After two years of being voraciously booed in every performance of every run, Frank Castorf’s production of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival appears to have turned the corner. At the first performance of Das Rheingold in this third year of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, there were maybe one or two brief boos and then it was all enthused hooting and hollering for the cast and especially Kirill Petrenko, who is now of course the designated artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic. I believe it was Patrice Chereau (whose “Centennial Ring” production was also ferociously jeered at first, before it became the most applauded and lauded production in the history of Bayreuth) who said that in Bayreuth, “after three years, it becomes tradition”. With time ever speeding up, we have arrived at “after two years, it becomes tradition”...
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All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath
I was there in 1976,the summer of the Chereau Ring - I loved it and it remains my favorite of more than a dozen Rings I have seen around the world. But, pandemonium broke out after each opera (sometimes after each act) - booing mixed with cheers, fistfights and worse that continued onto the streets & in restaurants. Very exciting. Since then I've attended 3 more Bayreuth Festivals, the last being Katerina's first - I will never go back - she is an untalented person who believes that being outrageous is somehow creative. What a shame!
ReplyDeleteWell, never going back might be a bit drastic. I hope you saw Herheim's Parsifal, though... since that would still have fallen into her dad's reign.
ReplyDeleteIf it is true that she didn't like that production (for whatever reasons), than that does indeed speak less-than-well for her.
I know that I enjoyed the Neuenfels Lohengrin very much (that might also not have been her sole planning, I reckon), and even the controversial Tannhäuser... and now this Ring.
And heck, it's still Bayreuth... and with conductors like Petrenko or Thielemann (not that his conducting rescued Tristan for me, more about which anon.), it is still an alluring place for Wagner-likers.