Mark your calendars and set your alarm clocks, cher public, for 13 October 2013 at 18:00 CEST (that is, 2:00 PM in New York City) when individual tickets for the 2014 Bayreuth Festival will go on sale online.
All right, I admit it; I finally broke down and read the program notes for the Ring in the Bayreuth program book.
I’m told that the public were, if hardly enthusiastic, at least ambivalent toward the Frank Castorf Ring up until the first performance of Siegfried, at which point things got really ugly and the booing started in earnest.
First things first: working from the limited evidence of half or less than half of Frank Castorf’s production of the Ring, I don’t see any evidence of contempt for the audience or whatever you want to call it.
There are some productions that “introduce” themselves quite clearly early on: for example, the Patrice Chereau Ring puts it cards on the table very frankly with the image of the hydroelectric dam populated by grisette Rhinedaughters.
Our Own JJ (right) reports he is ready and relatively un-jetlagged for Das Rheingold tonight at Bayreuth. He'll have comments afterward.
If the Frank Castorf production of the Ring at Bayreuth accomplished nothing else, it will be the popularization in classical music circles of the term “boovation.”
Opening the 2013 Bayreuth Festival today, Der Fliegende Holländer conducted by Christian Thielemann (not pictured).
Revealed: first images of Frank Castorf‘s production of the Ring, launching Friday at Bayreuth.