Festival

Singer

Tenor

Andreas Schager

Siegfried

Arnold Bezuyen

Mime

Baritone

Tomasz Konieczny

The Wanderer

Bass

Olafur Sigurdarson

Alberich

Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Fafner

Contralto

Okka von der Damerau

Erda

Soprano

Daniela Köhler

Brünnhilde

Alexandra Steiner

Voice of a Woodbird

Cornelius Meister

Conductor

Stage director

Valentin Schwarz

Set designer

Andrea Cozzi

Costume designer

Andy Besuch

Lighting designer

Reinhard Traub

Dramaturge

Konrad Kuhn

Bayreuth

Germany

Richard-Wagner-Festspielhaus

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Bayreuther Festspiele

German

Public

Opera

Approved

Credit: Enrico Nawrath, Bayreuther Festspiele

Siegfried, Bayreuther Festspiele

Bayreuth as a place and heritage challenges us to stage a continuous, highly topical story in a rapidly changing time with the monumental work Der Ring des Nibelungen . The 15 hours that audiences experience on the Hill over four nights in less than a week becomes an addictive series, following the members and uninvited guests of an extended family from episode to episode. Where are you from? Where do you go? At some point, nothing comes for everyone, being forgotten; everyone tries to fight it in their own way - with the help of power, possessions, wealth, violence, beauty or progeny.

 

Through empathy with each individual character, whether superficially good or secretly evil, whether sympathetically close or fascinatingly distant, understanding for the people in today's world grows: for our mistakes, for the dangers we create for ourselves. We are morally composed of shades of grey; even the so-called villains have their problems to contend with. To paraphrase another 19th-century giant, Tolstoy: "All happy childhoods are alike, each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way."

 

In his total work of art, Wagner does everything to hold together the collage he created from a wide variety of myths and subjects through a fascinating musical formal severity and through the network of leitmotifs. W e want to present this great story in a uniform aesthetic – without wanting to claim a closed world design that looks at the fates as if through an upside-down telescope as a mere drama of ideas.

 

In this four-part family epic, we follow the characters with their different biographies through time and watch them age. A world passes, a new one arises. We meet people in their tragedy and in their comedy, with their fears and with their dreams that are shattered by reality.

Siegfried by Richard Wagner, From Bayreuther Festspiele (2022/2022), Directed by Valentin Schwarz,, Conductor Cornelius Meister

Credits (Cast & Crew)

Bayreuther Festspiele

Cornelius Meister

Valentin Schwarz

Cast

Andreas Schager

Arnold Bezuyen

Tomasz Konieczny

Olafur Sigurdarson

Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Okka von der Damerau

Daniela Köhler

Alexandra Steiner

Crew

Andrea Cozzi

Andy Besuch

Reinhard Traub

Konrad Kuhn

Ensemble

Bayreuther Festspielorchester

Program, About & Synopsis

Photos 5

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues 3