A Bayreuth Experience
Richard Wagner in Haus Wahnfried. Photo: Per-Erik Skramstad
At last, at last! After nine years of applying for tickets, my wife and I obtained tickets for Parsifal and Meistersinger at Bayreuth in 2007. I was then approaching sixty and, being a composer myself, I didn't want to die before I had heard Parsifal in the acoustic for which it was written! Although Wagner's music has never influenced my own compositions, I consider him the most profoundly moving of composers, and my collection of Wagneriana runs into hundreds of books, articles, scores, CDs of all the operas, and so on.
Colin Bayliss
Clemens Bieber
Bea and Alec Bobotek
Stephen Charitan
Jerry Floyd
Diana Herbst
Hildegaard Arnold Kiel
Walter Meyer
Anne Midgette
John F. Runciman
Per-Erik Skramstad
Julia Thornton
Mark Twain
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We determined to make the experience into something special, as indeed it should be. Therefore we flew to Cologne and traveled to Nuremberg by train down the Rhine valley. We then spent a couple of days in Nuremberg taking in the atmosphere of Hans Sachs' city.
Then to Bayreuth itself! Alighting from the train, the first thing one sees is the Festspielhaus rearing out of the trees half a mile away, which is the first of many times your breath is taken away.
Our hotel was halfway between the station and Wahnfried, so after unpacking the bags, it was straight to the Wagner museum there. A small admission charge and we were in Wagner's own house with all its fascinating memorabilia. As I walked through the Saal past his library of philosophical books I burst into tears without warning. The attendant told my wife that this happens frequently.
In the evening we walked up to the Festspielhaus and talked to members of the chorus who were not singing that night. I found that my German was far better than I had thought and I could converse about other things than rings and grails!
Bayreuth Festival. Photo: Per-Erik Skramstad
The next day was Parsifal, and to enter the Festspielhaus at last was another breathtaking experience in itself. It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit inside but 90 outside, so it seemed quite comfortable! The wooden seats are also surprisingly comfortable as they support the thighs even for someone of my height of six foot three. The unique sound from the covered pit cannot be described except to say that the music seemed to be both around and within your head. It was the last of the old production of Parsifal (Christoph Schlingensief) and although the singing and conducting were near perfect, the replacement of that production can only be welcomed. So too will the replacement of Katharina Wagner's production of Meistersinger! I have no objection to the modernistic avant garde productions, but they must be done well, and this production was so misguided in concept and overburdened with so much irrelevant stage business that both the singers and the orchestra were affected. However, it did give us the opportunity to hear that wonderful acoustic in action when 1800 people booed!
Katharina Wagner's production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Hans Sachs is kidnapped by performance artists in Act 3. Photo from 2009: Enrico Nawrath
It would be irrelevant to the Wagner theme to go into detail of the rest of our time there, but I must mention going to hear German organ recitals on instruments which are kept in immaculate tuning, unlike English ones. Also we went to a recital of English church music in Bayreuth and met someone whom I'd not seen for 15 years; then in Cologne on the way home we had dinner with a player in the Gurzenich Orchestra who surprised me by showing me a video of his conducting a piece of my music with a youth orchestra in Italy.
But back to Wagner. Let me quote Gustav Mahler. "Emerging speechless from the Festspielhaus [after hearing Parsifal in 1883], I realised that I had undergone the most soul-wrenching experience in my life, and that I would carry this experience with me for the rest of my days". It would be difficult to express the Bayreuth experience better except to say that it has been with me consciously every day since August 2007.