Bayreuth Festival

Richard Wagner raised the Festspielhaus on a hill above Bayreuth and opened it in 1876 with the first complete Ring. The building was designed around the sound: the orchestra sits under a hood, invisible from the hall, so the voices arrive over an even, blended wash rather than through it. Seats are plain wood in a single steep fan, with no side boxes and no centre aisle. There is no air conditioning, and there are long intervals in the gardens because the works themselves are long. The festival runs for roughly a month each summer, staging Wagner and nothing else, and Parsifal was written for this particular hall and first performed in it in 1882.

History

Wagner chose Bayreuth partly for its splendid Margravial Opera House, built in 1747 for Margrave Frederick and his wife Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great, and partly because the town lay outside the regions where he had sold the performing rights to his own works in 1864. He and Cosima visited in April 1870, and although the old opera house proved unsuitable, the town's burgomasters agreed to help him build an entirely new theatre, with the festival planned to open in 1873; after a fruitless meeting with Bismarck in the spring of 1871, Wagner raised money on a tour across Germany, including Leipzig and Frankfurt (Wikipedia, Bayreuth Festival).

What to look for

• The covered pit - Wagner's sunken, hooded orchestra, unique in its acoustic effect.
• The wooden seats - unpadded benches in a steep single fan, exactly as designed.
• The fanfares - brass calls from the balcony summoning the audience back after each interval.
• Wahnfried - Wagner's house in the town below, now a museum covering the festival.

When to go

The festival occupies roughly late July to late August and there is nothing running on the hill outside it. Tickets are allocated by written application in the autumn beforehand, with returns and online drops the only late route in. Bayreuth's hotels fill for the whole run, so book beds at the same time as you apply rather than afterwards.

Practical notes

Getting in is the hard part: demand has long outstripped seats, and there is no way to buy on the day with any confidence. Once inside, the benches are hard, the hall gets hot, and a performance with intervals can run six hours. Sightlines are good but there is nowhere to stretch, and dress stays formal even in August heat.

Nearby

The Margravial Opera House in the town centre, Wahnfried and the Hermitage park on the edge of Bayreuth.

Key facts