Wagner’s elite is concentrated in Bayreuth – The Universal

The premiere of Tristan und Isolde led by Katharina Wagner , granddaughter of Richard Wagner , concentrated today the opening of the Bayreuth Festival Wagner’s elite, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bavarian unconditional event.

The head of the Government, with long turquoise dress, attended the event with her husband, Professor Joachim Sauer, as Wagner fanatic like her, and a long parade of faces of German celebrity and the world of politics, represented, among others, the speaker of parliament, Norbert Lammert.

Attend the opening of the festival in Bayreuth, a provincial town in Bavaria, is an indispensable ritual in Germany to famous and powerful from time songwriter Ring des Nibelungen .

Then, his box of honor was occupied by his patron Ludwig II of Bavaria The “Mad King”, as did the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, and in democracy, many presidents, chancellors and ministers, plus the Bavarian political class as a whole.

The focus in this 104 festival turned into the new “Tristan” a huge challenge for the heir to the house, Katharina, who opted for a risky version of this Wagnerian drama of love and death.

This is a scenery gray tones with little chromatic joys, with Tristan – Stephen Gould – tied at its peak to a revolving fence currently in the midst of a plot that runs between triangular geometries, according to the concept of the granddaughter composer.

Katharina Wagner, 37, who was the daughter of director of Bayreuth for more than half a century -Wolfgang-, took the stage direction with a double commitment, since at the end of this season will take the reins alone the competition.

This is the second production that runs in Bayreuth, after the Meistersinger of Nuremberg 2007, then received with displeasure in the fief of the dynasty Wagner.

The preambles of the premiere bogged down further by a traditional intrigues of Bayreuth, this time focusing on the removal of those who, from Wolfgang’s death in 2010, she co-directed the festival, his Eva Wagner-Pasquier, 70.

A rumor mill unleashed by that farewell joined the appointment as music director of Christian Thielemann , the leadership of the new “Tristan” and a “spoiled” by Katharina.

Master His appointment came in March, he said yesterday the manager Heinz-Dieter Sense, but met a few weeks ago, almost coinciding with the resignation of who was to be “Isolde “Anja Kampe, paper adopted at the last moment Evelyn Herzlitzius .

Thielemann become viceroy, the resignation without further explanation Kampe and a production in which he worked to the dress rehearsal they unleashed ominous comments in Bayreuth.
Sense was the sole representative of the direction of the festival in the conference prior to the opening press on Friday as neither Katharina and Thielemann attended the meeting with the media .

Rounding out the season at Bayreuth reruns of Ring des Nibelungen of Frank Castorf, Lohengrin Hans Neuenfels and Flying Dutchman Jan Philipp Gloger.

Tetralogy staged by Castorf, heavily booed at its premiere in 2013 and slightly less in 2014, will once again conducted by Kirill Petrenko, acclaimed in the two previous seasons.

The season runs until August 28 and, according to tradition, 60,000 tickets are officially sold out.

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