Festspielhugel
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The Richard-Wagner-Festspielhaus, also called Bayreuth Festival Theatre, is a festival theater on the Green Hill in Bayreuth. It was built in the years 1872-75 by Otto Brückwald according to designs by Richard Wagner in the Hellenistic Romantic style. Unlike many opera houses, it does not have a permanent ensemble and is performed every year exclusively from July 25 to August 28 as part of the Bayreuth Festival with operas and music dramas by Wagner in 30 performances. It is considered one of the opera houses with the best acoustics in the world.
Suggestions
As his Riga biographer Carl Friedrich Glasenapp
claimed, Richard Wagner received the first suggestions for his later
Festspielhaus during his time as Kapellmeister in Riga (1837/39). The
theater there is said to have had many elements of the Bayreuth
Festspielhaus: a steeply rising stalls in the form of an amphitheater, a
deep orchestra pit and a darkening of the auditorium, which was not
common at the time.
Wagner initially considered Würzburg, where
he lived in 1833/34 and was choir director, as a location for a festival
theater in Germany.
Wagner's ideas
After completing the
composition of his Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner also formulated his idea
of a stage festival in 1851, initially in letters to Franz Liszt, for
example, and later also publicly in a communication to my friends. A
“theater festival” was to be added to the “singing festivals” and
“gymnastics festivals” of the time. The performances were to take place
in a rather small town in an unadorned and makeshift theater as a
one-off event. The theater "made of boards and beams" was then to be
demolished again. The auditorium would have to be laid out as an
amphitheater and the orchestra would have to be covered in any case.
Wagner was referring to the theater festivals of ancient Greece and
the regular Dionysia. The painted canvas ceiling of the Bayreuth
Festspielhaus is reminiscent of the ideal of an open-air theatre.
Semper's plans for Munich
When King Ludwig II of Bavaria summoned
Wagner to Munich in 1864, it seemed that the idea of a festival could
soon be realized. Gottfried Semper, the architect who was a friend of
Wagner and the builder of the Dresden court theater and after its fire
also of the new court theater, the Semperoper, was entrusted with the
design and realization of the project.
Semper first planned a
theater to be built into Munich's glass palace, then a monumental
festival hall high above the banks of the Isar, accessible via a wide
boulevard. According to Wagner's wishes, the interior design was the
same as in the house later realized in Bayreuth: extreme practicality in
the auditorium and stage with concentration on the work being performed.
The aim was not to create a box theater, but an ascending auditorium
with a good view from all seats, a "democratic" auditorium without any
class barriers.
When Wagner had to leave Munich in 1865, the
Festspielhaus project stalled. Wagner himself soon distanced himself
from it, also because the whole project threatened to become too
monumental for him, moved more and more away from his ideals and evaded
his influence, since he now lived in Switzerland.
Around 1870, Wagner discovered the Margravial Opera House in
Bayreuth in a conversation dictionary. Since it had the largest stage in
a German opera house at the time, he hoped to find a suitable venue
there for his Ring des Nibelungen and to be able to realize his idea of
a stage festival after all. Therefore he came to Bayreuth in April 1871
and visited the historic theatre. Because of the small size of the
auditorium, he gave up the plan, but Wagner liked the location and size
of the city, so that he soon began concrete preparatory work for a new
building. Initially, a plot of land on Stuckberg, near the suburb of
Sankt Georgen, was discussed as a building site after a visit in April
1871. After the sales negotiations failed, the city acquired a building
plot on today's Green Hill below Bürgerreuth without Wagner's knowledge.
Wagner, upset by the development, considered dropping the Bayreuth site
again. Therefore, on January 8, 1872, his local sponsor Friedrich
Feustel and Bayreuth's mayor Muncker traveled to Tribschen to change his
mind, which they succeeded in doing with Cosima's help.
Wagner
received the property on the Green Hill free of charge from the city of
Bayreuth. The architectural planning was carried out by Otto Brückwald,
whereby the basic features of Semper's plans were retained.
The
cornerstone was laid in the pouring rain on May 22, 1872, Wagner's 59th
birthday. Wagner gave a speech and on this occasion conducted
Beethoven's 9th symphony in the Margravial Opera House. The construction
was repeatedly delayed for financial reasons. The planned sale of 1,000
patronage certificates for 300 thalers each went slowly; by the spring
of 1876 less than half had been sold. Despite the support of Countess
Schleinitz, Wagner hoped in vain for the German Emperor, the Reich
Chancellor and the Reichstag. He received financial help from the
Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz in the amount of around 89,000 euros according
to today's purchasing power (2023).
The first festival planned
for 1873 had to be postponed. On August 2, 1873, the topping-out
ceremony was celebrated with a large audience in fine summer weather.
The foreman Johann Hofmann read the topping-out speech, which was
written by the evangelical dean Wilhelm Dittmar at Wagner's insistence
and was amended and expanded at short notice by the client. The fact
that the glass, which he then threw down according to old custom, landed
unharmed on the ground was considered an auspicious omen. At the express
request of the workers, who had no accidents to complain about during
construction, the Wagner family and Franz Liszt sang the chorale Nun
danket alle Gott an at a dizzying height. After the final chord of the
Emperor's March had faded away, the workers went to the topping-out
feast in the painter's hall, where the Wagners paid them a visit.
A lack of funds threatened the completion of the building. In
1874, King Ludwig II secured the building with a loan of initially
300,000 marks, which was later increased by 100,000 marks. The Wagner
family later repaid both amounts in full after offsetting royalties.
The Festspielhaus was finally opened on August 13, 1876 with the Rheingold, which initiated the first cyclical performance of the Ring des Nibelungen. Because of the deficit caused by the first festival, the house stood empty for six years, and the next festival only took place in 1882 with the premiere of Parsifal. For the visit of Ludwig II to the festival in 1882, the house was expanded to include the "Königsbau" at the front, but the shy king no longer attended these festivals.