Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
For Wagner, listening to opera was meant to be work and he tested his listeners wherever pos-
sible.
Götterdämmerung, Parsifal, Tannhäuser
and
Tristan and Isolde
are grandiose pieces that
will jolt any audience geared for light entertainment. Four days of
The Ring of the Nibelung
are
good for limbering up.
After poring over Passau and a few other German cities, Wagner designed his own festival hall
in Bayreuth. The unique acoustics are bounced up from a below-stage orchestra via reflecting
boards onto the stage and into the house. The design took the body density of a packed house into
account, still a remarkable achievement today.
Wagner was also a notorious womaniser, an infamous anti-Semite and a hardliner towards
'non-Europeans'. So extreme were these views that even Friedrich Nietzsche called Wagner's
works 'inherently reactionary, and inhumane'. Wagner's works, and by extension Wagner him-
self, were embraced as a symbol of Aryan might by the Nazis and, even today, there is great de-
bate among music lovers about the 'correctness' of supporting Wagner's music and the Wagner
Festival in Bayreuth.
