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The Bayreuth experience

Robin Holloway

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

Robin Holloway visits the town for the first time and sees seven Wagner operas

Enough of all this scene-setting! What matters is, how it works. Sightlines in this uninterrupted space are good unless you happen to be fronted by a person of unusual height or girth; which must be just as bad for (usually) him because the rows are tight and narrow. The seats are notoriously punishing, too; not so much their corduroy-covered bottoms as their unyielding wood backs. But cushions are permitted and widely resorted to; surprising, because you would think that several hundred cushions would alter the acoustic. (Apparently not.)

I’m in two minds about this acoustic, the theatre’s most celebrated feature (to hint a fault and hesitate dislike, as I rashly did, is to risk a National Incident!). Yet after attending all seven works I am quite sure it doesn’t suit them equally well. Tristan, seen first, already poses the problem: the prelude’s aspiring start and ebbing close were clear if unmysterious; its burning climax failed to sear. Once singing begins, you register the clever balance that permits voices to emerge distinctly, without straining, over even the most turbulant orchestral textures, and how, within them, every strand is distinct and separate while preserving richness and utterly eschewing the nasty X-ray quality. When towards the end of Act I the lovers drink the potion, the total audibility of every tiniest quiver and shudder was uncanny, mesmerising, electrifying. (At this of all moments the couple in front began a whispered colloquy, which in my outrage I imagined to begin: ‘Are you sure you remembered to put the timer on for the bratwurst?’) Then with the convulsive close of the act the sound was veiled again, just when the orchestra needs to vie with the on-stage trumpets (also rather feeble) to shattering effect.