TRAVEL
By travel editor David Bray
The Australian Opera plans to stage Wagner’s Ring cycle in Melbourne late in 2013, an enterprise that will draw hundreds of tourists, many of them from other countries. Your reporter hopes to be among them, for what would be his tenth encounter with one of the western world’s great artistic achievements.
So far as can be discovered, there are as yet no plans for group travel to Melbourne for the occasion, but there sure enough will be. In the meantime, there are festivals of Wagner’s work just about all over the world, including the definitive one at Bayreuth. But there’s more to Bayreuth than Wagner.
Asking for an argument, I know, but it really is a pleasant and prosperous city, famed around the world for its Festspielhaus, home of the vast and ever-growing business that is the music/drama of Richard Wager. Loathe the man, marvel at the music. That’s the way most of us see it.
If you can’t stand either, stay with me for a little bit while I tell you about the city. The Wagner bit comes at the end. Bayreuth is in fact the biggest city in Upper Franconia, a modern university and conference town with a strong economy and is well on its way to be the high tech centre of the region. But you can’t escape opera, because Bayreuth boasts the Margravial opera house, nominated by the German Government to become one of the UNESCO World Heritage sights in Germany.
Built 1745 – 1748, it is one of the most outstanding monuments of European theatre architecture in baroque times, preserved virtually unchanged in its original appearance. The splendid auditorium one of the most beautiful in the world and is open, for a fee, most days of the year, with a sound a light show every 45 minutes, cost five euros. If parks are more your thing, it’s easy to catch a bus to the Eremitage, a fine large space east of the city.
There are spectacular fountains, grottos and a fairytale-like Orangerie with its Sun Temple crowned by Apollo. A good walk around, with the bus stop back to town at the gates. Bayreuth has more than 20 interesting museums, plenty of festivals offering music, theatre and art on a high level, a “”championship’’ golf course and the Lohengrin thermal spa.
As for accommodation, the Hotel Bayerischer Hof is a personal favourite, family-run for generations and with a guest list heavy with the rich and famous. Right at the railway station, a gentle stroll to the city centre, 15 minutes walk to the Festspielhaus. Now, about the 2012 Bayreuth Festival. For a start, as already noted, there is no Ring cycle. What will be on the programme are: Der fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser. The Bayreuth Festival 2012 will open with the premiere of Der fliegende Holländer on July 25. There’s a big change in that for the first time tickets for the season can be applied for online.at http://ticket.btfs.de.: T
he customers receive a personal access code with their annual ticket order form which takes into account their application and ticket history. Application via post is also possible. You may, should what is basically the Wagner family-run organization approve of you, pay for the tickets by credit card. Leaving aside the politics (not easy, even for those of us from the other side of the world), the festival’s schedule of seven nights of opera in eight or nine days is an extraordinary occasion, a lifetime experience.
Some of the world's greatest music dramas performed in the theatre purpose-built for them and if any architect wants to know about acoustics, nowhere in the world does better sound. There is a tradition of musical excellence, somewhat tarnished in recent years but still remarkable, of high seriousness, performance and audience rituals, uncomfortable seats and sometimes stifling heat, sausages and beer in the hour-long intervals.
One of the great tests here for non-German speakers is the absence of sur-titles. The important lesson is that when the mind is free to concentrate on the music, the words are literally not very important. What’s more you soon learn that the almost universal conception of an opera singer as a fat lady is seriously out-dated.
The singers we hear and see look good. On our experience, which includes the Ring, there wasn’t a large lady among them, with even Brunnhilde a trim figure in leather and zippers. So what was that about politics? The final night of the festival brings Meistersinger, a work obviously beloved by the Germans.
A long and less than riveting first act gives way to beautiful sets and hugely stirring choral work. So stirring as to induce near-hysteria among otherwise apparently sane and certainly well-to-do citizens and to disturb several among the Aussies.Another misconception needs to be straightened out. Whether or not the new on line booking eases things even more, tickets to the festival are not as hard to come by as you may have heard.
Some of the Bayreuth hotels have them; Wagner Societies around the world have allocations (Queensland sends a goodly contingent every year). Costly but worth every cent.
GETTING THERE
Bayreuth is on national motorways A 9 and a 70.Deutsche Bahn (German Railway) links Bayreuth and Nuremberg every hour. Several airlines fly daily to Nuremberg. Frankfurt airport is about four hours direct by train from Bayreuth. info@bayreuth-tourismus.de Hotel Bayerischer Hof, Bahnhofstrasse 14, 95444 Bayreuth hotel@bayerischer-hof.de www.bayerischer-hof.de
TOP of story: Festspielhaus, the opera house designed by and built for Richard Wagner. Below: Home of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, now a museum to him and his works.
