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) 6. Success

In years past, tickets to the Bayreuth Festival - roughly 60,000 of them every season - could have been sold four to 10 times over. Such was the level of demand, with festival visitors sometimes waiting years fo r their turn to come. The ratio has narrowed down considerably in recent years, however, and tickets are sometimes available online for the current season. The legend of the wildly successful festival, seen historically, is just that: a legend.

The first Wagner Festival in 1876 was a financial disaster, followed by six years of - nothing. The despondent composer called his festival theater "a fool's whim." Disappointed by bis own stage presentations, he sarcastically remarked that he now wanted to create "invisible theater."

The second Bayreuth Festival, in 1882, was a success however. It consisted of 16 performances of his work "Parsifal," vITitten with the

specifics of the Festspielhaus in mind. Wagner died a year later - and three years after that, his widow Cosima tried to get the festival going again with her own staging of "Tristan and Isolde." It played to a nearly empty house. For one performance, it's said that only 12 tickets were sold.

During World War I, the festival remained closed, and subsequent years of hyperinflation impoverished the Wagner family. During the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, a friend of the family, subsidized each new production. Tainted by the association, the festival was nearly abolished forever in the early postwar years. Richard Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang managed a restart in 1951, however, and it bas been going strong ever since.

7. Family

Cosima Wagner followed Richard Wagner as director of the Bayreuth Festival. She was succeeded by their son Siegfried. Both Cosima and Siegfried died in 1930. It was the beginning of the era of Sometimes a darkened stage can add Siegfried's widow Winifred Wagner, who remained at the helm until the end of World War II in 1945. to the mystique - such as in the current staging of 'Tristan aod Isolde' Six years later came the co-directorship of Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang. The latter by Katharina Wagner remained the sole festival director after the former died in 1966. Wolfgang stayed on until 2008 - a remarkable 57 years altogether. He, in turn, was succeeded by his daughters Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. Beginning in 2016, Katharina has been the sole festival director. What sounds like a smooth succession bas been anything but. Each phase has met with family quarrels and controversy. One could write a book about it all. In fact, several have been.

8. Nazis

As a young man, Adolf Hitler went to every Wagner opera performance he could. He was only one of many who felt personally spoken to by Wagner's music. "'Hitler's Bayreuth" by historian Brigitte Hamann documents the fateful mix of the "Fiihrer" and the Bayreuth Festival, even leading to absurdities such as closed performances for soldiers wounded in World War II on the presumption that they would be "healed" by Wagner's music. Much is known about those fateful years in festival history - but not everything. The correspondence between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler still awaits Winifred Wagner, Adolf Hitler and Wieland Wagner at the rediscovery and evaluation by historians. 1938 Bayreuth Festival