Tchaikovsky Research: The Bayreuth Music Festival

From Tchaikovsky Research:

The Bayreuth Music Festival (Байрейтское музыкальное торжество) (TH 314 ; ČW 580) was a special article by Tchaikovsky for the Moscow journal Russian Register (Русские ведомости), in which it appeared over five issues between May and August 1876 [O.S.].

It concerns the first performance of Wagner's complete Ring cycle in 1876 at the opening season of the new Festival Theatre in Bayreuth—Das Rheingold on 1/13 August, Die Walküre on 2/14 August, Siegfried on 4/16 August, and Götterdämmerung on 5/17 August 1876—conducted by Hans Richter, and with a first cast which included Amalie Materna as Brünnhilde.

The article is divided into five parts with the following subjects:

Part I: An outline of the genesis of the Ring cycle and how the Bayreuth Festival Theatre came to be built;
Part II: A synopsis of the plot of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre;
Part III: A synopsis of the plot of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung;
Part IV: A tourist's walk through Bayreuth, including interesting descriptions of the Festival Theatre and Wagner's Villa Wahnfried; a description of the reception for Emperor Wilhelm I and the procession of musicians, including a fascinating 'snapshot' of Wagner himself and some admiring remarks on Liszt; a very amusing account of the trials and tribulations faced by hapless tourists in this small Bavarian town; a list of those famous composers who had not come to the Festival, as well as of those Russians who had; a description of the performance practice and audience etiquette at the Festival;
Part V: A fascinating general discussion of Wagner's "symphonic style" in the Ring, with various criticisms and reservations (which Tchaikovsky attributes in part to lack of sufficient familiarity with the cycle as yet—something that he hoped to put right by "further study"); at the same time, though, tremendous admiration for Wagner's "strength of spirit" in accomplishing this "titanic endeavour", and even if Tchaikovsky drops various hints that he does not agree with Wagner's "quixotic" approach to opera as "music drama", he concludes that this first complete performance of the Ring was "an epoch-making event in the history of art"!

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