Just in: Bayreuth sacks its entire chorus
OperaKatharina Wagner’s parting message last night at the closing of the Bayreuth Festival 2024 was: The entire Festspielchor must re-audition. The existing Festspielchor has been disbanded.
The Festspiele will hold auditions on around 10 weekends across Europe (but none in the UK) starting in late autumn. Only two venues in Germany are planned.
Until now, Katie has merely shrunk the Chor. Now she’s ujsing the arrival of a new chorusmaster to sweep the backroom of simmering discontent and start again.
‘We have effectively been laid off,’ said one singer. ‘Nobody knows what will happen next and whether any of us will be here next year..
It’s a brutal decision. Many of the chorus members return every summer and know every detail of Bayreuth procedure. They will leave with a bitter taste, and justly so.
Open competition for equal access is an excellent idea, otherwise you wind up with a nepotistic situation where people with the same surname runs the same festival from generation to generation. It gets stale and incestuous.
Now maybe they can all apply for chorus jobs in Beirut!
Instead of getting rid of KW, who has repeatedly shown herself to be a terrible manager (and a terrible stage director), KW is getting rid of the best of the Bayreuth Festival, along with the orchestra. For what this individual is going to leave behind, it would be best if they celebrated the 150th anniversary in 2026 and closed down. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.
She has an incomparable talent for turning gold into lead. What a record! I won’t be going back while she is there.
It’s not as if Wagner and his 10 tired operas are in need of a dedicated house to promote them. They are promoted in every major opera house in the world. If a house is needed for special attention to his œuvre, Seattle is well prepared to handle the job, and handle it well.
…I wonder if she would dare to do the same with the orchestra?! As far as I know most musicians never had to do an audition to get in, just know the right people…
I hope they don’t sack Sachs!
She is perfectly capable of firing her great grandfather 00:30
The Boston Symphony went through something similar in 2018 with the Tanglewood chorus. I’m curious to know how it turned out.
https://symphony.org/new-conductor-of-tanglewood-festival-chorus-puts-re-auditions-in-place/
It depends on your perspective. The BSO trustees and executives are delighted with the present chorus, just as they always said they were with the chorus under its founding director. The dismissals were horrible to the singers who were cut and also to the remaining choristers–25, 30 or 40 years of camaraderie blown up. There’s a sizeable contingent that feels the singers took the hit for management’s letting the founding conductor stay in the role too long after his concert preparations had become less diligent.
“The operation was successful. The patient died.” Current trends: doing without a musical director, sacking the chorus. Now who will apply to work in such a “toxic environment”?
Christian Thielemann was the only music director Bayreuth has ever had and that only for a handful of years. The position does not define the festival.
Thousands of people.
Meanwhile the once unreachable tickets are easily available as the public is uninterested in pseudo-intellectual and outdated Regietheater force-fed on the hill. Very sad.
Does institutional memory mean nothing any more?
Should we be blaming KW? I’d think a new chorus master would want to put his mark on things. And most groups I know will reaudition every few years.
Katie, was tust du? Was hast du getan.