Perhaps It's Time

This Sunday, 25 July, marks the opening of the 2010 Bayreuther Festspiele, and the advance press coverage in the mainstream media, both here and abroad, is resoundingly...all but nonexistent. All but nonexistent as well are scheduled radio broadcasts of the performances, live or recorded, with the lone exception of the opening-day live broadcast of Lohengrin, the Festspiele's only new production this year, with newly-risen superstar German tenor Jonas Kaufmann making his Bayreuth debut in the title role, which performance a number of radio stations are covering live.

Has the Festspiele outlived its outside-Germany relevance and importance, or is it rather the cumulative artistic damage, both musical and theatrical, that's been done to the Festspiele over the past 44 years under the general directorship of recently deceased (21 March 2010) Wagner grandson Wolfgang Wagner subsequent to the untimely death of his brother, the brilliant director and stage designer Wieland, in 1966, or a combination of the two, or something else entirely?

We don't know the real answer to that question, but we'd be willing to put our money behind the proposition that the Festspiele has lost its outside-Germany relevance and importance due the cumulative artistic damage, both musical and theatrical, that's been done to the Festspiele over the past 44 years under the general directorship of Wolfgang Wagner, and bet further that it will require an artistic reordering, both musical and theatrical, of momentous proportions to restore the Festspiele to its pre-war artistic excellence and glory and outside-Germany relevance and importance.

And of what would such an artistic reordering consist? The requirements are three in number.

First, luring back to the Festspiele world-class singer-actors appropriate to the roles — a major problem as few such singer-actors exist, today as in times past. Second, luring back to the Festspiele Wagner conductors of the first water — again, a major problem as few such conductors exist today, most present-day conductors unsympathetic or outright hostile to or repulsed by the hyper-Romantic rhetoric Wagner's music both requires and demands. And finally, the jettisoning and firm disavowal of Eurotrash Regietheater stagings which today and for several decades now have disgraced the Festspiele's stage and everything the Festspiele stands for — or, rather, should stand for — according to the imperatives and mandates of the Festspiele's founding genius, Richard Wagner.

There's but a limited amount that can be done to satisfy the demands of the first two requirements, but a huge amount that can be done to satisfy the demands of the third. Sadly, even ominously from our standpoint, the new co-directors of the Festspiele — Wolfgang Wagner's two daughters, Katharina Wagner and her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier — are not only disinclined to satisfy the demands of that third requirement but seem intransigently committed to flying in the face of it as was their father before them, in the false and perverse belief that it is just such stagings that will guarantee the future outside-Germany relevance and importance of the Festspiele.

Well, it's been a long and checkered career for the Bayreuther Festspiele, both artistically and otherwise, since its establishment in 1876 and today the oldest music festival extant, and perhaps it's now time to remember fondly its past days of artistic excellence and glory and bid a final farewell. After all, nothing lasts forever.