Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic A familiar face is missing from Bayreuth this year. After many years of attendance, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who turned 70 a couple of weeks ago, has announced that she is giving the Bayreuth festival a miss in 2024.Not that this has stopped the country’s highest-profile opera festival from getting itself in the news, as usual. Shortly before the opening night, culture minister Claudia Roth set the cat among the pigeons by suggesting that other composers should be performed at Bayreuth, not just the operas of Wagner, for which the festival was founded in 1876.“I have Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel in mind,” she told German media. “It is important that the festival is generally more open to young audiences and specifically addresses them. Bayreuth should become more diverse, more colourful and younger overall.”As the federal and local governments have assumed greater responsibility for the festival, it was always likely that pressure for change would mount. For the time being, though, the Wagner dynasty remains in control, as much the German “royal family” as ever. In May this year, Katharina Wagner, the composer’s great-granddaughter, had her contract as artistic director extended for a further five years to 2030, albeit with a general manager now alongside. Plans continue to feature a new production of a Wagner opera each year and in 2026, its 150th anniversary year, the festival will present all 10 mature operas, plus the early Rienzi, never before staged at Bayreuth.This year’s novelty is a new production of Tristan und Isolde. Its predecessor, directed by Katharina Wagner herself, probed deeper than most with its multiple visions of Isolde in Tristan’s raving mind. This latest, directed by Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson, is as inconsequential as they come.Its salient feature is that crucial turning-points in the opera’s plot are negated — so the love potion is “superfluous”, Melot does not stab Tristan, and Tristan and Isolde spend part of their love duet having a tiff (she slaps him). The idea is that their love and destiny are so strong that outside influences are not needed to play any part, but that leaves all kinds of questions unanswered. In particular, why do these two archetypal lovers barely interact? The first time they showed a positive connection was at the curtain calls, when Tristan enthusiastically swept Isolde off her feet. Wasn’t that what the opera was meant to be about?We are left with random ideas, often lost on an unhelpfully murky stage. A large hull of a boat dominates in the gloom, piled inside with what look to be disused props. Isolde spends her time defacing her wedding dress, but the words she has scrawled on it are snatched away before we have a chance to read them. Spotlights blaze unexpectedly at Tristan’s entrance, as though announcing the star of the show.At least the production gets that right. Andreas Schager is an unrivalled Tristan in almost every way, strong, full in voice and seething with intensity in Tristan’s suffering. His stamina is heroic, though even he could backpedal earlier to leave more juice in the tank for the last 15 minutes. As well as Tristan, he is singing the title role in Parsifal this summer. Has Bayreuth rifled through Isolde’s chest of magic droughts for a potion to keep him going?Many Isoldes might find themselves overpowered by him and Camilla Nylund is no exception. Even in this most voice-friendly of opera houses her soprano sounds on the small side for Wagner and less than opulent in quality, though she gives everything she has. Christa Mayer is a fine Brangäne, Olafur Sigurdarson a tireless Kurwenal with a throat of steel and Günther Groissböck a highly charged King Marke.There was orchestral luxury down in the pit, where Semyon Bychkov conducts a slow and spacious performance with the music sinking into a velvety cushion of rich sonorities. Forward drive is hard-won — one was left gasping for dramatic tension at times — but his slow-burn Wagner pays off and was wonderfully well played, earning him an ovation. The production team were booed long and loud, though at Bayreuth that could be taken as a badge of honour. ★★★☆☆This year Bayreuth is also making other news. For the first time, after more than a century of male dominance, there are more women conductors at the festival than men. One of them is Nathalie Stutzmann, returning to take charge of this year’s revival of Tannhäuser, to which she brings an invigorating cut-and-thrust.This is Tobias Kratzer’s rollicking production from 2019, which fuses video and live action to show us Tannhäuser as a dropout from a zany group of travelling players and the singing competition at the Wartburg as — guess what? — a performance of Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In a delightful twist, a parallel feed of live video offstage shows Venus craftily changing the sign on the conductors’ dressing room from male to female.Updating the production with details like that has kept it fresh. Kratzer wittily subverts Wagner’s queasy take on sex and religion and has done so with gung-ho panache. Elisabeth Teige’s pure singing as Elisabeth and Klaus Florian Vogt’s ringing Tannhäuser stand out in a good cast. ★★★★☆A live video feed is also a feature of the current Parsifal, new last year, but its director Jay Scheib went one better, adding special effects viewable through augmented reality glasses. Once an AR designer gets involved, there is no stopping them. Birds, hand grenades, dollops of blood, used plastic bags (this is Parsifal after a climate-change cataclysm) — the images flash relentlessly before one’s eyes.If you are lucky enough to get a pair of the AR glasses, set them aside. What makes this Parsifal worth catching is the musical performance. Pablo Heras-Casado judges pace and musical architecture to a nicety, and Bayreuth’s orchestra and chorus are first rate, as always.In Georg Zeppenfeld, the festival has the pre-eminent Wagnerian bass of his generation, and arguably the one before, as a Gurnemanz of exceptional eloquence. Ekaterina Gubanova is an effective Kundry, Derek Welton a sturdy Amfortas and Jordan Shanahan a vivid Klingsor. Last, but certainly not least, Schager was back, apparently refreshed after his Tristan, as a Parsifal of limitless power and musicality. Does this man never tire? A minor miracle — a Wagner festival with nothing but top-grade tenors. ★★★★☆To August 27, bayreuther-festspiele.de
