Rienzi at Bayreuth 2026: A Historic Premiere in the Festival’s 150th Anniversary Year
Photo: Enrico Nawrath / Bayreuther Festspiele
It doesn’t matter how many times one goes to the Bayreuth Festival, it always feels like a special occasion. Still, there’s special and then there’s special, and operatic occasions don’t really get more special than a genuine Wagner premiere. Technically, the festival did dip its toes into the Rienzi water back in 2013 for the composer’s 200th birthday, but not with a fully staged production at the Festspielhaus. That was reserved for this year – a truly historic first Green Hill performance of Wagner’s early depiction of the rise and fall of “the last of the tribunes” to mark the 150th anniversary of the festival.
Show me someone who says they know Rienzi well though and I’ll show you a liar. In fact, I’d wager that plenty of keen opera goers haven’t even heard of it. Some will have heard of it, but never listened to it; others might have listened to the odd bit – the overture, perhaps, or the title character’s Prayer, but no more; a small percentage of the most devoted may have seen a performance of it once or twice, maybe in Leipzig who have a version knocking about. But I feel safe in saying that, essentially, nobody knows this piece well. Given it was once one of his most popular works, it begs the question - why?
In terms of Bayreuth, its absence can be traced back to Wagner himself: by the time the festival was up and running, his musical style had evolved so significantly that he looked upon Rienzi with some embarrassment – an enthusiastic but immature attempt at the grandest of operas that had no place in the new theatre. Later thoughts about a possible staging of the work by Siegfried Wagner were scuppered more by uncertainty over what version of the score to use – the work always having been subject to cuts and never having an established “final” version. But as always with Wagner, there’s more controversy to it than that.
A first viewing of an opera can certainly be inspirational. The composer Max Reger, for example, once said “When I first heard Parsifal at Bayreuth I was fifteen. I cried for two weeks and then became a musician.” Inspiration does not, however, always manifest itself in such a sublime way, and it’s the unfortunate fate of Rienzi that Adolf Hitler first heard it in Vienna when he was sixteen, and – allegedly – claimed it was the seed from which his political ambitions sprouted. I say allegedly, both because the veracity of the story is dubious, and because even if Hitler really did make the claim, that does not make it true. Aside from anything else, if he really walked out of the house suddenly believing his destiny was to somehow bring glory to the German Empire, spending the next two years repeatedly trying to get into art school seems like a circuitous way of going about it. But perhaps that’s beside the point. What is not disputed is that he was very keen on the work and openly identified with the title character while he was in power; that he was given the autograph manuscript for his 50th birthday: and that both this and the only original performance version were lost during the final days of the war.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath / Bayreuther Festspiele
Given this context then, of Rienzi as a youthful work in need of both musical reconstruction and historical reclamation, we should perhaps not be surprised thatrevivalsin the post-war period have been vanishingly rare. Nor perhaps that one of the first things co-director Alexandra Szemerédy asks in the programme notes is “How much Hitler is actually in Rienzi?”, even if that question is at the very least being asked the wrong way round. What is perhaps surprising, and certainly not in a bad way, is that despite asking such questions, Szemerédy and her co-director Magdonla Parditka seemed not to particularly attempt to answer them on stage. Updating the action to an unspecified near future, we were presented more with a general exploration of political populism in the internet age than with any attempt to reckon with the piece’s reception history; one that was on the one hand engaging and skilfully realised, but on the other, confusing in message.
One of the most significant directorial decisions began in the overture with the portrayal of an invented backstory, the consequences of which would permeate the production. The curtain opened to three rooms or interconnected flats, all identical boxes that gave off the vibe of Eastern Bloc Plattenbau, perhaps already a comment on a lack of individualism that would be seen throughout the society on stage. More significant though was the scene that played out between the three occupants. While Rienzi worked on a political speech and Irene made coffee, an unnamed child asleep in the third room began coughing. Attempts to comfort him, first by Irene and then Rienzi, seemed perfunctory, given that the boy soon began coughing blood but was simply sent back to bed while the siblings cracked on with the speech writing. If that weren’t enough to raise eyebrows at the pair’s priorities and impulses, Rienzi then moved to kiss his sister (with sexual intent), who initially seemed to respond in kind before pulling away and appearing shocked. Meanwhile, the child awoke once more with a still-worse coughing fit and collapsed dead, leading both Irene and Rienzi to howl in pain after discovering the body.
I’m certainly not against a directorially-inserted backstory in principle: done well, they can do a lot to bring us on the journey the director wants us to take and ensure we don’t get lost along the way. One doesn’t need to look far to think of a classic example either – Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Dutchman that’s also back at the festival this year is splendidly set up by a creatively staged overture. My issue with this one was that by the end of the evening, I simply was not sure of its real purpose.
From a practical point of view, it was not clear who this child living with Rienzi and Irene was from the stage action alone. I had read in advance that he was meant to be their younger brother, but there was really no way of knowing that without having read the programme notes. Given what else was going on in the overture, it would have been perfectly reasonable to assume he was the product of their incestuous relationship. It is true that Rienzi mentions his brother was killed by the Colonna family to Adriano in scene two, but a. we have already established that nobody knows this opera well, and b. even if one did, nothing is done to confirm the child we see is that brother.
In fact, the libretto here only muddies the waters. Why would Adriano acknowledge his family were responsible for the death of Rienzi’s brother, when we have just seen that the death was due to neglect by Rienzi and Irene? More to the point, why would Rienzi claim to be stepping into the political fray to avenge that death, knowing that the true circumstances don’t warrant it? With images of children in hospital appearing on television news behind the action, I suppose it is possible that this was a case of transferred blame, and that, unable to accept any responsibility for his brother’s fate, his guilt was transformed into a vendetta against those he believed had created the society that allowed his brother to get sick in the first place; a sort of personalised “stab in the back” theory, if you will. But if so, this was not signposted enough.
In any case, the boy’s death was clearly the idée fixe of Rienzi’s failing psyche, acting as an explanation, if not an excuse for his changing behaviour. Headaches, accompanied by negative images projected on a screen upstage, also signalled his failing mental health throughout the evening, beginning at the end of Act 1 when he looked pained and vexed when accepting the role of tribune, before a vision of his dead brother appeared atop the steps of the hall of the Capitol while the Messengers of Peace sang. If, as Szemerédy states in the programme notes, the idea was to focus on “how much of the personal is actually embedded in a political programme” then I’m not sure what this, or indeed, the explicit depiction of desire for his sister, says. Surely not that politicians only do bad things because they have some deep-seated family trauma or mental health issues; but then what? By the third act this is a man who is seen executing his enemies in cold blood and cackling afterwards – if the message is that Rienzi stoops to such a brutal act of violence because he feels tormented about trying to seduce his sister while his brother was dying, does that actually tell us anything about the dangers of real political populism? I fail to see what.
Another angle that flowed through the production from the start was the influence of social media, smartphones and 24-hour access to the internet on politics. In this iteration of Rome, televisions were always on, phones were always out, and politicians on all sides were always ready to pose for selfies. In an age where governmental decisions are regularly announced on Twitter (no, Elon, I’m not calling it that) and the previous limits of tribalism seem no longer applicable when one’s opponent is merely a pseudonymous handle on a screen, the immediate wall of tweets and reactions we saw on the apartment TV screens, and people filming rather than helping during what is after all an attempted kidnapping (at least in the libretto), was an attention-grabbing start to this theme. It was a shame then that I felt the staging rather substituted development of this angle for repetition. By the third or fourth crowd scene with ubiquitous smartphones, we had got the memo, but there was little else and no pay off. What did this society learn, if anything, about their reliance on such technology? Perhaps the descent into military dictatorship and the ultimate death of Rienzi (and Irene) were supposed to be message enough, but any actual causality between the events of the opera and the use of technology was never really demonstrated. And with a new vote projection showing Rienzi’s share falling to 0% in the final scene still appearing on a fancy big screen, any indication of what exactly society should do differently seemed far away.
Photo: Enrico Nawrath / Bayreuther Festspiele
Having said that, while I didn’t feel the production ultimately delivered many answers about the nature of populists or elections in the internet age, there were certainly elements to admire about it. First, I appreciated greatly the attention to detail, and in particular, the attention to musical detail, paid by the production team. Set design worked very well, with the windows cut into the walls of each boxy apartment aligned to provide a striking visual tableau of identical televisions flickering through them. Speaking of televisions, news tickers on the screens imparting uniformly positive messages while Rome burned and child soldiers marched was just one of a number of nice background touches that helped fill out the picture of what society under Rienzi was like. As mentioned though, most pleasing was how clear it was that the directors had worked very much with the score as well as the text: machine gun fire being timed with snare drum rolls, a pantomime Siegfried’s horn call being perfectly aligned with a fanfare in the score – things like this elevate an opera and help it become an integrated musical drama, and the directorial team here must be commended for taking the time to do it when so many do not.
I just mentioned a pantomime Siegfried, and out of context that might seem rather incongruous in a production of Rienzi, but it actually formed part of another aspect of the staging I thought was strong, namely the treatment of the Act II ballet music. A second Festspielhaus proscenium descended from the ceiling and a condensed comedic dash through more or less the complete Bayreuth canon played out as the entertainment that had been laid on for Rienzi’s ambassadorial guests. A little commentary on the political history of the Bayreuth Festival for sure, but just as importantly, a fun, well-choreographed bit of stagecraft that raised genuine smiles.
On the musical side of things, it makes no sense to start any place other than with Andreas Schager in the title role. I’ve been a Schager admirer ever since he broke on to the scene more than a dozen years ago now, and in my view he remains the gold standard for Heldentenors this century, even if things do not perhaps always come as easily as they did back then. On this evening, he once again proved tireless, and if anything seemed to sing louder than ever, matching the large choral forces on stage with apparent ease. He can certainly sing quietly when he wants to as well, notably in a sotto voce rendition of the “Allmächt’ger Vater” prayer that really grabbed one’s attention. If I had to be super critical, I might highlight the fact that the transition from quiet to loud was occasionally a little sudden, but that would be to nitpick: this was another accomplished performance, and he was the right candidate to be Bayreuth’s first Rienzi.
Jennifer Holloway was equally as impressive as Adriano in a portrayal that I felt worked equally well viewed as a trouser role, or alternatively as an Adriana. Dramatic and emotional commitment to the part did not lead to clear diction being sacrificed, and her monologue in the third scene of Act 3 was a particular highlight.
Gabriela Scherer too delivered the goods as Irene, and made a perfect foil for both Holloway and Schager in a performance that successfully conveyed a more hemmed-in character that nevertheless had its own intensity.
Of the smaller roles Vitalij Kowaljow impressed most, his chocolatey, focused resonance standing out in all the moments he had, while Andreas Bauer Kanabas and Michael Nagy took their roles as Colonna and Orsini well.
In the pit Nathalie Stutzmann led the orchestra in a reading that I felt was just on the right side of being sensitive to the singers rather than mere accompaniment. Balance between soloists, orchestra and chorus was generally excellent – no mean feat in a work scored like this one – and perhaps the real measure of success was that she made this music feel like it belonged in the Festspielhaus acoustic. The chorus of course deserve a shout out of their own too, showing what a high-quality ensemble they remain while doing a lot of the musical heavy lifting.
A mixed affair then, that certainly didn’t lose my attention throughout, but which in the end felt more like a special event than a special operatic production. There are clearly ideas worth exploring in this staging though, as well as not a small amount of directorial skill in the execution, that almost makes it a shame that this is (currently) expected to be a one-year-only production that will not have a chance to develop. On that topic, what of the piece itself? Is it a work that, now resurrected from its Fafner-like slumber, demands or deserves to become a permanent fixture at the festival? I’m ambivalent, to be honest. On the one hand, I was certainly very glad to have the opportunity to see and hear it in these surroundings, and I really do not want to gatekeep that experience from others who may not have been able to attend this year. As mentioned above, I actually thought the music worked surprisingly well in the Festspielhaus acoustic, and throughout the evening it was interesting to hear not only Rienzi but the seeds of operas still to come – Tannhäuser and particularly, Lohengrin. For what it’s worth, I also found myself humming the melody to the prayer several days after the performance.But as much as I enjoyed the piece as a curiosity, in truth I probably won’t be rushing to hear it again soon. It’s not that the music seems “bad” as such – in fact, on its own terms, I was probably more impressed with it than I was expecting to be. However, averaging a big chorus scene roughly every 20 minutes, it’s undeniably relentless in style – sort of like a Lohengrin with all the quiet bits removed. After a while, it rather wore me down, its perpetually heightened “dramatic” style actually diminishing the sense of actual drama to me after a while.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is not whether Rienzi should come back, but that given the canon has now been widened, whether we will now also see Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot at some point? There doesn’t seem to me any great reason why we shouldn’t. If any of the early works are shown in the future though, I would just ask festival management for one thing: can we please have surtitles? I completely understand the arguments against them at the festival ordinarily, and indeed, ordinarily I would agree that they can distract from one’s focus even when one knows a libretto well – I often find myself pointlessly reading titles even when I know what is being said. But as I noted at the beginning, Rienzi is very much not a typical evening at the opera since – once more for those at the back – nobody knows it well. So even when the audience is a collection of the world’s most obsessive Wagnerians, I can’t believe more than a handful of people in the theatre wouldn’t have a better experience with surtitles. Rules are there to be broken, and given an exception was already made in staging the work, I do hope one more will be made with regard to titles should the situation come around again. Either way though, if Bayreuth is to maintain its place atop the Wagnerian tree, it must continue to do new things, and in that sense at least, this Rienzi was the perfect celebration.
Sam Goodyear
Sam Goodyear is an opera fan and Wagner enthusiast, originally from Portsmouth but now living in Germany. He read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and has at various times worked as a bookie, translator, trader, journalist, and TV researcher. He currently works in socially responsible investment. While very much an amateur, his interest in music has in the past led to him singing on BBC radio, and playing the trumpet in front of the queen. He attends as much Wagner both at home and abroad as time and money will permit, and he has written on Wagner for Classical Music Magazine.
