The Bayreuth Festival, Bayerische Rundfunk, and Deutsche Grammophon are cooperating in a broad media partnership. Following the successful international broadcast of Valentin Schwarz’s new Ring production last year, the partners are continuing their collaboration, enabling a comprehensive and immersive media experience of the festival.
A highlight is the broadcast from the Festspielhaus of the highly anticipated Parsifal new production by Jay Scheib under the musical direction of Pablo Heras-Casado. Mezzo-soprano and DG exclusive artist Elīna Garanča makes her Bayreuth debut in it. She embodies Kundry alongside tenor Andreas Schager. BR-KLASSIK will broadcast the opening premiere live on ARD Radiofestival on July 25 from 3:57 PM in all ARD cultural channels, and from 4 PM via video livestream in German-speaking countries on br-klassik.de. Globally, Deutsche Grammophon will make the opening premiere available one day later, on July 26, 2023, at 6 PM, on www.stage-plus.com.
The new production Parsifal will for the first time incorporate Augmented Reality. US director Scheib is a professor at the pioneering Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is considered a proven specialist in the field of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
BR-KLASSIK is currently reporting from the Green Hill, accompanying stars and newcomers, inviting renowned critics for discussions, and offering a multifaceted dossier with background reports. In selected contributions, BR-KLASSIK cooperates with Deutsche Grammophon. Wagner fans in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are thus offered an extremely diverse program. The TV broadcast of the Parsifal new production on 3sat on Saturday, July 29 at 8:15 PM, as well as the radio broadcasts, including the performance of Tannhäuser under the baton of Nathalie Stutzmann on July 28 from 3:57 PM live on BR-KLASSIK and delayed from 8:03 PM on ARD Radiofestival, are also eagerly awaited.
Furthermore, the opening premiere on July 25, 2023, at 6 PM will be shown with a slight time delay in selected German cinemas, offering captivating sound, brilliant visuals, and extraordinary behind-the-scenes insights into Bayreuth Festival.
In addition to the current Parsifal production, STAGE+ offers the most comprehensive Bayreuth archive in the digital space. Here, all productions from 2015 onwards can be experienced, since Katharina Wagner took over the sole artistic direction of the festival, including Tobias Kratzer’s Tannhäuser from 2019 or Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Der fliegende Holländer from 2021. Performances that made history from the era of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner can also be seen. In particular, the so-called Jahrhundert-Ring by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez from 1976. Furthermore, STAGE+ presents the complete cycles by Frank Castorf under the musical direction of Marek Janowski, as well as last year’s premiere by Valentin Schwarz and Cornelius Meister. Of course, the rich audio discography of the festival can be heard in the legendary sound of Deutsche Grammophon and Decca, under conductors such as Karl Böhm, Pierre Boulez, Wolfgang Sawallisch, and Christian Thielemann.