Advance Ticket Sales Begin on June 4, 2018.
Bayreuth Festival will start the 2018 season with a premiere. As part of their accompanying program DISKURS BAYREUTH, which took place for the first time last year, the opera “The Vanished Wedding Guest” by the renowned Austrian composer Klaus Lang will premiere on July 24, 2018.
The work, commissioned by Bayreuth Festival, is based on an old Lower Austrian legend and tells of a bridegroom who is invited to a wedding by a stranger. There he can enjoy himself and dance, but never longer than the music plays, the stranger commands. The wedding guest disregards the prohibition. When he returns home, he realizes in horror that three hundred years have passed since his departure, whereupon he crumbles to dust.
In an interview, composer Klaus Lang said about his work: “The material is not directly related to ‘Lohengrin’ or any other work by Wagner. The piece stands on its own and is neither an anti-Wagner piece nor an apotheosis of Wagner. […] It was simply about writing a new piece that tries to relate to the world we live in today. […] For me, a central point in any compositional work is the perception of time and the question of how time is made audible through sound.” *
In DISKURS BAYREUTH, the cultural-historical phenomenon “Richard Wagner” is to be reflected upon and controversially discussed, both artistically and scientifically. Klaus Lang explicitly welcomes this: “I think it’s very important and great that this is happening. This is also in the spirit of Wagner, who tried exactly that: to create something new.” *
“The Vanished Wedding Guest” will be performed at the Bayreuth cultural venue “Reichshof” in the heart of the city, a historic cinema hall from 1925 that has not been used for decades.
Ticket sales begin on June 4, 2018, the tickets uniformly cost 35 Euros, and visitors have free seating. Tickets can be ordered by email at hochzeiter@bayreuther-festspiele.de or in writing to Bayreuth Festival · Ticket Office · Keyword “Hochzeiter” · Festspielhügel 1-2 · 95445 Bayreuth
Premiere on July 24, 2018, 9 PM, additional performances on July 26 and 27. Performances each begin at 9 PM.
Cultural Venue “Reichshof” Bayreuth (Maximilianstraße 28, 95444 Bayreuth)
More information: https://www.bayreuther-festspiele.de/programm/diskurs-bayreuth/der-verschwundene-hochzeiter/
The premiere is made possible thanks to generous support from the Oberfrankenstiftung and the Gesellschaft der Freunde von Bayreuth e.V. The composition commission is financed by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.
(* Quoted from “Nordbayerischer Kurier”, Bayreuth, May 26/27, 2018, p. 11, Interview: Roman Kocholl)