HAVE GERMAN WILL TRAVEL FESTSPIEL

"Bei uns ist immer was los!"

Bayreuther Festspiele / Bayreuth Richard Wagner Opera Festival (annual month-long summer music festival held in Bavarian town of Bayreuth from end of July to end of August)

Mixed opinions have always been part of the Bayreuth Festival, so why should Wahnfried be any different? The covered substitute furniture and the pieces once treasured by visitors but not shown, will likely be a bone of contention that the museum shop and cafe could potentially make up for. As for the air-conditioning? These times, they are a' changin', wrote a different bard.

The Wagner family tree stretches across an entire wall

When we think of Richard Wagner, most ofus think of Bayreuth and its renowned festival. Wagner's 200th birthday is coming up in 2013, a good occasion for us to visit some of the sites where he lived and worked.

We start with the city where the composer was born: Leipzig. Richard Wagner went to school here, at least when he wasn't cutting class. He preferred to take harmony lessons on the sly. These were the first steps on a long and often ha.rd career. Today, a walking tour covers 25 sites in Leipzig connected to Wagner.

In 1842, Richard Wagner made his breakthrough as an opera composer with 'Rienzi - the Last of the Tribunes' at the Royal Saxon Court Theater, now Dresden's famous Semperoper. And Wagner remains a regular on the bill.

Inevitably, we head to Bayreuth. Originally, the festival was meant to be held in the Margravial Opera House, but it proYed too small. So the composer simply had the town build him a Festspielhaus atop a "Green Hill" especially for his operas. And the rest is - literally - history.