Hot debate... scene from a 2004 production of Die Walküre. Photograph: EPA/Bayreuther Festpiele GmbH/Arve Dinda Musik/Festspiele
It has become an annual summer ritual in Germany for anybody who is anybody: the annual four-week Wagner festival in the southern town of Bayreuth, which opened last night, writes Luke Harding.
But far from confirming the festival as the preeminent event in the German cultural calendar, this morning's newspapers are talking up a future without it. Der Tagesspiegel wonders whether the festival has any cultural relevance these days. Or is it, in fact, just another overblown marketing event? "There's singing and dancing everywhere at the moment... A cry is going up from the audience asking: 'Are we amusing ourselves to death?' In fact the festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg are the most prominent examples of an increasingly close network of festivals that now stretch across Europe from the south Pole to Andalusia," it says.
The critics have already given a lukewarm response to last night's performance of The Flying Dutchman, a revival of a 2003 production, describing it as "engaging but not gripping". They noted that the applause was brief by first night standards - probably because most Wagner fans were keen to rush off and cool down with a cold Pils.
They have a point. Temperatures in the Festspielhaus hit 35C yesterday. The wooden auditorium, designed by Richard Wagner to house performances of his works, doesn't have air-conditioning. Instead, an elaborate water cooling system prevents the audience from fainting on their famously uncomfortable seats. "If you really want to enjoy Wagner you have to be prepared to suffer," confirmed Peter Emmerich, spokesman for the Festspielhaus. "You don't just have to wait a long time to get a ticket. You also have to put up with the conditions. A true Wagner fan is passionate. He doesn't care about this," he told the Guardian yesterday.
The main event of the Bayreuth season happens next week, with a new performance of the Ring cycle, directed by the 80-year-old poet Tankred Dorst. Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel - a big Wagner fan - is expected to turn up for the second part of the epic quartet. Other German politicians, including Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber and the federal health minister Ulla Schmidt, were in attendance last night, a rather predictable outing for the country's opera-loving political elite. There was even a Schlager star - Roberto Blanco, better known for singing cheesy German hits that you sway along to.
Of course, the debate in the newspapers is probably water off a duck's back to the Wagner family. Richard's 86-year-old grandson Wolfgang was today featured on several front pages, standing next to the latest member of the Wagner dynasty, his 28-year-old daughter Katharina, who is likely to make her own opera-directing debut at Bayreuth in 2008.
Perhaps Der Tagesspiegel is right. Maybe it is time for Bayreuth to call it a day. Perhaps even Wagner could do with a holiday.
