Disastrous evening at the Bayreuth Festival: performance booed mercilessly - audience angry

Created: 08/10/2022 05:04

By: Franziska Konrad

The new production of the “Ring der Nibelungen” was mercilessly booed by the audience at the Bayreuth Festival.

© Imago Images

Last Friday evening will not only be remembered by the Bayreuth Festival audience for a long time: after the premiere of “Götterdämmerung” there was loud protest.

Bayreuth - The Bayreuth Festival has rarely experienced such a storm of protest: the new production of the "Ring des Nibelungen" was booed furiously and mercilessly by large parts of the audience on Friday evening, August 5, after the premiere of "Götterdämmerung".

The team around director Valentin Schwarz received loud protests when they showed themselves to the audience.

Those in the audience who tried to counter it with applause and bravos perished.

Bayreuth Festival: protest storm after the performance - boos from the audience

The premiere of "Götterdämmerung" developed into a largely disastrous evening of opera.

And that was by no means due to the world conflagration with which Richard Wagner's "Ring" ended.

In the last part, Schwarz seemed to capitulate to his extremely ambitious and imaginative directing concept.

He presented a surprisingly conventional and at times long-winded interpretation of the murder of Siegfried and the return of the gold to the sisters of the Rhine.

The music also left a lot to be desired.

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It is important to mention that at the Bayreuth Festival, the audience is generally much more forgiving of the musicians than of the direction.

In plain language this means that when even the conductor and the main actress of the evening had to take boos, that is indeed remarkable.

Bayreuth Festival: an unusual number of boos from the audience

Conductor Cornelius Meister had to be satisfied with mixed reactions for his loud and sometimes ruthless conducting, from which Iréne Theorin in particular suffered audibly as Brünnhilde.

The soprano seemed to be having unusually difficult times with the role anyway.

Her extremely fluttering voice kept threatening to be drowned out by the orchestra.

There were unusually clear boos.

On the other hand, "Siegfried" stand-in Clay Hilley was celebrated without reservation.

This replaced Stephen Gould, who was ill for a short time.

This was announced by the press spokesman for the festival, Hubertus Herrmann, when he informed the audience of the cast change before the premiere began.

The strongest performances of the evening, however, showed the two villains: Hagen (Albert Dohmen) and Gunther (Michael Kupfer-Radecky) were celebrated for their achievements.

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