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The hill lay still.

As always in the Bayreuth midsummer, there was no breeze.

But singing and instruments were also silent.

The corona virus put the Richard Wagner Festival 2020 into a deep sleep.

But there!

Don't you hear it?

Down below, in the bustle of the city, something was stirring.

Only two evenings in August, plus in an unfamiliar location.

But what sounded in the former “Reichshof” cinema saved the reputation of the summer town of Bayreuth (like the baroque festival in the Margravial Opera House a month later).

Even more: it pointed a possible way into the future of the festival.

Because in the “Werkstatt Bayreuth” there is a rumble.

There you push for new acts and formats.

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And Siegfried, Richard's master son, who lived from 1869 to 1930, is catching up tremendously.

As early as 2019, a production of his fairy tale opera “It's all about hats” in the Margravial Opera House made a name for itself.

Isn't the overdue late romantic composer, who was also a pioneering Bayreuth Festival director, a huge opportunity for Germany's most important opera festival?

Especially today, when the sacred aspect of Wagner's work is increasingly taking a back seat (or is being stepped)?

Where is parody, parody and even trash falling behind?

Siegfried Wagner's prelude to "Sun Flames"

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Trash is the keyword.

Peter Pachl, Siegfried's governor on earth and head of the pianopianissimo music theater, is considered the high priest of trash culture.

In each of his productions he celebrates such a wonderfully tumultuous children's birthday that one could only name Rosa von Praunheim, who similarly brazenly and indefatigably teases out the carnivalesque elements from that "idealistic production of meaning" that the Germans so much imagine.

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And so Pachl's staging of Siegfried Wagner's opera “Sonnenflammen”, which is now available on DVD from Marco Polo, is again a clever, fluffy main fun (also thanks to the hand-knitted costumes by Christian Bruns, with which one could cause a sensation at every DIY ball).

What does it matter that this ideologically upgraded piece actually stirs up the Crusades and the fall of Byzantium, German wanderlust and local stubbornness in a 175th infusion of the romantic outsider drama?

Siegfried Wagner with his favorite conductors, from left: Julius Kniese, Hans Richter and Franz Fischer, Bayreuth Festival 1899.

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

After all, isn't the hero happily called Fridolin (instead of Tannhauser, for example)?

Shouldn't he (here sung by the powerful Giorgio Valenta) die a completely nonsensical and dramaturgically unfounded love death (but alone!) With the most beautiful and intimate cantilena of this piece, which is already overflowing with indulgent melodies?

He is allowed to!

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But then director Pachl can also let it rip with set pieces from the past and present.

May record silent film sequences from the premiere of “Sonnenflammen”, but also when the home bells ring with Bambis and milk cows in the digital orchestra (which takes some getting used to!) Under Ulrich Leykam.

He is allowed to short-circuit crusades and cruises.

Let the decadent Byzantium die through global warming and nuclear energy.

Oh, what you are allowed to do!

One should only want!

Also up on the hill!

The new DVD with Siegfried Wagner's opera "Sonnenflammen"

Source: Marco Polo (Naxos)