Griffin Kaiser
November 2024

The 2024 Bayreuth Festival season marked the third and penultimate year of Valentin Schwarz’s staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Like many current productions, Schwarz’s version opts for a contemporary setting, but it should not be considered a production which lacks mythology, as his concept draws deeply from a larger-than-life family drama.  Here, Wotan is the patriarch of a wealthy family overseeing their[...]

F. Peter Phillips
August 2021

Forty years after reporting on my first visit to Bayreuth (see Wagner Notes Vol. IV No. 5, November 1981), this city in the time of Covid is, in many respects, […]

A team of young creators headed by a director sporting a baseball cap; a black performer in drag; extensive use of video: the new production of Tannhäuser in Bayreuth this […]