Volume 35, Number 17 · November 10, 1988
Bombing in Bayreuth
By Jonathan Lieberson
Der Ring des Nibelungen
by Richard Wagner, directed by Harry Kupfer, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, designed by Hans Schavernoch. Bayreuth Festival, 1988
The opera festival in Bayreuth, which performs only Wagner's works—usually Der Ring des Nibelungen, and two or three others—continues to induce in some spectators the feeling expressed by Mark Twain when he attended it in the Nineties, that he was 'a sane person in a community of the mad.' Because of the length of Wagner's operas—the prologue and first act of Götterdämmerung, for example, is longer than all of Rigoletto—the performances begin in the mid-afternoon, and hour-long breaks are planned between acts. But this does not greatly relieve the discomforts of the experience. Formal dress is expected even in great heat and even though the theater is not air-conditioned: some men wear the stiff, high-collared, white tie one would associate with figures like Max of Baden or Count Keyserling, and one sees women who have woven sprigs of flowers into their hair in imitation of the Flower Maidens in Parsifal.
Review, 7143 words
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