Confirmed: Bayreuth chorusmaster quits
OperaWe are hearing from several sources that Eberhard Friedrich resigned last night as director of the festival chorus. His resignation came in the interval of Parsifal and the chorus demonstratively applauded him from the stage instead of taking their own applause.
We have asked for a statement from the Bayreuth Festival.
Friedrich, 66, has led the Bayreuth chorus since the summer of the year 2000. For the past three decadxes he has been in charge of the opera chorus at the state opera houses of Berlin and Hamburg.
Katharina Wagner has shrunk the chorus this summer to a pool of just 113 singers.
UPDATE: It’s been confirmed by festival spokesperson Hubertus Herrmann that Eberhard Friedrich, the long-time Chorus Master at Bayreuth Festival, has decided to step down. See here.
Bayreuth, as usual, turns a real-life drama into an admin process.
No match for the late Norbert Balatsch.
who was no match for Wilhelm pitz
I’m very sorry to hear this news. A.L. says that Friedrich is “no match for the late Norbert Balatsch”. Having heard the Bayreuth chorus live, many times, under both directors, I strongly disagree. The chorus has been the most consistent glory of the Bayreuth experience ever since WW2, under the three magnificent directors Pitz, Balatsch and Friedrich.
In the Friedrich era, the choral singing in Holländer (above all in the Gloger production when conducted by Thielemann) was electrifying, by far the best I’ve heard in fifty years of opera-going.
Very well said.
A chorus is only as good as the singers in it!
I heard him from 2000 since Thielemann’s MEISTERSINGER
There’s no such thing as “the interval” at Bayreuth performances. There are either two or none! Which interval was it?
Shame for Bayreuth. Eberhard is the finest chorus master in Germany, possibly Europe and certainly one of the best in the world. He told me this summer he’d already ‘retired’ but was staying on a further year in Hamburg, leaving definitively in a year’s time. It’s thus no surprise he’s called time on Bayreuth, where he has been in charge since 1999, having been one of Balatsch’s assistants for a number of years before that. Considering he’s spent the entirety of every festival period on the Green Hill for the last thirty years (chorus period: mid to late June till end of August) in addition to his fulltime job at the Berliner Staatsoper and more recently the Hamburger Staatsoper, he’s probably ready to put his feet up for a while. He leaves behind him the finest chorus in the world, his legacy is secure.
I’m intrigued as to who will succeed him.
I’’m sure Eberhard knows already who can replace him.
So am I.