Katharina Wagner - the woman dubbed in the German press as "Bayreuth Hilton" - has unveiled her new production of MEISTERSINGER at her great-grandfather's theatre in Bayreuth.

Bating opera producers is a sport in itself in Germany, and new productions routinely come down to a chorus of boos and a torrent of vitriol in the press.  It's no surprise that at the notoriously conservative Festspielhaus the reception of Ms Wagner's production was more than usually splenetic.  The NYT keeps up the pressure on her in this review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/arts/music/30meis.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin
(currently visible without registration or payment, but that expires very quickly on the NYT so take a look now if you are interested)

Bayreuth is something that's inaccessible to me for the triple reasons of location, price, and extremely restricted ticket availability.  Have any other members seen this production, or do any of you have plans (or even tickets?) to see it in the future?

Frankly I take all such reviews  - kneejerk opposition to any reinterpretation of "Der Meister's" holy writ - with a pinch of salt.  The photographs look good, but I know full well that isolated moments from a show can give an utterly false impression of how it worked on stage. In fact many producers fall into the trap of "creating pretty pictures" whilst ignoring the prime directive of every producer - to tell the story as fully and truthfully as you can.  Ideally, of course, you should be able to do both. My own view is that if you haven't got at least 2-3 moments where your compelling narrative crystalises into a breathtaking visual tableau that sticks in the minds of the audience, then you've missed a major opportunity, and possibly failed entirely.  This is the principle shortcoming of Stanislavsky if used as unalterable dogma... it ignores the need for a stunning visual scene as viewed from the auditorium (and in fact considers this irrelevant - a basic tenet of Stanislavsky is that you must never for a single moment think "what you look like on stage" or you are dead in the water and left "posing for the peepers" instead of living-out your character's intentions).

The NYT article does go for the jugular, and accuses K Wagner of failing in her basic duties - of directing the action convincingly (a duty that every producer has, whatever "concept" or "approach" or "paradigm" they've gone with).  This, of course, can only be assessed by someone who has seen the show.   The Act III finale, in particular, is a nightmare to stage, and even battle-grizzled pros have called-in extra help (movement advisors, choreographers etc) to stage the thing (the NYT article doesn't mention how K Wagner fared here, keeping its powder dry to assassinate her for alleged shortcomings in the final scene).

Anyone got any views on this?  About this staging in particular, about contemporary tendencies in staging Wagner generally, or about the battle for power and glory behind the scenes at the Festspielhaus??   Should this father-to-daughter handover be regarded as normal and desirable?  Or could K Wagner be the Kundry who finally sets free the long-suffering Bayreuth knights, and even anoints an outsider as High Priest?    Perhaps the "old guard" saw themselves caricatured in the photo above? 

musically dissapointing too, apart from the booing at the end.
very satisfying.



very satisfying.

i think i would be unhappy with anything remotely untraditional at bayreuth, and that makes me very disappointed in myself.

Fair point, Soundwave... but I think there's a strong "look at meeeeee!" element in many of the performance art disciplines 

Mind you, no member of the Wagner family (at least in Germany) needs to do anything at all to get noticed.

I don't know much about the tradition of performing Wagner as such, but I did see the Schlingensief Parsifal at Bayreuth last year. I got a free ticket for the Generalprobe from a chorus member. Lucky me!

I was really entranced by the wonderful sound and playing of the orchestra (and the fact that they were completely invisible, at least from where I was sitting) and the chorus sections were absolutely wonderful. I could hear the principals quite well most of the time (but not their words - then again, my German was pretty sketchy at that point).

As far as the staging was concerned, I found it to be a dreadful mish-mash of all sorts of poorly integrated ideas. Schlingensief's production seemed designed to do as much as possible to subvert and undermine Wagner's story, as well as to distract one's attention from the music. There were all sorts of naive syncretistic allusions (monks and priests of every religion he could think of), a revolving stage, grafitti everywhere, and banners flying in and being projected onto for 20 seconds and then removed (a lot of them). The blocking was pretty much non-existent.

One of the few images I remember well from the production was a spray-painted slogan: "Die Bilder werden bleiben". An interesting idea, but, well, they didn't really (although the annoyance caused by them did indeed stay for quite a while!). And there was one moment where I actually felt something quite special was happening - for the orchestral interlude (Procession of the Grail I think) in Act I there was a massive b/w film projection on a gauze in front of the stage which showed a kind of Pagan ritual with a deer-man at its centre. As I say, this blew me away but that might have been the power of hearing the music live for the first time as much as the film (or the fact that I'm quite fascinated by Paganism as well as by Wagner and the combination was powerful). At any rate, I didn't feel the idea was followed up in the rest of the production, and its imagery certainly wasn't matched.

Sorry to be so long-winded: it was a big experience and of course left me with mixed impressions. Maybe that's exactly what Wagner staging should do, but I'd have preferred to see a more traditional staging for my first Parsifal.

Good points, pw, and I owe you a message about music criticism from another thread, don't I - I haven't forgotten, just haven't got round to writing it yet!