The centerpiece of Bayreuth's 150th-anniversary season was the first performance ever of Richard Wagner's “youth work” Rienzi in the Festspielhaus. Rienzi has never belonged to the traditional ten-work Bayreuth canon, so staging Wagner's only grand opera on the Green Hill was a genuine experiment. Since 2026 marks 150 years since the first Bayreuth Festival of August 1876, the opening days carried extra[...]
The Atlanta Opera’s recent performances of Götterdämmerung (May 30; June 2, 6, and 7) marked the capstone of a Ring project that formally began with Das Rheingold in 2023, though […]
Wagner’s groundbreaking, metaphysical romance Tristan und Isolde returned to the Metropolitan Opera on March 9 for the first time in ten years in a bold new production featuring Lise Davidsen, […]
Two events that occurred in Pierre Audi’s life on July 20, 1969–attending Tristan und Isolde in Munich and watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon–would heavily influence the lunar […]