world has failed almost entirely to heed its example may sadden us, but reflects on that world and us, not on Bayreuth, nor indeed on Wagner. As Pierre Boulez observed, whilst at work here half a century ago on the now legendary ‘Centenary Ring’ with Patrice Chéreau, perhaps with a little exaggeration, if understandably so, Wagner’s ‘diatribes’, written in turn:

… more than a century ago, are still completely relevant, for nothing has changed—the laziness of the repertory theatre, its failings, its precarious functioning, the blind choice of works, the fortuitous casting of singers and players, the lack of rehearsal, the sauve-qui-peut routine. Architecturally speaking, the Bayreuth model has remained a dead letter and we still have Italian-style theatres. … Both visually and acoustically, we continue to witness this permanent defeat of what is truly theatrical, Bayreuth having effected not the slightest improvement.

To strike a slightly less pessimistic note than Boulez, I think Bayreuth has played a notable role in effecting certain theatrical improvements, if more related to staging than stages. That 1976-80 production and numerous others – Ring stagings from Harry Kupfer and Frank Castorf, Tristan from Heiner Müller, Parsifal from Stefan Herheim, Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin, Tobias Kratzer’s Tannhäuser, and so on – set standards for and posed challenges to the rest of the world, just as Wagner did, and occasionally, sometimes more than that, they have been taken up, run with, even surpassed. Bayreuth as ‘workshop’ (Werkstatt), the greatest legacy of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, created the conditions for such innovation, building on the vision and achievements of Richard himself, as well as (whisper it) the best of the Winifred era, brought such artists of vision, Boulez included, to the Green Hill, showing not only the necessary courage to fail but the equally necessary courage to rethink, to revise, to rejuvenate: Wagner’s own celebrated ‘Kinder, macht Neues!’ following that very first festival in 1876.

If,  gentle reader, you sensed a less-than-gentle ‘but’ approaching, I fear you would be anything other than mistaken. Perhaps nothing, especially in the theatre of Tannhäuser and Parsifal, is truly irredeemable; perhaps something can be salvaged from this. Imagining how lies quite beyond my little mind, though perhaps some machine will tell us. For what the Festival, incomprehensibly, has come up with to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the first Ring must be the greatest travesty ever to have been visited on it anywhere at any time, an experience so unbearable five (out of five) people I spoke to afterwards described it independently as the worst thing they had ever seen, one (Stefan Mauß, whom I have permission to quote) adding the unforgettable and entirely accurate phrase ‘visual waterboarding’, and a rebuke not only to Wagner, not only to Bayreuth, but to any conception of art that tiny, human mind of mine will ever be able to entertain. Enter the ‘AI’-Ring, mysteriously and with insufferable pretention subtitled ‘‘Ring 10010110 – vom Mythos zum Code’, seemingly undirected, and yet ‘curated’ by one Marcus Lobbes.

What we saw can be dealt with briefly. (If only one might say the same of experiencing it.) Following a mercifully image-free Prelude, beautifully and imaginatively led by Christian Thielemann, near-peerlessly performed by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, any sense of drama, opera, or basic humanity deserts us for a parade of banal screensaver images shown upon a curtain in front of the singers, thus largely obscured and left to fend for themselves, wearing identical, indistinguishable, weirdly yet unrevealingly hideous costumes. (Final applause, for those who could bring themselves to engage, proved something of a game in trying to identify who was presenting him-/herself at any point At least it offered the first and only prospect of entertainment in the entire sorry evening.) Sometimes there was a clear reference to the Ring at Bayreuth, the first image being the celebrated representation of the Rhinemaidens in 1876, amidst genuine theatrical wizardry that enabled them to appear as if  swimming in the Rhine. (Yes, as Anna Russell told us, in the Rhine: now on the curtain.) I almost wept upon a brief appearance, in bizarrely low resolution such as would be refused by the least assiduous reviews editor, of Castorf’s Golden Motel, not out of the nostalgia I feel for that production, but because it was vaguely discernible. We did, to be fair, see a few large rings, on apparently female fingers, when the ring should first have been seen on stage with Alberich. Otherwise, endlessly, pointlessly transforming shapes came and went, sometimes returning, few with any relation to what we heard, culminating in an anonymous man and woman who turned into street (or perhaps theatre?) lights, quickly to turn back again. Some more recognisable, if irrelevant images were suggestive of  Ludwig II put in a very brief guest appearance during the descent to Nibelheim, as did very occasional glimpses of other Rheingold productions, but that was it.

The ultimately unforgivable thing was the way this abject, wasteful nonsense distracted from whatever might have remained of the drama. With that going on before our eyes, our ears (at least my ears) struggled for more than a minute or so to keep track of what was probably a very good musical performance. Not only was this entirely at odds with any idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk – in many ways, a problematical idea that will benefit from deconstruction – but with art and even humanity themselves. I managed to hear flashes of an intriguingly mobile, flowing orchestral conception shaped by Thielemann—rather along the analytical lines suggested by Wagner in an 1871 report to German Wagner societies, tracing an entire corpus of interrelated themes from the individualisation of ‘a few malleable Nature motifs’. If I sensed that most vividly in the Prelude, its low E-flat foundational in every sense and exquisitely decorated by some of the fruitiest, bubbliest woodwind I can recall hearing here, that is a comment related in no sense to the performance itself.

Vocal contributions seemed to be of a very high standard too. Not having had chance to remind myself of the cast beforehand, I had a very pleasant surprise in hearing Klaus Florian Vogt, no less, as Loge, the ringing clarity and sincerity of his tone both in consonance with the demi-god’s revelation of uncomfortable truths and in productive contrast with his wheedling strategizing. Michael Volle’s performance, lighter than one often hears from him and in keeping with the specific demands of the Rheingold Wotan, would doubtless have graced any stage, had I been able to follow it adequately; likewise Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s darker hued Alberich, Mika Kares’s evidently lovelorn Fasolt, Christa Mayer’s chalumeau-like Erda, and much else besides, Evelyn Novak's golden Freia and a fine trio of Rhinemaidens included. To claim that I properly heard any of these performance, though, would be entirely misleading, so I shall leave it there. 

According to Tina Lorenz, writing in the programme, ‘Ring 10010110 tells a radically contemporary story about how we are currently witnessing the beginnings of a transformation in the global order’. It may be a ‘contemporary’ story, but its only ‘radicalism’ lies in turning Das Rheingold and presumably the rest into an immersive Fidelio in which we as prisoners finally experience light and fresh air upon its close. The stampede for the doors was unlike any I have seen—or participated in. Some brave souls managed to agitate for opening of the theatre doors during its course and escaped, to the intense envy and admiration of the rest of us. A period of lengthy reflection, absention, and apology would be in order from all involved. Wagner deserves better, as do the musicians and audience. So too does a world, like that of the Ring, on fire thanks to wasteful, ‘technological’ domination.

Bayreuth Festival (1) - Rienzi, 26 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Rienzi – Andreas Schager
Irene – Gabriela Scherer
Colonna – Andreas Baer-Kanabas
Adriano – Jennifer Holloway
Orsini – Michael Nagy
Cardinal Raimondo – Vitalij Kowaljow
Baroncelli – Matthias Stier
Cecco del Vecchio – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Messenger of Peace – Victoria Randem

Directors, set and costume designs – Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka
Lighting – Bernd Gallasch
Video – Leonard Koch

Dramaturgy – Markus Kiesel  

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor)

On 22 May 1872, Wagner laid the foundation stone to his new festival theatre, followed by a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, probably the single most important artistic work other than his own for Wagner’s own life and work. It has reappeared for key anniversaries ever since, not least the reopening (and ‘rebranding’) of the Festival as ‘New Bayreuth’ in 1951, including this year’s sesquicentennial edition. Unable to attend that official first night, I nonetheless hastened to the still more auspicious, unquestionably more historic event of the second, the first ever Festspielhaus staging of Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes. Excluded by Cosima – not without warrant from The Master himself – from the Bayreuth canon, Rienzi has actually appeared once before in Bayreuth, alongside the still earlier Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, during the 2013 bicentenary of Wagner’s birth. That initiative, likewise from Festival Director Katharina Wagner, nonetheless operated in the penumbra of the Festival proper: in the Oberfrankenhalle sports complex, albeit played by the Festival Orchestra and (unlike its two predecessors) staged within the limitations of the arena. Now, however, for the first time since 1901, a new Wagner opera was admitted to the formal Festspielhaus canon. 

How many people in the audience, on this first night or thereafter, will have known Rienzi at all, and if so to what extent, is an open question. Probably more than in many (all?) other theatres, I should guess, but still with a considerable number who will never previously have had the opportunity to see it, and doubtless some who will never have heard it. That holds implications for how to present it and for how it will be received. So too does the vexed question of a text for the work. The latter opens up a fascinating, rich, and complex world in itself, which I cannot even begin to summarise here. Suffice to say that the very idea of a complete text sits at odds with the expectations of the grand opéra genre in which Wagner was mostly, if not entirely, composing this ‘große tragische Oper’. That is, even if there were a single version, it would not necessarily – almost certainly not – have been expected that all the material would have been used for any given production and/or performance. There is not, since Wagner made revisions even before performance, and would unquestionably have done so again for future performances in which he wished to offer even a provisional, let alone definitive, version to the world. Late in life, he famously declared he still owed the world a Tannhäuser; whether he felt similarly about Rienzi is more dubious, though we might do so. If I understand correctly, the 2026 ‘Bayreuther Fassung’ of the verbal text has its foundation in that Wagner authorised in 1871 (presumably for the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen published that year), with some textual variants nonetheless adopted, and an important, almost equal role played by the piano score in Egon Voss’s complete edition. Wagner’s stage directions are, for better or worse, ‘only seldom adopted’—which, as Brahms might have told us, any ass can see.  

Lack of surviving sources that would enable definitive presentation, as opposed to reconstruction, of particular musical versions presents another, currently insuperable problem. The autograph, given by Winifred to Hitler, disappeared one way or another with him in 1945, as did performance parts in Dresden the same year, courtesy of ‘Bomber’ Harris et al. Much more could be said – and has been – about those difficulties, but like any such difficulties, they can also present creative and intellectual opportunities, perhaps especially when coming into dialogue, conflict, whatever we wish to call it, with a festival founded on strong notions – born in Wagner himself, at least the Wagner of late life – of a textual canon. At any rate, although the idea of a ‘complete’ Rienzi is straightforwardly impossible and probably undesirable, this gave a far better sense of the shifting boundaries and potentialities of the ‘work’ than my previous theatrical encounter, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with a version so mutilated as to verge upon the useless. 

The question then, remains: how did this new Rienzi fare—with relation to these parameters and, let us to be fair, to its own too? There are very few cases – in my personal experience, only Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal comes to mind – in which a first-year production at ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’ has proved its strongest, and/or has not undergone considerable modification in light of stage experience. If, as we have been led to believe, this is to be a one-year-only production, that may prove unfortunate, but for the moment it is in any case all we have. My assessment would be mixed, albeit with overriding gratitude for the occasion so much as to present itself. To my mind, orchestral playing and vocal performance considerably eclipsed conducting and stage direction, although everything afforded material to consider and reflect on, both in itself and in relation to broader ideas of the Festival, its history, and its future, which is just as it should be. 

Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka’s staging had its moments, but mirroring Nathalie Stutzmann’s conducting, failed to my eyes (and ears) to form a coherent assemblage, let alone whole, whilst ultimately proving more successful than either director (Philipp Stölzl) or conductor (Evan Rogister) in Berlin. The staging opened chez Rienzi, with Irene and a child in attendance. Given the advanced state of their brother-sister relationship, I assumed the child was theirs; only in the programme, did I discover him to have been their brother. (So far as I was aware – and I may well have missed something – nothing defined who he was, the first of several signal directorial omissions.) The brother’s death whilst Rienzi and Irene pursued their relations formed the foundation of a psychosexual crisis that offered the ultimate explanation for Rienzi’s deeds thereafter. Reductionist, nous? But then we repaired to a world of rolling (and fake) news, of social media speculation about ‘keeping it in the family’ and worse, whilst opinion polls forecast apparently increased vote share for Rienzi vis-à-vis his electoral opponents, Colonna and Orsini. Whatever the scandal, it seemingly did our would-be-tribune, ‘Rienzi for Prez’, no harm, though the fickleness of the crowd ultimately would. In essentials, then, here was criticism of that which liberals have christened ‘populism’, with little fundamental recognition that the people may be right as well as wrong, and that in their systemic as well as charismatic manipulation lies the greater problem. I might add here that, in the absence of German, let alone English, titles – to my mind, a mistake for a work unfamiliar to many – some things could be filled in via placards and screens:  no bad thing, which merits commendation.

In Wagner’s second act, which formed the second half of the first of Bayreuth’s three acts, the ballet was, rather to my surprise, retained, although most of its sense was lost. Wagner’s brilliant idea, in defiance of grand opéra convention, of offering dramatically meaningful dance, in this case via an allegory of the rape of Lucretia, was ditched in favour of a Bayreuth metatheatrical show that took in many of the dramas to come, from Das Rheingold to Parsifal, all directed from the other side of the political-dramatic stage by a gilded mini-Wagner familiar from around the town (here played by a child—and very well too). If much was lost, a considerable amount was also gained, and the humour of showing us as audience rushing to the Bratwurst stall and lavatories was well observed. A turn to sacrifice and martyrdom – seemingly of the entire Rienzo family – was abrupt and, stigmata aside, a little too dependent on a screen relay of Olivet Discourse prophecies from St Matthew’s Gospel, first in English, then in Latin. Again, something more broadly rather than personally political would have been welcome, but it made its point well enough. Visual inheritance from Meyerbeer (and presentiment of Götterdämmerung) in stage positioning of Rienzi, Irene, and Adriano was striking in its complement to the score. 

The third/second act was perhaps the most successful, its colour and overall look splendidly dark. Rienzi suddenly becoming a crazed murderer, firing mortal shots, was a duly shocking moment—although I am not sure so ‘critical’ a stance to the opera and its hero was necessary or even advisable at this stage in its chequered reception. The final act(s) had politics more or less entirely collapse in favour of Rienzi as a sort of hapless Macbeth, incomprehensibly stabbed by Irene rather than meeting his death at the hands of the populace. For some reason, during the fifth act proper, they both went backstage, the world as theatre returning, the point presumably being that all of these worlds – social media, Bayreuth, politics, and more – are stages of some point. A lack of clarity in direction, though, made much of this seem weirdly arbitrary, as did Rienzi carrying on crying, gesturing, and singing for a long time after his death had apparently come. I gleaned little concerning who the ‘smaller’ characters were. One might say – unfairly to my mind – that Wagner might have offered more here; but even if one did, that surely presents a challenge or, better, an opportunity to the directors, not a fait accompli.

Rienzi explicitly looks forward to a united Italy, which in Vormärz Saxony had obvious implications for a German revolution from below. Nor for nothing did Friedrich Engels sketch a drama on the same subject at pretty much the same time. By all means try something different, but do it with more evident knowledge and understanding of that from which you are differing. Szemerédy would seemingly benefit from, among other things, a lesson in basic historical chronology if she seriously thinks, as she is quoted saying in the programme: ‘How much Hitler is actually in Rienzi? The case had to be reopened.’ None, literally none; there is no ‘case’ to answer. Hitler was born in 1889; Wagner died in 1883; Rienzi was written forty years before that. That is not what she meant, of course, but the starting point remains unfortunate and straightforwardly wrong, whether in theory or in practice.

At least as consistent a failing, though, was the directors’ failure to consider the crucial role of the Church and Papacy. If not eliminated from the words, it was entirely absent from the stage, without even a derisory substitute put in its place. One set design may well have been informed, as again the programme informed us, by a floorplan of St John Lateran, but it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have known this, nor appreciated why it might have mattered. If couching the drama in terms of opinion polls, electoral politics, and ‘private lives’ was a signal error – in drama, as in life, we need far more than #ImWithHer – so was avoiding any attempt to reinvent such broader social, political, and ideological structures of the drama. Final approach towards a video man of the future and failure to meet him are all very well, yet unprepared it went for little.

Stutzmann often drew a fine sound from the orchestra, the beginning of the Overture revealing a wondrously golden, blended sound that was not simply the achievement of the covered pit. Alas, the somewhat listless way in which it proceeded was similarly prophetic of much of what was to come. I assume part of the reason for her selection and for her interpretative choices was her attempt in Tannhäuser to emphasise its French origins, but inability to present tempi as part of a greater whole even within numbers, let alone between them, did little service to Wagner’s far from inconsiderable musical dramaturgy. I should usually be the last person to complain about a lack of applause, if perceived as merited, within acts. ‘Traditional’, ‘historically informed’, or not, I cannot stand the practice; it has been outmoded since long before Wagner (with the possible knowing exception of Strauss’s Zerbinetta). And yet here, awkward silences, born of the audience’s ‘proper’ Bayreuth respect for the unity of the act, cried out for something to fill them. It need not have been that way, but it was the conductor’s responsibility to impart a sense of unity that precluded thoughts of audience participation, even in its absence. Wolfgang Sawallisch’s live 1983 (another Wagner anniversary) Munich recording remains an object lesson, if not in forestalling applause, then more importantly in creating a convincing, compelling tonal-dramatic plan. It is not the only way to perform Rienzi; there is never one way. But it has an idea and achieves it, at least in musical terms.

Andreas Schager impressed in the title role as few have. One might cavil that this was Rienzi approached from Siegfried rather than from Restoration Paris, yet Schager, one, forgivable moment aside, proved tireless and commanding in vocal terms, if a little generalised in gesture. Although I suspect it thought it was doing just this, the production ultimately did Irene no favours, rendering her at times little more than a cipher. Gabriela Scherer made much, though, of the hand she was presented, offering a stylish, committed performance. So too did a tremendous Jennifer Holloway as Adriano, bringing thoughts of Wagner’s inheritance, partly via Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, from Fidelio to mind that the conducting, sadly, did not.  Vitalij Kowaljow’s Raimondo stood out to me from the rest, doing what he could, in light of the production’s failure, to explain the presence of a cardinal. There were, though, no grounds for vocal disappointment. Bayreuth offered a fine cast, which could have been stretched further, yet acquitted itself handsomely. The Bayreuth Festival Chorus did that and more, even in the choral passages a little too close to Meyerbeer that Wagner would understandably later commend for their emptiness. Where they become more musicodramatically interesting, including a cappella writing that points its way to other, more occasional works of the 1840s, performance was duly arresting. 

Rienzi will probably always remain a singular, problematical opera, but to repeat myself, warts and all, what we saw and heard at Bayreuth was ultimately an opportunity for which to be grateful. That there is a big-heartedness to this ‘work’ offers a salutary reminder that, whatever uninformed people will tell you, Wagner had a complex personality and outlook, with many admirable as well as many less admirable traits. The ideology of some preposterous incarnation of evil is at least as absurd as that of the Bayreuth Circle and its Master. Of course reception plays a role; it always does. But so does historical truth, however shifting and uncertain. All historical truth is, by its very nature—and by that nature standing quite opposed to ludicrous, pernicious claims by the political Right to ‘protect’ it, whether it be that of Wagner, Bayreuth, or any other historical phenomenon. Statues and memorials fall, which may be good, bad or indifferent, but that creates rather than ‘destroys’ history. So too does erecting new ones. Rienzi now has an important memorial of its own; what follows is up to us. One can only hope that Die Feen, to my mind the most consistently fine opera of the unlucky first three, will succeed—and that Das Liebesverbot will be accorded an opportunity to convince us relative sceptics too. For now, this truly historic moment will more than suffice.

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Tannhäuser, 4 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Günther Groissböck
Tannhäuser – Klaus Florian Vogt
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Markus Eiche
Walther von der Vogelweide – Siyabonga Maqungo
Biterolf – Olafur Sigurdarson
Heinrich der Schreiber – Martin Koch
Reinmar von Zweter – Jens-Erik Aasbø
Elisabeth – Elisabeth Teige
Venus, Page – Irene Roberts
Young Shepherd – Flurina Stöckl
Le Gateau Chocolat – Le Gateau Chocolat
Oskar – Manni Laudenbach
Pages – Simone Lerch, Laura Margaret Smith, Annette Gutjahr

Director – Tobias Kratzer
Set designs – Rainer Sellaier
Lighting – Reinhard Traub
Video – Manuel Braun
Dramaturgy – Konrad Kuhn

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor)

Adieu or au revoir, I asked myself when leaving the Festspielhaus, but also from time to time during this performance of Tannhäuser. It will not, I hope, be adieu to the Bayreuth Festival. My years of attendance pale in comparison to those of many, but regular visits have become part of my musical, intellectual, and indeed social life, and I should be sorry to see that come to an end. But would it be to Tobias Kratzer’s production, and to the characters it has not only portrayed and explored but created, with lives, personalities, and possibilities of their own. The closest parallel that presented itself to me, perhaps ironically, was that of Frank Castorf’s Ring, which I also saw here three times, and to which by the end I had become quite attached. Even now, I sometimes wonder fancifully whatever became of Nadine Weissmann’s Erda, following Wotan’s brutal dismissal of her at (Al-)Exanderplatz. Somehow, ridiculous though this may sound, I should like to know that, a bit like Dallas’s Sue Ellen, she battled through. For Kratzer’s similarly classic – less controversially so – staging, time will tell. 2024 was scheduled to be its final outing, but there are plausible rumours that Le Gateau Chocolat and the gang will take the stage one more time two summers from now, when Bayreuth is due to give all works from The Flying Dutchman on, adding Rienzi for the first time in the Festspielhaus, for the Festival’s sesquicentenary.

Le Gateau Chocolat

As intelligent as it is entertaining (not necessarily a word one instantly associates with this opera), Kratzer’s metatheatrical, Ariadne-like Tannhäuser thus became all the more moving for me on this occasion, though I think that may also be attributed to a slight shift in tone. At its heart – it has a big heart – lies the opposition, faithful to Wagner’s own binaries and attempts to bridge them, between the world of the Wartburg and that of the Venusberg: the former as presented at Bayreuth, the latter a defiantly alternative, joyous troupe made up of Tannhäuser, his lover Venus, and two fellow artists, the fabulous Le Gateau Chocolat (as herself) and the enchanting Oskar (as in Günter Grass’s Oskar Matzerath, played by Manni Laudenbach with tin drum). They too make art; they too can be uncompromising; but differently, as in life, and in that they are quite unapologetic. The Overture – for better or worse, this is the Dresden Tannhäuser – shows through a mixture of film and staging our players on the road, running out of food and fuel, having to make an emergency stop at a service station to replenish supplies, only to be (almost) caught by a policeman. Venus, to the horror of the others, puts her foot down in a hit-and-run incident, occasioning Tannhäuser’s jump from the van and departure from the band. ‘Unapologetic’ has its limits. A lovely touch this year, was early on to have Oskar, lump in his throat, drink a shot in memory of Stephen Gould, the production’s first Tannhäuser.

Found by a passing cyclist (the Shepherd), Tannhäuser proceeds to rejoin his former singers on the Festspielhügel, the Festival audience making its way around their discussions, in order to be present at the performance. As the first act is drawing to a close, Venus, Le Gateau Chocolat, and Oskar make their way to the Green Hill to win Tannhäuser back. Much of the actual audience – all who wish – then make their way down to the pond at the foot of the actually existing hill, for the cabaret show they have devised, beautifully compered by Le Gateau Chocolat, who draws proceedings (her own rendition of ‘Dich teure Halle’ included) to a close with a call for Bayreuth to come out of the closet and display of the Progress Pride Plag, a poignant and necessary call for queer liberation in the age of JD Vance and JK Rowling. 

For the second act, we move inside the Festspielhaus/traditional Wartburg, video taking us backstage, both for preparations (with fine, detailed work both by the live film crew and members of the chorus) and for events for which the house is anything but prepared. In explicit homage to the Young German Wagner, members of the troupe invade the temple of bourgeois art, reminding us who Wagner really was and what he stood for with the banner unfurled from the storied balcony at the front of the house: quoting the composer’s torrential revolutionary catechism, Die Revolution, of 1849: ‘Frei im Wollen/Frei im Thun/Frei im Geniessen/R[ichard] W[agner]’. Freedom in desire, deed, and pleasure offers an obvious, glaring contrast with the professed values of the Minnesänger, as of course Wagner proceeds to show in the song contest, here crashed by our alternative artists, Venus pushing herself forward as an ersatz Page (a phrase behind in the first instance). Eventually, a security guard alerts Katharina Wagner, who calls the police to arrest Tannhäuser, notably leaving a dejected, broken troupe behind as the curtain falls. 

No one is a winner here, then, and certainly not Elisabeth, whom we meet again in a desolate landscape, the van burned out, tasting soup Oskar has made. What has happened in the meantime can largely be left to our own imagination, but it is clear that the troupe has broken up and Elisabeth has similarly lost almost everything. If, moreover, she has not lost her final gift (or curse), she will do so shortly to Wolfram, though only because he agrees to dress as Tannhäuser, clown wig and all. It was clearly not a good idea; it does not seem to have brought them any joy; but in the absence of anything better in art or life, they felt a compulsion to do so in the back of the van. Only Le Gateau Chocolat, we learn, has made it, advertising watches from a giant billboard above. When Tannhäuser returns, he tears to pieces his own score in despair, pages littering the stage until tales of the Papal miracle reach us. Life having in crisis supplanted art – this is not a Nietzschean aestheticism, nor was Wagner’s – we see on film at the close an alternative path, which may or may not offer consolation: Tannhäuser and Elisabeth, riding off in the van into the sunset. Perhaps another day, in another world. 

None of this would amount to much without committed performances from all concerned. All principal roles other than Venus were played by the same artists I heard last year. Ekaterina Gubanova will return for the final two performances, but here she was replaced with Irene Roberts, who uncannily resembled her (tribute not least to those working in costumes and make-up). Her performance was alive, arresting, and unsentimental: very much what was required. Klaus Florian Vogt’s Tannhäuser was beautifully sung, tirelessly acted: another intelligent portrayal. Some do not like his voice or think it appropriate; it is for them, as his gang might (perhaps more colourfully) tell us, to deal with it. Elisabeth Teige gave another excellent performance as her namesake, showing strength and subtlety in her tragedy. Markus Eiche’s often tenor-like Wolfram offered a fine study not only in verbal response but also in wounded pride. Günther Groissböck was on considerably better form as the Landgrave than as the previous night’s King Marke. Other noteworthy performances out included Siyabonga Maqungo’s sweet-toned Walther von der Vogelweide and Olafur Sigurdarson’s charismatic Biterolf.

Eberhard Friedrich drew out variegated performances from the Bayreuth Festival Chorus, words and meaning as intelligible as those of any soloist. And whilst I was unconvinced by some gear changes in Nathalie Stutzmann’s conducting – at the end of the first act in particular – and there remained a good few peculiar orchestral balances, possibly born of a desire to highlight Wagner’s debt to grand opéra, considerable progress had been made from last year. Ensemble was not perfect, but it was a good deal sight stronger than it had been in the first of the three productions I saw and heard this year. The sum of what, I think, we may in the best sense call this ‘show’ proved greater and deeper than its estimable parts. Here is to hopes for 2026.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Tristan und Isolde, 3 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Tristan – Andreas Schager
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Camilla Nylund
Kurwenal – Olafur Sigurdarson
Melot – Birger Radde
Brangäne – Christa Mayer
Shepherd – Daniel Jenz
Steersman – Lawson Anderson
Young Sailor – Matthew Newlin

Director – Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson
Set design – Vytautas Narbutas
Costumes – Sibylle Wallum
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Lighting – Sascha Zauner

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Almost uniquely amongst operas (dramas, if we prefer), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even much in the way of framing. Perhaps not uniquely, but to a greater extent than any other. Any attempt to make Tristan ‘about’ anything other than what it is intrinsically about seems doomed to fail. I continue to live in dread of the director who decides it is somehow ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or anything pertaining to the phenomenal world. So many, distrusting or simply uninterested in music, seem incapable of sensing what it is concerned with. 

Put frankly, if you are uninterested in music, you should leave Tristan well alone. Its action is interior; the exterior is largely back story. For Wagner at his most Schopenhauerian, in aesthetics as much as ontology, the striving of the Will is the action, to which music – not opposed to, but as drama – as its representation comes closer than any other art form or means of expression. It is the music drama in which least would be lost if words and staging were discarded. In reality, of whatever kind, that how we listen to it, even when convinced otherwise. At a certain point in the Act II love-duet, it becomes difficult, even impossible, to have the words, fascinating, complex, and telling though they may be, register in one’s consciousness. Whether we call this the world of the noumenon, of night, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we as well as the lovers are – or should be – there and not in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equivalent. 

All very well, you may say, but we do have words, we do have singers, we do have staging. Indeed we do, and they – singers and staging, in a sense words too – must work within these realities, these artistic truths. That need not be a problem; art thrives upon constraint of one sort or another. (Ask Wagner’s antipode, Stravinsky.) Too often, though, directors do not, perhaps cannot, since they seem to have little sense of what this work is actually concerned with, still less that it seemingly cannot be wrenched to be concerned with anything else. A signal feature of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I saw in its second performance, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson seems to grasp this, in theory and in practice, and moreover to grasp that this does not negate but rather invites his work as director. There are cases, I think, in which he might go further in this direction in paring down the extraneous – is there a better model than Wieland Wagner here? – but this makes for a very good start and, following so many misfires, whether in Bayreuth or elsewhere, comes as a great relief. 

Nietzsche wrote a good deal of arrant nonsense about Wagner, often deliberately so, yet in calling Tristan the opus metaphysicum, he was on the mark. Only a couple of stagings I have seen, by Dmitri Tcherniakov and Peter Konwitschny, have offered serious challenge to that and Konwitschny in considerably more circumscribed fashion; they are destined, I suspect, to remain exceptions. Anarsson’s production treads on safer ground, neither without reason nor without advantage Moreover, there is to Anarsson’s work and to that of his collaborators, not least the outstanding Semyon Bychkov as conductor, a sense not only of the noumenal but of the aesthetic. 

Ship enthusiasts will find themselves well catered for. Not only the first act but the entire drama has a ship as its setting. Vytautas Narbutas’s set designs evoke this powerfully, suggestively, and without clutter—save, in the second act, where the clutter is the point. Ropes mostly do the trick in the first act, whose abiding visual motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding dress, also suggestive of sails. The words displayed – and just as much, concealed – on it from Wagner’s poem tell their own story, especially as she attempts, with varying success and perhaps intent, to free herself from it. Anarsson sees no reason actually to visualise the love potion, knowing that it is simply a symbol, not a cause. I have no especially strong feelings either way on that in principle; it is merely an external manifestation. It felt slightly odd, though – I realise this may seem somewhat at odds with what I say above – as did the onset of what seemed like a realistic fight between Tristan and Melot at the end of the second act, Melot wielding a sword, only for its outcome to happen seemingly spontaneously. Those objects and acts of the day perhaps benefit, if less strongly than their counterparts in the Ring, from some sort of visualisation.

The second act moves to the inside of the ship, seemingly its core: the core, one might say, of what action there may be. Its décor is fascinating, suggesting a lumber room strewn with objects that may in some sense have led us – which is to say Wagner, the work, those performing and otherwise experiencing it – there. Caspar David Friedrich’s presence is doubtless inevitable, and will at least evoke recognition, though part of me feels it is time to give his more celebrated images, like those of Monet and Klimt a while ago, a period of rest. The broader, unaggressive deconstruction of ‘civilisation’, western and perhaps eastern too, forms a captivating backdrop for the stage and ultimately the ‘real’ action. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a different part of (presumably) the same ship, the third act unfolds in a ‘later’, barer environment. It already feels too late, which in the most obvious if not necessarily the deepest sense, it is. Lighting, or rather its lack, throughout seems intended both to accentuate but also to develop the contrast between night and day. It reminds us that these are not operatic characters; the point is not necessarily to observe them minutely. There are greater forces – ultimately, one great, overwhelming force – at work.

Following the crude lack of direction, balance, and tuning brought to us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv in the covered pit, Bychkov’s work sounded like aural manna from heaven. He knew how to work with the theatre and its particular characteristics; beyond that, he knew the workings and expressive possibilities of Wagner’s score and communicated them in a reading that often took its time, especially in the second act, yet never dragged. The opening of the first-act Prelude – and its echo, towards the end of the act – sounded more beautifully hushed than I can recall, yet in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with knowledge, albeit knowledge that could not yet be imparted, of where the music would head, of what dramatically, in the fullest sense of the world, was at stake in melody, dissonance, and their consequences, always, if sometimes only just, within a tonal framework. That was the story, in which intensification of string vibrato could play as important a role as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov did not hold back; his is not Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to anything other than its own musicodramatic requirements. He nonetheless helped liberate the voice’s expressive potential, even when vocal realities fell short of the ideal.

I did not feel that so strongly as a couple of people I have spoken to since, and wonder how much of that might be ascribed to seating in the theatre (as well, perhaps, as to aesthetic priorities). Seated at the back of the stalls, I may have benefited from the healing balm of the Bayreuth acoustic. That said, Andreas Schager’s Tristan, for stretches of the performance possessed of many of this Heldentenor’s familiar qualities, also experienced difficulties. Balance in the second-act duet was sometimes awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at times also seemed stretched, if more in control of her part. A degree of abandon is, of course, no bad thing; Schager’s performance, however, came into and went out of focus a little too often and became strangely disjunct in the third act, as if the effort to sing more softly, to offer a more variegated reading, made it more difficult to maintain his line at all. 

Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, by contrast, everything it should have been: warm, sustained, intelligent, and as well as integrated as any orchestral line. Günther Groissböck’s snarling Marke seemed to be making a play to come across as more cruel, even vindictive, than one might expect; this emerged as something of a work-in-progress. If a little bluff, even gruff at times, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles were all well taken, Birger Radde’s ambivalent Melot, Daniel Lenz’s sweetly sung Shepherd, and Matthew Newlin’s clear-toned Sailor all standing out, whilst taking their place in the greater ensemble. The latter was ultimately what mattered and which, shortcomings aside, made this a satisfying and often moving whole.