Avert your AIs
Bayreuth’s AI-powered “Ring 100010110” marred a first-rate cast and orchestra with nightmarish visuals and horrid dramaturgy.
Bayreuth Festival
Götterdämmerung
Christian Thielemann conducts Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, and Jochen Schmeckenbacher in a slightly delayed performance from Bayreuth
Streamed August 1, 2026 at 2:03 PM
228 comments
Siegfried
Christian Thielemann conducts Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, and Michael Volle in a slightly delayed performance from Bayreuth
Streamed July 30, 2026 at 2:03 PM
46 comments
Die Walküre
Christian Thielemann conducts Klaus Florian Vogt, Elza van den Heever, Camilla Nylund, and Michael Volle in a slightly delayed performance from Bayreuth
Streamed July 28, 2026 at 2:03 PM
125 comments
Das Rheingold
Christian Thielemann conducts a performance in slight delay from Bayreuth featuring Michael Volle, Jochen Schmeckenbacher, and Anna Kissjudit
Streamed July 27, 2026 at 2:03 PM
65 comments
Rienzi
Nathalie Stutzmann conducts a live performance of the first-ever Rienzi at Bayreuth
Streamed July 26, 2026 at 11:05 AM
135 comments
Beethoven No. 9
The opening of the 2026 Festival season featuring Christian Thielemann leading Elza van den Heever, Christa Mayer, Piotr Beczala, and Georg Zeppenfeld in a slight delay from Bayreuth
Streamed July 25, 2026 at 2:00 PM
9 comments
Ringing them in
Cher public is exhorted to join the Geplauder when the annual week of broadcasts from Bayreuth begins on Saturday
Daniel Barenboim is a great opera conductor
Daniel Barenboim’s Tristan und Isolde is a performance I keep coming back to, again and again.
By Domingo Hindoyan
82 comments
Aegean in place
Greek National Opera’s Medea in the ancient theater at Epidaurus is an intermittently rewarding exercise in nostalgia.
The Parterre Box Guide to Bayreuth
After more than twenty years of unsuccessful attempts to secure tickets, I imagined that experiencing a performance at the Festspielhaus would be a singular, once-in-a-lifetime event. Yet…
A favorite Verdi performance from CKurwenal
Like probably all of us, there are so many different things I could have submitted for a favorite Verdi performance.
By CKurwenal
51 comments
“Modern convention is the oddity”
Michael Spyres talks to Kevin Ng about his winding path as a baritenor, which composer he wants to conquer next, and how he makes Wagner work in his voice — and in his native Ozarks.
Tunnel vision
Lise Davidsen, Michael Spyres, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are astonishing in Tristan und Isolde at the Met, while Yuval Sharon‘s new production is anything but.
Some unholy wars
Caitlin Vincent‘s new book Opera Wars paints a persuasive picture of the problems facing opera today, though her solutions leave something to be desired.
“I don’t play a wilting flower very well”
Jennifer Holloway, star of Salome at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, talks with Christina Colanduoni about re-launching her career as a soprano and how her Salome is “just trying not to disappear under everybody else’s rule.”
Grail against the machine
A new production of Parsifal at San Francisco Opera stirred something deep inside Michael Anthonio about how music soothes the soul
A favorite Wagner performance from Le Petit Yniold
Nowhere are the contradictions between Wagner’s small-mindedness, his meanness of spirit, and his human insight on clearer display than in Hans Sachs monologue Wahn, Wahn überall Wahn in the third Act of Mesitersinger.
By Le Petit Yniold
45 comments
A favorite Wagner performance from CKurwenal
Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde pretty much started it all for me.
By CKurwenal
59 comments
Gonna build a heaven from a little hell
Tobias Kratzer‘s Das Rheingold in Munich kicks off a Ring for the post-secular age
This is what trauma looks like
Valentin Schwarz‘s and Simone Young‘s Ring, in its final outing at Bayreuth, is dramaturgically messy and musically excellent.
A favorite Wagner performance from grimoaldo2
I suppose Der fliegende Holländer is my favorite Wagner opera — a riveting masterpiece from start to finish, dramatically and musically.
By Grimoaldo2
53 comments
Lohengrin
A performance recorded earlier today at the Bayreuth Festival
Götterdämmerung
The final installment of the 2025 Ring from Bayreuth
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).