Security fears cast shadow over Beyreuth opera festival

Offstage drama and security fears have cast a shadow over Germany’s Bayreuth opera festival, which opens this week.

Tighter security on Bayreuth’s Green Hill has been in place since the start of rehearsals.

Germany’s Bayreuth opera festival dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner opens this week, but security fears and offstage drama threaten to cast a long shadow over the 140-year-old event.

The curtain goes up just days after an 18-year-old German-Iran­ian went on a shooting rampage in Munich, killing nine people before shooting himself.

A week earlier, five people were injured in an axe attack on a Bavarian train in Wuerzburg that was claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Bayreuth is just a two-hour ride from both incidents. In the wake of the shooting in Munich, the regional state premier of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, said the traditional opening banquet originally planned for yesterday would be cancelled out of respect for the victims and their families.

Tighter security on Bayreuth’s Green Hill — on which stands the Festspielhaus festival theatre — has been in place since the start of rehearsals last month.

Town authorities called for extra measures following rumours that this year’s new production, which no one has seen yet, of Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal, could be seen as being critical of Islam. According to media reports, subsequently dismissed by director Uwe Eric Laufenberg, the Flowermaidens in the opera were to have worn burkas.

Festival insiders say the heightened security could sour the hitherto idyllic summer atmosphere in Bayreuth’s world-famous Festspielhaus, the theatre built to Wagner’s designs.

Some observers even have suggested that the extra security was one of the reasons rising star Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons — who had been scheduled to direct the glitzy opening gala — quit with just four weeks to go.

The opening night of the festival, one of the highlights of Germany’s social and cultural calendar, traditionally is attended by the country’s political and social elite.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a keen opera fan, has trodden the red carpet almost every year but she will not be attending this year owing to a diary clash.

In contrast to past years, all bags and cushions will be banned from the auditorium as well as cloakrooms and patrons have to carry photo ID at all times.

Given the bitter feuds between Wagner’s descendants over control of the festival, founded in 1876, the behind-the-scenes machinations in Bayreuth are often more entertaining than the productions themselves, with every artistic tantrum and diva clash gleefully pounced on by the media.

This year, reports have suggested that Nelsons’s departure also was due to constant meddling by the festival’s general music director, Christian Thielemann.

Last year, Thielemann was rumoured to have sacked one singer because she was close to rival Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko who pipped him to the post of chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Petrenko, who has conducted in Bayreuth for the past three years, also will be absent this year and is being replaced by veteran conductor Marek Janowski.

The Bayreuth Festival runs from July 25 until August 28 with 30 performances of seven operas, including Parsifal, Tristan and Isoldeand The Flying Dutchman.

AFP