Deutsche Grammophon to present first-ever virtual Bayreuth Festival this summer!

Deutsche Grammophon will present the first-ever virtual Bayreuth Festival this summer.

Created in partnership with the spiritual home of Richard Wagner’s music dramas,  Bayreuth Festival 2020 will run on sixteen evenings between 25 July and 29 August as part of DG Stage – The Classical Concert Hall.

The four works scheduled for the 2020 Bayreuth Festival – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Der Ring des Nibelungen – will be broadcast online in recent or landmark productions from the Bayreuth archives.

Each work will be shown on the day and at the time it would have been performed during this year’s cancelled festival and remain available to view for 48 hours.

DG Stage ticket-holders can also watch critically acclaimed festival stagings of Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal on free days in the 2020 Bayreuth calendar.

To substitute for Bayreuth’s new production of the Ring, DG Stage is set to run Frank Castorf’s challenging 2013 staging of Wagner’s tetralogy (in a recording from 2016, conducted by Marek Janowski), as well as Patrice Chéreau’s iconic production from 1976 (in a recording from 1980) with Pierre Boulez conducting – the celebrated Centenary Ring.

All productions will be introduced by a stage director, conductor or principal singer involved with the original production, specially filmed for the festival’s DG Stage season. Speakers include music director Christian Thielemann for Tristan und Isolde and Lohengrin; Marek Janowski for the Castorf Ring; Barrie Kosky, Michael Volle and Philippe Jordan for Die Meistersinger; Elena Zhidkova and Lise Davidsen for Tannhäuser; as well as Georg Zeppenfeld for Parsifal.

Heinz-Dieter Sense, Managing Director of the Bayreuth Festival, comments:

“It was with great regret that we decided to suspend our productions this year. This unique event means so much to so many people around the world, which is why we are delighted to be able to collaborate with Deutsche Grammophon and present our full festival programme online. While we look forward to welcoming artists and public back to the Green Hill in 2021, DG Stage is set to deliver the best of Bayreuth to a global audience this summer. Together with the festival management, the Friends of Bayreuth set up the emergency fund for artists of the Bayreuth Festival. Artists and performers who are in need as a result of the Corona pandemic are to be supported by this fund.”

Tickets for DG Stage Bayreuth performances cost € 4.90 and can be bought securely online using all major credit cards or via the usual payment providers. Festivalgoers will gain access to one-off productions broadcast in state-of-the-art audio and visual quality.