- Bayreuth canon
The Bayreuth canon is a term referring to those
operas ofRichard Wagner that have been performed at theBayreuth Festival , the festival of his music founded by the composer and continued since his death under the directorship of members of his family. The canon consists of:
*"Das Rheingold ", "Die Walküre ", "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung ", the four components of "Der Ring des Nibelungen " first performed in its entirety during the first festival in 1876;
*"Parsifal ", first performed at Bayreuth during the second festival in 1882 and solely performed there until the embargo placed on performances elsewhere by Wagner and his heirs was broken by theMetropolitan Opera ,New York in 1903;
*"Der Fliegende Holländer ", "Tannhäuser", "Lohengrin", "Tristan und Isolde " and "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ", all introduced by the composer's widow Cosima after she started running the festival on a continuing basis.Together, these make up the last ten completed stage works by the composer, he having come to reject his first three completed operas as immature apprentice works. Although these earlier operas have been given in other opera houses, the Bayreuth canon far outstrips them both in the number of performances given around the world and the number of recordings that are available. The term can therefore also be used as shorthand for those of Wagner's works that form part of the mainstream operatic repertoire.
Table of Performances at Bayreuth
As of the completion of the 2008 festival, a total of 2412 performances have been given at the Bayreuth Festival of the operas in the canon, distributed as in the following table.
ee also
Bayreuth Festival References
*Gurewitsch, Matthew [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFDC1F3BF936A3575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print "Music: Bayreuth, Like Wagner, Survives the Critics"] ,
New York Times , September 5, 1999, viewed 29 Sept 2008.
* [http://www.bayreuther-festspiele.de/statistiken/auffuehrungen_sortiert_nach_festspielleitung_324.html#gesamt Performance statistics at Bayreuth Festival site] (in German), viewed 29 Sept 2008
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