Bayreuth Festspielhaus

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Bayreuth Festspielhaus

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Bayreuth Festival Theatre) is an opera house

Opera house

An opera house is a theater building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building....
north of Bayreuth

Bayreuth

Bayreuth is a city in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Frankish Alb and the Fichtelgebirge. It is the capital of Oberfranken and has a population of 73,048 citizens ....
, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
, dedicated principally to the performance of opera

Opera

Opera is an Performing arts in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work which combines a text and a musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition....
s by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, Conducting, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas . Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner wrote both the scenario and libretto for his works....
.

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The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (Bayreuth Festival Theatre) is an opera house

Opera house

Bayreuth

Germany

Opera

Richard Wagner

Bayreuth Festival

The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented....
, for which it was specifically conceived and built.

The design was adapted by Wagner, without the architect's permission, from an unrealised project by Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper was a Germany architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semperopera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841....
for an opera house in Munich

Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
, and built under Wagner's supervision. Its construction was funded principally by King Ludwig II

Ludwig II of Bavaria

Ludwig II was king of Kingdom of Bavaria from 1864 until shortly before his death. He is sometimes referred to as the Swan King in English language and der M?rchenk?nig in German language....
of Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is a region located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest States of Germany of Germany by area....
. The foundation stone was laid on 22 May 1872 (Wagner's birthday). The building was first opened for the premiere of the complete four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen

Der Ring des Nibelungen is a literature cycle of four epic poetry music dramas by the Germany composer Richard Wagner. The operas are based loosely on characters from the Sagas and the Nibelungenlied....
(The Ring of the Nibelung), from August 13, 1876 to August 17, 1876.

Only the entry façade

Facade

A facade or fa?ade is generally one side of the exterior of a building, especially the front, but also sometimes the sides and rear. The Word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
exhibits the typical late-19th-century ornamentation, while the remainder of the exterior is modest and shows mostly undecorated brick stone. The interior is mainly wood, which contributes to the excellent acoustics. Unlike the traditional opera house design with several tiers of seating in a house-shoe shaped auditorium, the Festspielhaus's seats are arranged in a single steeply-shaped wedge, with no galleries or boxes. The capacity is 1,925.

The most famous and significant feature of the Festspielhaus is its unusual orchestra pit. It is recessed under the stage and covered by a hood, so that the orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is an Musical ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an theatre of ancient Greece reserved for the Greek chorus....
is completely invisible to the audience. This feature was a central preoccupation for Wagner, since it made the audience concentrate on the drama onstage, rather than the distracting motion of the conductor

Conducting

Conducting is the act of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and other musical ensembles often have conductors....
and musician

Musician

A musician is a person who plays or writes music. Musicians can be classified by their roles in creating or performing music:* An instrumentalist plays a musical instrument....
s. The design also corrected the balance of volume between singers and orchestra, creating ideal acoustics for Wagner's operas, which are the only operas performed at the Festspielhaus. However, this arrangement has also made it the most challenging to conduct in, even for the world's best conductors. Not only is the crowded pit enveloped in darkness: the acoustic reverberation makes it difficult to synchronise the orchestra with the singers. Conductors must therefore retrain themselves to ignore cues from singers. Most, if not all, of the festival's conductors have found the Festspielhaus venue the most challenging of their careers.

The Festspielhaus also features a double proscenium

Proscenium

A Proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large archway at or near the front of the Stage , through which the audience views the Play ....
, which gives the audience the illusion that the stage is further away than it actually is. The double proscenium and the recessed orchestra pit create, in Wagner's term, a "mystic gulf" between the audience and the stage. This gives a dreamlike character to performances, and provides a physical reinforcement of the mythic content of most of Wagner's operas.

The Festspielhaus remains the venue of the annual Bayreuth Festival, during which Wagner's operas, such as the Ring cycle and Parsifal
Parsifal

Parsifal is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the medieval Epic poetry of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail....
, are given on a repertory basis.

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

See also

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