Breaking: Bayreuth drops 3 operas from anniversary year

A blunt email from the festival said today that rising costs were imposing economies on th festival in its 150th anniversary year.

Here’s the official line:
The current cost developments pose major challenges for the Bayreuth Festival. …Due to the very high proportion of personnel costs in the overall budget, the Bayreuth Festival will not be able to generate the additional financial resources required for this from its own resources in the long term, despite a very high level of self-financing of more than 55%. On the other hand, the general economic situation does not currently allow the shareholders to provide significantly higher funds to offset the deficits.

In view of these developments, it is necessary to adapt the original planning for the anniversary season in order to secure the season planning for the following years and at the same time to present a program for the 150th anniversary that reflects the breadth of the canon of works that Richard Wagner intended for Bayreuth.

“The Flying Dutchman”, which Richard Wagner considered worthy of being performed in the Bayreuth Festival Hall as his first opera, the tetralogy “The Ring of the Nibelung”, with which the Festival Hall was ceremoniously opened in 1876, and the stage consecration festival play “Parsifal”, which was composed especially for this venue, will be performed. In addition, for the first time and only in the anniversary season, there will be a new production of Rienzi in the Festival Hall. The 150th Bayreuth Festival will open with Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which Richard Wagner himself conducted on May 22, 1872 in the Margravial Opera House.”

It seems clear that Tristan and Isolde, Meistersinger, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser have been dropped.

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