Bayreuth Festival director, Katharina Wagner, is moving with the times. In the new production of Richard Wagner's opera "Parsifal," US theater director Jay Scheib is working with augmented reality, bringingthe Richard Wagner Festivalinto the digital age.

With the help of virtual technology and special 3D glasses distributed to the audience, digital avatars move through the space and objects fly around the audience's ears. A novelty at the Bayreuth Festival in southern Germany, and in the traditional opera world. Meanwhile on stage, as always, the real singers perform.

New experience

Augmented reality means "extended reality" and enables immersion into virtual 3D worlds. Unlike "virtual reality," one does not move in a purely digitally constructed environment, but also sees the auditorium and the stage through 3D glasses overlaid with digital images and effects.

"We're going to break down walls," vows director and performance artist Jay Scheib in an interview with the German news agency dpa. Scheib's musical production "Bat out of Hell" — based on the 1970s album of the same name by hard rocker Meat Loaf — is currently still touring Germany. Meat Loaf alluded to symbols from Wagner's operas both on the album cover and in the music.

Bayreuth on the pulse

Festival director Katharina Wagner also wants to use the new project to attract interested newcomers and, above all, a younger audience to the time-honored festival. And virtual reality specialist Jay Scheib is always good for a surprise. He had already realized a virtual excerpt from Wagner's opera "Siegfried" in Bayreuth in 2021.

He chose the famous dragon scene, where you could kill the dragon yourself with Siegfried's sword through 3D glasses. Speaking to DW back then, Scheib had said: "The part where Siegfried hits Fafner (the dragon) right in the heart was important to me, because we're living in a time where we have to defeat a lot of dragons right now — like Donald Trump."

Parsifal: Wagner's 'world farewell work'

The opera "Parsifal" is the last musical drama by Richard Wagner, composed especially for the Festspielhaus. "It is his 'farewell to the world', as Wagner himself called it. Wagner died six months after he wrote the work," Sven Friedrich, director of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, told DW.

Friedrich will introduce the audience to the work at the festival, but isn't revealing much just yet. Jay Scheib is also keeping a low profile. The director, who is also a professor of music and theatre arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the daily Frankfurter Rundschau: "I don't know if you approach it differently as an American. For me, maybe it's not a religious issue. But 'Parsifal' is a symbol of Bayreuth, it's Wagner's church: and yet I say to myself, 'Let's get the party started'."

Wagner for all 

There will be a big musical "party" at the open-air event on the eve of the premiere. The opera singers from the various productions will be there. The audience can follow the spectacle on chairs and picnic blankets on the large lawn of the "Grüner Hügel" (Green Hill).

Markus Poscher will conduct the festival orchestra with music that also, as the program overview highlights, "breaks boundaries entirely in the spirit of Wagner." Composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich, Alban Berg and Giuseppe Verdi, as well as Aerosmith are listed on the program.

'Der Ring des Nibelungen'

A controversial production of Wagner's opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen," directed by Austrian director Valentin Schwarz, is back on the program this year. Schwarz will stage the four-part Ring cycle as a family drama. The so-called "Netflix Ring," which works with cliffhangers and open questions in the style of television series, left viewers and critics alike puzzled and confused in 2022.

As a utopia of love, German music director Roland Schwab has Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" played out in a spartan futuristic setting. This production also dates from last year.

The "Flying Dutchman," directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, appears on the program for the third and thus last time, conducted by Oksana Lyniv. In 2021, the Ukrainian was the first woman to take the conductor's podium at the Bayreuth Festival. This year, French conductor and singer Nathalie Stutzmann will join her as the second female conductor. She will conduct Tobias Kratzer's production of Tannhäuser.

Angela Merkel to attend again

Every year, some 60,000 people make the pilgrimage to the "Green Hill," where Richard Wagner inaugurated his festival with the "Ring of the Nibelung" in 1876. Of the approximately 1,900 guests, only 330 spectators — prominent visitors who will arrive via the red carpet — can enjoy the digital glasses for "Parsifal" because of the high costs.

This year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and, once again, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have announced their attendance. Claudia Roth, Minister of State for Culture, will also be present. However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is away on vacation and will probably not attend.

This article was originally written in German.

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