The Wagner city of Bayreuth

Thursday, 29 March 2012 - 01:07 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
Reading Time:  4 minutes

Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de - Rico Neitzel

Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de – Rico Neitzel

Bayreuth is a sizeable town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town’s roots date back to 1194 and it is nowadays the capital of Upper Franconia with a population of 73,000. It is world-famous for its annual Bayreuth Festival at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented.

The town is best known for its association with the composer Richard Wagner, who lived in Bayreuth from 1872 until his death in 1883. Wagner’s villa, “Wahnfried”, was constructed in Bayreuth under the sponsorship of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and was converted after World War II into a Wagner Museum. To the north of Bayreuth is the Festival Hall, an opera house specially constructed for and exclusively devoted to the performance of Wagner’s operas. The premieres of the final two works of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Siegfried and Götterdämmerung); the cycle as a whole; and of Parsifal took place here.

Every summer, Wagner’s operas are performed at the Festspielhaus during the month-long Richard Wagner Festival, commonly known as the Bayreuth Festival. The Festival draws thousands each year, and has persistently been sold out since its inauguration in 1876. Currently, waiting lists for tickets can stretch for 10 years or more.

Market Square © Michael Sander The Eremitage with its sun temple © Richard Schubert Old Castle © Immanuel Giel Margravial Opera House © Andreas Praefcke German Freemason Museum © GertGrer Friedrichstrasse © Thomas Kees New Castle © D.j.mueller Wagner family home, Haus Wahnfried © Dickbauch Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de - Rico Neitzel
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Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de - Rico Neitzel
Owing to Wagner’s relationship with the then unknown philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the first Bayreuth festival is cited as a key turning point in Nietzsche’s philosophical development. Though at first an enthusiastic champion of Wagner’s music, Nietzsche ultimately became hostile, viewing the festival and its revellers as symptom of cultural decay and bourgeois decadence – an event which led him to turn his eye upon the moral values esteemed by society as a whole.

In 1886, the composer Franz Liszt died in Bayreuth while visiting his daughter Cosima Liszt, Wagner’s widow. Both Liszt and Wagner are buried in Bayreuth; however Wagner did not die there. Rather he died in Venice in 1883, but his family had his body brought to Bayreuth for burial.

Read more on City of Bayreuth, Bayreuth Tourism, Bayreuth Festival, County of Bayreuth and Wikipedia Bayreuth. Learn more about the use of photos. To inform you about latest news most of the city, town or tourism websites offer a newsletter service and/or operate Facebook pages/Twitter accounts. In addition more and more destinations, tourist organizations and cultural institutions offer Apps for your Smart Phone or Tablet, to provide you with a mobile tourist guide (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




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