The Bayreuth Festival are shocked and stunned by the sudden and completely unexpected death of their press spokesman Peter Emmerich at the age of just 61, which snatched him from the midst of life and his work.
After being hired by Wolfgang Wagner and his unusual relocation from Dresden to Bayreuth, approved by the highest state authorities of the former GDR, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, he served Bayreuth Festival for over 30 years. Both as a scientific advisor to the festival management and as editor of the program booklets, he was their central intellectual authority, and as a contact person for the press, an institution. Especially in delicate situations, he always knew how to find the right tone and appropriate words, without having to flaunt his outstanding education and erudition. Always with kindness and humor, but if necessary also with convincing emphasis, he represented Bayreuth Festival to the outside world and made everyone who knew him feel that the soul of this company was and is the conditio humana from which Richard Wagner’s works also live.
With him, Festival Director Katharina Wagner loses not only a highly experienced and loyal employee, but also a reliable confidant. Bayreuth Festival are poorer without him; his sudden loss will be difficult to replace quickly and easily. The festival management, all employees, and the participants of Bayreuth Festival pause and bow in high recognition of Peter Emmerich’s decades of service to Wagner’s work and his Bayreuth stage, and remain in deep sorrow.