Breaking: Uproar over Bayreuth chorus bloodbath
OperaThe union representing chorus singers in Germany has fired off a furious protest to the management of the Bayreuth Festival over plans to slash the chorus next summer from 134 singers to just 80, a 40 percent cut.
The union has demanded urgent financial justification for this radical reduction. It says: The special choir sound is unique in the world and is traditionally part of the Bayreuth Festival. Reducing the choir to 80 members … does not meet artistic requirements and will affect the quality of the performances.’
Singers have been warned not to talk to the media while negotiations are in progress.
Nothing, so far, has appeared in the German press. You read it here first.
Pictured: Parsifal bloodbath at Bayreuth
For shame. That chorus is indeed something special and worth protecting. Hear them here in the Der fliegende Holländer. No chorus anywhere else can match their character, intensity and accuracy. At the time they were under the direction of Norbert Balatsch and it shows.
https://youtu.be/SB-WS2HwSHY
Wilhelm Pitz is spinning in sein Grab.
Seinem
It would be folly to make such an enormous cut – any cut – to the Bayreuth Festival Chorus. In an age where a fair few other houses regularly engage better soloists the chorus and orchestra on the Green Hill provide the indisputable reason to make the trip to Upper Franconia. Compromise that incomparable sound and you undermine the very reason for the festival’s continued existence.
Worthy of the BBC?
Bayreuth in 2023 has nothing really to do with Wagner at all.
Staging opera should enhance the music drama and follow the composers stage directions. Bayreuth is rather like hanging the Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is some awful garish frame. Visitors then only notice the picture frame and not the actual art itself. Opera directors and TV presenters often fall into this same trap.
Many decades ago a famous Irish raconteur and social observer David Tynan O’Mahony, whom Brits may recall as Dave Allen, made a fascinating documentary series about English eccentrics.
These included a vicar who had another life as a cowboy, a plumber from Eastbourne who lived with his wife as Sioux Indians in their back garden, Ivor Cutler who composed funny songs on his harmonium snowy, a childrens entertainer who lived on a diet of cabbages he grew himself. Dave Allen just let each of them tell their stories without judging them as presenters do today.
I had plans to attend Bayreuth for Parsifal, having researched into their “production”, I am quite appalled. I saw an excellent one in Berlin some years ago which was far better.
In no way relevant to the issue discussed here.
Wrong pal, Doc is 100%. You have missed his point entirely. Folk hate these Euro trash shows.
Some goners,yes.
“The lucky ones who get to stay on can just sing 40% louder.”
Utterly unbelievable; that the world-renowned Bayreuth could even think of such a thing! The Singers (Including Chorus!), Hall and Orchestra of die Bayreuther Festpiele are a treasure to the music world, and should be treated as such. Hopefully sanity will prevail!
I know several Bayreuth sponsors in HK and elsewhere who have had enough of their traffic cones, clowns & rat costumes in these productions. They want to see chain mail, armour and HIP productions they are historical dramas after all set in a fixed time period eg 10th century for Lohengrin. Apart from the Ring which is Dark ages.
Beware us of those unintentionally funny Monty Python and the Holy Grail productions.
If you want Wagner done right, go elsewhere. They have lost the plot 100%.
Wagner has hours of boredom in between a couple of minutes of nice wee tunes rather similar to film music, eg Bernard Hermann
It´s music for grown ups,as my my mom used to say. You need more than an attention span of an insect.
This is a very disappointing decision. Whatever you think of the productions, the chorus remains outstandingly good and the loss of 40 singers will diminish the quality of the performance.
How many singers did Wagner use in his chorus at Bayreuth?