Scenes from Provincial Life: Matthew Rye explores some of the bicentennial offerings in Germany away from the bright lights of the biggest cities

Reviews of Parsifal, directed Pilavachi, conducted Brogli-Sacher, Lübeck, 2013; Parsifal, directed Schloemer, conducted Soltesz, Essen, 2013; Rienzi, directed Oldag, conducted Kütson, Krefeld, 2013; Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed Dew, conducted Meister, Darmstadt, 2013.

November 2013, Volume 7, Number 3, 63–72.

The space given in international print to the major opera companies in the main German metropolises sometimes hides the fact that there are still some forty or so municipal theatres in the country putting on opera performances on a weekly or even daily basis. This round-up is an attempt to give coverage to some of the bicentennial Wagnerian offerings of these smaller, less widely known companies and to discover how vibrant the operatic scene is in the German ‘provinces’, for want of a better categorisation, in these financially restrained times.