Although everyone dresses up, the atmosphere is fairly classless. For every couple quaffing champagne and scoffing fancy finger food there are lots of people glugging beer and munching bratwurst. Most spectators are German, but I also saw a fair few Britons, Americans, Chinese and Japanese. Despite its austere Teutonic temperament, Wagner’s music is adored worldwide.
When Wagner died in 1883, his widow Cosima took over the festival. It’s been a family affair ever since, run by Wagner’s son, Siegfried, then by Siegfried’s widow, Winifred, then by their sons Wieland and Wolfgang, then by Wolfgang’s daughters Eva and Katharina – and finally, until today, by Katharina alone. With its numerous feuds, the Wagner family saga is like a Teutonic version of Succession, set against the long dark shadow of the Holocaust.
The extent of the Wagner family’s complicity in those awful events is hard to measure. Richard Wagner wrote some terrible things about Jews and Judaism, yet he worked closely with many Jewish artistes (and he died before Hitler was born). Are his operas antisemitic? I think not, but this remains a matter of fierce debate. Wagner’s widow Cosima was also an antisemite, though she also had many Jewish collaborators. Â
The festival’s most controversial figure was Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Winifred, who took over the Festspiele in 1930 and ran it until 1945. An Englishwoman, born in Britain but raised in Germany, Winifred Wagner had been close to Hitler since the 1920s (there were even rumours that they were lovers). An obsessive, lifelong fan of Wagner, Hitler was a regular guest at Wahnfried, the elegant villa where Richard Wagner spent his final years, and where Winifred and Siegfried raised their children.
After the war, a denazification tribunal banned Winifred from the festival. Her sons, Wieland and Wolfgang, took over and restored the Festspiele’s reputation. Wolfgang’s daughters, Eva and Katharina, carried on where they left off. Today there’s a moving display outside the Festspielhaus honouring all the Jewish artistes who suffered under the old regime.
Seeing an opera at the Festspielhaus is the highlight of any trip to Bayreuth, but even if you can’t get a ticket there’s lots of other stuff to see and do. The Wagner family home, Wahnfried is now an evocative museum. The great composer is buried in the back garden. Beyond, through a little gate, is the Hofgarten – the palace gardens that date back to a quieter, gentler era when Bayreuth was the quaint capital of a little statelet, one of hundreds of little statelets that now make up modern Germany. These gardens are a beguiling blend of wild and formal, woods and flowerbeds. You can picture Wagner striding through here in search of divine inspiration.