…a quarter of an hour before the start, the so-called intermission musicians appear for the first time on the balcony of the Festspielhaus – and sound a fanfare specially composed for this purpose. Appropriately featuring a motif from the next act or scene: Once a novelty, just like the festival itself.
Programme
No bell, no gong…
This tradition dates back to Richard Wagner’s time. The interval fanfares have been played at all performances since 1876, in almost any weather. Always at the same time, because already at the first Bayreuth Festival, the start of performances was set at 4 p.m. (except for Holländer and Rheingold) and the interval length at sixty minutes.
Also remaining is the canon of ten Wagner works from which the repertoire is composed: “Der Fliegende Holländer”, “Tannhäuser”, “Lohengrin”, the four-part cycle “Der Ring des Nibelungen”, “Tristan und Isolde”, “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, and “Parsifal”.
