Bayreuth Festival marks 150 years with AI Ring and restored Friedman invitation

The Bayreuth Festival opens at the end of July as it marks its 150th anniversary, drawing international opera fans and prominent guests, including German politicians such as Chancellor Friedrich Merz and former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The first Bayreuth Festival opened on August 13, 1876, after years of disputes over funding Richard Wagner’s ambitious project. Friedrich Nietzsche, a friend of Wagner and a festival guest, praised it as “the first circumnavigation of the world in the realm of art.”

This year’s anniversary program includes a new staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle using artificial intelligence and a first Bayreuth production of Rienzi, Wagner’s first major success. The original plan to stage all 13 of Wagner’s finished operas was abandoned because it was financially unfeasible.

The opening ceremony on July 25 features Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a work Wagner admired and conducted in Bayreuth in 1872 during the laying of the foundation stone for his Festival Theater. The festival says the program reflects Wagner’s call for new creation, “Kinder, schafft Neues!”

The run-up to the festival was overshadowed by the so-called Friedman affair. Michel Friedman, a German-French journalist and former president of the European Jewish Congress, was invited to speak at the memorial event “Silenced Voices,” which honors Jewish artists whose careers at Bayreuth were destroyed by antisemitism, persecution and murder.

The festival said in an official release that, in its 150th anniversary year, it is aware of its historical responsibility regarding Wagner’s antisemitic views and the connections of parts of the Wagner family to National Socialism. Friedman was initially asked to postpone his speech because of insufficient security measures, but after an apology from festival management he will now attend.

The memorial event will include music by Gustav Mahler and Pavel Haas, who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. Katharina Wagner, the festival director and Wagner’s great-granddaughter, said on the festival’s website that she is delighted to welcome Friedman.

Rienzi will be performed at Bayreuth for the first time. Wagner composed it in the style of French Grand Opera and later thought it did not fit the repertoire for his festival theater. The opera is based on the rise and fall of the Roman leader Cola di Rienzo, who fought against the aristocracy.

The work has also drawn attention because it was among Adolf Hitler’s favorite operas. Sven Friedrich, director of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, said Hitler admired the figure of the self-made man who rises to sole power through charisma.

The Hungarian directors Alexandra Szemeredy and Magdolna Parditka said they are not focusing only on one dictatorship, but on how a state can gradually evolve from populism into an authoritarian regime.

The new Ring production is being presented as a major experiment for the anniversary year. Katharina Wagner wants it to break new ground by incorporating AI, and curator Marcus Lobbes said image layers will be generated partly in real time to create holographic 3-D spaces.

The team used archival footage of Ring performances from 1876 to 2024 for the AI to analyze. Lobbes said the aim is to create a vast visual composition and a “visually effervescent cosmos of light, texture, history, and association.”

The Bayreuth Festival runs from July 25 to August 26.