Bayreuth premiere cast of Parsifal
The Bayreuth premiere cast of Parsifal list the participants in the new productions of Richard Wagner's Parsifal stage dedication festival , including the world premiere, which took place on July 26, 1882 at the Bayreuth Festival .
To the performance history
In the last performance of the series of premieres in 1882, Richard Wagner took over in the III. Act personally, the baton led by Hermann Levi , unnoticed by the audience, as the overbuilt orchestra pit of the Festspielhaus made the conductor and the orchestra invisible to the audience. It was the only time that the composer conducted himself in his house.
Parsifal was composed especially for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and, as Wagner stated in a letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1880 , should only be performed there. The premiere production in Bayreuth was almost sacrosanct and was on the program of the festival almost unchanged over a period of 51 years. Hermann Levi remained the conductor until 1894; Felix Mottl only conducted in 1888 (and then in 1897) . Later, Franz Fischer and Karl Muck took over the musical direction of the Parsifal festival performances.
The protection period of 30 years after the composer's death ended on December 31, 1913. However, as early as 1901, the composer's widow and director of the festival, Cosima Wagner , approached the German Reichstag with a request to secure the sole performance rights for Bayreuth. The request was refused. Even before the end of the term of protection, there were unauthorized performances, for example at the New York Metropolitan Opera , there on December 24, 1903, Cosima's 66th birthday, and in Amsterdam.
After the end of the term of protection, forty productions of the work took place within the month of January 1914. The first of these legal productions began on New Year's Eve 1913 at 11:30 a.m. in the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona. To this day, Parsifal is the most frequently performed work at the Bayreuth Festival.
1934
It was not until 1934 that a new production was shown - commissioned by Adolf Hitler - with sets by Alfred Roller , Hitler's favorite set designer . After Arturo Toscanini's refusal for political reasons , who should have directed the new production, Richard Strauss stepped in .
After the start of the Second World War due to the German attack on Poland , the work was no longer allowed to be played in Bayreuth at Hitler's behest, presumably because of his message of reconciliation. As if by a miracle, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus was not destroyed in the Allied bombing war, but two thirds of the city was in ruins. The Villa Wahnfried was also half destroyed on April 5, 1945, the hall including the rotunda and the floor above as well as the southeastern part of the house were blown away.
1951
When the Bayreuth Festival could be re-institutionalized in 1951, the new Artistic Director of the Festival, Wieland Wagner , presented a radical new version of Parsifal as the first production of “New Bayreuth”. He renounced a detailed naturalism and put the music in the foreground through abstraction and suggestive lighting . The action on the stage was expressively condensed and only underlined by extremely reserved, stylized and meaningful gestures and movements. His Bayreuth staging style became the model that was copied many times for numerous Wagner productions up to the 1970s. The new production was conducted by Hans Knappertsbusch and has also been released as a record. Wieland Wagner's production remained on the Bayreuth repertoire for more than twenty years and reached 101 performances. The premiere featured the world's best Wagner singers, including Wolfgang Windgassen in the title role , Martha Mödl as Kundry and George London as Amfortas.
Premiere casts
The sixth column shows the number of performances of the respective production.
swell
- Overview of the staging of the Bayreuth Festival (completely from 1951), accessed on August 20, 2019
- Wagner portal , cast for the premiere, accessed on July 15, 2016
- Tamino Autographs , cast sheet for the performance on August 23, 1934, accessed on July 18, 2016
- Tamino Autographs , cast sheet for the performance from July 23, 1937, accessed on July 18, 2016
Individual evidence
- ↑ »How wonderful! - the king longed to hear from Parsifal «. The genesis of Richard Wagner's »Parsifal«. In: Thalia: Festspiel-Magazin Bayreuth 2016 Current information on the 105th Richard Wagner Festival. Ed. Von Thalia.de, pp. 9 to 11, description of taking over the leadership on p. 11.
- ↑ Wagneropera.net: Conductors Parsifal Bayreuth , accessed on July 17, 2016.
- ↑ BELART: Friedrich Nietzsche's friendship with the tragedy Richard Wagner and Cosima Wagner-Liszt, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86347-477-5 , page 111
- ↑ Metropolitan Opera (New York): The United States Premiere of Richard Wagner's Parsifal, December 24, 1903 , see: [1] , with an announcement of the US premiere with details of the full cast, accessed on July 17, 2016.
- ^ A b Christian Wildhagen: History of "Parsifal": The robbery of the Grail from Bayreuth Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 22, 2014, accessed on July 17, 2016.
- ^ Wagneropera.net: Parsifal , accessed on July 17, 2016.
- ^ Oskar Pausch: Alfred Roller's visit to Adolf Hitler in 1934 . A lost document. Retrieved from [5153_OEZG_2_2012_S237-244_Pausch.pdf] on July 18, 2016.
- ^ Wagner Operas: Parsifal , accessed on September 28, 2016.
- ^ Der Spiegel (Hamburg): Obituary: Wieland Wagner, 5.1.1917-17.10.1966 , October 24, 1966, N. 44/1966, accessed on September 28, 2016.
- ↑ Amazon: Richard Wagner: Parsifal (complete recording) (Live, Bayreuth 1951) box set , accessed on September 28, 2016.
- ↑ a b c Bayreuth Festival: The performances sorted according to staging ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
- ↑ So far, there is only a cast sheet for the performance on August 23 for 1934. This was a recapitulation, not the premiere, and was conducted by Franz von Hoeßlin . There may also have been changes in the cast of the singers since the premiere.
- ↑ The cast list lists Ruth Berglund , but here the spelling Rut Berglund was chosen because this was also chosen on the cast list in 1937 and in later recordings, see [2] . In the case of the soprano Käthe Heidersbach , the spelling from 1934 was chosen because this was also the common one in the post-Nazi era.
