Bayreuth canon
Encyclopedia
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s by the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
(1813-1883) which have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n town of Bayreuth, and has continued under the directorship of his family since his death. Although it was not originally held annually, it has taken place in July and August every year since the 75th anniversary season in 1951. Its venue is the Bayreuth Festspielhaus
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...
, which was built for the first festival. Attendance at the festival is often thought of as a pilgrimage made by Wagner aficionados.
Components
The components of the canon are as follows:Das Rheingold
Das Rheingold
is the first of the four operas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen . It was originally written as an introduction to the tripartite Ring, but the cycle is now generally regarded as consisting of four individual operas.Das Rheingold received its premiere at the National Theatre...
, Die Walküre
Die Walküre
Die Walküre , WWV 86B, is the second of the four operas that form the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner...
, Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
and Götterdämmerung
Götterdämmerung
is the last in Richard Wagner's cycle of four operas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen...
:These are the four parts of Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
. The Bayreuth Festival was created for the first complete staging of the Ring in 1876. The Ring was next staged in Bayreuth in 1896, the only other season when the cycle has been performed there unaccompanied by other operas. Since then, it has appeared during most seasons.
Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
:This work was first performed at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882. The degree to which Parsifal is associated with one venue, the Festspielhaus, makes it unique among major theatrical works. Wagner dubbed the opera a Bühnenweihfestspiel, which opera director Mike Ashman translates as a "festival work to consecrate a stage". Ashman explains this as meaning that it was intended to secure the financial future of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and allow the composer's heirs to continue running the festival profitably. Parsifal was staged nowhere else until 1903 when the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
broke the embargo placed on theatrical performances outside Bayreuth by Wagner and his widow Cosima
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Francesca Gaetana Wagner, née de Flavigny, from 1844 known as Cosima Liszt; was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt...
.
- Parsifal far exceeds the other members of the canon in the number of performances it has received at Bayreuth. It is the only work to have had three festival seasons (1882, 1883 and 1884) dedicated solely to its staging, and was performed every season from 1882 until the start of World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, with the exception of 1896 when Cosima first revived the Ring. Most of these performances were of the original production, which received 205 performances before a new staging was introduced in 1934. Another production – the influential one by the composer's grandson WielandWieland WagnerWieland Wagner was a German opera director.- Life :Wieland was the elder of two sons of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner and grandson of composer Richard Wagner....
– was staged every year from 1951, when Bayreuth reopened after the war, until 1973, accumulating 101 performances.
Der Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
, Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
, Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
:Cosima introduced these five works from 1886 onwards, after she started running the festival on a continuing basis. In introducing these, she fulfilled her dead husband's wishes but over an extended timescale. Meistersinger is the only work in the canon, apart from Parsifal and the Ring cycle, to have had whole festival seasons, those of 1943 and 1944, devoted solely to it.
The canon as a whole
Die Feen
Die Feen is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's La donna serpente.Die Feen was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime...
, Das Liebesverbot
Das Liebesverbot
Das Liebesverbot is an early opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a grosse komische Oper, it was composed in 1834, and Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at Magdeburg...
and Rienzi
Rienzi
Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name . The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi...
, as apprentice works. Although these have been staged elsewhere (and Rienzi was very popular into the early 20th century), the works in the canon exceed them, both in the number of performances given and in the number of available recordings. The term Bayreuth canon is therefore sometimes glossed as meaning the composer's mature operas. Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
was the first conductor to complete studio recordings of all the works in the canon, starting in 1958 with Das Rheingold and finishing in 1986 with Lohengrin.
Performances at Bayreuth
festival, 2472 performances have been given at the Bayreuth Festival of the operas in the canon, distributed as in the following table.Key
| symbol and colour | meaning |
|---|---|
| † | Ring opera |
| ‡ | Introduced by Richard Wagner |
| * | Introduced by Cosima Wagner |
| Opera | Completed | Première | Bayreuth première | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| † (The Valkyrie) |
|||||
| Siegfried† | |||||
| Götterdämmerung† (The Twilight of the Gods) |
|||||
(Tristan and Isolde) |
|||||
Sources
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- Ashman, Mike "Tannhäuser – an obsession" in John (1988) pp.7–15.
- Bayreuther Festspiele (2010) "Die Aufführungen sortiert nach Festspielleitung". Statistics of performances at Bayreuth Festival sorted by festival director at official festival site. Version updated after 2010 festival. In German, accessed 28 June 2011.
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(1979) I Saw The World End: A study of Wagner's Ring, Oxford, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0193153181. - Deathridge, JohnJohn DeathridgeJohn Deathridge is a British musicologist. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and at Lincoln College, Oxford culminating with a dissertation on Wagner's sketches for Rienzi, and is currently Professor of Music at King's College London...
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, 5 September 1999, accessed 19 December 2009. - Headington, ChristopherChristopher HeadingtonChristopher Headington was an English composer and pianist.Born in London, he studied at Lancing College and the Royal Academy of Music, later studying composition with Lennox Berkeley...
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/The Royal OperaRoyal Opera, LondonThe Royal Opera is an opera company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968...
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, Ponto PPO-1040. - Sabor, Rudolph (1997) Richard Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen: a companion, London, Phaidon, ISBN 0714836508.
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, June 1992 accessed 12 February 2010. - Syer, Katherine R. "Parsifal on Stage" in Kinderman & Syer (2005) pp.277–338.
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