Beauty Unveiled: Barry Millington reports on a new ‘Parsifal’ and a revived ‘Tristan’ at Bayreuth

Reviews of Parsifal, directed Laufenberg, conducted Haenchen, Bayreuth, 2016; Tristan und Isolde, directed Katharina Wagner, conducted Thielemann, Bayreuth, 2016.

November 2016, Volume 10, Number 3, 58–63.

With the Siegfried-Wagner-Allee (the grand avenue leading up to the Festspielhaus) closed to all traffic, multiple bag searches and police security at all entrances, this was a Bayreuth experience like no other. Ill-informed advance reports had suggested that the new production of Parsifal by Uwe Eric Laufenberg was anti-Islam in conception. But with the Munich shooting incident just a few days earlier and terrorist atrocities an ever-present danger, not to mention the presence in the audience of the German Chancellor, the Bayreuth management and police authorities were taking no chances.