Jedermanns Bayreuth: Edward A. Bortnichak and Paula M. Bortnichak report on current productions and the commitment of the new regime to ‘open the shrine’

This was the inaugural season for the management of the Bayreuth Festival by the half-sisters Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier. Positive changes in attitude and direction on the Green Hill are already clearly evident. The new leadership is pursuing an ambitious tripartite agenda: provocative Regietheater reinterpretations of the canon, popularisation of the works and of the festival, and audience building and education. The open, populist, questing nature of Bayreuth under the new regime has already been outlined with the recent announcement of plans to encourage scholarly investigation of the festival and its administration during the period of National Socialism, live public screenings and webcasts of festival performances, continued expedited DVD release of current productions, repertoire extensions to festival-time productions of the three ‘juvenile’ works, outreach educational programmes for children, and updating and renovation of the Wahnfried Museum.