Claudia Roth, Germany’s commissioner for culture and the media, told Bavarian newspapers today that the Bayreuth Festival “should become more diverse, more colorful, and more youthful overall.” To achieve this, she suggested that the world-renowned festival built by Richard Wagner should perform music by composers other than Wagner.
“It is important that institutions such as the Bayreuth Festival open up more to young audiences and specifically address them,” Roth told journalists. She offered the example of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera “Hansel and Gretel,” which could appeal to younger audiences while retaining a close connection with Wagner. Humperdinck assisted Wagner in the 1880 and 1881 Bayreuth Festival productions of “Parsifal,” and he served as music tutor to Wagner’s son, Siegfried.
Roth’s suggestion is ripe for controversy: the festival’s foundational charter, which is signed by the city, state, and federal government, states that the purpose of the foundation is to “permanently preserve the Bayreuth Festival Hall … for the purposes for which its builder intended it, i.e., solely the festive performance of the works of Richard Wagner.”
Nevertheless, there is precedent for performing composers other than Wagner at Bayreuth. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has been performed at least half a dozen times at the festival, including as the first work ever performed in the Festspielhaus on Aug. 13, 1876.
