This year, too, the city of Bayreuth honored long-standing festival contributors with the traditional beer mug Eichala. The pewter mug is popular not only with technicians, extras, and the music director – after all, it has been used for drinking since margravial times. Franconian beer, as documented in Cosima’s diaries, was also greatly appreciated by Richard Wagner. He regularly frequented the inn Angermann with his son (later the Eule), where the just ten-year-old Siegfried received a personal tankard (with a pewter lid) as a gift – actually quite late. At least, considering that beer was already part of his basic sustenance as a toddler from the age of 5. That father Richard took his son to the pub was completely normal for those times; no doctor would have advised children against a nightcap. However, young Siegfried could not lift the real Bayreuther Eichala (the 0.5-liter Eichala weighs nearly 900 grams), but the pewter mug is still associated with the festival today: The city of Bayreuth presents it as a thank you to long-standing contributors of the Wagner Marathon. Anyone who has been involved with the festival for 20 years or more also receives other gifts. The top honoree in this year’s recognition: Choir Director Eberhard Friedrich (25 years). For 20 years on the Green Hill, the city thanked Music Director Christian Thielemann, choir singers Gabriella Brancaccio, Johanna Dur, Gertrude Spitzer, musicians Michael Neuhaus and Frank Szathmáry-Filipitsch, technician Erik Steiner, and extra Stephan Müller.
Photo: Catherine Foster and Georg Zeppenfeld with a small Eichala (for 5 years of Bayreuth affiliation)
