After 25 sold-out performances, the 109th Bayreuth Festival successfully concluded on August 25. More than 22,300 visitors attended the 2021 festival.
The focus of this year’s festival season was the new production of Der fliegende Holländer under the musical direction of Oksana Lyniv, with stage direction and set design by Dmitri Tcherniakov and costume design by Elena Zaytseva.
This year’s festival summer featured 25 performances at the Festspielhaus: Seven performances of Der fliegende Holländer, six performances of Meistersinger, six performances of Tannhäuser, three concert performances of Walküre, one concert performance of Parsifal under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann, as well as two concerts under the musical direction of Andris Nelsons.
The ‘Diskurs Bayreuth’ event series took place for the fifth time as part of the supporting program for the 2021 festival performances. This year, ‘Ring 20.21’ featured commissioned works from various art forms, all of which reflected, commented on, continued, or made newly experienceable parts of Ring des Nibelungen. As a new composition, the music theater work ‘Das Rheingold – Immer noch Loge’ by Gordon Kampe, based on the libretto by Paulus Hochgatterer, staged and realized with puppets by Nikolaus Habjan, took place at the pond in the Festspielpark. Action artist Hermann Nitsch engaged with Walküre in a painting performance on the stage of the Festspielhaus. In a multimedia work by Jay Scheib – ‘Sei Siegfried’ – spectators could empathize with Siegfried and lead the dragon fight against Fafner. An installation on Götterdämmerung by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota – ‘The Thread of Fate’ – completed the cycle in the Festspielpark.
Complementing the ‘Ring 20.21’ project, ‘Diskurs Bayreuth’ also discussed questions about the future of theater this year. Under the title “Ist die Zukunft digital? Musiktheater und virtueller Raum”, various video statements were published. In a virtual discussion, Georges Aperghis, Calixto Bieito, Hannah Dübgen, Alexander Fahima, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Sebastian Hannak, David Hermann, Stefan Kaegi, Philippe Manoury, Olga Neuwirth, Falk Richter, Alexander Schubert, Valentin Schwarz, Yuval Sharon, and Nicolas Stemann participated.
For the eleventh time this summer, the ‘Wagner for Children’ project, realized by BF Medien, took place. A version of Tristan und Isolde specifically created for children was performed a total of ten times with great success at the Kulturbühne Reichshof in Bayreuth.
In addition to the performances at the Festspielhaus, technical rehearsals have been ongoing since April 2021, and scenic rehearsals since June 2021, for the new Ring des Nibelungen, directed by Valentin Schwarz, which will premiere at the 2022 festival.
The contingent of freely available seats for next year is not yet foreseeable due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why the order form and performance schedule for Bayreuth Festival 2022 are not expected to be sent out until the end of 2021. The “waiting year system” applied in Bayreuth will also be continued in the 2022 season. All registered customers will remain at the same level of waiting years accumulated up to the 2021 season.
Bayreuth Festival looks forward to seeing you again in 2022.
The Bayreuth Festival 2021!
