Winifred Wagner welcomes Adolph Hitler to Bayreuth for the annual music festival in August 1939. Photograph: Corbis
I'm intrigued by the sound of this production, by Norwegian director Stefan Herheim, of Parsifal in Bayreuth. "Swastika banners unfurl over the stage, Nazi SS officers goose step in formation," reports Shirley Apthorp of Bloomberg. Just like old times, eh?
Andrew Clark of the Financial Times unpacks it thus: "In the late 1930s and early 1940s swastikas bedecked the Festspielhaus. Getting into bed with Hitler was Bayreuth's darkest hour - something it has hitherto refused to acknowledge, partly for fear of jeopardising its commercial success, partly because the Wagner family's support for Hitler is a can of worms.
"The sense of atonement on Friday, in an opera about redemption, was palpable. At last the festival could talk openly about what had for so long been taboo."
