Bayreuth, Germany Summary

The capital of Upper Franconia, polished and respectable BAYREUTH, which lies some 80km northeast of Nürnberg, enjoys its reputation as one of the great cultural centres of Europe. Except for the five-week festival period beginning in the second half of July, it’s a quiet provincial town, which was something of a late developer, only coming to prominence in 1603 when it displaced nearby Kulmbach as the seat of the second of the Hohenzollerns’ Franconian principalities. Its subsequent fame is due to a series of imported creative spirits, two of whom played defining roles. The first of these was Wilhelmine of Prussia, Frederick the Great’s elder sister, who was intended for the British royal throne, but was married off instead in 1732 to her amiable but dull kinsman, the future Margrave Friedrich of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Instead of settling down to obscurity, Wilhelmine set about creating a vibrant courtly life, employing architects, painters, interior designers, landscape gardeners and musicians from all over Europe. The following century, Richard Wagner decided to settle in Bayreuth because the town offered to build him a stage large enough to put on his grand-scale opera productions, and the festival he founded, the Richard-Wagner-Festspiele, soon established itself as one of the great annual events of the music world. In common with everything else to do with Wagner, it was tarnished by association with Hitler’s patronage and exploitation for propaganda purposes, but continues to flourish, with demand for tickets always exceeding supply many times over.