Russell Burdekin, Darkening the Auditorium at Bayreuth in 1876

March 2020, Volume 14, Number 1, 49–62.

Amongst Richard Wagner’s many claims to fame, an oft-repeated one is that he was the first person to leave the auditorium dark during a performance. This was at his newly built theatre in Bayreuth on 13 August 1876, during the Bayreuth premiere of Das Rheingold and the world premiere of the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. This article looks in more detail at this claim. It arose out of research exploring when auditoriums started to be darkened in the British theatre.