BAYREUTH – CHAPTER I

I. FROM A CONCEPT (THE TOTAL ART)
TO BUILDING PROJECTS (A FESTIVAL THEATRE)

1- From the idea of an exceptional musical drama
to the concept of a theatre specifically dedicated to it

What could be called “The Bayreuth adventure” was above everything the adventure of The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen), a unique music cycle of four operas (or “music dramas“) – The Rhinegold (Das Rheingold), The Valkyrie (Die Walküre), Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) –  the colossal epic to which Richard Wagner devoted more than a quarter of his life as a man and as a musician.

And to perform such an artistic creative “madness” (nearly sixteen hours of music in total), what could be more “natural” and even absolutely “essential” in the eyes of its spawner (in addition author of many theoretical writings on music and on the modern way of bringing lyrical works to the stage) than to conceive a theatre, a specific building that would be specifically designed to stage it in optimal architectural and acoustic conditions? Even if it meant to reject de facto as a whole a lyrical tradition inherited from the 18th century and its “italian style theatres” where opera, giving in to all the trends and conventions of the time, was then only considered as entertainment…

In this revolutionary logic aimed at a new order, Art must, according to Wagner, play a crucial role; this art must be understood by the leaders as well as the people, its mission is to elevate the minds towards an ideal, it must federate them around common origins reminded, sublimated. The manifestation must be good both in terms of content (the subjects addressed in the works) and form (the way of producing them on stage). We must therefore return to the very essence of theatre, that of the ancients, especially that of the Greeks.

Wagner felt himself invested with the mission of a prophet: he was the one who would dust off Art and would bring to the lyrical theatre a new form, freed from the yoke imposed by the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie of this industrial and capitalist 19th century. His comrades in arms (arms at first purely verbal and then bearing firearms on the barricades of 1848) were called Gottfried Semper (the architect of Semperoper, the Dresden Opera House erected in 1838) and Sergei Bakunin; the builder and the anarchist: two founding fathers in their own way of the Bayreuth Festival.

To serve his political and artistic ideals, Wagner relied on his personnal experience. Indeed, his position as music director and conductor of the German Opera Theatre in Riga (1837-1839) enabled him to discover a theatre that seemed to extend his theoretical ideal, both in the architectural design of the hall and that of the stage :
– Our composer discovered a theatre which, surprisingly for the time, was plunged in the dark during the performances ;
– The concert hall itself was in the form of an amphitheatre, thus abandoning the principle of the Italian-style theatre ;
– The orchestra pit was half covered by the stage.
If one thinks of the disposition that would take the future Bayreuth Festival Theatre, one can only see a direct filiation with the theatre in Riga.

MVRW RIGA Opera plan salle

It was in 1863, in the preface to the first edition of The Ring, that the composer and playwright clearly expressed his conception of the optimal framework to produce the “great work of his life”, a conception evoked but not formalized in 1848. His will was to realize the “Opera of the future“, a total work of art (or Gesamtkunstwerk).

The place … and the financing of such a project remained to be found!

 

2- The first projects

220px-Wagner_LudwigWhen the score of The Ring came to light after years of work in the late 1860s and early 1870s, Richard Wagner gained the unfailing support of “The Friend” in the rich and generous person of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The composer knew from the beginning that his royal supporter would be the centerpiece of the incredible bet he made to revolutionize the opera world, if not that of arts.

With what could be qualified today as a certain logical mind, and even a frank obstinacy, Wagner convinced the young king of the necessity of ordering the construction of a building of new dimensions – understand: architectural and artistic ones – for his great work that was The Ring.

And to see the advent of his dream no doubt a little megalomaniac, the composer did not skimp on the “brainwashing” (not to speak of blackmail) on Ludwig II. Would the construction of a modern theatre which turned its back on the architectural and social conventions of its time not serve the glory of the King? With such a building, would he not walk in the footsteps of his grandfather Ludwig I? Would he not gain the status of an enlightened monarch, a building sovereign and an innovator?

In Munich, King Ludwig II of Bavaria already embodied, and justly, this modernity of arts, thought and architecture. Modernity has always been the prerogative of the Wittelsbach family. His father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, a worthy descendant of Ludwig I, had decided at the time (in 1853) to build the Glaspalast (the Glass Palace) (NB: this building was destroyed by an arson in 1931; nothing remains of it today), a large exhibition pavillon directly inspired by the Crystal Palace in London. The building located in the former Munich botanical garden was to be used to organize and house the First German Industrial Exhibition (Deutsche Industrie Austellung) held there in 1854.

Heir of building kings, seduced by Wagner’s idea of a Festtheater, the future setting of an exceptional work, Ludwig II projected, in 1864, to build in the main hall of the Glaspalast a temporary theater. The plans of the project were entrusted to the architect Gottfried Semper, former comrade in arms of Wagner.Glaspalast 1

MVRW Glaspalast Variante

MVRW Glaspalast Variante bis

An analysis of the plans of this project revealed the Wagnerian precepts which would serve later in the construction of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth: the projected theatre, of parallelepiped shape, was conceived like a vast open-air amphitheatre with stepped stalls that ends with, at the bottom, a wall of boxes, containing in its center the royal box; a Festspielhaus in Bayreuth before time. Encouraged of course by Wagner, who hoped to realize his very first dreams, the project was getting increasingly bigger, so much so that the Festtheater by Semper was considered “out” of the Glaspalast and placed on the banks of the Isar, in the extension of the Maximilianstrasse: a royal position for the theatre of a royal protege! Nothing was too good to satisfy the composer’s wildest dreams.

But this project remained shut down. Indeed, Wagner’s insatiable appetite earned him the antipathy of the public, then the disgrace pronounced by a desperate King, whose hands and feet were tied, on 18 December, 1865.

The Munich Festtheater, whose construction site was inaugurated in 1868, was abandoned the same year. Ludwig II, Wagner and Semper understood the message that the Bavarian people and the authorities of the Court conveyed to them: if we must build, it will be out of Munich!

King Ludwig II of Bavaria, as we know, was bound by his unfailing friendship and his unbounded admiration for the composer. Even when separated from him, he sought solutions, even if it attracted the enmity and wrath of his ministers who did not see the end of the royal expenses in favour of Wagner and their (allegedly) common dream. But a major problem eventually arose, due to the personal and reciprocal ambitions of the two men. For Ludwig II, a temporary stage, a temporary theatre, built with wood and floating on the shore of a lake – considered in Switzerland or in the Füssen region – that of the King’s extravagant constructions (Neuschwanstein, Linderhof…) – “would suffice” to satisfy his own pleasure. A sweet romantic dream, albeit a bit selfish, but that did not correspond in any way with the requirements of greater recognition of the composer.

From his remote residence in Tribschen, in Switzerland, where he was confined in his exile with his new wife Cosima, Franz Liszt’s daughter, Wagner still dreamt of his own theatre…

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List of reference materials consulted for the realization of Section IV : BAYREUTH

MVRW Picto Section 4

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