Rienzi - Bayreuth Festival 2026 - Rienzi - Bayreuther Festspiele 2026, Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka

Description

New production.

For the first time in its history, the Bayreuth Festival is staging a production of Rienzi, Richard Wagner’s first major success, although the composer had not included it among the ten works he considered suitable for performance at Bayreuth. To mark the Festival’s 150th anniversary, the organisers nevertheless maintain that ‘had a definitive version been created around 1871, Rienzi would certainly have found its place in the Bayreuth canon’. They continue: “Indeed, the ten works of the Bayreuth canon are not based on a will or on authoritative formulations in the founding charter of the Richard Wagner Foundation in Bayreuth, but solely on passages taken from Wagner’s letters to King Ludwig II of Bavaria dating from 1882”.

The 2026 Bayreuth Festival is therefore presenting a new production of Rienzi, based on versions that take into account not only the traditions surrounding the work, the history of its reception and the philological research uncovered in recent decades, but also new sources that have made it possible to reconstruct parts of the score previously thought to be lost. Thus, according to the Festival, “even if Wagner had written only Rienzi, this opera would be a masterpiece unique in its kind, which would have found its place in the history of European musical theatre genres, even without the signature of the future master of Bayreuth”.

This new production is in the hands of the directing duo Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka. The musical direction is entrusted to conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, who leads a cast of great Wagnerian voices.

Further information is available on the Festival’s official website.