Richard Wagner Festival Wels

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The Richard Wagner Festival Wels was an opera festival with works by Richard Wagner that took place from 1995 to 2015 in Wels , Upper Austria . The venue for the annual festival held at the end of May / beginning of June was the Wels city theater, Theater im Greif .

History and reception

In 1989, as part of a concert with excerpts from Wagner operas, a bust of Richard Wagner was unveiled in the Stadttheater Wels, which had found its place in a niche in the staircase. This concert in the presence of Wolfgang Wagner was so successful that it was decided to hold an annual gala. The director of the festival, Renate Doppler, and her father, Walter Just (1921–2012), on whose initiative this festival goes back, have set themselves the goal of bringing the operas to the stage in a way that is true to the work. The scenographer Günther Schneider-Siemssen suggested scenic performances that have taken place since 1995.

The hall has just over 600 seats and a production was only shown two or three times during the festival. In 2006, the New Yorker described tickets for the festival as “recently sought after”. Around a third of the audience for the performances, which were consistently sold out, came from abroad.

For their services to Richard Wagner's work, Renate Doppler and Walter Just were made honorary members of the Richard Wagner Association Linz in 2011.

After 26 years, the festival took place for the last time in 2015 after the city of Wels and the state of Upper Austria discontinued financial support. The last performance on May 24, 2015 was Tristan and Isolde with Stig Andersen and Lioba Braun in the title roles.

The committed soloists included proven Wagner specialists such as Theo Adam , Jayne Casselman (2011), Simon Estes , Gwyneth Jones , Janis Martin , Hans Sotin (2011) and Heinz Zednik .

The conductors and musical directors included Hans Wallat , Johannes Wildner , Friedrich Haider and Ralf Weikert . Günther Schneider-Siemssen directed until 2001 and Herbert Adler since 2002 .

In October 2016, the Lohengrin production of the Richard Wagner Festival Wels was performed in the Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman).

Schedule and participating artists

The following operas were performed:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b History ( memento of August 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on the festival website, accessed on June 17, 2015
  2. ↑ James B. Stewart: The Opera Lover . In: The New Yorker . 82nd volume, Volume 82, No. 1–11, p. 108.
  3. ↑ Honorary memberships accessed on January 14, 2015
  4. ↑ Current report in the online edition of the Kleine Zeitung, accessed on January 16, 2015
  5. ↑ MUSCAT: LOHENGRIN or "Wagner in the desert". Premiere. Review in Online Merker, accessed on March 30, 2017.