Leading opera director dumps Bayreuth

Leading opera director dumps Bayreuth

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norman lebrecht

December 19, 2016

The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, whose Madama Butterfly opened La Scala’s season this month, had ended talks with Bayreuth over a 2018 Lohengrin, the festival announced today.

There seem to have been political differences.

His likely replacement is the Los Angeles-based Yuval Sharon.

Comments

  • Theodore McGuiver says:

    ‘Had’ ended talks? Doesn’t seem any great loss if his Butterfliege is anything to go by.

  • DESR says:

    I loved Neuenfels’ Lohengrin but we need the next one to be a hit. The heart of the Wagnerian rep.

    About time Thielemann began to direct, no?

  • HugoPreuss says:

    Good riddance. The gentleman from Latvia complained loudly last year about Germany’s refugee policy, fearing that Germany and Europe would be Islamicized in no time. He is a racist, pure and simple. There are enough stage directors in the world; nobody needs a racist. Besides, the irony of a foreigner complaining about too many foreigners in a foreign (to him) country was apparently lost on him. And if he lacks the sensitivity to understand that xenophobic and racist sentiments are especially inappropriate in Bayreuth of all places, given the history of that house, he should not direct anything in Bayreuht.

  • kerstin weiss says:

    @HUGOPREUSS What a stupid thing to say. It is you who is the aggressor. Alvis Hermanis has never been a racist. He was very close to the paris attacks and thats why he thinks differently about refugee politics. And he thinks different about the ide of a ntion, since his has been supressed since a thousand years. By germans. And russians. And he did some of the most beautiful theatre works ever, consider his price for new Theatrical Realities.

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