Bayreuth Festival: Alas, alas, my child!

Suddenly it comes to my head: “Oh dear! Oh! Oh, the evil that I foresaw!” So ​​bad? What happened? Don’t worry, I’m fine. It’s a beautiful sunny July day. I’ve just finished eating a large slice of a delicious apricot tart in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, and now I’m standing in front of a former dance hall from the 1920s, which now houses a cinema, and I’m happy that I’m in my home capital not in the Franconian hinterland.

Apricot tart? Movie theater? Franconia? What are we talking about? It is July 25th and today the Bayreuth Festival opens with the premiere of the newly staged Wagnerian musical drama “Tristan and Isolde” directed by the Icelandic theater artist Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson. However, I’m not making a pilgrimage to the Green Hill, but will instead make do with a live broadcast of the spectacle in images and sound.

Unlike in the festival hall, in the air-conditioned cinema I can buy half a liter of cold beer at the last minute before the start of the performance (many thanks to Augustiner-Bräu Wagner KG!), which I can even take with me into the auditorium. Halfway there I am handed a glass of champagne – as a small greeting to the guests of this special program. Packed with beer and champagne, I go to my comfortable seat and suspect that something like this has happened to me before (was it with the new “Flying Dutchman” from 2021?).

Richard Wagner’s “Tristan”, this almost 160 year old “plot in three acts”. Looking ahead at the screen, 300 kilometers away the heavy curtain opens, the orchestra makes its instruments sound from deep in the pit (musical direction: Semyon Bychkov) and in Bayreuth as in Berlin you can see the stage-foggy nothingness. The audience’s nerves are spared for the duration of the famous foreplay.

It is a strange romantic drama that occurs between these two title characters. All the back and forth, murder and grief, desperation and hide-and-seek do not occur to us in a stage setting – they are translated into music or have to be retold to us by the actors singing. The great drama takes place almost entirely internally. It takes a director’s courageous approach to captivate the audience not only acoustically but also visually.

Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson often tackles the big material: “The Edda”, “The Odyssey”, “The Oresteia”. But can he get hold of it? In any case, the “Tristan” slips through his fingers.

As the fog clears in the first act, Isolde (Camilla Nylund) peels off the oversized lower skirt of her white dress. She will return to the material again and again throughout the evening on stage and tinker with it. Sometimes it lies in front of her like an endlessly long train. This suits this thrice prevented bride, who is left with only the head of her fiancé, Prince Morold, cut off by Tristan’s hand; who is on her way to Cornwall to King Marke, to whom she is to be given in marriage as a pledge of peace and from whom she will know how to evade; who, after inducing the right substances, will soon fall in love with Tristan, with whom she will then only be united through her love death.

So Isolde rests in the ship wrapped in fabric. Ropes are stretched across the stage (Vytautas Narbutas), the fleeting action is surrounded by deep black. One would believe that one is looking into the vastness of the sea. But the singers seem to walk unguided through the stage, sometimes playing into the empty space, sometimes sticking together like in a chamber opera.

Soon Brangäne (Ekaterina Gubanova), Isolde’s confidant, dressed in a gray business suit, sings the verses – yes, there it is again! – “Oh dear! Oh! Oh, the evil that I foresaw!« And with my face contorted in pain, I inevitably start to nod. Couldn’t I have guessed it? Arnarsson lacks an idea for Bayreuth and suddenly there is a strong smell of Biedermeier theater around me.

But isn’t that clear anyway? Isn’t Wagner only for arch-reactionaries and his festival hall the eternal stronghold of the conservative? Wasn’t Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth speaking truthfully when she demanded that the festival should become “more diverse, more colorful, younger,” perhaps by expanding the schedule? Wait, wait, wait! It’s not that simple at all. The reactionary nature of Wagner’s work can definitely be approached artistically. This has also occasionally happened in Bayreuth in recent decades. The festival hall is not initially a burden, but a cultural heritage that – yes, of course! – wants to be played with.

And, in all seriousness, when Claudia Roth is so sure of something, then doubts are usually more than appropriate. “More diverse, more colorful, younger” is quickly shouted. But phrases don’t help behind the Green Hill. And actually help with what? This year the festival is sold out again. The biggest joke, however, was the idea of ​​the presumptuous ex-dramaturg Roth that the Bayreuth program could be expanded to include Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel”, contrary to the local custom of only showing works by Wagner. The hearts of countless young people will have beat faster when they heard this demand. The cultured boys and girls will soon saddle their horses and ride to Upper Franconia, as everyone knows: Humperdinck, that’s the new hot shit that people are talking about in the schoolyard while smoking e-cigarettes.

Back to the cinema. The first act continues, the brilliant tenor Andreas Schager, who plays Tristan, enters the scene. But even he can only partially enliven the action on stage. Isolde, in her emotional distress, wants revenge on Tristan, also wants the end of her own life, and pulls out a bottle with the death potion, which, as such things are supposed to go bad, turns out to be a love potion. Now – dare to be kitsch – a tender picture is found and the curtain falls for the first time.

While the stage was incredibly vast in the first act, in the second act we find ourselves in the claustrophobic confines of a ship’s belly that is overflowing with all kinds of bulky items: paintings, a globe and a mirror, gears and statues, stuffed animals and a skeleton. Pretty messy at Marke’s yard. Here the two title characters play their secret love game. If that’s what it’s worth. Because eroticism doesn’t develop in the bashful stage action, and you’re happy for every note of the music that you can pay attention to instead. When Tristan and Isolde’s clumsily hidden agreement is exposed, Marke is beside himself and his faithful servant Melot takes up the sword against Tristan.

What follows stage-wise in the last act – “Oh dear! Oh!” – is the compelling consequence of what has been seen so far. The bric-a-brac from before is piled up as if for bulky waste collection. In the middle of it all, singing can be heard, but the game remains without focus. Tristan, seriously wounded, holds out until he can die in Isolden’s arms. King Marke appears to give his blessing to the two lovers. Too late. Now Isolde’s only option is to die.

But what Arnarsson does with it is the choreography of the outstretched arms, the artificial touching of the lover’s cheek! – comes from the mothballs of acting in musical theater. An idea for this material or even just an attitude towards it is missing. The previously rumored concept that this production deals with gender roles is not implemented on stage.

My companion on my right, an experienced theatergoer who is not afraid of the lengths of the performing arts, has dozed off more than once. This also reveals how yesterday and boring this work is. The singers and the conductor, representing his orchestra, are greeted with cheers. The directing team receives clearly audible boos. The idea that this could have been due to an audience that was too conservative seems absurd.

The Bayreuth Festival ends on August 27th.

www.bayreuther-festspiele.de