Adolf Hitler's favourite opera has finally arrived at Bayreuth. Rienzi, Wagner's early work, opened the festival's 150th anniversary season as an exception to the canon of his 10 mature works.
A flawed but ambitious staging
Since the complete handwritten score was given to Hitler and subsequently disappeared, no authentic version exists. Aesthetically, Rienzi shares the vast scale of French grand opera but sounds broadly Italian, with flashes of chromatic ambition hinting at Wagner's future language. Yet there are endless repetitions and the sense of an epic both overcompressed and underpowered.
Bayreuth's acoustic lent even four-square passages a diffuse luminosity. Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann found moments of pure chamber-music tenderness, majestic poise and vast surges of bass amid military marches and rousing choral outbursts.
An abstract near-future election drama
In Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka's production, 14th-century Rome becomes an abstract near-future with smartphones, screens and dystopian concrete, referencing recent US politics. One faction brandishes placards screaming “lock him up” and “bringing Rome back”; Rienzi's supporters insist they're “stronger together”. Events onstage are filmed and projected, labelled “live from the Capitol”. The narrative becomes an election drama incorporating psychosis and incest. Bayreuth itself appears in the act two ballet, a madcap compilation of Wagner's operas directed by a child dressed as the composer. Bible verses spool across the stage, video clips of pigeons appear. “There is, in short, too much happening.”
Standout performances
Andreas Schager was high-wattage in the title role, his clarion tenor thrilling if unvaried, his gentleness in act four a rare poignancy. Andreas Bauer Kanabas and Michael Nagy were persuasive as political rivals Colonna and Orsini, while Gabriela Scherer gleamed as sister Irene. Best was Jennifer Holloway's Adriano – now a soft-butch lesbian rather than a trouser role – whose desperation and torn loyalties remained sympathetic, her singing searing as catastrophe raged around her. Rienzi continues at the Bayreuth festival until 26 August.
